The Highlander's English Bride (The Lairds Most Likely 6)

With a sigh, he trudged toward the steps. "Let’s get you a wee dram then put you to bed."

He stamped downstairs, once he checked that she followed. Sending Big Billy back

to Lyon House had been a mad, reckless act. The peel tower was too small, when it came to Emily trusting him with her chastity.

Hamish began to wonder whether the whole wide damned world was too small, when it came to keeping his hands off his delectable wife.

Chapter 22

Emily picked her way down to the study and paused in the doorway to watch Hamish dig two small glasses and a squat flask from a corner cupboard.

"Are you sure you’re not cold?" Hamish asked without looking at her.

"No, I’m fine, thank you." Scotland in early autumn was warm, much more so than she’d expected.

However, she was most definitely suffering an agony of self-consciousness. When she’d prepared for bed, she’d considered sleeping in her crumpled shift. But much more appealing was one of Hamish’s clean white shirts, smelling of herbal soap and mown grass and sea salt – and the tiniest, most intriguing hint of him.

After those incendiary kisses in the moonlight, she hadn’t been able to sleep. Her blood fizzed like champagne shaken inside the bottle, and a needy restlessness made her feel like ants crawled over her skin.

It wasn’t just her body that was in a ferment. Her heart brimmed with the overwhelming love she’d only just acknowledged.

Was falling in love with her fascinating husband a blessing or the worst calamity that could befall her? For ten years, she and Hamish had fought each other to a standstill. If anyone had suggested she was likely to fall in love with her father’s swaggering protégé, she’d have laughed her head off. Yet now she ached for him to take her in his arms and tell her he loved her, too.

Emily was accounted a clever woman, but she found herself conflicted and confused. This dilemma was beyond the powers of science or mathematics to solve. Unless the equation really was as simple as one and one made two.

Troubled and unhappy – yet, strangely happy too, because love was a gift, whether returned or not – she’d stretched out on a bed that smelled like Hamish’s shirt. Trying to quiet the turmoil in her heart, she told herself that tomorrow, she’d make some decisions.

Then all she did was lie there, tired, mentally alert, physically…

Physically, every fiber of her body insisted that it was wrong to be alone.

Hamish had touched her with desire. But at least as important, they’d spoken like intimates. Joy had flowered in her soul when he’d trusted her enough to confide in her. There had been occasions tonight when he’d felt like her dearest friend. Could she rely on this surprising, erratic harmony that sprang up between them here in this magical place?

She wished to heaven she’d taken the trouble years ago to talk to him properly. Tonight’s revelations had shown her that her husband was a million miles away from the impervious rock of arrogance she’d once believed him.

At last Emily came to know him as someone other than a rival. Because she was ashamed to admit that he had been a rival, both intellectually and for her father’s affection. She’d now grown up enough to see that jealousy rather than pique had inspired a large part of her hostility toward her father’s favorite pupil.

She loved Hamish’s mind. His intelligence left her in awe. But she began to wonder if perhaps his heart was even bigger than his extraordinary brain. If that was the case, it was time to clear away the obstacles standing between them and seek a genuine closeness.

She burned to tell him she wanted him, too, that she was tired of being a virgin bride. If he kissed her the way he had tonight, he could do whatever he liked to her.

But when she sought him out, her courage failed. The words inviting him to take her refused to emerge from her lips. Some cowardly element hoped that when she showed up half-naked, he’d take the decision away from her.

He hadn’t, curse him. She should have known he wouldn’t. He had too much honor. At last, she acknowledged what a fundamentally good man Hamish was.

Sometimes, like now, she wished he wasn’t quite so good.

"Here." He passed her a glass half-full of golden liquor. "This should help you sleep. Slainte mhath."

"What?"

"It means ‘your health.’"

"Slong chee..."

He laughed softly. "Speak the English, lassie. Gaelic takes a bit of wrapping the tongue around."

Inevitably that made her remember how his tongue had danced inside her mouth. That had seemed such a bizarre thing for him to do, yet in practice it had been wonderful. That disturbing yearning surged again, and she shifted from one bare foot to the other.