Mared swallowed a lump of despair. “But I…I canna go back,” she whispered tearfully. “I canna be who I was then.”
Payton sucked in a breath as if he’d been physically hit. He dropped his hands from her face and with a weary sigh, he pocketed the ring he had intended to give her. The bewilderment in his eyes was devastating.
“Very well then,” he said, sounding completely dejected. He glanced up at her, and she could see how deep his hurt ran. “This is the last time I will impose on ye, leannan,” he said quietly. “I have loved ye, aye, I’ve loved ye all my life. But it seems I’ve been a bloody fool….” He sighed again, and turned partially toward the window. “Aye, but I’ll no’ be a fool again, for I donna believe,” he said, his voice getting hoarse with emotion, “that I can love ye any longer.”
He might as well have kicked her in the gut, and in fact, Mared felt her knees begin to buckle. She grabbed on to his arm, but he shook her off and moved out of her reach. Payton, the man who had been the constant in her life, the man who had adored her, wooed her, courted her, enslaved her, seduced her…he wouldn’t love her any longer? The very notion shook her to her core. “Please donna say that,” she pleaded.
“’Tis too late, Mared,” he said wearily. “Whatever I have felt for ye all these years has died with yer refusal. Go then. Live yer life. Leave no stone unturned.” He started to walk past her.
Mared tried to catch his arm, to make him turn around, to make him take it back, but he shrugged out of her grip, opened the door, and strode into the brightly lit corridor.
She did not see him again.
Twenty-seven
I t was Ellie who informed Mared that Payton had left Edinburgh. When she and Duncan came in from their afternoon stroll around Charlotte Square, Ellie handed her bonnet to the footman and said excitedly, “You did not tell me that Laird Douglas had come to town!”
Mared froze at the writing desk where she was reading the post. “Douglas?” she echoed weakly. “In Edinburra?”
“Yes, of course! I encountered Miss Douglas, and she told me that he’d come and gone in two days’ time. But he attended the Aitkin ball last evening—surely you saw him there.”
“No,” Mared said, looking up. “No, I didna see him.”
Ellie looked quite surprised. And even more skeptical.
“It was horribly crowded,” Mared quickly added.
“Hmm,” Ellie said, looking at her curiously. “I would think that the laird would seek you out, what with his regard for you.”
“Oh,” Mared said airily, turning back to the morning post, “he’s not had any regard for me in months. No’ since I ruined his neckcloths.”
“Really,” Ellie said.
“No’ the slightest,” Mared insisted and nonchalantly picked up an invitation and stared blindly at it as the heat of her lie crept up her neck.
“Well then, I suppose I shall inquire why he didn’t call when I see him next,” Ellie said pertly.
Mared jerked her gaze up. “When you see him next?”
“At Loch Chon. We’re to go home soon, you know.”
“No, I didna know.”
“Anna’s time is near, and the winter weather will be setting in soon. Didn’t Liam tell you?”
“No,” Mared said, frowning. “He didna, for I would have told him that I canna go back to Talla Dileas.”
Ellie’s gasp of surprise was nothing compared to Liam’s roar of disapproval over supper. They argued well into the night, Liam insisting that she could not remain behind, unchaperoned, without at least a companion, for it would not do for an unmarried lass to cavort about Edinburgh without escort.
Mared argued just as vehemently that she was a grown woman, and she’d lived her entire life at Talla Dileas wasting away under that curse, and now she was determined to live life fully and become the person she was meant to be. Not a spinster. Not a woman stuffed away in some dreary rotting castle in the Highlands.
Liam took great offense at that comment and he reminded her rather loudly—so loudly that Ellie ran from window to window, ensuring they were all soundly shut—that she was a Highlander born and bred, and he’d never let her forget it. Mared swore she’d never forget it, how could she? But that did not mean she was destined to be tucked away in the Highlands all her life. She reminded Liam that he and Grif had had their share of travel and adventure before the family fortune had turned, and now it was only fair that she had hers.
“No’ without a companion or escort, no’ over my bloody body!” Liam shouted.
Mared shrugged. “I donna care for a companion. But if that means ye’ll leave me in peace, then I shall have one. But I am no’ going back!” Especially not now that Payton hates me.