Holy hell.
He spun on his heel and headed straight to the study. From there, he headed directly to the sideboard. He rarely drank. In fact, he could count on one hand the number of times he’d indulged in the last eight years. Nearly all of them, he realized grimly as he poured himself a finger of brandy, had occurred in the last week.
The man I love.
He added more to the glass.
She couldn’t mean it. She couldn’t possibly love a man who’d been nothing to her only months, possibly only weeks, ago. A man whose sins had put her life at risk. That had been his initial, albeit in part irrational, reaction—she didn’t know all his sins, did she?—the moment the words left her mouth, followed shortly thereafter by the single most brilliant pang of joy he had ever known.
Evie wouldn’t say the words unless she meant them. It wasn’t in her nature to lie. Well, yes, he amended, it was in her nature to lie, but not about that. He was sure of it. She wasn’t the sort to make a sport of something so important.
She loved him. Despite his reticence, despite his less-than-auspicious origins, despite all common sense, really, she loved him.
The man I love. Her voice echoed in his head. You arrogant, heartless arse.
He downed the glass in one long swallow.
If she bloody well loved him, she could bloody well marry him. What could be more natural?
Admittedly, a woman in love might have hoped for a proposal with a bit more romance. But how the devil was he to have known she was in love?
She complained of his reticence. He snorted—actually snorted—and considered pouring another glass. She hadn’t said a word about love. Not a single word.
If she had, he might have broached the idea of marriage a little differently. He might have tried to appeal to her heart rather than her head.
She would just have to live with it, he decided in another burst of temper. In fact, she should be thrilled for it. What was wrong with having appealed to her head—to her sense of reason—as he would have a man’s? Isn’t that what she’d harped on about in the past? Women not being respected for their minds?
It damn well was.
He slammed the glass down on the counter and strode from the room.
He was going to his bedroom. Then he was going to pack his things for tomorrow’s journey back to Haldon. Then he was going to wait.
Evie could bloody well come to him. *
Evie could not recall a time in her life when she’d ever indulged in such a fit of violent temper. It could be assumed that she’d had her moments as a small child, but as an adult, she preferred the simplicity of a few choice curses followed by a short period of brooding. Nothing too dramatic.
But right now, right at this very moment, she wanted to break something. Pick it up, dash it against the wall, and watch it shatter into a million little shards. Then she wanted to do it again. She wanted to scream, to lash out, to destroy something.
She stood in the middle of her room, seething with a rage that could find no outlet. Making a loud fuss would only bring members of the house rushing to see what was the matter.
And there was nothing in the room she could break, because nothing in the damn room belonged to her. She dearly wished there was something in it that belonged to McAlistair. Something expensive and fragile. Like her heart.
Frustrated beyond measure, she stalked to the bed, picked up a pillow, and hurled it against the wall. The soft and wholly unsatisfying thump it made only served to infuriate her further.
“Argh.”
After a moment’s hesitation, she picked up another pillow and tossed it as well. It was, she decided, marginally better than nothing.
“Need keeping, do I?” she fumed between gritted teeth. “Keeping?” She tossed the next pillow. “Like a child, or a pet?”
She hurled the last. “Bloody keeping?”
She couldn’t believe, quite simply could not wrap her head around the fact that he’d had the gall to use such a monstrously insulting phrase. There was little else the man could have said that would have infuriated her so effectively…or cut her more deeply.
She felt the sting of that wound now, as the worst of her temper began to ease in small increments.
With a sound that was half growl and half sob, she sat heavily on the edge of the bed.
Hadn’t he come to know her at all?
Didn’t he love her even a little?
The sting grew into a heavy ache in her chest. She pressed at it with the heel of her hand, as if she could rub it away as McAlistair had rubbed away the pain in her leg.
Exhausted and heartbroken, she crawled on top of the bed, curled into a ball, and wished she had a pillow to cry on.
Twenty-nine
Evie slipped into a fitful sleep and woke to the late-afternoon light barely seeping through the wool curtains.