“That was . . .” she began and then a blush stole over her face. After all that, she was still capable of blushing. She was still his innocent bride. He rather suspected a part of her always would be.
He reached out and brushed a finger against her cheek. “I enjoy your blushes.” She ducked her head with a timorous smile. “I look forward to doing many more things that prompt the color to rise in your face.”
She lifted her gaze back up, arching an eyebrow in interest. “Indeed?”
“I promise you that.”
She woke to an empty bed. Dawn tinged the room a purpling blue. Somehow he had roused himself before her despite how little they had slept. She’d think that after the night they had—in addition to the fact that he had been trounced by a band of Highlanders—he would have slept like the dead.
Her arm stretched out beside her, searching and finding nothing. Sitting up, she clutched the bedcovers to her chest and rubbed at her eyes. She couldn’t have slept very long. A few hours maybe. She had fallen back to sleep after their second bout of lovemaking and their talk of blushes.
Her hand drifted over her stomach, sliding up to her sensitive breasts. It had been faster. Frenzied. Needier if possible than the first time. That position had been wild. Primitive. She came apart in a way that she could never have dreamed.
She stretched her body, wincing at her aching muscles. She was an early riser but she was convinced she could sleep until afternoon.
It wasn’t even light out yet. The purpling blue was turning into the barest gray of dawn now, pressing against the mullioned pane of the chamber’s single arched window.
A rustling sound captured her attention and she turned, tracking the source. Marcus sat before the fire, already dressed, sliding on his boots.
“Marcus?” she queried in a tremulous voice before she could think better of it.
He turned and for a moment they simply stared at one another across the room. Everything hovered between them, the intimacy of the night before, the memory of his body sliding against her, into her over and over . . .
Heat singed her face and that felt silly. Despite his seeming approval of her blushes, it felt silly.
After everything, her face shouldn’t be so quick to catch fire. She should be more composed than this. He was undoubtedly accustomed to taking much more sophisticated women to his bed. And then she flinched at the thought of him with other women. Why did she have to think of that?
“I wanted us to get an early start,” he said. “We’re close and I’m becoming anxious to finally see Kilmarkie.”
She nodded jerkily. “Oh. Yes. Of course.”
Coward. It wasn’t what she was thinking. She couldn’t find the nerve to say any of the things she was thinking. All the many things she was thinking.
So many questions whirled around her mind.
What were they to each other?
Had things in fact changed like Nana proclaimed?
Did he mean what he said last night now in the light of day?
Did he consider her his wife?
And yet despite all those questions running through her mind, something else blurted from her lips. Something she had not anticipated even asking.
“What are you running from?”
He stopped. Stared. “I’m not running from anything.”
“It’s just you have never been to Kilmarkie House before . . . and yet you’ve been so very determined to reach there.”
“I’m not running from anything, Alyse,” he repeated. The warmth had bled from his eyes. He looked stern. Distant. Cold even. It was a hard thing to reconcile after the inferno that had raged between them last night.
“I’ll leave you to get dressed and go ready our mounts,” he added, clearly finished with the subject. “I’ll ask a servant to fetch us a breakfast, too.”
She nodded, still clutching the covers over her nudity. He snatched up his coat and left the chamber. The door clicked shut behind him.
She dropped her head back down on the bed with a sigh. She needed to get up and get dressed so they could resume their journey.
She supposed there was no question of her staying here. Not after last night. She would be leaving with him.
And yet she still had other nagging questions. She didn’t know what she was to him. She no longer felt like his employee. They were much too familiar now. She had never been a housekeeper before, but she was certain a soon-to-be-housekeeper didn’t interact with the master of the house the way they did. Not a proper housekeeper, at least.
Nor did she feel like his wife, though. That would make her a duchess and that could never be. Awkward or not, she would still be his employee. That would be less awkward than becoming his wife.
With a groan, she flung back the covers and stood, determined to get dressed before he returned.
She knew about persevering. About squaring her shoulders and moving ahead despite everything. Despite all disappointments and pain. This was just more of the same. It should feel quite customary by now.
When he returned, she’d be ready to depart.
Marcus left their bedchamber shaken. He paused outside the room and leaned his back against the cold stone wall of the corridor, letting the chill seep through his garments and into his skin. Her voice echoed through his head. What are you running from?
Her eyes told him she did not believe his denial. Hell, even he didn’t believe himself.
How did she see into him so clearly? It was hard enough to cope with the fact that he felt such a deep and growing attachment to Alyse. Must the girl now peer with such ease into his very soul?
The truth of the matter . . . the thing he had not admitted to her was that he had been running from himself when he left London. At least in the beginning it had been that way.
Now, strangely, he felt as though he were running to himself on this journey.
Somewhere along the road north, he had reached a level of peace with life that he had never known.
With her at his side, he had found himself. He had found the man he wanted to be.
They were words he was not ready to admit to her, but they were there nonetheless. A truth he was only now seeing and accepting. A truth he would reveal to her in good time.
They reached Kilmarkie House the following afternoon, which only hammered home the fact that the laird who abducted her was Marcus’s closest neighbor. That might make for awkward relations if the laird seemed inclined to harbor any ill will toward him. Somehow, she thought his bark greater than his bite, though.
He may have thrashed Marcus and abducted her, but MacLarin behaved as though that was all water under the bridge.
They moved along a narrow path and crested a great hill. She could taste the sea wind. It was funny how you knew what something was without having to be told—or without having ever experienced it before.
The briny air sat thick on her skin. As they cleared the hill, they both stopped and looked down the grassy slope.
It dawned on her that she wasn’t the only one seeing Kilmarkie for the first time. He was, too. This place was all his to do with as he wished. Whether it prospered or fell to great disrepair was all on him. She slid a look at him. The wind ruffled his dark hair as he stared out at the view.
“It’s beautiful,” she remarked of the sprawling stone structure. The broad manor house was constructed of varying shades of gray stone and dark wood beams. The dark sea glinted a distance behind it. The shore was riddled with rocks of pale pink. She’d never seen anything like it.
“It is beautiful,” he agreed.
Squinting, she noticed rippling pockets out on the bay. “Are those . . .” Her voice faded breathlessly as a sleek dark body arced out of the water.
“Dolphins,” he finished.