“Sorry to disappoint you, but I have not, as of yet, developed an artistic interest in your arse.”
He leaned close to speak in her ear. Heat built between their bodies. “You,” he whispered, “are every bit as desperate to consummate this marriage as I am.”
“That’s preposterous.”
“Lass, I dinna think it is.”
She put her hand to his chest—-partly out of a need to hold him off, and partly out of desire to touch his bare skin. He was so warm, and more solid than she could have imagined. His chest hair tickled against her palm.
Oh, Maddie. You are in so much trouble.
She had to regain control of this conversation, and fast.
“You speak about needing a home, not wanting to move on . . . but it’s not only your men you’re concerned for. No one’s that selfless. You must want this land for yourself, too.”
He fell back a step, breaking their contact. “I never had a home to begin with. Didna have one to lose, so I’ll never know what I’ve been missing. I’m the lucky one that way.”
Oh, no. Not the tragic orphan story again.
Her heart gave a foolish twinge.
She gathered up some nightclothes and ducked behind the screen, desperate to hide from him and his disadvantaged past, and from her own silly feelings.
A great many -people grew up orphaned, she reminded herself as she shimmied out of her frock and donned her nightrail. That didn’t excuse him. Maddie had lost her own mother at a young age.
But then again, she’d always had a home. She’d certainly never been forced to sleep with the cows and live on a few crusts a day.
There it went again, that pang of emotion.
Maddie resolved to simply ignore it. Logan MacKenzie was blackmailing her into marriage. He’d given her a secondhand engagement brooch. She had no logical reason to feel sympathy for him.
She must have too much feeling pent up in her, that was all. Too much tenderness and affection, with no means to dispel it. Not even any proper pets. Only dead beetles and frigid lobsters.
She took her time washing and brushing her hair and buttoning up her shift all the way to her neck, hoping he might fall asleep before she even finished preparing for bed. At the very least, any ardor he might have been feeling should have cooled.
When she finally emerged from behind the screen, she felt certain she would have no difficulty resisting him.
She was dead wrong. This was even worse than she’d feared.
Pang, went her heart.
Pang, pang, pang.
He was lying in bed, a loose shirt hanging open at the neck to reveal a wedge of his chest. His brow was lightly furrowed in concentration, and those spectacles were perched on the strong bridge of his nose. One muscled arm was flexed and propped behind his head. And in the other hand, he held . . .
Devil take him. Heaven help her.
A book.
Not just any book, but a thick one bound in dark green leather. And he was reading the thing.
Those twinges of emotion had grown so strong that they had her nearly doubled over. Little fireworks of longing were bursting in her chest.
Not only in her chest but lower, too. Some cord running from her heart to her womb hummed like a plucked harp string.
He looked up from the book and caught her staring. “Is there something the matter?”
“Yes, there’s something the matter. Logan, this is bad.”
“What’s bad?”
“Here I am, struggling to banish any foolish imagined affections for you so that we can consummate this marriage of convenience in a proper businesslike fashion, as we agreed. And then you go and read a book?”
While he was at it, why didn’t he just bring her a basket of kittens, a bottle of champagne, and pose naked with a rose caught between his teeth?
He pulled a face. “I’m trying to get some rest, that’s all. I only read when I want to fall asleep.”
He turned a page with one hand, hooking it with his thumb and dragging it from right to left while keeping his other arm tucked securely under his head.
The deft, practiced nature of it stirred her suspicion. She eyed the well--creased spine of the volume. The book’s pages showed the wear of being thumbed from right to left, again and again, all the way to the end.
He only read to fall asleep, he claimed? Oh, yes. And falcons only took wing out of boredom.
A terrible sense of affinity swamped her. For all her life, making the acquaintance of another book lover had felt like . . . well, rather like meeting with someone from her own country when traveling overseas. Or how she imagined that would feel if she ever traveled overseas.
The love of books was an instant connection, and a true boon for a girl who tended toward shyness, because it was a source of endless conversation. A hundred questions sprang up in her mind, jostling with each other to reach the front of the queue. Did he prefer essays, dramas, novels, poems? How many books had he read, and in which languages? Which ones had he read again and again?
Which ones had felt as though they’d been written just for him?