She sounded utterly exhausted. An hour ago, he’d have taken her in his arms and offered to comfort her. Now he could tell that his touch was the last thing she wanted.
He loathed that she rejected his proposal and his love. But the thought that she’d never let him touch her again made him want to smash something priceless into dust.
But he could see that haranguing her further would be cruel. She looked close to shattering. He had a brief, piercing memory of the gloriously vital and sensual creature who had brought him to shattering release such a short while ago. That seemed like a different woman.
He loved that woman for her passion and her strength. He loved this wounded woman, too. Her vulnerability was so raw.
Marina needed him as much as he needed her. All he could hope for was that she’d come to see that before she returned to Italy.
Noting the stubborn line of her jaw, he couldn’t be optimistic.
“Let me take ye home. I won’t push this now.”
Bleak amusement turned her lips down. “Now.”
He spread his hands. “I willnae give you up easily.”
“I know that’s true.” She raised her chin, and he watched her gather her strength around her. It was impressive, even if she used that strength against him. “But I won’t stay here to become your satellite, Mackinnon. Please accept that while I’m honored by your proposal, I can’t accept it.”
And that, he thought grimly, seemed to be that.
* * *
Dinner was an ordeal for Marina. Her father’s leg had healed to a point where he could come downstairs using a stick, and he was in a mood for celebration. She couldn’t blame him. He’d chafed under the restrictions of his long recovery.
With her hours in the hills, trying to finish the duke’s commission, she’d rather neglected him over recent weeks. She told herself she’d make it up to him, but that didn’t stifle a pang of guilt. She couldn’t put all the blame for her absence on hard work. During a lot of those hours when she was ostensibly sketching, she’d been lying in her lover’s arms.
Although her father’s mobility meant her departure from Achnasheen loomed closer, she struggled to appear happy for him. After this afternoon’s tribulations, she should be glad that her misery wouldn’t spin out indefinitely.
Fergus’s proposal had changed everything between them, but not so drastically as his declaration of love. Refusing him had come close to killing her, but she knew if she yielded, he’d end up subsuming everything she was and everything she’d achieved.
Right now, watching Fergus with her father—he hid his perturbation better than she did, but she knew him well enough to discern the turmoil beneath the Highland charm—she wondered whether her artistic calling was worth the sacrifice of his happiness. In forty years, would she regret giving up his love, and his friendship, and his company, and his kisses, and his children, and…
Santa pazienza, if she kept this up, she’d start howling like a lost puppy.
“Marina, per favore, walk me to my room,” her father said. “I’m still uncertain on my feet.”
“As you wish, Papa.” She rose from the table.
“Grazie, figlia mia.”
“Goodnight, Mackinnon,” she said without looking at Fergus. Thank God this interminable purgatorio of an evening would soon be over, and she could shut herself in her room and cry her eyes out for the rest of the night.
Fergus stood when she did. “Goodnight, Ugolino. Goodnight, Signorina Marina. I might take a stroll outside.”
His statement startled her enough to make her look at him directly. “But it’s pouring.”
As they’d come down the mountain, the weather had closed in. By the time they reached the castle, the wind blew a gale and the gusts carried sleet. The elements conspired to reflect her bleak mood.
Now she saw that the self-control that had sustained Fergus so far tonight was fraying. He looked drawn and unhappy, and that betraying muscle twitched in his lean cheek. He struggled for a smile, but she couldn’t even call the result a half-smile. “Och, just a wee Scotch mist.”
A wee Scotch tempest, more like. But she’d lost the spirit to argue.
She crossed to help her father out of his chair. “How’s your leg, Papa?”
Marina was sharply aware of Fergus leaving the room behind them. She wanted to call him back and say she was sorry for making him so unhappy. What was the use? She’d told him no this afternoon, and he’d refused to accept her answer. If she betrayed any weakness now, she’d forsake any hope of resisting him.
“It’s weaker than I’d like, but I’m so pleased that I can use it again. We have much to thank Fergus and his people for.”