What was the point of denying the truth? She’d always loved Brody. She had a sick feeling in her stomach that she always would. Her decision to forsake her penchant for him was nothing but pique and pride and hot air.
She could no more stop loving Brody than she could stop having brown eyes. He was part of her, whether he loved her back or not.
“God give me strength,” Hamish bit out in angry bafflement. “Then why in hell won’t you marry the cove?”
Since last night, Elspeth must have shed enough tears to fill the loch outside. Surely there were none left to cry. Nonetheless hot moisture pricked her eyes, and she raised unsteady hands to dash it away.
“Because he doesn’t love me,” she said in a choked voice.
“Are you sure?” Hamish left the hearth and stepped closer. “Last night, when you refused him, he looked like you’d shot his dog. And Fergus and his kin are very fond of their dogs.”
“Even if he does think he loves me…” Although she couldn’t imagine he did. She gulped down a sob. “It’s because I’m dressing better, and wearing my hair differently, and—”
“And speaking up, and lifting your head out of your book now and again, and showing that there’s a woman of spirit under your shyness.” He paused and subjected her to a thoughtful inspection. “In fact, you haven’t been shy at all this Christmas.”
“It’s not the real me.”
“Of course it is.” Hamish was annoyed again. She couldn’t blame him. Even in her own ears, she sounded addled. “If your new dresses made Brody notice you, all well and good. He was never going to fall in love with someone who spent her life scuttling around the edges of the room like a wee mouse.”
Elspeth bit back a groan. The mouse word again. She cast her brother a look of renewed dislike. “He only started paying attention after Marina put me in Sandra’s hands.”
“Does that matter, as long as he pays attention?”
“Yes, it does,” she insisted, even as she wondered if her pride was condemning her to a lifetime of loneliness.
“I’ll say it again. I’ll never understand women,” Hamish said, rolling his eyes in masculine disgust. “You’re saying that you’ve finally got what you always wanted, but you’re not going to take it, because
you can’t accept that the man you love thinks you’re pretty?”
“That’s not fair, Hamish,” she said in a raw voice. “He wants to marry an imposter.”
“No, he doesn’t.” Hamish was still frowning, as if prodding his massive brain to shift away from cosmic issues to concentrate on merely human ones. “He asked my permission to court you before you turned into the Belle of Achnasheen. It was three days after he arrived, when everyone still thought you were a shy wee sparrow. He spoke to me just before you came downstairs and dazzled us. I’ll lay money that I’m right about the timing.”
Through her fog of misery, Elspeth wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. It seemed too good to be true—too good and too awful, because since then, she’d done her level best to wreck her chances with Brody Girvan. Saying no to his proposal last night and again this morning had come close to killing her. In fact, this morning it had been even worse because, while logic insisted that his deeper feelings weren’t involved, she couldn’t mistake his genuine chagrin at her refusal.
She turned to survey her brother, wondering if he ran mad. Or if she did. “Say that again,” she said slowly.
“Brody asked permission to court you on his third night here, just after Ugolino and Giulia turned up, and before you came downstairs in your new dress.” Hamish didn’t seem to realize that he changed her entire world with just a few words. In her turmoil, she didn’t even mind that he spoke to her as though he addressed someone of weak mind. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when he did. I’d never thought he was smart enough to notice what a hidden treasure you are.”
Her brother’s uncharacteristic compliment passed her by. “He asked you for my hand before he saw me in my new clothes?”
Hamish gave an irritable grunt. “Didn’t I just say so?”
“Yes, you did.”
“I can’t see that it matters much when he asked.”
After such misery, joy struck with painful force. “It does matter.”
“Women!” her brother bit out. “Now you’re crying again, when for a moment there you looked almost happy. What the devil’s set you off now?”
She sniffed, as she fumbled in her pocket for her handkerchief. “I’m happy.”
“Good,” Hamish said, eyeing her doubtfully and passing her a pristine square of white linen. She was in such a state that she’d failed to locate hers.
Elspeth blew her nose and forced her mind to work past the astonishing truth that Brody had meant it when he said he wanted to marry her. Her, Elspeth Douglas, not some painted doll Marina and Sandra had created between them.
“I need to see Brody. Do you know where he is?”