"Because ye want company for Christmas?"
"Dinnae be a fool, Dougal."
He was still frowning and hardly seemed to hear her. "It wasnae just the islanders who wanted me to woo ye, was it?"
"Why is that such an astonishing idea?" she snapped, tired of the way he dismissed her as a potential wife.
"Fair Ellen…"
Her temper flared. She stepped closer, clenching her hands at her sides. If punching Dougal would beat some sense into that thick, handsome head, she’d gladly knock him to the ground.
"Who’s on Innish or Canna or Orkney – or in far Cathay, for all I know." She gulped in a shuddering breath. "For all ye know."
"It’s no’ your right…"
But she’d fired up her own resentment now and wasn’t about to back down. "She’s no’ here, Dougal. And I am." She struggled to control the bitter despair in her voice, but still a low, wretched tone emerged. "I’m here, Dougal."
"This is all because of the kiss."
She winced. "Ye kissed me. I didnae kiss you." At least at first. "You’re no’ as pure as you’d like to think, my fine Highland laddie."
This time he winced, although he didn’t look away. "Aye. Aye, I did kiss ye. And I curse that I did."
She made a distressed sound. "That’s cruel."
Brief remorse flashed across his features before too quickly, his frown returned. "No, it wasnae the kiss, was it? You’ve been drilling holes in the Kestrel since that first night. Ye set up that kiss."
She flushed with humiliation and chagrin, because that was one thing she was innocent of. Perhaps the only thing. "Dinnae start casting me as some kind of evil seductress in this story, Dougal."
"What else am I to think?"
She dared another step nearer. Even more, she dared to reveal the embarrassing truth. "Aye, I want ye to stay. I thought if we had time together, you’d realize how perfect we are together."
"Perfect?" His snarl indicated his disgust at that concept. "As if I’d wed a deceitful witch whose every word is a falsehood. Ye failed in your attempt to catch yourself a rich husband, Miss Macbain. If I didnae feel so sorry for the poor sod you end up marrying, I’d almost wish ye better hunting next time."
The awful accusation sliced at her like a razor. She bit back another whimper, although she couldn’t stop her tears from overflowing. "I dinnae care about your money," she muttered. "Surely ye must know that."
The rage seeped from his eyes. But the chill it left behind was worse. He inspected her as if she was something low and poisonous. An adder. Or a spider. "Why would I know that? It turns out I dinnae know the first thing about ye."
He was justified in hating her. She knew it. But that didn’t prevent her heart from cramping in agony. "I know you’ll never forgive me."
"You’ve got that right."
He was an idealistic idiot to commit himself to the myth of Fair Ellen, but she couldn’t escape the bitter knowledge that what she’d done put him forever out of reach. Even if Fair Ellen had no more reality than fairy dust, he’d never come back to Kirsty Macbain.
Kirsty wiped roughly at her eyes. He was going to leave. Of course he was.
She didn’t want him taking away an image of a weak, defeated woman who could only cry her eyes out now she’d been caught in the act. Because the awful truth was that, given the last few days to live all over again, she wouldn’t do anything differently. Fate offered her a chance at love. She couldn’t let it vanish into the mist, because she suffered a few qualms about taking matters into her own hands.
It took her a little while to realize that he offered her his handkerchief. "Here. I cannae stand to see a lassie cry."
"Thank ye," she choked out, accepting the square of white linen with shaking hands.
A prickly silence crashed down. When Dougal next spoke, he sounded more like the man she’d come to know and less like a furious stranger. "Ye couldnae keep drilling holes in my boat until the crack of doom."
She blew her nose and raised bleary eyes to his face. That wonderful, beautiful face that had stolen her heart the minute she first saw him. "I wanted to give ye a chance to fall in love with me."
Then had cause to regret her brave confession, when he repeated the word like a curse. "Love?"