Right from the first, Hamish had set her hackles up, even when he wasn’t doing anything overly objectionable. But on those rare occasions when she didn’t want to cosh him with the nearest blunt instrument, he also had the knack for making her laugh.
"I don’t think you should touch me like this now." In concert with that lovely rubbing across her poor, tortured scalp, her heart pounded hard and deep. She should be more insistent. She should shift away. When Hamish took down her hair, it felt disturbingly bridal.
"Do you feel better?"
Better? Plague take him, she felt like melting into a puddle at his feet. Far from her hackles rising, her shoulders felt ready to slide off her neck and drop down to the floor. As he changed the pressure, she made a soft growl of pleasure. "I suppose so."
"You’re a bonny fighter, Emily," he murmured. "And you have lovely hair. For years, I’ve wondered how you’d look when you let it down."
There was something wrong with what he said, but she was too lost in weariness and the haze of pleasure to work out what it was. Her legs felt so rubbery, they were likely to collapse under her.
When her back met something large and warm, she realized with a distant shock that she leaned into him. Somehow his attention to the tight muscles of her head had loosened every other muscle in her body.
He made a soft sound of satisfaction, and she noticed that he’d stopped massaging her skull and had started stroking her hair. He ran his fingers through it, until it cascaded around her in long waves.
Since he’d started touching her, Emily’s vision had grown mistier and mistier. Now she closed her eyes and sighed with a mixture of physical wellbeing and exhaustion. For so long, she’d battled to stop everything caving in on her. Now for a miraculous instant, someone else held up the sky when her strength threatened to fail.
She had to move. She would move. If only because the man who propped her up was Hamish Douglas, and she wasn’t even sure she liked him.
But how she longed for one small moment’s rest. How she longed to take a breath that was free of fear and grief and worry.
Emily hardly noticed when he slid his arms around her, bringing her closer into his body. She was warm and safe and drifting in a world rich with the smell of citrus soap. She felt a ridiculous desire to cry. For months, she’d held herself as tight as a drum. Now all she felt was relaxed and unencumbered.
"Emily, my lovely wife…" A soft bass voice rumbled in her ear before lips brushed the sensitive skin of her neck.
The forbidden thrill that ripped through her jolted her out of her languor. With a gasp of horror, she wrenched away from Hamish.
"Let me go." On unsteady legs, Emily whirled to face him. "You’re trying to seduce me, you devil."
Despite everything, when he smiled, she needed to steel herself against the onslaught of charm. Her accusation didn’t prompt a scrap of guilt from the cad. "You can’t blame a fellow for trying, darling."
Her shoulders tightening, she scowled at him. "Don’t call me that. It doesn’t mean anything."
He arched those expressive eyebrows. "Do you want it to mean something?"
No, no, no. This wasn’t what she planned when she said she’d marry him.
"I want you to stick to the bargain we made." She meant her voice to cut like a knife, but it emerged wobbly and uncertain. She wished to glory he’d left her hair alone, however badly her head ached. With her hair flowing around her, it was impossible to maintain her dignity. Curse him, she must look like a wanton dairymaid.
"Are you sure?" When Hamish spread his hands, she hardened herself against the appealing picture he made. "It seems a dashed lonely way for us to go on."
He was right. Emily only had to recall all those smug, happy Scots making sheeps’ eyes at one another to understand that her marriage locked her inside an invisible cage. Inside her cage, she was safe. Outside her cage, she wasn’t. She just had to look back on these last few minutes to understand how dangerous Hamish could be.
But while a retreat to safety was her only choice, it still left her trapped in a cage.
"I’m sure." This time she managed to sound more convincing.
Disappointment shadowed his eyes, and she tried not to feel guilty. He’d behaved so well during the last month. She couldn’t have asked for a better betrothed. And he was right. Their marriage was going to be lonely.
"You knew our arrangement when I agreed to marry you, Hamish." She shouldn’t sound defensive. After all, she’d set out her conditions before their engagement and he’d agreed to abide by them.
As he lowered his hands, an uncharacteristically desolate expression settled on his face. "I knew, but it seems a waste when we could have so much more."
"Physical pleasure, you mean," she said in a snide tone.
"Don’t knock what you haven’t tried, my dear."
The insincere endearment struck her on the raw. "How do you know I haven’t tried it?" she asked, before she could question the wisdom of challenging him.