Hamish looked unsurprised. “Aye. He’s had them since he was a ween.” He gave her another of those straight looks, as though he sought some commitment from her. “But ye can help him. If ye feel braw enough tae take the task. And the lassie who climbed Ben Tassoch yesterday is as braw a lassie as any I’ve ever met.” He stood up and stared down at her.
“I was so frightened,” she admitted, remembering the raw panic that had threatened to paralyze her throughout her misguided attempt to flee. She hadn’t been brave. She’d been utterly terrified.
Hamish’s smile didn’t fade. “Aye, but ye still did it, my lady.” He bowed his head to her, one of the few times she’d seen him show anything like conventional respect for anyone, even the duke
. “Good day tae you.”
Clearly, he’d tell her nothing more. Troubled, she watched him walk away toward the stables.
Was he right? Did she have the heart to take on Kylemore and the demons that pursued him?
Did she have a heart left at all?
Kylemore’s ultimatum last night had demanded a surrender that was already so precariously close.
Her abject surrender had been his goal from the start. She wasn’t fool enough to imagine anything else.
Oh, why couldn’t she have fallen in love with someone simple and straightforward? Someone who at least promised her a tiny hope of happiness.
She’d never asked much from life. Experience had taught her to make do with what was within reach and never to howl after the moon. She’d be content with kindness and a few shared interests. Companionship. Consideration.
She didn’t want a difficult, brilliant, mercurial, tormented man like the Duke of Kylemore.
But she did.
A horrified gasp escaped her, and she staggered to her feet in denial. The devastating truth hammered at her with the grim inevitability of the cold Scottish rain she’d endured in the mountains yesterday.
She’d struggled against this fate since she’d seen a gloriously handsome young man across a London drawing room. Something within her had immediately warned her of danger. But she’d kept her head over the years, difficult as that had sometimes proven.
Until he’d radically altered the game between them.
In London, she’d been able to maintain the detachment that kept her safe. Here in this small house, where Kylemore refused to countenance barriers between them, she couldn’t pretend she felt nothing for her lover.
Was this the revenge he’d planned all along? Had he fought to stay in her bed because he’d known that eventually she’d fall victim to love?
Love.
Such a small word for what she felt.
Yet what other word could there be?
She loved the Duke of Kylemore. And that love could only lead to disaster.
Chapter 18
Kylemore lay awake in the barren little room he’d claimed for himself in this hated house. It wasn’t the room he’d used as a boy. Neither pride nor will could make him sleep in that particular chamber: It remained empty and abandoned at the end of the corridor.
Empty, that is, of everything except the screaming ghosts that returned to rupture his slumber.
He’d dream again tonight. He knew it. And in his extremity, he’d find no soft comfort, no warm arms to embrace him, no whispered words of reassurance.
Verity wouldn’t come to him. Why would she?
He hadn’t seen her since he’d left her to sleep on her own last night. Perhaps it was best if he never saw her again.
Hamish could take her by boat along the loch and down to Oban, where she could arrange passage to Whitby. Hamish would undertake the task with alacrity. His old mentor had always disapproved of Kylemore’s treatment of his mistress.
With good reason.