“So far you’ve told me a dozen different versions of that story,” Rory said mildly. “Doesn’t anyone know the truth?”
Archie shrugged. “No one knows for sure,” he admitted. “We’ll find it though, lad. I know we will.”
Archie drained his glass and stood up. “It’s time for my bed,” he said, with an ostentatious yawn. “Goodnight to you both.” And he left the room with the brown dog behind him.
They were alone. The candles dipped and flared in the many drafts that infiltrated Invermar Castle. The silence lengthened and became uncomfortable. Rory sipped his wine and watched her fiddle with her napkin, making her even more edgy.
Olivia was not prone to social nervousness, and she wondered whether it was because she was in Rory’s place, rather than her own. If she was dining in London, or at a ball or the theatre, or any of the places she had frequented growing up, then she would know what to say and do.
Or was it simply that Rory mattered so much to her that she didn’t want to make a mistake?
“As you can see,” he gestured about him, “Invermar has been stripped down to the bare bones.”
“You can build on those bones,” she reminded him.
He smiled. “It will always be chilly in the winter, and drafty all year round. Imagine smoky fires and damp stone.”
She looked at him curiously. Was he trying to put her off? Send her home for fear of getting a cold, like his mother? She lifted her chin and gave him a bold look. “I’m thinking of warm beds and snuggling up close. Long dark winters with nothing else to do but lie in my husband’s arms.”
His gaze had sharpened. She had his attention now.
“I thought,” she added, “that Scotland was supposed to be romantic.”
For some reason he’d decided to dismantle her fantasies. “Our history is a grim affair. Battles and bloodshed and treachery. You shouldn’t believe everything you read in fiction.”
His voice, low and warm, stroked her senses. If he thought to chase her away then he was wasting her time.
“Do you know that your accent is stronger now you’re away from London?”
“Is it?”
“You’re different too. The same, but . . . different.”
“Am I?”
“I think, in Mockingbird Square . . . It was as if you were wearing clothing that did not fit you properly. You were uncomfortable. Was that to please me?”
He hesitated. “Yes.”
“Would you go back there?” she asked him, searching his face, trying to read his thoughts while hiding her own. “Could you? I think, Rory, you are not a man to be content away from all of this.” She waved a hand as if to encompass the loch and the hills and the isolated vastness beyond the castle.
“Perhaps I could stay in London for half the year, and you could stay here for half the year?” he suggested and she could see that he was deadly serious.
“Would you do that?” she asked him softly.
“Would you?”
They were stepping around each other, neither of them willing to speak what was in their hearts. She watched, wary now, as he stood up and came around the table to her chair. “Rory . . .” she murmured, as if to restrain him, but all he did was take her hands in his to help her to her feet. They were necessarily close together—the room was not wide—and gracefully he brought one of her hands to his lips and then the other as she watched, waiting to see what he would do next. Although she thought she already knew what that would be, if his quickened breathing was any clue.
“Let me,” he whispered, and bent his head.
His lips were soft and tender, but when she didn’t resist, his mouth claimed hers with a growing passion. He would have pulled her body close, all her soft curves against his hard muscle, and she admitted she wanted him, so much. The longing was like an ache inside.
She put her hands up, as if to wrap them around his neck, and then placed her palms to his chest instead. Holding him at a distance. She knew she looked flustered and breathless, her hair not quite so neat now, her mouth a little swollen, but if she gave in to their growing desire then she knew she would lose this opportunity to get to know her husband better.
“What must I do to be forgiven?” he asked her.
“It’s not that.” She sought words to explain. How to tell him that when they were together in bed, they were so well matched that words were unimportant? It was outside bed where the problems lay. “I want to get to know you,” she said at last. “I want to hear about your life and your hopes and your dreams. We’ve never spoken of such things, Rory. We married too quickly and then . . . We rarely spoke of the difficult matters. I was too busy pretending everything was perfect and you let me. But it wasn’t. It isn’t.”