“Wise advisors,” she murmured.
“Aye,” Callum said. “Since Urquhart became our home, we have suffered frequent raids from the MacDonalds, which weakened us considerably. It did nae help matters that we were not near as large as the MacDonald clan in the first place, so my father sought out an alliance, and Edina’s father answered the call. He gave my father warriors, and in exchange, I was offered as Edina’s husband when we both grew older. I was but ten summers at the time the promise was given.”
“And when ye broke yer promise to wed Edina…?”
“We came under attack from the Gordon clan, as well,” he supplied. “When my father was killed, my mother begged me on her knees to mend the breach, but I could nae because of what I felt for ye.”
He had that same tortured look he’d had earlier on his face. She stilled, her body screaming to touch him. She trembled with the effort to hold herself back.
“Christ,” he muttered, slammed the pointed edge of the stick the rabbit was on into the ground, stood, and turned away from her. “Telling ye this does neither of us any good, yet I find I kinnae stop myself.”
Her heart lurched at his words.
He swung toward her, his gaze swirling with emotion. “Even when I thought ye dead, my grief, my love for ye, obliterated my desire to do what I should as laird.”
She inhaled a long breath, each word hitting her like a pebble hitting water and sinking into her brain. Her chest felt as if it would burst, and a trembling took hold of her. “Why did ye think me dead?” she asked, fully believing him now.
“Shortly after I returned home from the Gathering, we received a letter from yer father announcing that ye had drowned.”
Her father’s betrayal roiled through her, making her feel ill with the knowledge. She had this space in time to say out loud how she had felt, how she still felt, or she was certain the words would never be uttered to him. Soon they would part, and he would marry another. She clenched her hands with indecision, nails biting into her palms.
He caught his lower lip between his teeth in the same unconscious gesture that had made her wonder earlier if their son did the same thing, and the tension that had been building in her since the first moment she had seen him again in the tent at his tournament, drove the truth up. “I loved ye,” she blurted, her palms instantly damp. “Not that ye dunnae already ken it, but I loved ye. Completely. I wanted—” A sob tore through her for what she had lost with him and with their son.
Before she realized he had even moved, he was a hairsbreadth from her. Pain twisted his features and shone in his eyes. He raised a hand toward her but stopped partway there. “I want to touch ye, lass, but I—”
She grabbed his hand and pressed his open palm to her cheek. “I ken. I love ye still,” she said on a choked cry. “I love ye.”
“By God, Marsaili, I love ye, too.” Misery was etched in every word, and raw pain glittered in his gaze.
And then his mouth was on hers, crushing her to him. His lips moved possessively, devouring her, worshipping her, but he abruptly pulled back. He cupped her face, his touch so tender and the look in his eyes so reverent that she gasped. “Ye have my heart,” he vowed. “All of it. Ye have me in ways I did nae even ken were possible for a woman to take a man. I am yers, body and soul.”
His confession released something within her. With a groan, she pushed his hands aside, kissing his neck and his chest, the passion and need pouring from her. She wanted him to take her in this moment, to pretend with her that they had not lost each other, that they had a future together.
His hands came to her midriff, and he hoisted her off her feet as he brushed his lips to her flushed chest, then blazed a trail of kisses across her collarbone and up her neck. He growled, tangling his hands into her hair before pressing his mouth close to her ear. “I cannot resist ye,” he said, the desperate words hot against her ear. “I have struggled in vain to conquer my desire for ye.” His lips captured hers, more demanding than before. She tasted his searing desire, the kiss turning slow, causing each of her senses to spark to tingling life. He pulled back, his brown eyes glistening with need. “I kinnae find the strength to turn from ye any longer.”
His words cut her to the quick and filled her with a hot joy that was drowned by sorrow so awful that tears could never express it. He pulled her face close to kiss her, and in that instant, she knew that as much as she wanted to, she could not allow him to endanger his clan for her again. She shoved against his chest with a strength she had not known she possessed. The moment their contact was broken, she began to tremble as her emotions spun wildly out of control. She hated him, yet she loved him. She wanted to tell him of their son, but she feared that would be the very thing that would stop him from putting his clan first.
She turned from him, fearing he’d see the secret in her eyes. “I kinnae,” she said, sucking in a jagged breath. She could hardly breathe. She pressed her palms to her wet cheeks, only then realizing she was crying. “I… We kinnae. Ye are to be wed.”
“I’ll nae wed her,” he said in voice that was as unbending as the ancient bronze used to forge her father’s sword.
“Ye must,” she said, trying to make her own tone as hard as his.
“Nay, Marsaili.” His hand grabbed her wrists, but she jerked her arm away and swung toward him. His gaze burned into her. “How can I? I kinnae. I fooled myself into thinking I could. I will find another way.”
“What way?” she demanded, praying he truly had an answer.
“I dunnae ken,” he roared, “but I will find it.”
Foolish hopes. That’s all they had.
“Dunnae touch me!” she sobbed. If he did, she knew she would simply let him do as he pleased. If they shared another kiss, she would tell him of his son, and then he would feel obligated to wed her, even if their union would weaken his clan and bring another enemy to his doorstep. She had tasted his love for her in his kiss, seen it in his blazing eyes, felt it in the way he touched her, and heard it as truth from his lips. She would protect him from himself now.
He gave her a beseeching look that tightened her belly painfully. “Lass—” He stopped abruptly and drew his sword. “Nay!” he roared, and behind her, she felt the sudden heat of a body. Then a hand was on her mouth, an arm around her waist, and she was jerked backward off her feet as six men charged past her. The last thing she saw as she was being taken was Callum’s sword plunging into the first warrior who reached him.
