Page 21 of The Highlander's Auctioned Bride
“Ye have it all worked out, lass.”
“Then we keep separate rooms,” she said boldly, her chin lifting defiantly as she cleared her throat.
“I have nae objection to that,” he said, leaning back even further, putting down his glass, and interlacing his fingers over his almost bare chest. He watched with amusement as she averted her gaze to the fire. “But even if I dinnae want a wife. I dae need an heir.”
Her eyes widened comically, and even the tips of her ears went red at that comment. Her eyes were such an unusual blue. He had a notion that side by side, their eyes would look like a blue sky with a storm passing through it.
“Ye are very direct,” she said coldly. “Dae ye always speak this way?”
“When there’s somethin’ I want. Yes,” he replied, finally rising from his seat.
He walked toward her, deliberately flexing his muscles as he did it. Her blue eyes darkened and her lips parted before she had a chance to prevent it, and James grinned.
“If I get an heir, ye can live yer life as ye see fit. We dinnae even have to speak to each other if it isnae strictly necessary. Ye can have the run of the grounds, yer pick of the rooms. I’ll leave ye be, and ye can dae the same with me.”
“So ye can entertain other women all over the castle?” she asked archly.
He stopped, the instant feeling of repulsion invading his whole body.
Nae lass. Never that. I have seen what comes of womanizing. That will never be who I become.
He did not say that, however, affecting a casual tone.
“Hardly,” he replied dismissively, “me duty is to me clan. I have nae need for anythin’ else. Me place is with me people—it always will be.”
Maisie hesitated.
She knew a laird’s place was with his people, but what he described suggested she would simply exchange one lonely lifefor another. She thought of the miles of endless corridors in the castle, of walking them every day without a companion or a friend in the world.
His dark eyes were observing her quizzically, something in his gaze that seemed curious. She tried to school her expression as best she could.
The silence stretched as they stared at one another and finally, with a snarl, he advanced on her. She gasped as he used his bulk to move her backward until her shoulders connected with the wall behind her.
“Ye’re a brute,” she said angrily.
“Aye, perhaps,” MacLennan replied, his eyes twinkling. “And ye’ll be wed to me in a week’s time, and then we can be monsters together.”
“What exactly am I to dae in this castle while ye are seein’ to yer clan every minute of the day?”
“Anythin’ ye like.”
She almost laughed. He spent his life with duties overflowing on his desk. He would have little understanding of the isolation she felt day to day.
He clearly didn’t like her suggestion that he would be entertaining women all over the Highlands. It gave her a pulse of pleasure to know he would be faithful to her.
But his reaction had revealed something else. She wondered what he would say if it were the other way around.I need somethin’ to entertain meself after all.
“Anythin’?” she asked suggestively putting enough of an edge to her voice that he could not miss her meaning.
She trembled as a dark threat loomed in his eyes. His hands came up, bracketing either side of her head, his face inches from her own. “If ye ever let another man touch ye, I’ll tie ye to me bed for the rest of yer life so only I can have me way with ye.”
Maisie felt the same shudder of alarmed need rush through her. It was just as it had been in the gardens. This was the same domineering man she had known, unguarded—no longer the prim and proper laird he was with his council.
His strength and physical dominance over her were wickedly arousing. The idea that he wouldn’t let another man touch her, and would punish her if she ever tried was strangely comforting.
He cannot be entirely indifferent to me,she thought, hope springing in her heart.
She shuddered again as he pressed his nose into her hair, breathing deeply.
