Page 80 of Taken By the Heartless Highlander
Noah closed his eyes. “I dinnae wish to burden ye lass.”
“But ye’ll burden me with a farce of a marriage I cannae understand?”
Noah rubbed a hand over his own forehead and looked back at her, feeling his teeth grind together as the horrible memories resurfaced.
“He killed me maither because she loved another man,” he stated. Keira’s hand went to her mouth, her eyes wide with shock. “He destroyed me family because he couldnae overcome his own possessive rage.”
Noah’s voice was raw. He felt vulnerable, undone somehow, as though he had revealed too much, and yet wanted to tell her everything he could about his life. He wanted her to know him when no other had—and that truly scared him.
It took a moment before Keira said anything, watching him with that assessing gaze he had grown to know so well.
“Ye consider yerself a monster because of who he was, but ye are nothin’ like that, Noah. Ye are kind and?—”
“Ye are a healer,” he said flatly. “Ye understand that madness can run in families do ye nae?”
“Well, yes, but?—”
“Well, that is what I believe. There are things about me…”Things ye have brought out of me.“Things I feel sometimes that are just like me faither, whatever ye may believe. Me sister will inherit everythin’ from me, along with her children. Any link to me faither will die with me. A marriage of convenience, lass. That’s all I can give. It is nae just the priest I am protectin’ ye from…it’s meself too.”
He looked about them at their little haven of solitude and sighed.
“I shouldnae have touched ye like that, not with how things are between us. Once we are married, ye can be free to be yerself without me burdens and me past weighing on ye. Ye will come to see that it is all for the best. The further apart we are, the safer ye will be.”
There was a long silence. Keira’s expression was half sad and half defiant. It looked as though she had a great deal to say on the matter, but as she looked at him, he fixed her with a hard stare, and she seemed to decide against it.
“Well then…” she said quietly, her fists clenching at her sides. “Thank ye for teachin’ me to fight,me laird.”
And with that cold farewell, she walked away from him into the shadows of the trees.
CHAPTER30
“What does a marriage of convenience mean?”Daisy asked, looking confused.
Keira shook her head. “I shouldnae have told ye.”
“Yes, ye should. I am nearly sixteen, and ye promised never to lie to me.” Daisy insisted, taking Keira’s hand and kissing it, looking at her earnestly. “I ken he cares for ye.”
Keira sighed. “Maybe he does a little, but it is a passing fancy. I could never marry a man who dinnae want me for a wife except to protect me.”
“That’s as bad as what Lucas was offerin’.”
Keira turned from her seat by the fire to find her brother standing in the doorway.
He entered, leaving it open, his jaw set and his face twisted into a scowl that did not suit him.
“That isnae true,” Keira said gently. “Noah isnae like him. He has our best interests at heart.”
“Aye. Perhaps, but Lucas promised he’d marry ye to protect ye from the rumors he had spread about ye. MacAllen is saying he’ll do the same.”
Keira nodded. “I ken it sounds that way, but he is different.”
She could not think of Noah and Lucas as anything close to the same man. Quite apart from the fact that Lucas had never looked at her as anything other than a possession, the way that Noah made her feel was unlike anything she had experienced before.
He made her feel alive—like she was worth something.
She sighed, looking into the dying fire.
As she contemplated ringing for a servant to ask for it to be refreshed, there was a loud rattle from the door, and Fenella appeared with a coal scuttle and a basket of logs. She looked a little harried, but her cold gaze was the same as it had been when she had delivered the note the day before.
