Page 117 of Highlanders for the Holidays
“… stay…be my wife… she cannot learn…”
Roderick had deceived her again. He’d told her it was love, but he had another reason for keeping her here. There was something he wanted from her. She held her breath, desperate to hear what it was.
“…your vision was of our child… the seer.”
Tears blurred Lily’s eyes as she ran from the cottage. She heard the door slam but kept running until Roderick caught her.
“I hate you! I hate you!” she shouted as she scratched and kicked at him. “How could you do this to me!”
“I know what ye overheard sounded bad,” he said, holding her arms. “But ye must give me a chance to explain.”
“You pretended that you loved me,” she said. “But you only want me for the child you think I can give to your clan. That’s all it ever was.”
“Children would be a blessing,” he said. “But I want to marry ye because I can’t live without ye. Lily, I love ye with all my heart.”
“I’ll never be your wife,” she shouted. “I won’t stay here! I’m going back to my shop in London.”
“Ye want to throw away the happiness we could have,” he said, sounding angry now. “And for what? For four walls and some hanging herbs?”
“I have customers who rely on me, people I help.”
“They pay coin for your service, but will they help you when you’re in trouble? Nay, they care nothing for ye,” he said. “’Tis not like serving your own people, your clan, who are bonded to ye in good times and bad.”
She remembered how she had felt embraced in the joy of his clan at the Yuletide bonfire—and how alone she usually felt on feast days. Yet the sense of kinship with his clan that marriage would bring could never outweigh the pain of loving a man who used and deceived her.
And she did love Roderick.
“Look into your heart, Lily,” Roderick said, bringing his face close to hers. “Ye belong here. Ye belong with me.”
“I don’t care,” she said, shaking her head. “I won’t stay.”
He gripped her arms and held her so that their bodies almost touched, which caused a yearning that nearly undid her.
“When you’re back in your London town,” he said, “you’ll miss the sound of the sea outside the window, the mist on the loch, the mountains shrouded in clouds.”
As he spoke, each image was clear to her mind.
“And you’ll miss me.” His voice was thick with emotion, and his eyes locked on hers. “You’ll sit alone by your hearth on a cold evening with no one to hear the stories of your day—a strange malady ye treated or a new cure ye tried—and you’ll wish I was there.”
It was true, all of it. But it changed nothing.
“And at night,” he said, “you’ll lie alone in your bed thinking of the pleasure I could give ye.”
She would long for his touch and miss him every night and day. But she would not give him the satisfaction of admitting it.
“Who’s to say I’ll be alone in my bed?” she snapped.
The sudden rage burning in his eyes tested her courage. She swallowed hard and stood her ground. Though he was a lying bastard who broke her heart, she knew he would not harm her physically.
“’Tis nothing to me what ye do when ye leave here,” he said, but the twitch in his eye told her he lied. “Ye can be sure I won’t be sleeping alone.”
His words felt like a blow to her chest, forcing the air out of her lungs.
“I expect I’ll be wed,” he said, “and have a babe on the way by spring.”
Her eyes stung. That babe could be hers. Should be hers.
“Will ye lie to her as well?” she asked. “Tell her that ye love her?”
