Page 43 of The Scot Beds His Wife
“A Thorne, maybe, but you are not. My. Lord,” she bit out. “If you refuse the Mackenzie as your laird, though he is thought to be by tradition andlaw,then I do not see fit to address you as mine as you are neither a gentle nor noble man. Where I come from, a man must earn an exalted title by way of education, merit, or endeavor. Call that barbaric if you like, but it makes a great deal of sense to me as I stand in front of a man who can only count his accomplishments as high as the number of women he’s bedded. Or hearts he’s broken.”
“Do not speak tomeof broken hearts,” he warned, taking another dangerous step forward. “I’ve never led a woman to believe she was anything more to me than a passing fancy or a pleasant fuck. Should she build more in her mind than what I promised, the fault is hers.”
Samantha’s eyes narrowed with such strain, his impossibly beautiful face blurred into nothing more than brutal planes and sharp angles. “Youarea monster. One more dangerous than those who you would denounce. You’re a monster who believes himself other than he is.”
He threw his hands up in a sweeping gesture of derision. “So tell me, Saint Ross, whatever shall I do to gain yer condemnatory esteem? Is there no redemption in your heart for a lowly fiend like myself?”
“I’m no saint.” The fathomless void of shame swirled beneath her temper, spiking it ever higher. “I’ve allowed monsters to tempt me to do the devil’s work. I’ve frightened and hurt people. Innocent people. I’ve watched beautiful, powerful men like you hold their actions up to true evil and I found thegoodin the comparison. I excused who they were right up until they crossed the line they promised never to even approach. You think you’re the first wayward son or younger brother who vowed to be left untouched by the sins of his elders? In the end, the past will catch up with you, and men like you always pull the trigger when they ought not to.”
She raked him with a glare that told him she saw past his untamed beauty, to the ugly violence that rippled beneath all his taut, bronzed flesh. “As much as you’d like to think your hands are clean, we both know they’re not. They’re stained with a million sins, with a thousand tears, a hundred deceits, and maybe a little blood you pretend isn’t there. You may ignore it, butIsee it. I see who you are.”
“Then why did ye fucking kiss me back?” he snarled.
Samantha hid her gasp behind a shrug. “Because maybe I’m a monster, too.”
They stared at each other, each shaking from the cold rain and icy rage.
From the electric passion arcing between them like currents of lightning, brewing a tempest each of them knew could sweep them away.
The forest darkened as the storm intensified, casting his bright eyes into shadow, and slicking his sand-colored hair a darker shade. The rivulets of water running down the grooves next to his sensual mouth, tracing the sinew of his neck, his clavicles, dripping from his hair, could have been the tears of angels who’d given up on his soul long ago.
He appeared to her a bleak pagan god, forsaken by time and progress to lurk alone in primeval forests that had once been considered his temples.
She didn’t want to pity him, to feel any compassion…
But an ancient pain surfaced from beneath his hard fury like a long-forgotten corpse dredged from the bottom of a loch.
“Well then…” He reached down to retrieve his rifle, and Samantha’s hold tightened on the butt of her gun. “May the best monster win.”
Without another word, he gave her his back and stalked away, allowing both the forest and the storm to swathe him in shadows.
Samantha faced the new mother, who’d silently observed the spectacle with uneasy, exhausted curiosity while nursing the calf, who stood on quivering, unsteady legs.
For many reasons, both identifiable and befuddling, all Samantha wanted to do was cry. She fought it with deep,quivering breaths and lips pressed tight. Somehow, she was certain that the heathen Highlander still watched her from some dark vantage in the forest and she’d take a bullet from his rifle before he caught her crying.
The calf noisily detached from his mama upon her approach, and blinked at her in frozen uncertainty.
“It’s all right,” she crooned. “You can finish supper once we get you home.” He only let out awhuffof protest as she wrapped her arms around his spindly legs and hefted him up against her chest.
For the first time in her life, Samantha bemoaned soiling what was her second nicest gown, but damned if she would leave one more of what washer herdon Inverthorne lands.
The mama made an anxious noise when Samantha heaved the little thing over her saddle and climbed in behind it.
“Well, come on then,” she encouraged. “Follow me properly, and I’ll give him back.”
The urge to cry had morphed into more of a simmering snit by the time she reached Erradale and situated mother and calf into one of the deserted, ramshackle cottages.
She fought another, more insistent urge the entire way home, and lost the battle when the all-encompassing aroma of Callum’s latest offering of fish assaulted her nose.
Doubling over on the porch, she retched and heaved into the undeserving flower beds.
CHAPTERNINE
Gavin approached Erradale with a great deal more caution this time, wary of the gunshots that ricocheted across the moors.
He’d already paused at the top of Gresham Peak and used a spyglass to scope possible danger in the form of a wiry beauty with a tongue every bit as treacherous as her trigger finger.
Callum had revealed Alison would be alone today, as the Mac Tire was at Inverthorne helping his father, Eammon, with some heavy lifting. Locryn and Calybrid took to Rua Reidh on Sundays, for drinking and trading.
