Page 62 of The Laird's Unwanted Wife
“Ye’re here!” She cried, happy tears streaming down her face. “Ye came to see us!”
“I came back to ride with ye back home.” Gerald held Mollie so tightly in his arms that Aileen could have sworn she saw the faintest glimmer behind his eyes. “Ye never have to come back to this place if ye daenae wish it, lamb.”
Mollie squealed, excitedly rushing past Aileen and back into her room. “I’ll pack right now! I daenae take all me things out—we could leave tonight!”
“We’re nae leaving tonight,” Gerald chuckled lightly. “It’s too dark outside.”
“And anyway,” Aileen interjected. “I cannae just abandon the people here. At the very least, the council should be informed and have some time to prepare for me departure.”
Mollie hardly seemed as if a single word had registered. “I’ll go tell Sarah right now! We’re going home, we’re going home!” She bolted past Aileen, Bannock in hot pursuit as the pair vanished down the hall. All Aileen could do was stare after, somewhat stunned at the sudden turn of events. She looked back to Gerald, his soft expression hiding a note of … shame, she realized.
“Ye shouldnae have told her that,” Aileen said curtly.
“It’s the truth, though,” Gerald replied coolly. “We are to ride back to MacLiddel as soon as possible.”
Aileen’s fists curled at her side; any previous thoughts of submission were tossed aside, replaced with a burning desire to rip the control out of her husband’s hand. “I wrote to ye. Told ye I still had work to do.”
“Yer work is me work,” Gerald countered.
“So ye just decided I was done?” Aileen snapped.
“I decided I was finished actin’ the part of a coward, Aileen.”
That caught Aileen by surprise. She never thought she’d hear the Laird of MacLiddel openly call himself a coward. She crossed her arms against her chest, weeks of repressed anger flooding her veins.
Where apathy had once existed, there was now only a white-hot rage. Yet she bit her tongue, giving Gerald one more chance she was certain he did not deserve.
And she gave it to him—because, deep down, she wanted him to have it.
Gerald seemed to sense as much, and his mannerisms changed. He was no longer the unbreakable, unshakable Laird of MacLiddel, but simply Gerald Buchanan. Simply a man making himself entirely vulnerable to the woman he called his wife.
“I was a coward,” Gerald repeated firmly. “I used guilt—used me own brither’s death—as an excuse to keep meself closed off to others. I have always been terrified of being hurt as badly as I was the day he died. I was terrified to find happiness in a world that Ewan didnae live in.”
He exhaled sharply, visibly fighting to keep himself together. “I took that out on ye, and … and I shouldnae have. What was once a self-inflicted punishment lashed out at ye, and I’m sorry.”
Aileen stared at him, her anger wavering.
“These last two weeks have been unbearable. I couldnae think of anything else but the pair of ye. Of Mollie throwing sticks for Bannock, of ye breakin’ into a study I refused to fix the latch of, in hopes ye’d stumble in.”
Aileen’s heart skipped a beat at the sudden confession. She took a deep breath, trying to calm the sudden tremble running down the length of her arms. “The woman’s face in yer study, the one ye carved into yer bookshelf.” She steeled herself for the answer, staring Gerald directly in the eye. “Whose face is it?”
Gerald’s smile expelled whatever anger she had tried to hold on to. “It’s always been yers, lass. Always.”
Her face flushed with a brilliant heat, and she found herself unable to stop stammering. “Ye’ve never told me ye loved me.”
“Easy. I love ye.”
It couldn’t be this easy.
“I love ye.”
“Ye didnae wish to have a family of yer own, though!”
“Ye’re me family, Aileen. Ye and Mollie, and whoever joins us later in our lives.”
Her face somehow grew hotter, and she tried to cover her cheeks with her hands. Dizzy—why was she suddenly so dizzy? “Ye said ye didnae want children! And anyway, we’d have to … ye’d have to claim me, first! And ye made it very clear that ye would do nae do such—!” A startled squeal escaped her as Aileen was swept off her feet, carried firmly in Gerald’s arms.
“Tell me where yer room is,” Gerald whispered hoarsely. “And I’ll do it. Here and now, at the very keep where I first fell in love with ye.”
