Page 52 of Sutherland's Secret
“Ye keep saying that.”
“Because it’s true,” she cried. She stood up and paced to the other side of the small hut. It took only a few steps. “I wish you had let me go.”
Brice hissed in a breath at the pain her words caused. Even now she didn’t want to be with him. “And what would ye do in Canada?”
“I would find a house I could serve in.”
Stunned, he could only stare at her for a bit. “Serve? How many fine houses do ye think are in Canada?”
She threw her hands up in the air. “I don’t know. I would have found something. I’m actually very good at serving.”
He rolled his eyes and looked into the fire, not wanting her to see how hurt he was. He was such a damn fool when it came to women. He could never find one who wanted to stay. They all thought there was something better out there.
She sat down beside him, and he looked at the length of her legs, tightly encased in the worn breeches. The sight stirred him in inappropriate ways. He’d not seen a woman in a man’s clothes before. “Where’d ye get the clothing?” he asked gruffly, poking at the fire with a long stick.
“Cecilia. Now, don’t be getting angry at her for it. If you’re angry at anyone, be angry at me.”
“Oh, I am.”
She sighed. “Why are you angry? Certainly you can agree that I’m nothing but a hindrance to you and yourStaran. I’m a danger to all of you. Blackwood is out there looking for me, and if he finds me at Castle Dornach, under your protection, all of you will pay the price.”
He stabbed the fire again. Everything she said was true. Maybe he should have left her to board the boat. In Canada she would be safe from Blackwood. He’d sent countless people to Canada, watched them board that ship and say a tearful farewell to their Scotland, knowing they were headed for a better life.
However, seeing Eleanor trying to board that ship had done something to him. He was damned if another woman was going to run away from him. Yet was it fair that Eleanor was paying the price of Alisa’s desertion?
“Alisa left me,” he said into the fire, surprised he’d said the words out loud. He’d had no intention of telling her this when he’d brought her here.
“Pardon me?”
“My wife. Alisa. She left me.”
The flames crackled. Outside the wind blew harder, and in the back of his mind, Brice thought it would probably rain before the night was out. A storm would ensure that they would stay here the whole night, and he wasn’t averse to that. His heart told him that while he’d stopped Eleanor from leaving now, he wouldn’t be able to stop her a second time. Her leaving was inevitable, and that stabbed his soul.
“Alisa left you,” Eleanor repeated.
“There’d been talk of our marriage between our families since we were young. She was a McKinney, and a match with the Sutherlands was good for both families.”
“That sounds very romantic,” she said sarcastically.
Brice grinned. “It was all very unromantic. We’d met before, once or twice.”
“And was it love at first sight?”
He looked over at her and smiled. “Ye are the romantic one, aren’t you?”
“I never thought I was.”
“Alisa…she was different. She’d been raised in the Highlands, but she had no love of the Highlands.”
“How could anyone not love this beautiful country,” she murmured.
Brice looked at her in surprise. He thought the same, of course, but it was a surprise to hear it from Eleanor, someone who had grown up in London, a place of elegance and sophistication. “She desperately wanted to travel to London and attend a ball. It was her greatest desire.”
Eleanor snorted. She actually snorted. Brice wasn’t sure he’d ever heard a woman snort, especially a lady.
“She wasn’t missing much. They are stuffy and hot and not all that fun. It’s the same people at every ball, and their greatest pastime is to talk about each other behind their backs.”
Brice had figured as much. He could never understand Alisa’s need to travel to England, and yet it was all she had talked about.
