Page 45 of Beguiled By the Highlander
“I’ll take that above indifference any day.”
She gave an impatient sigh. “Can ye not be serious for more than a moment?”
“I’m serious. We’re talking about the rest of our lives here.”
“Aye.” She pounced on that comment. “And ye know how I can’t leave my isle.”
“I know ye love yer isle.” He seemed to be picking his words with care, and for some reason it irked her more than if he’d simply dismissed her comment as being irrelevant. William Campbell wasn’t supposed to be thoughtful or mindful of her feelings. She wanted to hate him, but no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t. “I hope one day ye might love Creagdoun, Isolde. ’Tis my dearest wish ye’ll be happy there as my bride.”
He sounded so sincere. But Creagdoun was in the Highlands, far from her beloved isle and so different from every dream she’d woven around her stranger from the sea. Fear of an uncertain future caught in her throat, and before she could stop herself, she whispered, “I don’t even know who ye are.”
“Whatever else has changed between us, I’m still the same man whose bed ye shared the other night.”
She didn’t want to think about the other night. Because the other night she had believed they could have a future together, here on Eigg, when that had always been nothing but a foolish fantasy.
“Ye’re wrong. For ye’re not Njord, and ye never were.”
Her barb hit home, and his smile faded, but no spark of triumph warmed her heart. Only a hollow sense of regret.
“That’s right.” There was no hint of amusement in his words, only a hard edge she’d never heard from him before. “I never was, Isolde, and I never claimed to be. But by God there’s one thing I promise ye. When we are wed, I’ll have ye screaming my true name when I make ye mine.”
Her regret vaporized as a maelstrom of fury and, God damn it, lust blurred her reason. And only one word hammered through her mind.
Bastard.
Chapter Fourteen
The meeting inher grandmother’s chamber had been intolerably long. But not because of any unreasonable demands from William.
It was Amma.
Had the contract been for anything other than the capsizing of her own future, Isolde would have been utterly mesmerized by her grandmother’s attention to every detail. Nothing had been left to chance, including the future security of both her sisters regarding their rights to Sgur Castle in the event of Lady Helga’s death.
And this was the contract the Baron of Dunstrunage had agreed to.
William signed the contract with a flourish, and then Amma turned to her.
“Isolde, do ye agree to honor the contract and wed William Campbell, laird of Creagdoun?”
The silence in the chamber was like a thick fog, pressing into her mind. She stared at the clause on the parchment, at the words that would bind her to William Campbell and tear her away from everything she had ever known.
The words that went against everything her grandmother had taught her of the Deep Knowing.
For ten years she’d been so adamant that, if things came to a head, she’d simply refuse to go through with it. But now she was out of time. Now, she had to make the decision to eitherdisgrace her beloved Amma and the honor of her foremothers by rejecting the contract—or accepting her fate and all that might entail.
She cast a surreptitious glance at William, who sat on the other side of the desk. She half expected him to appear smug that he was so close to achieving his objective. And how much easier that would make it to despise him.
But he didn’t look self-satisfied or give the air of a man who knew he had won. There was a subtle sense of watchfulness about him, as though even now he wasn’t certain she’d go through with it.
And if she didn’t, what could he do about it?
Once again, she focused on the contract, but the words blurred, and her heart thundered in her chest. No one said a word. Despite how much Amma wanted this, in the end she was leaving it up to her to make the final decision.
A decision that would take her away from her isle and make her William’s wife.
She didn’t want to leave Eigg. The very notion of it gripped her stomach. And yet the prospect of wedding William—which should have disgusted her to the core of her being—sent tremors of treacherous anticipation spiraling through her.
It was wrong. She shouldn’t still want him on any level, but she couldn’t hide the truth from herself. Deep inside, in a place she hadn’t even known existed until now, she still craved him.
