She faced him, but didn’t venture closer. “Wasn’t about to sleep alone?”
Logan studied her face in the lamplight; the set of her features was uninformative, her eyes shadowed. “No.” He had no interest in sleeping alone ever again, not if he could help it. “However, if you’re wondering if that was part of the reason I insisted you came with me, the answer is no-that consideration didn’t occur at the time, and weighed not at all in my decision. Yet now you are here, with me, I can’t imagine not lying with you, sleeping with you in my arms.”
She seemed to hear the truth in his words. Yet still she hesitated, her arms wrapped over the counterpane, her gaze on him.
Then her lips firmed, and her gaze grew sharper. “An earl’s son?”
The question was quiet, yet loaded with intensity. With intent.
Mentally cursing his luck, he baldly stated, “My father was the Earl of Kirkcowan.”
“Was? He’s dead. So who’s the earl now?”
“His eldest son.” Standing, he shrugged off his coat, tossed it on a nearby chair. Started unbuttoning his waistcoat.
“From which curt description, I take it you’re estranged?”
He nodded. “I’m…” A bastard. “The black sheep of the family.” He had to tell her, and surely this was the perfect opening, but he hadn’t yet got all in place. He was too good a commander to charge in when his troops weren’t ready. Jaw tightening, he said, “You don’t need to worry about my… elevated connections. In every sense, they’re irrelevant.”
“Are they?”
“Yes.” Laying aside his waistcoat, he turned as she came closer, but she halted more than a yard away, studied his face as, raising his chin, he unknotted, then unwound, his cravat.
From her stance, arms still folded, from her increasingly determined expression, from the frown tangling her brows, she was preparing for battle.
Sure enough…
“Originally you swore you’d return to me. Instead, you’ve managed to whisk me away with you.” Her green gaze locked on his eyes. “But you can’t keep me with you. You’ll have to let me go in the end.”
Meeting her challenging gaze with adamantine stubbornness, he started unbuttoning his shirt. “I am not going to walk away from you.” Stubborn witch . “I won’t be letting you go. Not now, not later. You’d best get used to that.”
The scoffing sound she made stated she was far from that.
“Just how do you see that working?” Temper snapping, Linnet swung out an arm, encompassing the pair of them and the bed. Inside her roiled panicky fear-and the fact she felt it scared her even more. The desperate fight in the narrow yard, the race through the maze with enemies in pursuit, the knowledge that those enemies were still there, lurking beyond the Hall’s thick walls to fall on him again… her reaction to that, and to what that reaction meant and might mean, shook her to the core.
She’d fallen in love with this stubborn, irritating, impossible man, and she’d never be the same again.
Her heart would never be the same again.
That didn’t mean she would let him trample it, cause her more pain-more pain than she would feel anyway when they came to part.
She stepped closer, locked her eyes on his. “I refuse to allow you to keep me with you. I will not be kept.” Raising a finger, she pointed at his patrician nose. “I will not be a kept woman. I will not be your mistress, sitting waiting for you at your house in Glenluce.”
Something flared in his eyes, some emotion so powerful that her unruly heart leapt and her nerves skittered, but then he locked his jaw, reined it, whatever it was, in.
All but ground his teeth as, eyes burning darkly, he stated, “I don’t want you as my mistress.”
She held his gaze. “What, then?”
“I want you as my wife , damn it!”
Slowly, she released the breath she’d been holding. Commendably evenly stated, “Wife.” She’d assumed he’d meant that, but… “You never said anything about marriage. You didn’t mention a single associated word-like wife , bride , wedding .” Belligerently stepping closer still, temper rising as her emotions churned, even more out of control than before-God, how did he make her feel so much?-she deployed her finger again, wagging it under his aristocratic nose. “And don’t you dare suggest that me not jumping to a wedding-bell assumption is in some way a slur on your honor. I can’t read your damned mind-and it’s not as if scions of noble houses don’t keep mistresses. It’s a time-honored tradition for earl’s sons!”
The point that had been preying on her mind for the past hours. Folding her arms, a barrier between them, she glared at him from close quarters.
Somewhat to her surprise, he didn’t glare back.
Hands fisted at his sides, jaw clenched, Logan held his fire-because she was right. He’d spelled out his intentions to her men, but he hadn’t told her, not clearly. He’d sworn he would never give her up, had insisted that once he was free, he wanted to share his life with her, but he hadn’t mentioned marriage.
He’d omitted stating what to him had been the obvious. He’d assumed she had, as he had, come to see their relationship as something any sane man would seek to formalize, that, indeed, being a very sane woman, she would view it in the same light… but she hadn’t.
Clearly she hadn’t been thinking along those lines. Marriage lines. Vows and permanency.
Which was both a blow to his pride, and a sudden, jolting disappointment-more, a threat. A threat to what he now wanted, nay, needed his life to be-a threat to his dreams for the future.
Yet he couldn’t fault her-she’d always stated that in her view their liaison would inevitably end. She’d expected it to end in Plymouth. Instead, he’d all but kidnapped her, and now…
His eyes locked with hers, he dragged in a slow breath, filling his lungs, fighting to clear his head while he grappled with how to forge a way forward. Her description of a mistress sitting and waiting in a house in Glenluce… the vision had rocked him, pricked him on the raw as nothing else could have. The thought that he would ever subject her to that…
That had been his mother’s life. It would never be Linnet’s. Not while he breathed.
Forcing his fingers to uncurl, his jaw to ease, he slowly lifted his hands and gently closed them about her arms, simply held her and looked into her eyes. “You’re irritated, annoyed-and you’ve already countered any argument I might make that you ought to have guessed what my intentions were, any righteous assertion that as a gentleman I’d never have slept with you-continued to make love to you-if my intentions hadn’t been honorable-”
Eyes sparking, she opened her mouth-
“No-it’s your turn to listen.”
Reluctantly, all but smoldering, she subsided.
“You countered those arguments before I made them because you’ve already thought back and realized that, all along, I could have been intending marriage-you just assumed I wasn’t.” He held her gaze. “But I was. As God is my witness, I never thought of making you my mistress-I don’t want you as that. I want you in my bed, but I also want to have breakfast with you, to spend my days, my time, with you. I want to dine with you, to follow you on your rounds and check the doors after you, and follow you up the stairs to your bed.
“I want that as my life, my future. I told you I wanted to share my life with you, but I didn’t say anything about marriage because the fact that I might die, or be too seriously wounded to have a life to share, precludes that. You saw what I’m facing-the cult is determined to kill me and seize the scroll-holder. Until we reach the end of this, I can’t-in the traditional, honorable way can’t-make any formal offer for your hand.”