Highland Surrender (37 page)

Read Highland Surrender Online

Authors: Dawn Halliday

BOOK: Highland Surrender
2.45Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
“Doing what, Ceana? I love you—”
“Stop it!” She jerked away from him, scrambled off the bed, and snatched her shift from the floor. “Stop all these protestations of love. That’s exactly what Brian did.”
His voice hardened. “I’m not Brian.”
It was hopeless.
God.
She had to do it again. It had nearly torn her apart to deny Rob, but she’d known he didn’t really love her. But Cam . . . It would destroy her to hurt him.
But hurt him she must.
“Lies, Cam. You think so now, because you find me pleasant bed sport. But soon you will regret these rash words.”
He sat up. His dark eyes remained fixed on her. “I want to spend my life with you, damn it, to hell with the repercussions. I’m not going to change my mind.”
He was utterly convinced, and it shook her to her core. She gathered herself, then gave a hollow laugh. “No one will accept a marriage between us. It will destroy you politically. It will earn you the enmity of the Duke of Irvington, the Duke of Argyll, the king . . .”
“They can all go to the devil. I don’t care about them. I care about you.”
“We’ve known—both of us—from the beginning that this was an impossible match. We are too different.”
“Our differences don’t matter anymore,” Cam growled. Anger flashed in his eyes. “I know what I want.”
She narrowed her gaze at him. “Do you bother to take into account what I want?”
“You want me too. You’re being stubborn about this foolish curse business . . .”
“No! I don’t want you!”
He ground his teeth. “Ceana . . .”
She pulled on her
arisaid
with jerky movements as she continued. “I have a profession, and it’s something I love, something that’s part of me to my soul, something that you know nothing of. I heal people. You are not part of that. I have no wish to waste my days away as the wife of a nobleman. I have no desire whatsoever to be your wife.”
“Then stay with me. Become my mistress. Later, I will convince you that it can work. I’ll prove it to you, Ceana. There is no curse. And as for the rest—I’ll find a way, goddammit. Everyone will accept this match—unlikely as it may be. And then you will marry me.”
She gave a bitter laugh. “Pretty dream, isn’t it?” Yanking at her belt, she leaned over him. “Until you find another woman you wish to bed. Because that’s all it was with me, wasn’t it? You wanted to tup me. I saw it in your eyes. You wanted me more than you wanted Elizabeth, and you are overcome by the guilt of it, confused by your carnal desire for an old heathen healer over the bonny daughter of an English duke. Well, you’ve had me, Cam. It should be enough.”
Please, God, let that deter him.
If she were forced to continue this charade much longer, she was going to fall apart.
He blinked at her. Then he stood up from the bed, his magnificent nude body nearly overwhelming her. Ceana tore her gaze away from it. He reached out, captured her arm. “No. It’s not enough. It’ll never be enough. From the beginning, I knew it was more. You mean so much to me. For God’s sake, believe me. I’ve fallen in love with you, and nothing can revoke that.”
She recoiled as if he’d hit her. And then she laughed. She laughed and laughed, the sound high, eerie, impossible. Finally, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, she smiled at him.
“Well, love. To me, it was just as we both knew from the beginning, and I never allowed it to grow deeper. You were a pleasant fuck. Just like Rob MacLean was.”
His eyes narrowed, and she knew then that it was over. She had won.
It didn’t feel like a win. It felt like a devastating loss. It felt like a piece of her had died.
“That’s right,” she forced out. “I’ve bedded Rob just as I’ve bedded you. And then I tired of him, and I left him. You don’t mean anything more to me than he did—don’t you see?”
She reached for her jacket and began to work the row of buttons down its front. “So the truth has been revealed. I was trying to hand it to you delicately, to cause you as little pain as possible, but you didn’t listen. So now I must reveal the truth, just as I did with Rob a month ago. I’m finished with you. I don’t wish to marry you, be your mistress, or even sleep with you again. I’ve had my fill of you, my lord.”
He stared at her. Shock, pain, confusion, distress, disbelief. Anger. All of it raged across his face. His fists clenched and unclenched at his sides, and his jaw worked spasmodically.
She straightened, looked down her nose at him. “You’d best believe me, Lord Camdonn. If you approach me again, I will turn away. I will pretend I didn’t see you. If you need healing, turn to your under-worked castle surgeon. I am a MacNab woman. You’re a fool if you think you could ever take one of us to wife. MacNab women never marry.
Ever
.”
With that, she turned and stalked outside, slamming the door behind her. Once she was out of sight of her cottage, she ran into the forest until she was certain nobody would find her. And then she collapsed to her knees, buried her face in her hands, and wept.
 
Rob surged up from his bed just as Elizabeth flew into his room.
He knew it was her right away. He knew the sound of her heavy breathing, the sound of her sobs. He leaped out of bed, and she flung herself into his arms, trembling like a terrified butterfly.
“Elizabeth? My God, are you all right? What happened?”
“It’s . . . it’s Uncle Walter,” she said, gasping. “He saw . . . me coming to you tonight. Rob . . . he’s going to kill Bitsy. And then . . . and then he’s going to . . .”
“Are you certain? Where is she?”
“I . . . don’t know . . . Please, Rob, we must leave this place. We must go!”
“Shhh,” he soothed, trying to calm her even though his own heart was galloping like a racehorse. “Look at me.”
She raised her head slowly. Tear-streaked cheeks, red, blotchy skin, bloodshot eyes, liquid seeping from her eyes and nose. God, she was beautiful, even racked by terror. He reached up and, using his sleeve, wiped some of her snot away as if she were an infant. “Keep looking at me,” he ordered in a soft, soothing voice. “Tell me what has happened.”
“He saw me leave here earlier. He knew . . . he knew we were together. He said he was going to kill Bitsy as my punishment, and then he’s coming after you.”
He pulled away from her. “I must stop him—”
“No!” Elizabeth clutched at him and yanked him back to her, wrapping his shirt in her fists, her eyes wild. “No, please. Oh, God, Rob, he’ll kill you. Please don’t. I know what we must do. It is the only solution.”
Tears welled over her bottom lids and streamed down her cheeks. He wiped them away with his thumbs. “Your uncle cannot hurt me, Elizabeth.”
“You don’t know the whole story, Rob. You don’t know what he’s done. What I’ve done in cowardice and selfishness.”
“Tell me, then,” he said quietly.
“There’s no time! We must leave this place, for Bitsy’s sake! She’ll be safe only if we go. Please.
Please
, Rob.”
He paused, considering, staring at her, and realized he trusted her implicitly. If she said they must leave, then that was what they must do.
Moments later, with Elizabeth hidden beneath a plaid, they rode past the guards and through the gates of Camdonn Castle. When they turned onto the shadowy path and were out of earshot, Rob slipped his arm around her middle. “Tell me now. How can leaving your maid behind help her?”
“I ran away once before. If I am not there to participate in the deed, he has no reason to hurt her.”
“What of when you return?”
She heaved in a breath and whispered, “I cannot return.”
He took this in, and they rode for long moments in silence, the only sounds those of the horse’s hooves and Elizabeth’s intermittent sniffles.
Finally, he asked, “Is that what you did in cowardice and selfishness? Returned home knowing your maid would be punished?”
“No.”
“What, then?”
“I was six years old when they died. My mother and father . . . and my brother.”
“Aye. They died of smallpox, you said.”
“I brought it home from the country house we’d visited for the summer. I recovered, but by the time I was well, they had contracted it. They were very ill.”
She hiccupped, and Rob’s chest tightened in sympathy. She felt guilty for her parents’ and brother’s deaths, for she had brought the disease to them, and she had recovered while they hadn’t.
“You know you’re not responsible for their deaths, don’t you? A child cannot help the illnesses she contracts and passes along.”
She didn’t answer him. Just stared straight ahead. “There’s more. One night, late, I woke myself up coughing. I wanted my mother, so I slipped into their room and found them both sleeping. They looked so peaceful, and I didn’t wake them, for I’d been told when I was ill that sleep would help me recover. But then I heard someone at the door. I’d been banned from their sickroom, so I hid under the bed, terrified that one of the servants would find me and I’d be punished.”
She paused, and he tightened his arm around her middle. “It was your uncle?”
She nodded. “Yes. I don’t know what he did.” Her chest shuddered in a sob. “I think he . . . smothered them. I heard them struggling, but I was too cowardly. I just wept and listened to him murder my parents. They were too weak from their illness to fight him.
“He stayed there for hours. I hid under the bed, too terrified to move or sleep. And then he began to pace the room. A bit of my nightdress must have been peeking out, and he discovered me there.”
Rob swallowed. Goddamn, he would kill the man with his bare hands if he ever saw him again.
“He coaxed me from under the bed, and there, standing beside my dead parents, he scolded me. He said that it was very bad of me to go there, for I wasn’t allowed into the sickroom, and he said it was very, very bad of me to hide. He said I must be punished. So . . .” Elizabeth gulped in a breath, and her chest shuddered under his hand. Rob pressed his lips to the back of her head.
“So,” Elizabeth continued in a whisper, “he took me to my brother’s room. He said since I was well and whole, he couldn’t punish me. But . . . but . . . he could punish William, who was very sick. I . . . I didn’t understand . . .”
Her body shook, and she bowed her head.
Rob’s jaw went tight. “He killed your brother too?”
“He said it was my fault. If I was naughty again, he’d have to punish me again. And he did . . . he beat Bitsy whenever I was bad, and I knew if I did something truly terrible, he’d murder her too.”
She dissolved into a shaking ball, and Rob curled his body protectively over hers. Hatred surged through him.
“I should have done something. I should have stopped him. I was weak. A coward.”
“No. You were a frightened lass who wanted her parents. You did nothing wrong. There was nothing you could have done to save them.”
The Duke of Irvington had destroyed a family. He’d destroyed the woman in Rob’s arms. The woman he loved.
She trembled in his embrace, and he knew he must care for her. Take her to safety. Protect her, and heal her. She’d reached her limit, and so had he. Nothing—not his relationship to Cam or his knowledge of her uncle’s power in England—could stop Rob from doing what needed to be done. The only thing that mattered now was keeping Elizabeth from the danger her uncle presented, not to her body, but to her soul.
Tenderly, he touched his finger to her chin and turned her face to his. “He’ll never hurt you again, love. Never again.”
 
Cam could dredge up no emotion beyond the dull ache in his chest. After offering every signal that she felt the same as he did, Ceana had spurned him. Cruelly.
He couldn’t believe she honestly accepted this absurd story of witches and curses her mothers had fed her. But if she didn’t believe it, that meant the second part of her story was true. She didn’t love him. She’d used him.
Cam’s heart was a stone in his chest. The more he thought about it, the more he believed the latter theory. She’d shown him some measure of kindness and compassion—far more than her MacNab reputation warranted—but beyond that, she’d never said, or even implied, that her feelings for him went beyond the carnal.
And what kind of woman would admit to using men? She’d said she’d used Robert MacLean in a similar way, grown tired of him, then discarded him.
Hell, maybe she
was
a witch. Seducing men, crawling into their beds, into their hearts, and then casting them off as easily as the ashes from her hearth.
Her cottage felt lonely, almost eerie, without her presence. He had a strong feeling she wouldn’t return until he’d gone away.
Weary and heart-worn, he dressed, went outside, and mounted his horse.
He’d ride for a while, then go home and sleep the day away. When he awoke . . .
Hell.
He needed to have words with Elizabeth. He’d arrange a private meeting with her, and he’d lay down the truth of what he knew and what he felt.

Other books

1971 - Want to Stay Alive by James Hadley Chase
Odd Thomas by Dean Koontz
Refuge by Karen Lynch
A Killing Season by Priscilla Royal
Kissing The Enemy by Helena Newbury
Oblivion: Surrender by Cristina Salinas
Watched at Home by Jean-Luc Cheri
The Love Season by Elin Hilderbrand