Perfect Strangers (32 page)

Instead, Gabrielle bunched her hand into a tight fist, held rigidly at her side as she glared down at him. The imprint of her hand lingered an angry shade of red on his cheek. "You miserable bastard," she hissed, the glint in her green eyes murderous. Her cheeks flamed with furious color. "How dare you suggest that the only thing I'm good for is bearing children?"

"Och! calm yerself down, lass, I dinny mean—"

"Of course you did! What else
could
you have meant?" A part of Gabrielle was aware of, and embarrassed by, her high, shrewish tone; a larger part of her was too furious to care, let alone make an attempt to correct it. "I know full well that I'm not beautiful, but you do me a grave disservice to suggest by your words that I am stupid as well as plain."

"I meant only—"

"Quiet! Please, do not insult me further by lying and saying you think me comely. I know better. No man with eyes has ever mistaken me for that. 'Tis a fact I learned to accept long ago. However, no man with a grain of compassion has dared say as much, and in so crass a manner, to my face. Methinks there's a reason they call you Scots barbarians, and 'tis for more than your tactics on a battlefield. The ballads say The Black Douglas is a cruel man, but I'd no idea
how
cruel."

"Gabby—"

"Be quiet, I tell you! I—"

"Lass, are ye crying?"

"—don't wish to discuss the matter further. And I most certainly am
not
crying. As for what you've said... your opinion of anything—least of all your opinion of me!—means less than nothing." Gabrielle bit down on her lower lip until it stung and she tasted the sharp tang of blood on her tongue. The lie tasted sour in her mouth, but pride forbade her to take it back. She dashed a hot, traitorous tear from her cheek with her fist and, gathering up her skirt with her free hand, turned to leave the room.

Connor was on his feet in a heartbeat, and across the room in two. He caught up to her just as she was about to disappear into the shadowy corridor outside the arched stone doorway. Curling his fingers around her upper arm, he tugged, stopping her short.

He heard her try, and fail, to suppress a choked gasp of surprise. Beneath the brocade sleeve, he felt a tremor ripple through her.

"If I've said aught to offend ye, lass..." Connor's words trailed away when he noticed the way Gabrielle strained her neck to keep her face turned away from him. The jerky lift and fall of her shoulders told him that indeed she
was
crying.

The muscles in Connor's stomach fisted. God, how the sight tore at him! He longed to enfold her in his arms, press her cheek to his shoulder, stroke her soft, inky hair and croon soothing words in her ear. He'd no practice comforting teary-eyed women, but for this one, heaven help him, he would make the attempt.

If
Gabby allowed it.

The rigid set of her spine and shoulders suggested that she would not. The stiffness of her posture also suggested that, if Connor so much as thought about trying to soothe her, she would slap out at him again. Blindly, wildly. His cheek still stung from her first blow; fierce Douglas pride forbade him from giving her another opportunity.

Gabrielle muffled a sniffle with the back of her hand and cleared her throat. She would have wiped the tears from her cheeks, but there were too many and they refused to stop falling. Her voice shook only a bit as she said, "Unhand me, please. You're hurting my arm."

Connor's fingers loosened, but he did not let her go. "Why? So that ye can run away? I dinny think so, Gabby."

"I am
not
running away."

"Then what would ye call it?"

"I'm"—
sniffle, sniffle
—"simply retiring for the night, is all."

"Do ye always run to yer chambers when ye retire for the night, lass?"

"Only when I've been gravely insulted and wish to be alone with my thoughts, m'lord."

Connor sucked in a choppy breath as the pad of his thumb traced small circles against her sleeve and the warm, soft skin beneath. "How many times do I have to say it? No insult was intended."

"Mayhap a part of me believes you, but a larger part most certainly did take insult."

"Is it yer habit to take insult whenever a mon offers to wed ye?"

"I wouldn't know, the offer has never been made before." Gabrielle dashed the tears from her cheek and, finally managing to gain control over her emotions, craned her neck to glare hotly up at him. "Heathen Scot though you are, surely even
you
cannot be so ignorant as to think that your offer is what I find so insulting. Tis not, 'tis the
reason
for it. Obviously you think of me as nothing more than a brood mare.
That
, I find insulting in the extreme. What woman with even a tattered scrap of pride would not?"

"Ye aren't making any sense." Connor shook his head, confused. "Arranged marriages are an age-old custom in yer country as well as mine. A marriage based solely on begetting heirs is not unusual. Och! but 'tis a maun honorable reason to wed. I ken few couples on either side of the Border whose marriage is based on—"

He gulped, his throat closing tightly around the word.

Gabrielle's gaze sharpened on him when Connor stopped speaking abruptly.

"On what, m'lord?" she prodded coldly. When he still refused to finish the sentence, she determinedly finished it for him. "You know of few couples on either side of the Border whose marriage is based on...
love?
Is that the word you're having so much trouble saying?"

"Aye," he growled, his gray eyes narrowing angrily. He hated the way his tongue tripped awkwardly over the word, hated, too, the way his mind tripped even more awkwardly over the prospect of voicing it.

"Have you ever been in love, Connor?"

He gritted his teeth, making the muscles in his jaw bunch hard, and shook his head. "I've no time to waste on such silly emotions."

"You think love silly?"

"Quite."

Gabrielle opened her mouth to say something, but abruptly changed her mind; the glint in her green eyes suggested that the words she settled upon were not the ones that originally entered her mind. "I pity you, Connor Douglas. Not only can't you say the word, you can't even feel the richness and depth of the emotion."

"I dinny lack for emotions, lass. Ye be wrong aboot that."

"Mayhap, but you obviously lack the most important one. Love. Methinks 'tis what the term 'barbarian' truly means."

That said, Gabrielle reached up and untangled her arm from his shock-slackened fingers. Turning her back on him, she quit the hall without a backward glance.

That he'd been insulted, Connor did not doubt. Exactly
how
the insult had come about, however, he wasn't so sure of. He knew only that without her presence to warm it, the great hall felt suddenly chilly and... aye, lonely in its vast emptiness.

Connor stared at the empty spot where Gabrielle had stood for a full two minutes after the clipped echo of her footsteps faded away. He might have stood there a good deal longer if not for the two sudden, sharp pains in his shin that snagged his attention.

His gaze jerked down and to the side, colliding with one that was a bit bluer, wider, and fringed by long, thick copper lashes.

"So help me, Ella," he snapped, "if ye dinny cease kicking me, I'll see ye wed to—"

"Ye be a real charmer, Cousin," Ella said sarcastically, ignoring the threat he'd been about to voice. "I cannot remember the last time I heard a mon turn a woman's head with such honey-sweet words." Crossing her arms over her waist, she met Connor's glare with a steady one of her own. "Tsk, tsk, tsk. Even Roy Maxwell has a smoother tongue than yers, and that mon was
purposely
insulting me. 'Tis wondering I am, why ye dinny ask Gabrielle to open her mouth and show ye her teeth. Indeed, ye might as well have asked her to bare all. A Douglas ne'er does anything by half measures, don't ye ken? If ye're bound and determined to treat the lass like ye're doing nothing maun important than buying a horse, ye may as well do it right."

"If Roy Maxwell has insulted ye..."

"Roy Maxwell isn't the point. Gabrielle Carelton
is.
I'll thank ye to be sticking to the subject at hand. Dinny be trying to change it again."

"Have a care, Ella, I'm in a foul mood and of a mind to take ye over my knee."

"I've just come from the dungeon, and Roy Maxwell's voice is still ringing in me ears. Since me mood isn't any better than yers," she gave a careless shrug, "I'm almost of a mind to let ye try. Almost."

Connor clamped his teeth around a terse reply. Spinning on his heel, he retrieved the tankard, left the table long enough to fill it to the cold, pewter brim, then returned. Thinking only of turning his back on his annoying cousin, he sat where Gabrielle had sat... then instantly wished he'd chosen another spot.

Was it possible for the bench to radiate the woman's heat, even now, or was his imagination getting the better of him?

Connor swore under his breath, then lifted the tankard and gulped down half its contents in two huge swallows. Perhaps whisky would have been a better choice? The potent liquor would be more numbing to his senses, something he could most certainly use just now.

An uneasy feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. Complete intoxication would be the only way he'd be able to chase wayward thoughts of Gabby from his mind, he realized. Even then, the remedy would be temporary. Aye, he could get blindly drunk, mayhap even forget about the lass for a wee bit, but as sure as the sun would rise come dawn, he knew that when he sobered, his traitorous thoughts would stray right back in that woman's direction.

Gabrielle Carelton was like a fever in his blood, one that ran strong and deep, one he could not seem to shake himself of. When he wasn't with her, he thought about her. Who was she with? What was she doing? Was she happy or, at the very least, content?

And why,
why
did the answers matter ever so much?!

Bloody hell!

When he was awake he fantasized about her, when he was asleep he
dreamed
about her. More provocative dreams he'd never in his life experienced, yet he had to admit that only a small portion of those dreams centered around the tantalizing memory of their lovemaking. Equally as many left him to wake with the lingering impression of Gabby's smile, or the bittersweet trill of her laughter echoing a haunting melody in his ears...

"...Alasdair Gray."

The name broke into Connor's thoughts and caught his attention. He focused on his cousin and demanded she repeat herself.

"I said only that the last time I saw such a ridiculous expression on a mon 'twas on Alasdair Gray, when he took Vanessa Forster to wife."

"And what expression is that?"

"I may be wrong," she replied, and grinned impishly, "but methinks the kitchen wenches call it 'lovesick.' "

"Och! Cousin, I'm
not
lovesick! Curse ye for e'en suggesting such a thing!"

Ella's lack of a verbal response made her arched copper brow all the more compelling.

"Ye dinny believe me?" Connor growled as he slammed the tankard down on the table. With his free hand, he plowed his fingers through his dark, shaggy hair. "I'm
not
in love."

"If ye say so." A grin tugged at one corner of Ella's mouth. The gesture suggested that she didn't believe him for a second, as did the flicker of amusement he saw flash in her wide blue eyes. She gave his shoulder a light slap. "Och! Connor, dinny look so distraught. Truly, it no longer matters if ye love Gabrielle or nay. Ye made such a disaster of proposing that there is no chance she'd consider wedding ye now." She pursed her lips and frowned thoughtfully. "'Tis a stroke of luck that Robert Carey had to stop here on his way to Edinburgh for a fresh mount, aye? If he'd passed us by, ye'd ne'er have learned so quickly of Elizabeth's passing, and by the time ye did find out, 'twould have been too late, ye'd already have been wed to the cursed Sassenach wench."

The fingers of one hand curled around the bowl of the tankard while the finger of his other tightened around the handle. Had the molded pewter been made of less sturdy stuff it would have snapped off with the force of his grip. "Ye forget me reasons for wanting to wed her in the first place. I want a son. An heir will assure that Colin can ne'er get his conniving hands on Bracklenaer."

"I forget naught," Ella replied, ignoring the reference to Connor's twin instead of allowing him to change the subject, the way she'd a feeling he'd intended it to do. "And I'm of a mind that neither will Gabrielle. Especially after ye explained it to her in such a"—
cough!-
—"succulent and gallant manner."

"I was being honest with the lass, 'tis all."

"Were ye?" Ella rested the knuckles of her fists on the table and leaned toward Connor until they were on eye level. "Were ye really?"

"Are ye suggesting otherwise?" he asked tightly.

"What I be suggesting is that there's a fine muckle of good, healthy Scotswomen who'd be overjoyed to share yer name, yer bed, and yer bairns. Gabrielle Carelton may have been needed to settle our feud with the Maxwell, howe'er she isn't the only woman who can supply ye with an heir. Since yer qualifications are so ver basic, would not any woman do the job nicely?"