Page 86 of Wedded to the Scottish Duke

“What is it, then?” He waved a hand at her in disbelief.

“Oh, you fool. It’s caring… it’s curiosity!”

He took another small step back.

Caring…

He couldn’t bear her saying such things. If she declared she had feelings for him, he was likely to take her back to that bed and never let her go. To know that everything they shared wasn’t just about attraction but something so much more would be his undoing.

It would allow him to stop calling what he felt for her just an infatuation. He could give it a new name, something deeper, something much more meaningful.

Somethingfrightening.

“Keith, listen to me.” She walked toward him. This time, he didn’t step back. She halted in front of him, the two of them still naked. “This isn’t pity. I just want to know what happened. Please? Tell me?”

He sighed deeply and rubbed a hand over his face. If he was going to have this conversation, then he couldn’t do it like this. He crossed the room and picked up a banyan, throwing it over his shoulders to hide his scars. She reached for his discarded shirt on the floor and put it on.

“Ah, lass.” He moaned at the sight of her. “Wearing my shirt just makes me want to ravage ye again.”

“Don’t tempt me.” She smiled and then moved to kneel on the bed again, her cleavage showing through the neckline of his shirt. “Please, Keith?”

He moved back toward her. He sat on the very edge of the bed, though he didn’t trust himself to come any closer.

“Those scars were put there by one man.” He stared off into the distance. He knew he wouldn’t be able to look her in the eye when he said the next words. He feared glimpsing that pity. “My father.”

“Your father did this?” Celia practically shuddered on the bed.

“He was rather fond of brutal punishment for what he saw as wrongdoing.” He closed his eyes, still remembering what had caused that final and violent white scar across the middle of his back. “He was fond of using his belt for such things. Or a riding rod.”

His father had come back from a ride one day when he had come across Keith in the doorway of the castle.

Keith had refused to tell him where his mother was hiding in the castle. In return, his father had hit him with the riding crop when he had turned his back on him. It had sliced open his skin. The bleeding had not been easy to stop that day.

“He was a laird,” Keith said slowly.

“That doesn’t explain the brutality,” Celia whispered.

“No, it doesn’t. Neither myself nor my brother are so violent, but for my father, it was a way of life.” He breathed deeply and returned his gaze to Celia. “I don’t like being reminded of him or the past. It infuriates me that I have to carry with me the reminder of what sort of man he was. It’s why I keep my shirt on.”

“You didn’t that day at the lake, when you helped me,” she reminded him, a small smile playing on her lips. Keith found himself returning that smile. “You took it off and saved me.”

“It was dark. I wasn’t going to let ye drown, was I, sweetheart?” He leaned toward her, acting on instinct.

She leaned toward him too, and their lips met in the softest of kisses. Warmth spread through his chest before he saw her eyes flick to the banyan. That warmth abruptly vanished.

“He was more of a barbarian than I am,” Keith tried to joke, but it came out strained. He looked away, desperately wishing that they were not having this conversation.

To Celia, more than anyone else, he wanted to look unscarred, unhurt by the past, but that possibility was gone now. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she had recoiled and bolted from the bed, calling him the son of a monster and retreating as far as she possibly could.

But something odd happened instead. He felt her hand on his shoulder. He turned his head around to face her again, his eyebrows drawn together in confusion at what she was doing.

“Trust me?” she said softly. Her fingers slid from his shoulder to the hem of his banyan.

He didn’t answer, but neither did he pull back from her. There was something curious in her movements, something that strangely made him long to see what she was going to do next.

Boldly, she took hold of his banyan and slowly pulled it down one shoulder. Kneeling behind him, she moved her lips down, first kissing his bare shoulder and then moving to one of the scars on his back. Her lips brushed against the scar lightly.

Keith’s eyes closed as he held on to that feeling. He could not remember ever having been touched so softly in his life. In that darkness, he concentrated on her movements alone, feeling what she did next.

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