Page 70 of His Highland Duchess
He shook his head. “Is that what you think?”
“It’s what I ken,” she pressed on him. “Yesterday, before I… before I said as I did, that is what ye were going to tell me. I ken that ye – look at me!” she cried suddenly, unable to bear the way he refused to acknowledge her. “Look at me and tell me to my face that this is what ye want!”
Lysander sighed and placed down his knife and fork. Then he took a calming breath before forcing himself to look at her. She gasped when he did, for the expression he held her in was devoid of emotion. No sense that he cared for her. No signs of the love she knew he bore. It was not him, he whose eyes she met. His body, yes, but his soul was empty.
“It does not matter what I was going to say,” he said simply. “What matters is what you said…” His lip curled slightly, but he straightened it. “Words that, to be honest, I needed to hear. For that, I thank you.”
She winced and leaned back. “I dae nae believe ye.”
“Believe it,” he said coldly. “For it is the truth.” He nodded once and then turned back to his breakfast. “With that in mind, I think it best if you leave today, not for Scotland, as that is a trip that will take some time to arrange. But to your sister’s, a fewnights there as I make the preparations, and then you will be free to return home.”
“Lysander…” her voice was soft and defeated. “Please…”
“This was always the plan, Margaret,” he continued as if it were a most casual conversation. “Truly, I would have thought that you would be happy to hear it.”
Margaret didn’t know what to say. Or what she even could say! If the man sitting before her was the Lysander she had grown to love, she might have tried to reason with him, to explain, to force him to admit how he felt. But this was not the same man. He was a shadow of her husband, determined to hide himself behind a wall of emotionless dispassion because she had forced him into this state.
Her brow furrowed as she looked at him. As she tried to see through this vessel and find the man who she had known was going to tell her that he loved her. She searched desperately… but found nothing.
“Is this… is this what ye want? Truly?”
“It is,” he said. “It is how it must be.”
It was stupid, she knew, for the fault was her own, but that did not stop the anger from rising in her. It was like a fire, burning hot and furious, and it took all the strength she had not to turnit on him.I would say that might only make things worse, but how could they possibly be any worse?
“Fine.” She pushed back her chair and rose. “If that is the way it must be…” She stormed across the room, reaching the doorway, where she turned back and fixed Lysander with a fiery glare. “You are right, in some ways better that this happened now, rather than later. This way…” Her chin wobbled, but she kept it straight. “This way, I am able to see truly who ye are. And that ye are nae who I thought ye were. This man…” She sneered. “This man is nae worth fighting for.”
With that, she turned and left the breakfast room, striding across the foyer, up the stairs, down the hallway, and into her room. She slammed the door closed and threw herself on her bed, only then allowing the tears to come.
It was all her fault. So close she had come to having everything. So close she had come to admitting how she felt, and having those feelings returned. So close she had come to happiness… only for it to be snatched away, but not before dangling just out of reach as if to tease her.
Lysander had been right; this was always the plan, one that she had once wanted. Things had changed since then, and try as she might, Margaret could not see a way through this that would lessen the pain she felt in her heart. That was hers forever now, to carry always…and to remind me of the follies of giving my heart to another.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
“Stop dodging me!” Lysander growled as he took a wild swing at Julian. “Stand and fight!”
“And as I told you already, I have no wish to fight you.”
“You’re scared, is why!” Lysander danced forward and swung for his friend’s head. Julian, seeing it coming, leaned back so the punch missed him by several inches. “Coward!”
“Is that what you think?”
“It is what I know!” He charged Julian, this time predicting that Julian would simply try and dodge him. To counter this move, he overextended his reach, getting right into Julian’s large body so his friend would have nowhere to go. As he’d hoped, the move worked a charm, and Lysander’s glove fist found the side of Julian’s face.
“Urgh!” Julian stumbled back. “Where did that come from?”
Lysander didn’t bother himself with a response, taking advantage of his friend’s shock and throwing a second wild swing. This one, too, found its mark, striking Julian square in the side of the head.
Julian cried out and darted back further so he was out of Lysander’s reach. An ex-boxer, and far larger than Lysander in all the ways that mattered when it came to a physical brawl, perhaps angering the man was not a smart idea. But smart ideas were not exactly Lysander’s forte of late.
“Are you going to fight me?” Lysander held his gloved hands up, readying for his friend to accept the reality and to quit playing with him.
Julian’s expression darkened, and he too held up his gloved hands. “Just remember, Lysander, you asked for this.”
Julian came at him with more speed than a man of his size ought to possess. He feigned a jab, which saw Lysander raise his arms to block, only for Julian to redirect and wallop him hard in the right side of his body. Lysander groaned and attempted to swat him away, but Julian countered again, this time striking him on the left side. Pain ripped through his torso, and Lysander buckled, but he did not break.
“Better,” he growled. “But try this on for size!”
