Page 77 of Here in Your Arms
She recoiled. “Don’t,” she snapped. “Just—don’t.” She let out a brittle, mirthless laugh, still fumbling to right her shift, which she’d put on backwards. “Jeez,” she muttered under her breath, shaking her head as the shift finally fell into place. “Maybe it’s a good thing I came to this stupid century after all.” Her lips twisted, bitter and angry as she faced him, holding his gaze, refusing to let her gaze stray lower over his magnificent body.
His eyes flashed with confusion and anger. “Why does it matter what I believe about where ye came from? I wanted ye in my bed. I make nae apology for that.”
“Of course you don’t. You just needed a ghost to cling to, didn’t you? You know, I actually thought—” She stopped herself, jaw locking tight. No. She wouldn’t say it. Wouldn’t give him that power. Wouldn’t tell him that she had actually, foolishly let herself believe that what had happened between themhadmeant something, had in the aftermath hoped that it had anyway.
She’d wanted him. Not because he reminded her of someone else, not because she was afraid and he had made her feel safe, but simply because she had wanted him.
He hadn’t wanted her. He had wanted a ghost.
She clenched her teeth so hard it hurt. “You’re just like them,” she whispered, her voice trembling with rage. “Like Leana and every other ignorant person at Druimlach—you don’t see me. You see her.”
Tiernan’s throat bobbed, and fury narrowed his eyes. “What the bluidy hell are ye—”
“Oh, stop!” She cried, spinning, snatching the MacIntyre plaid from the floor. “You got what you wanted—a naïve, trusting fool. A perfect stand-in!”
Tiernan stepped forward, confusion now etched severely on his face.
“Don’t you touch me,” she growled at him, only made angrier by his sudden pretense of oblivion. He didn’t get to feel bad, not when she was the one standing there, shaking, furious, humiliated.
To her relief—and her broken heart—he didn’t move as she stormed toward the door, and then through it.
Chapter Eighteen
He exhaled slowly, dragging a hand through his hair, staring ferociously at the closed door.
What in God’s name had just happened?
His shoulder throbbed, but the pain was a trivial thing, overshadowed by his confusion. Funny though, how the nagging, persistent pain in his shoulder hadn’t deterred him at all, had given him even less grief over the last hour or so.
A lesser man might have reeled presently, might have crumbled beneath the weight of her fury and obvious pain, scrambling to piece together what had just happened. Tiernan’s mind didn’t spin; rather it locked into place, clear and exacting, just as it did in battle. He scoured through every word they’d exchanged, every glance, every breath between them. Her questions. His answers. Where he’d paused, where her expression had shifted. What he’d said and she’d said—and what she hadn’t. He examined it all with the same unflinching scrutiny he brought to strategy and defense. Her anger had been real. Her pain, sharp.
And yet, it didn’t make sense to him.
She’d asked why he slept with her if he didn’t believe her—if he thought she was mad.
Had her extreme reaction truly been about his inability to express himself fully? Christ, had his answers not come swiftly enough to suit her?
This only caused Tiernan more confusion.
He hadn’t taken Rose for one of those overly dramatic sorts, the kind who combed through a man’s every word in search of insult or slight. She hadn’t struck him as the type to pick fights for the sake of it, to look for reasons to be wounded. She wassharp-tongued, aye. Independent to a fault. But not petty. Not hysterical.
That had always been Margaret’s strength, her stillness, her quiet. The way she met the world with such sweet serenity. There had never been dramatics with her, no raised voices, no tearful outbursts.
Just thinking her name made something shift uneasily in his gut. He replayed the moments again—Rose’s expression just before she pulled away from him, the anger and heartbreak bleeding into something else. Something more raw. More personal.
You don’t see me. You see her.
But, damn it, he hadn’t even mentioned Margaret’s name.
Or...had he? He exhaled sharply through his nose, dragging a hand down his face.
But I looked at ye and....
It should have been...
God’s bluid.
It took no great leap to imagine what she might have supposed he’d meant to say.
