Page 64 of Love with a Scottish Outlaw
She winced, but let out her breath. “At least they’re not suffering—yet.”
“Aye, and I know they don’t deserve to suffer. I knew my vengeance didn’t matter anymore. But now ye know where my clan lives, where my faithful men hide; I let ye find out too much.”
“So what now—you’ll kill me for what I know?” She stiffened her shoulders, lifted her chin. “Do you want to throw me off this cliff right here?”
She gestured wildly toward the glen below, and his stomach twisted as if with vertigo.
“Kill ye? Have ye seen any evidence that I’m a murderer?”
“Fine, you’re not a murderer. But you’ve told me lie upon lie, most especially about myself. You let me think—”
Her voice broke then, and her pain shamed and hurt him.
She steadied herself. “You let me think I might have a husband somewhere, while you . . . made my body feel—” She couldn’t go on for a moment, her expression full of grief and disdain. “I agonized over the fear that I was betraying a man I loved with what I felt for you. I lay awake at night in desperation, giving myself headaches trying to remember my life, when all along, the man who’d saved my life, who claimed to be protecting me, could have spared me the pain.”
“I regretted keeping the truth from ye, but there was nothing I could—” He stopped.
“Nothing you could do?” she finished for him with an ugly laugh.
“Not and protect my clan, which already suffers from stolen children, and a rash chief who got himself outlawed instead of solving their problems.”
There was a long silence, during which she turned back to the view of the glen, arms folded over her chest.
Stiffly, she said, “My father is dead, and my brother knows nothing about any of his crimes.”
“And ye’re sure about your brother?” When she whirled on him, he said, “I had to ask. Although I could see for myself that your clan is at peace under your brother’s rule, and that he and his wife seem happy.”
“My brother is a good man. He would never condone children being—” She pressed her lips together as if to master herself. “As for the whisky smuggling, I don’t know. He only just inherited the earldom a few months ago. That didn’t give you justification to steal it.”
He leaned closer and spoke coldly. “Nay, your father’s crimes made me justified in supporting my clan any way I could.”
They glared at each other before Duncan realized what he was doing.
“Arguing about this makes no sense,” he said stiffly. “Ye know everything now. What do ye want to do?”
“I want to leave!” she cried. “I want to get as far away from you and your twisted sense of honor as I can. I want to go back to my life.” Her voice wobbled, and she gave him a mutinous glare.
“Are ye going to tell my clan everything?”
“Of course not. They worship you,” she said sarcastically. “They wouldn’t believe you could do something like this to me deliberately. I’m a Duff—I know how they’ll look at me when they find that out. I’m the enemy.”
“They won’t hate ye.”
“No? You did. You had to hate me to do what you’ve done to me.”
“I hated your father.”
“Believe whatever lets you sleep at night.”
“Ye cannot leave alone. Ye’re a vulnerable woman.”
“As if I don’t have ample proof of that after how you betrayed me.”
He took a deep breath. “I’ve regretted keeping ye here from the moment I realized ye weren’t a spy, but I couldn’t stop.”
“A spy? What are you talking about?”
“I’d never heard of such memory loss. Ye could have been sent here to find out everything about us, to lead your father’s men here—anything.”
