Page 99 of In Search of a Husband
When he didn’t greet her, Kate softly shut the door behind her. She remained with her back against the wall for a moment, studying him. It was worse than the few punches that landed last evening. Those gray eyes of hers filled with contempt and desperation, and his chest ached far too much to make this conversation last any longer than it must.
“Did you win?”
“Naught to win.” He grabbed his unlit cigar and toyed with the end, contemplating whether he should light it or pace the room. Or better yet, cradle her face in his hands and kiss her until she remembered what they had discovered together.
“There is plenty.” She swallowed, then pointed toward the cut on his brow. “That likely needs stitches.”
“I’m fine.”
“You are a beast,” she snapped back. “You could have hurt yourself last evening. You went up against the Campbell brothers alone?”
His mouth soured, that familiar panic returning. He could have been hurt, and he had been in a state where he could have done something dangerous. Everything suddenly was slipping out of his control, and he didn’t want to lose her.
But that would be for the best.
“I’m a lot of things, Kate, but primarily yer employer. Yer parents have asked for ye to return with them to London, and the carriage is leaving in an hour.”
She stormed up to his desk and nearly growled.
Something in his chest ripped apart at the sound. At her hurt.
“I have done nothing wrong.”
“Ye shouldna stay here. Yer family wishes ye to be back with them.”
“What if I don’t wish to return with them?”
“Then where will ye go?”
“Go?” Her voice trailed off before she rested her palms against his desk. “I didn’t realize I needed to go anywhere.”
“If ye return to London,” he said clearing his throat, “and marry him, ye’ll have what ye wanted. He’s a good match.”
Kate drew back and scoffed. “You think I should marry him?”
Gabriel didn’t budge. He didn’t reach for her, didn’t try to erase the space between them. He barely blinked even as he saw the tears well in her hurt-filled eyes.
“That’s what you wish, Gabe? For me to leave?”
Not for all the world, but it would be easier if she left. Not at first. At first, he bet he could barely breathe, like now, staring her down coolly on the opposite side of his desk.
But in time, if she remained, Kate would only grow to resent him.
And then he would leave her far too early, and she would sure as hell curse the day he was born for leaving her all alone in the Highlands, hundred of miles away from her friends and family in a drafty old castle.
“If ye dinna ken by now what ye want, I canna stop ye. Go ahead to London, marry the marquess, and be a coward.”
“A coward?”
“A coward because ye refuse to stand up and do as ye wish.”
She crossed her arms. Tears sat on her cheeks even as her temper won out. “How do you know what I wish? How do you know I have not left behind what I didn’t wish for?”
“It isna here, and it isna with me. I canna give ye fine London Seasons or…”
“You gave me a new cooking range!” She pinched her brow, exasperated. “And so much more. Do you not know…” Kate paused, drawing back a step. “I arrived alone here. I have made this castle a home, and I have filled it with love. For you. Because of you, Gabe. That took far more courage than you could ever imagine.”
He had been fooling himself all along to believe he could marry her—because she was right—she had given herself over to the MacInnes and the Dunsmuir estate without ever asking anything in return.
