Page 142 of The Devil of Clan Sinclair
“But Alistair wouldn’t be, or hadn’t you considered that?”
She shook her head. “No, I hadn’t.”
“I don’t want to build our happiness on top of someone else’s misery. Or death. So don’t claim responsibility for something you didn’t do, Virginia. Henderson decided on his own to kill Lawrence. He decided, on his own, to come after you. None of those actions were your doing.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Now, let’s address you calling our son Alistair,” he said.
“It’s all your fault. He’s begun to look like an Alistair, don’t you think? All prideful and Scottish.”
“It could be his American half,” he said.
He pressed his lips against the worst of the scars on her upper cheek, near her eye. They were tangible reminders of how close he had come to losing her forever. He would never have known if he hadn’t gone to London, if he hadn’t pushed his pride down, out of the way.
Moments such as these were rare, when the world stilled around him, when it felt like he commanded time. He wanted this moment to last, to pull on each second until it stretched. Could he freeze the minutes? Could he hold them, frozen, in his hands and offer them to her?
She pulled away, staring out to sea again.
Was she thinking about what Henderson had done to Lawrence? Or what he’d done to her?
She’d been at the mercy of the man.
She’d been at his mercy, too.
“I’ve handled this all wrong,” he said, stepping back. “You should remain at Drumvagen because you want to, not because I’ve forced or charmed you into it.”
She spoke without glancing at him. “So now you’ll let me return to London, but without my son.”
“You can take Alistair with you.”
She gripped the railing tight enough he could see her knuckles whiten.
“You would let us go?”
“Yes.”
Did she realize it would nearly kill him to lose either of them?
“I want you to stay, but I can’t compel you to do so. I could tell you that you’ll learn to become a Scot. Or that Drumvagen isn’t nearly as isolated as you think. Or I’m wealthier than you realize.”
“It was never about money, Macrath. Don’t you know that?”
“Then what was it? A title?”
“A family,” she said, surprising him.
Turning, she faced him. “I didn’t have a choice about coming to England. What my father decreed was law. I was to simply acquiesce without a word spoken. I found myself married to a stranger, a man I grew to dislike intensely.”
She clasped her hands together.
“Yet he had a family. Two sisters who embraced me warmly. I grew to love Eudora and Ellice as dearly as the sisters I never had.” Her smile was barely a curve of her lips. “I feel the same about my mother-in-law, even though Enid occasionally makes me want to scream. She and my father negotiated my marriage settlement. Lawrence retaliated by beggaring us all. He spent my father’s money, all my inheritance, on properties that would go to his cousin.”
He’d learned that from Hannah, but hadn’t realized that Virginia had felt responsible for saving all of them.
“So coming to Scotland and getting yourself with child was the plan.”
She nodded. “At the time, it seemed like the only thing to do.”
“Did you never think of the consequences of your actions?” he asked. “That you brought a child into the world who would never know his father?”
