Page 143 of The Devil of Clan Sinclair
She glanced away, then back at him. “No,” she said. “I thought about a child in an abstract way. I didn’t think he would be Alistair and I would care more for him than myself. I didn’t know I’d feel guilty from the day he was born.” She hesitated. “How did you know he’d been born?”
“I didn’t come to London for Alistair,” he said. “I didn’t even know about him until I reached your house.”
She bit at her bottom lip. What words did she bite back?
“Why did you come to London, then?”
“That was our destination,” he said.
There, a partially true answer, one sparing him somewhat. He needn’t confess he’d thought of her endlessly. Why tell her he saw her face when he stared at the night stars? That the surface of the ocean seemed to reflect her smile, and the sigh of the winds her gentle whisper?
“So you decided to visit me.”
“I thought of nothing else for the last year,” he said, abruptly deciding to expose himself.
Let there be nothing but the truth between them now, since there had once been an important lie.
“If we’d been destined for somewhere else, I would have come to London for you. I wanted you enough to beg. I wanted you to marry me and come back to Scotland with me.”
She didn’t look at him, concentrating instead on her clasped hands. Her head was bent, and he wanted to place a kiss on the nape of her neck, ease her back against him and hold her. Would he always feel empty without Virginia in his arms?
He had won at everything he’d touched.
He’d never won at her.
Perhaps love wasn’t about winning or losing. Perhaps it wasn’t a game or war at all. If you were lucky, you found someone who made you think and laugh, with whom you wanted to spend your hours. If you were truly fortunate, loving that person changed you, made you better, softened your rough edges and fueled your ambition even further.
Dear God, but he loved her. He loved everything about her, from the way her nose wrinkled when she was reading to her habit of touching him on the arm while speaking.
When he entered a room, she stopped what she was doing, sending him a smile that made his toes curl.
How could he live without her?
“Stay with me,” he said. “Stay at Drumvagen and make it your home. If I need to travel, you can go with me. You and Alistair.”
“They’re depending on me.”
“Your London family?”
She nodded.
“So, you intend to let the lie continue?”
She surprised him by shaking her head. “I can’t. Because you’re my family, too. More than anyone else.”
He hated the worry in her eyes.
“I have a solution,” he said. “Tell them to come to Drumvagen. Tell them all to come. They’ll be part of our clan. Anything they want, they can have.”
“You would do that?” she asked, her eyes widening.
“I would do anything for you, Virginia. Don’t you know?”
“Enid is beyond stubborn, and insists on her own way. She’s used to having her own household and it wouldn’t be an easy transition.”
“I can’t wait for her to butt heads with Brianag.”
A look of amusement lit Virginia’s face, curving her lips and banishing the sadness. “Oh, dear, it will be a war, won’t it?”
