Page 57 of The Rogue's Bride
A beat of silence followed.
“I love ye, Caitrin … I always have,” he rasped. “I thought I’d mastered it … but the moment I returned to Duntulm and saw ye, I knew I’d been lying to myself.”
Shock rendered Caitrin momentarily speechless. When she finally found her tongue, she realized she was trembling. “Ye truly are a hateful man, Alasdair MacDonald,” she whispered.
He gazed up at her, naked pain upon his face. “I know.”
“Love is an act, not just a word.” Her voice shook as she spoke. “If ye love me, why have ye put me through so much misery?”
“I have no excuse … only cowardice.” A nerve flickered in his cheek. Tears glittered on his long dark eyelashes.
Caitrin swallowed as her own vision misted. “Why didn’t ye say something months ago?”
He drew in a shuddering breath. “I was about to … on the night I kissed ye in my solar.”
“So, this ismydoing?”
He shook his head. “No … it’s entirely mine.” His gaze ensnared hers then. “Do I repulse ye, Caitrin?”
The question caught her off-guard. She stared down at him, her lips parting. When she managed a response, her voice was barely above a whisper. “No. Why would ye think that?”
“Ye shrank from me that night.”
Caitrin swallowed. “I panicked,” she replied huskily. “I was determined never to let another man control me.” She broke off here, brushing away a tear that now trickled down her cheek. With everything that had happened since, her decision seemed pointless now. Soon she’d be a wife again, and her life as chatelaine of Duntulm would be nothing but a memory.
Alasdair’s gaze guttered. “I thought ye couldn’t stand to touch me.”
Caitrin wrapped her arms around her torso, hugging herself tight. It wasn’t cold inside her bower, but suddenly she shivered. “I tried to explain myself the following day,” she said. “But ye never gave me the chance.”
A deathly hush followed her words. Despair welled up within Caitrin. What an awful mess all of this was. “Please get up, Alasdair,” she whispered.
Seeing him on one knee before her reminded Caitrin of that fateful day, nearly three years earlier—and of the proposal that she’d spurned.
He didn’t move. “Will ye wed me, Caitrin?”
Caitrin stopped breathing.
“I’ll love ye and cherish ye … for as long as I have the breath to cool my porridge. And I will never try to separate ye from Eoghan again.”
Silence drew out between them. When Caitrin replied, her voice was brittle, pleading. “Please, Alasdair … get up.”
He complied this time, rising to his feet before her. However, the desolation she now saw in his eyes suddenly made it difficult to breathe. With a jolt she realized that she cared whether Alasdair suffered or not.
Despite everything—she cared.
“Ye will not wed me?” he asked softly.
She met his eye. “If I refuse, will ye still deny me Eoghan?”
They stared at each other for a long moment, before Alasdair answered. “No … as soon as I return to Duntulm, I will send him to ye.” He paused then. “I see it’s too late now … ye hate me.”
Caitrin swallowed. She’d told herself many times over the past days that she detested him. She wanted to rail at him, to tell him that she wished him dead, yet the words wouldn’t come.
“I don’t hate ye,” she whispered brokenly. She squeezed her eyes shut as more tears welled. How she wished she did hate him. “I too have done things I’m sorry for.”
“Ye have nothing to apologize for,” he rasped.
Caitrin opened her eyes, not bothering to wipe away the tears that now trickled down her cheeks. “We were good friends once, but I destroyed our friendship,” she whispered. “I laughed in yer face when ye proposed to me … it was a cruel, thoughtless thing to do. Ye deserved better.”
