Page 110 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
She didn’t turn to meet his eyes.
She could feel his gaze on her, felt the intensity increase as he tipped his head and studied her face.
“Lucilla.”
One word, but it was greeting, question, supplication, and much more.
She forced air into her suddenly tight lungs, then glanced briefly at him—too briefly to get caught in his amber gaze. “Why are you here?”
Refixing her gaze on the verbena and carefully clipping another long shoot, she waited—for the answer to the only question that mattered.
He sighed softly, so softly she wasn’t sure she was supposed to hear. Then he shifted to face the burn; after a moment, he sat on the stone wall alongside her, his hands gripping the coping on either side of him.
Not so close that he was in her way, but within easy arm’s reach.
She glanced at the leg closest to her. “How’s your wound?”
That was the healer in her speaking; she hadn’t meant to show any interest, at least not yet, but that other part of her had raised her head and claimed her tongue.
“A lot better. I had a doctor in Glasgow take out the stitches.” He paused, then added, “He was amazed by your work—both the stitches and the effect of your salve.”
She humphed.
And waited.
More than a minute ticked by before he said, his voice low, but without any real inflection, “You asked why I’m here—why I’ve come back. The answer is because…I was a coward.”
That hadn’t been any part of Thomas’s rehearsed speech, but sitting there in the quiet of the garden, with the one woman who meant so much to him, he’d finally understood what Richard had meant when he’d said:What’s the one thing you have that you haven’t yet laid at her feet?
He hadn’t given her the truth—the simple unadorned truth—because he hadn’t wanted to lay aside his pride.
He looked down at the toes of his boots. From the corner of his eye, he could see her face—see her arrested expression, see her hands paused, hovering, no longer smoothly working.
She was as surprised by that confession as he.
So he had an opening—a moment when her guard was down.
Drawing breath, he seized the chance and plowed on, “You asked, and I explained why I resisted the attraction between us—because it wasn’t a part of my plan, the definite plan I had for my life.” He fixed his gaze on the tumbling waters of the burn. “I told you of my plan—but I didn’t tell youwhyI had a plan. Why adhering to that plan was so important to me.”
At the edge of his vision, he saw her blink, saw her expression grow distant as she remembered that night and what he’d told her in the corridor—before some blackguard had invaded her room and made it all irrelevant.
Head tilting slightly, she murmured, “I didn’t think to ask, either.”
“You were caught up in absorbing what I said.” He remembered her concentration, her focus; even then, before they’d been intimate, the connection between them had run deep.
After a moment, she flicked him a glance, this time allowing their eyes to meet. “So,” she said, “why did you have a plan—one that you’ve clung to for so long, and so doggedly?” She looked back at the straggly bush and rather viciously snipped another long shoot. “That same plan was behind you returning to Glasgow, wasn’t it?”
He nodded, then realized she couldn’t see and said, “Yes.” Shifting his gaze back to the burn, he drew in a breath. Held it for a moment as he ordered his thoughts. “I can remember when I first started working on my plan. I was ten years old. It was a month or so after my parents died.” He nodded beyond the burn, to the north, toward the Carrick estate. “I was at Carrick Manor at the time—after my parents died, Manachan brought me back to the clan, and I spent that next year there.”
He fell silent.
Lucilla glanced at him but didn’t prompt. She wanted, so much, to understand, and she only would if he told her in his own words, in his own time.
After a moment, he went on, his voice deeper, his normally smooth tones rough, “I was an only child—my parents and I were close. Very close. We were holidaying in the Highlands, but I had a tutor and still had lessons. My parents left me with my books and went out for an afternoon drive in my father’s curricle.” He looked down. “Only their broken, lifeless bodies came back.”
She resisted the urge to reach out and touch his arm. It was an old wound, one that needed no more healing.
After a moment, he raised his head and drew in a breath. “When I finally…woke up again—that’s what it felt like when I came fully back to myself and re-engaged with normal life—I was at Carrick Manor with the clan. And I decided that what had happened…that I was never going to let that happen to me again. So I started to plan exactly how my life would be—I thought that if I controlled all the important aspects, if I determined my own life and always kept control, then I could make sure that whatever happened, I would never be hurt like that again. But even as a ten-year-old, I knew that the most important aspect of avoiding being hurt like that again was ensuring that I nevercaredfor anyone like that again—not in the way I had cared for my parents.”
