“What are ye doin’ here?” Emilie croaked, her voice breaking.
She coughed to clear her throat, taking a step to bring herself a little bit closer to him.
“What are ye doin’ here?” she asked again, her tone stronger than it had been a moment before.
“I came for ye,” Archer explained, his gruff voice like music to her ears. “I came to bring ye home.”
Emilie crossed her arms, shifting her weight from foot to foot.
“And ye thought, what?” she asked, suddenly combative. “Ye thought that I’d come ridin’ back with ye like nothin’ had happened?”
Emilie’s heart was beating so loudly she thought for sure that everyone around her would be able to hear it. Archer walked forward, bringing himself to within only a few inches of her.
“I shouldnae have ever asked ye to go,” he said, his voice more earnest than Emilie had ever heard it.
She shifted nervously, suddenly all too aware of all the eyes that were on her. Glancing around, Emilie locked eyes with Laura, who gave her a self-satisfied smirk.
“Come with me,” Emilie ordered, turning on her heel and stalking back toward the nunnery.
She didn’t look behind her to see if Archer was actually following, and there was a large part of her that didn’t expect him to. Her husband was not the type of man who took kindly to being ordered around.
But when she made it to the nearest courtyard, a beautiful space filled with flowers and the chirping of birds, she whirled around and found Archer right there with her, having followed her the entire way.
“Emilie,” Archer breathed the moment that she turned to face him. “I told ye already that I never should have asked ye to leave. The bairns miss ye.”
“And ye?” she asked, cocking her eyebrow at him.
Emilie had no idea why she was behaving like this. Why could she not just accept that he had returned for her? Had she not been about to return to the castle and ask him to let her back? Was this not exactly what she wanted?
But now that he was here, now that she realized that all this time Archer had been on her way to her as well, she finally allowed her hurt to rise up.
“What do ye mean?” Archer asked.
“Oh, is it yer turn to play daft now?”
Emilie stared at him hard, her glare pointed as she waited for him to answer. A muscle in Archer’s jaw ticked, and she could tell that she was making him uncomfortable.
In that moment, however, Emilie did not care. There was no one around but them. And she wanted to hear him say it.
She knew without a shadow of a doubt that if Archer didn’t miss her, he would not be here. She knew that he would not come running all this way just to convince her to come back for the twins and the twins alone.
They were six. In a few months, their wounds would heal, and they likely wouldn’t even remember her anymore, as much as that pained her to admit.
“I miss ye, too,” Archer said finally, his gray eyes molten as they stared at her.
“And what else?” Emilie prompted, staring hard at her husband.
Archer threw up his hands, a clear sign of exasperation.
“What do ye mean, what else?” he asked, staring at her.
“I mean, what else?” Emilie said.
She waved her hand, pointing her fingers out toward the front of the abbey where they’d just come from.
“Ye saw what everythin’ was like when ye arrived,” Emilie said. “I was about to leave. I was about to come back to Castle McGregor and ask ye to nae do this. But now, with ye standin’ in front of me, I realize I hadnae been aware of the hurt I was by all of this. So, ye want me to come back? Convince me.”
She crossed her arms, staring daggers at her husband. Her cheeks were flushed with heat, but whether that was from frustration or desire for the man standing right across from her, Emilie did not know. That wasn’t something that she could currently spend her energy thinking about.