“I told ye, he wanted an annulment.”
Laura raised a brow. “I ken that much, ye told me already. What I mean is, why are ye nae back at the castle, tryin’ to convince him to take it all back?”
Emilie stood a little straighter, staring at Laura as she finished bandaging her finger.
The thought had not occurred to her. When Archer had told her to begin packing, he had seemed so firm and so resolute that Emilie had seen no way out of it.
But would a few days have softened that? Would a few days be enough for him to see the error of his ways? Could she potentially convince him to allow her to move back in, to give their marriage a try?
“Ye ken, Laura,” Emilie said, a smile pulling up her lips. “I think ye just might have a point.”
The two grinned at each other while they stowed away the healing materials all over again. When they were finished, Laura turned her attention back to Emilie.
“When will ye go?” she asked conspiratorially.
“Tomorrow,” Emilie said immediately.
And that one word had a profound effect on her mood. For the first time in days, the smile that pulled up Emilie’s lips was genuine.
Tomorrow, Emilie would head back to McGregor. Tomorrow, everything was going to change.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
“Ye two are quiet tonight,” Archer said, gaze bouncing back and forth between the twins.
It was the day after they fell asleep in his lap in the library. He had hoped the night before that things were about to change for them, that the hostility and the distance between him and the twins could stop.
He would still have to be careful; his father’s blood did still run in his veins, after all. But that did not mean that it had to go back to the way it was, did it?
The twins stared at their plates, each one of them using a fork to push their food back and forth. They did not look up at him.
Archer sighed, placing his utensils back on the table.
“Ye can talk to me, ye ken,” he said gruffly. “Like ye did last night.”
It was Aurora who looked up first, her gray eyes flashing as they landed on him.
“Ye said that it wasnae anyone’s fault that Emilie left,” she said matter-of-factly, holding his gaze the entire time that she spoke. “But I daenae think that’s true.”
Archer cocked his head at her. “And what do ye think happened?”
For what it was worth, Aurora did not shy away from him.
“I think ye asked her to leave,” Aurora said. “And I think that ye did that because ye dinnae want her to be our maither, because ye ken that we liked her more.”
It took everything in Archer not to chuckle at his daughter’s words. He could tell by the look on her face that she was serious.
What would Emilie do if she could hear them now?
The thought brought him up short, bringing to mind images of what Emilie would look like sitting at the table with them now. He knew exactly what she would do, dipping her head and hiding her mouth behind her hand so that the children wouldn’t see her laughing at them.
She would be amused by this. He knew that she would be.
And just like that, a pang rang out in his chest.
Archer missed his wife. It wasn’t the first time in the last few days that he’d thought it, but now he felt it more than ever.
He wanted her here. He wanted her to experience the children as they were now.