“We gave in to lust.” Sybil fixed her gaze on the storm clouds on the horizon because she could not bear to look at him while she spoke of what happened between them as so much less than it was. “Your clan should not suffer for our weakness.”
“You and I know the truth. We are husband and wife, and I’ll not deny it,” Rory said. “What kind of chieftain will I make if I’m not a man of my word? I’d be no better than Hector.”
Rory meant what he said now, but Sybil knew how these things went. His advisors would pressure him to make a useful alliance, and his ambitions for his clan and for himself would eventually lead him to change his mind. If he did not deny the marriage outright, then he would employ the Highland custom of setting her aside to make a more advantageous match.
This was precisely what he ought to do. And what she wanted him to do. For heaven’s sake, the last thing she wished for herself was to be trapped in marriage and under a man’s thumb forever.
So why did the thought of Rory taking another woman for his wife make her feel miserable and murderous?
***
We gave in to lust.Is that all Sybil thought it was?
Their lovemaking had changed everything. The moment their bodies were joined, they became legally bound as man and wife. But it was more than that. When he was inside her, Rory felt as if their very hearts and souls were bound together.
Each time he thought he understood Sybil, she confused him again.
It pained him that she had not trusted him enough to tell him she was raped. How could she believe he would blame her for that? She was accustomed to men who lied to get what they wanted and then deserted her when it served their interests, but she should know him better by now. Had he not claimed her after she lost everything?
She had been quick to forgive him for his foolish anger after their first time, and then she gave herself to him with such abandon that he believed he had finally gained her trust. Their lovemaking was nothing short of magical, a melding of two into one. Or so it had felt to him. And yet she believed he would deny what they’d done, deny that he’d made her his wife.
She had been raised in the midst of ruthless royal politics, and she was right that a different wife could bring him an alliance he desperately needed. All the same, it troubled him that she had expected him to behave so poorly—and that she had been willing to bed him regardless.
“We’d best be going.” He got up and started pulling on his clothes. “I’ll see to Curan.”
Before he could walk away, she stood, holding the blanket about her shoulders, and brought him to a halt with the touch of her fingertips against his chest. He sucked in his breath. Though her fingers barely grazed him, they burned into his skin like hot irons.
“I didn’t mean to insult you,” she said, looking at him with her fathomless violet eyes, “or to suggest last night did not mean as much to me as it did. I’ll hold the memory of it in my heart until the day I die.”
A moment ago she had dismissed what happened between them as mere lust. Was she now just telling him what she thought he wanted to hear? Ach, he didn’t know what to think.
“If the last weeks and months have taught me anything, it’s that we cannot know our future.” She took his face between her hands. “No matter what happens, I want ye to know, Rory Ian MacKenzie, that I treasure what is between us.”
The blanket slipped off her shoulder, revealing her creamy skin, a compelling reminder that she was naked beneath the blanket, which in turn sparked vivid memories from the night before. If Rory had any resistance left, it went up in smoke when Sybil wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him with a fierceness that sent a fiery burst of need coursing through his veins.
She gave herself to him with such warmth and enthusiasm, both then and in the days that followed, that he was sorely tempted to trust her. He wanted to believe she was as happy as she seemed to be wed to him.
And yet he could not forget her startled denial when he first called her his wife.
CHAPTER 19
Rory studied his wife of three days as she cooked the hare he’d caught for their supper. Though she filled his nights with passion and his days with easy companionship, he kept watch for signs of her earlier reluctance to accept their marriage.
When Sybil looked up and caught his gaze on her, she gave him a bright smile that warmed him from the inside out.
“I had no notion that cooking could be so satisfying,” she said. “Imagining how horrified my brother Archie would be to see me makes it all the more enjoyable.”
The lass seemed determined to be cheerful and adapt to whatever life handed her—even being wedded to him. Despite her efforts, he suspected his clan would not accept his Lowlander wife easily, especially when she could not speak their language.
“’Tis time I began teaching ye Gaelic,” he said.
“I already know it,” she said, with a wicked gleam in her eye. “Tell me, do ye call all the lassesmo rùin?”
“Ye wee devil,” he said. “Why did ye not tell me?”
“Ye never asked,” she said.
This was yet another piece of information she had not trusted him with earlier, but he took it as a good sign that she shared it so readily now.