“All right, I’ll tell ye.” It was time to get it all out on the table and see where the pieces fell. “Ye didn’t deserve to know the truth.”
Moira was furious that tears were stinging the back of her eyes.
“Ye took your clothes off for me, but ye couldn’t tell me the truth about Ragnall?” Duncan said, his voice growing louder.
“Going to bed with ye has nothing to do with it,” she said.
“Nothing to do with it?” he shouted.
“Why should I trust ye with my son, who is more precious to me than anything in this life, after ye left me alone and pregnant?”
“I asked ye that last night before your father sent me away,” Duncan said, “and ye told me ye weren’t with child.”
“I didn’t know until after you’d gone,” Moira bit out.
Duncan raked his hands through his hair as he started pacing the tiny room, making it seem even smaller than it was. “Then how can ye blame me for not knowing?”
“Did it never occur to ye that I might discover I was with child after ye left?” Moira asked, her voice strained. “Could ye be that ignorant?”
Duncan stopped his pacing. He did not answer her for a long while, and when he did, it sounded as though the words were torn from his chest. “I did not think you were. But aye, I did know it was possible.”
She’d known it all along. “But ye didn’t care enough for me or our child to stay,” she said, choking on the words. “Ye left me to face all that alone.”
Duncan looked away from her, but she could see his raw emotion in the tension in his jaw and the wildly beating pulse at his throat.
“Why did ye leave me?” Moira stepped close to him and clenched her fists in his shirt. “Why, Duncan,why?”
The silence stretched out between them like a fraying rope while she waited for him to finally tell her.
“I told ye before. Your father found out about us,” Duncan said in a quiet voice. “He was my chieftain, and he commanded me to go with the others to France. It was obey or die.”
Moira stared into his eyes searching for the truth. Duncan was holding something back.
“You’re the most stubborn and determined man I know,” she said. “If ye truly wanted me, ye would have found a way.”
Duncan pressed his lips together in a tight line.
“Ye owe me the truth, Duncan.”
“I cared enough to leave,” he said between his teeth.
“No,” she said. “Ye didn’t care enough.”
“Do ye think leaving ye was easy for me?” he shouted, his control snapping. He took hold of her arms and backed her against the door. “Do ye think I wanted to let some other man have ye?”
“You are the one who left me,” she said, her voice thick in her throat.
“I wanted to die rather than leave ye,” he said, his eyes wild.
“Then why did ye do it?” she shouted back.
“Because we would have had to leave the clan,” he said, “and I couldn’t do that to you.”
“I don’t believe ye,” she said. “Even if my father did threaten to banish us, that would not be reason enough.”
His eyes burned into her and the pulse at his temple throbbed, but he said nothing.
“I’ve waited seven years for the truth,” Moira said. “You tell me all of it, Duncan MacDonald.”