If Sileas answered, Ian didn’t hear it over the blood pounding in his ears. Just what was going on between Sileas and Gordan Graumach MacDonald? He was about to help Gordan out the door, when the man showed the good sense to leave.
“Ye won’t have far to look to find a man to replace ye,” Alex said in Ian’s ear. “That is what ye wanted, no?”
“That doesn’t mean I’ll let Gordan make a cuckold of me,” Ian ground out through his teeth.
Ian didn’t know whether to regret drinking so much whiskey—or to wish he had drunk a good deal more. After traveling half the world, he felt disoriented in his own home. Everyone had changed—his brother, his mother. And most of all, Sileas. He still could not quite believe it was her.
“Where’s da?” he asked his mother.
“Come have some supper,” his mother said, and disappeared into the kitchen. She returned a moment later with a steaming bowl. “I’ve got your favorite fish stew.”
Ian’s stomach rumbled as the savory smell reached him. He was near starved.
“Where’s da?” he asked again, as he sat down at the table.
From the corner of his eye, he saw the back of Sileas’s skirt disappearing up the stairs.
He stopped with his spoon halfway to his mouth as it occurred to him he had the right to follow her up and take her to bed. Tonight. Right now. Before supper, if he wanted. And again, after. The part of him between his legs was giving him an emphatic
His reaction startled him. For five long years, he had planned to end the marriage as soon as he returned. He’d harbored not a single doubt. The only question had been how to do it with the least embarrassment to Sileas—and the least difficulty for him.
But he made that plan before she turned into this enchanting lass with a voice that was like velvet sliding over his skin—and curves that would have him dreaming of her naked as soon as he closed his eyes.
Aye, he most definitely wanted to take Sileas to bed. Any man would. The question, however, was whether he wanted her to be the last woman he ever took to his bed. He wasn’t prepared to decide that tonight. Hell, he didn’t even know Sileas anymore. Was the woman anything like the wild-haired bairn who used to follow him about and always need rescuing?
Ian knew he should say something to her. But what? He couldn’t tell her he was ready to be her husband and bind his life to hers forever. Though he had no idea what he would say, he got up from his chair, stomach rumbling, to follow her upstairs.
Before he had taken two steps, he was stopped by a loud crash in the next room. He turned in time to catch his mother and brother exchanging glances.
At the sound of a second crash, Niall jumped to his feet. “I’ll get him.”
Sileas ignored the crash of pottery and the bellowing that followed as she ran up the stairs. This once, they would have to manage without her. She slammed the bedchamber door, leaned against it, and gulped in deep breaths. Damn him! She had wept for Ian MacDonald too many times over the last five years, and she was not going to do it again.
Her head pounded, her chest hurt, and she could not get enough air.
The foolish plans she’d held on to since she was a wee girl were shattering like the crockery Ian’s father was hurling against the wall downstairs. She had lied to herself. Lied, when she told herself she had put her childish dreams away. Lied, when she said she’d ceased expecting Ian to want to share a life with her when he finally returned.
If she had given up her dreams, her heart would not be breaking from the loss of them now.
When Ian embraced his mother first, she understood. That was only right. And she hardly resented it at all when he greeted Niall next, for Niall had missed Ian almost as much as she had. But then, it was her turn. She fixed her gaze on the floor and held her breath, waiting. He was the one who left; he should come to her. In any case, her feet would not move.
Then the room went silent, and she felt his gaze on her. Slowly, she lifted her head and looked into the bluest eyes in the Highlands. Her fingers were ice, her palms sweaty, and her bodice felt too tight. For five years, she had waited for this moment.
She had imagined it a thousand times. Ian would give her a wide smile that warmed his eyes and pull her into his arms. He would tell her how much he missed her and how glad he was to be home. Then, in front of God and his family, he would call her wife and give her a kiss—her first real kiss.
In her more realistic moments, she thought it might be awkward between them at first, but that Ian would attempt to make it right and seek her forgiveness. Never did she imagine he would not speak to her.
Not a single word.
With her heart in her throat, she implored him with her eyes to do as he ought. Instead, he stared at her as if she had grown a tail and fins. If he didn’t want to claim her, he could have had the courtesy to greet her as the old friend she was, then told her in private he did not wish to be her husband. His public dismissal was both insulting and heartless.
Sileas paced up and down her bedchamber, clenching her hands until her nails pierced the skin. The boy she had known would never have been so unkind. The angry young man who had called her repulsive, however, was capable of such cruelty. All this time, she had made excuses for him. Even now, she was tempted—but failing to acknowledge her in some small way was simply unforgiveable.
Ian’s words from their wedding day rang in her ears.
She tilted her head back. “Dear God, did ye have to make him more handsome than ever? Was that truly necessary?”
Ian had been a lovely boy, with kind, sky-blue eyes framed by thick, dark lashes—the sort all the mothers cooed over. But there was nothing left of the sweet lad in the man who strode into the house tonight. True enough, his eyes were as blue as ever and his hair the same shiny black of a selkie. But the man had a rough, dangerous air
