right, if I can,” Ian said. “I want to be your husband—not just to have ye in my bed, though I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t part of it. But I promise I’ll try to be the kind of husband ye deserve.”
Sileas felt herself weakening, but one pretty speech should not be enough to make her forgive the years of neglect nor the hurt he’d caused her since coming home.
“What about what I want?” she asked with a quaver in her voice.
“I thought this was what ye wanted. You’ve been happy living here with my family.” He leaned forward and gave her a soft smile. “And ye used to like me quite a lot.”
What he didn’t say, but they both knew, was that Ian had been the person she loved best in the world. And damn it, judging by how much her heart hurt, it was still true.
“I don’t want ye to be my husband because ye were forced to do it.” She swallowed and fixed her gaze on her hands in her lap. “Or because the clan needs my lands. Or because your mother is verra fond of me.”
“I’m fond of ye as well.” He reached out to tuck a loose strand of her hair behind her ear, but she pulled away.
“I don’t want ye to be my husband because ye think I need protecting or because ye feel sorry for me,” she continued. “Or because ye don’t like to do figures yourself.”
“I can promise ye, I’d want ye even if ye couldn’t do figures,” he said, brushing his knuckles against her cheek. When she looked up, he gave her a sizzling look that made her stomach tighten. “I do want ye, Sil.”
She took her hand from his and got to her feet.
All the reasons he wanted her might be enough if he were any other man. But they were not enough from Ian. She would not spend her life with a man, pining for her love to be returned.
She made herself walk out the door and close it behind her.
CHAPTER 12
Ian heard his father’s raised voice as he opened the front door to the house.
“Look at what ye done to me!” Payton was shouting at Niall, who was trying to help him across the room. “Ye should have let me die like a man.”
Sileas stood on his father’s other side, coaxing him forward. “It will be lovely to have ye take your meals with the family again.”
“Will ye no come sit at the table, da?” Niall said.
The instant his father began to raise his cane to strike Niall, Ian started across the room, but Sileas was closer. His heart stopped when she stepped between the two men.
“Don’t ye dare touch him!” Sileas shouted.
When his father checked the blow in time, Ian breathed again. His father still had the arms and shoulders of a powerful man. God in Heaven, he could have killed her.
Niall walked past Ian and out the front door without even seeing him. Sileas locked gazes with his father, going nose to nose with him—or she would have, if she were taller. Neither appeared to take any notice of Ian’s presence or the slamming door.
“If ye speak that way to Niall again, I swear I’ll not forgive ye,” Sileas said. Her chest rose and fell in deep breaths as she and his father glared at each other.
“He should have let me die on the battlefield,” his father said. “He took away my manhood, bringing me home like this.”
She spoke in a slow, deliberate voice, and there was steel in her eyes. “Ye ought to be grateful to have such a son, after what he did for ye.”
“Grateful? Look at me!” his father shouted, pointing at his missing leg.
“Shame on ye, Payton MacDonald, for wishing you could desert your family,” she said. “ ’Tis long past time ye stopped feeling sorry for yourself.”
She turned on her heel, her hair swinging out like a shooting flame, and stormed out of the house.
His father hobbled to the nearest chair, dropped onto it with a thump, and rubbed his hands over his face. Ian got the whiskey down from the cupboard and filled a cup.
“Here ye go, da,” he said, as he set the cup on the table next to his father. He started to put the bottle back, then set it on the table as well.
His father clenched the cup as if holding a lifeline and stared at the wall.
“I’d best see to Niall,” Ian said.
His father nodded without turning to look at him. “Do that, son.”
It was raining buckets, so Ian hoped Niall hadn’t gone far. He tried the old cottage first—and found Alex and Dina in the midst of enjoying the ways of the flesh. They didn’t notice him. From there, he splashed through puddles to the byre.
The smell of cows and damp straw filled his nostrils as he peered into the dim, musty interior. He paused and listened. Behind the sound of the pounding rain, he heard the murmur of voices and followed it to the back of the byre, where he found Niall and Sileas sitting side by side on a pile of straw between two cows. They didn’t hear him approach.
“It’s your father’s pain speaking,” Sileas said. “He doesn’t mean it like it sounds.”
“He means precisely what he says.” Niall slammed the side of his fist against the byre wall beside him. “He couldn’t be plainer.”
“Well, I am proud of ye, if that matters at all to ye.” Sileas put her hand to Niall’s cheek. “I am so proud of what ye did that my chest fairly bursts with it every time I think of it.”
