Leaning toward Connor so her words wouldn’t carry down the table, she suggested, “How about we talk about why you are having this big formal dinner when it is crystal clear that you hate every moment of it?”
Connor started at the question. He turned to her to find her gorgeous face just inches away. The strong beauty of her features nearly took his breath away. Strangely again he didn’t remember her being so lovely although Dorcas was there each day as a reminder. She was waiting expectantly for a response to her question, which in the face of her splendor he could not remember. “My apologies, what did ye say?”
Emmy forked up a large piece of her first course and savored the buttery flavor of the fish. “You don’t like the clothes and fancy dinner,” she said around the mouthful. “It’s painfully obvious. So why do you do it?”
Connor’s face hardened. The warm look that had darkened his eyes only moments before vanished to a hard glint. “My dear wife, ye more than anyone should know why I do all this.”
Emmy temper spiked and her eyes flashed. “Pretending once again, that I am not your Heather, why don’t you humor me?” Her voice was hard and uncompromising.
The temper flaring in her eyes was arousing beyond belief, but Connor was determined to crush any attraction he felt for this woman who had betrayed him so long ago. “I believe one of yer greatest complaints about Duart was that we were a hoard of uncultured heathens who couldn’t even dine properly. Seemingly we weren’t refined enough for ye.”
Pity stabbed through her chest. “You suffer through all of this...every night? Just to prove that you’re not a heathen to someone who hasn’t even been around to notice?” Emmy stabbed her fork into her food and lifted it waving it at him as a governess waved her finger. “Connor MacLean you have baggage, my friend. Serious baggage.”
“Baggage?” he echoed. His flash of anger faded at her curious statement.
“Deep, dark, serious, emotional baggage.”
“Enlighten me. What is baggage?”
“You know, all those scarred, debilitating moments that you are carrying around you and allowing rule of your life.” She waved the fork again. “Baggage.” Emmy took a sip of wine. “You need to let it go, honey.”
“Let it go?” Let it go? The words echoed in Connor’s mind. She wanted him, if he understood her implication well enough, to just forget what had happened between them? That day had been a defining moment in his life. The moment when he had gone from being a happy-go-lucky youth to the man he was today. How was one to simply ‘let it go’?
Instead of allowing himself to slide easily into the anger that such a blasé approach to his degradation would normally have caused, Connor reined himself in. He spent the next four courses silently pondering her statement and her person as well. Heather had changed these past ten years. She had gone from a haughty girl to an introspective, if somewhat pedestrian, woman. The lass didn’t even use the correct forks or eat like most women he knew. Meaning she actually ate and with gusto. Occasionally she made comments with a full mouth. She was common and familiar in her speech and had lost all refinement in her accent adopting that flat American intonation though there was a trace of what he knew was the accent of their southern states as well.
And she pried into his private matters as if it was a normal event to speak of them.
And he found it all…charming, he thought with surprise.
From the expectant glances she occasionally sent him, she expected some sort of response to her advice, if it could be called that. In spite of her casual attitude to their shared past, she did not seem interested in raising his ire. Rather she was merely curious about why he still ‘carried’ it with him. Like baggage. Hmm, he thought. It was an interesting analogy.
“Heather?” he asked in a low voice that carried no further than to her. “How does one ‘let it go’, as you so charmingly put it?”
She did not answer immediately or flippantly as he would have expected, but instead responded an almost scholarly way, “There are many schools of thought on this subject, Connor. Unfortunately, I am not a psychologist or psychiatrist…I did not enjoy that aspect of medicine a great deal, but I would have to say in most cases it all boils down to one simple truth. A key.”
Dorcas motioned for the ladies to retire and Emmy was forced to stand as the footman pulled back her chair. Connor rose and caught her arm before she could turn away. “And what is the key?”
“Forgiveness, Connor,” she answered softly and left the room holding her skirts up a bit too far in front of her so she wouldn’t trip on them.
Connor sat down hard in his chair and leaned back, stunned. Taking a long pull on the whiskey that had been poured for him – he had never liked port despite Dorcas’s insistence that it be served to the gentlemen following dinner – Connor tried to ponder the idea. Forgiveness. Could it truly be so simple?
Surely not!
Chapter 9
Emmy wandered around the smaller family parlor as the ladies chatted with one another. The men had not yet returned to the parlor but were instead enjoying port and cigars after dinner, Dorcas had explained when asked. Emmy did not know Connor too well, but hoped he was not in there smoking. Just the thought almost made her nauseous. She shuddered. Lord, she hoped not!
Surveying the parlor, Emmy noted the ladies had broken apart and were seated
