Page 107 of Captured by a Laird
“He did?” Alison asked, sitting up straight.
“As for not trusting ye, well, running off certainly didn’t help, dear,” Isabella said and patted her arm. “But I suspect that the true reason David mistrusts your loyalty is because, in his heart, he doesn’t believe he’s worthy of love.”
Alison’s hand went to her heart. What Isabella said struck a chord of truth. Despite David’s devotion to his family and clan, he stood apart. There was a core of loneliness deep inside him. She felt sure that she had breached the walls around his heart to reach it before she had gone to the abbey.
Surely she could do it again. She had to.
“I’ll ask Brian to arrange an escort for me and leave at once.” Alison stood and leaned over to Isabella to kiss her cheek. “Thank you.”
Isabella gave her a knowing smile.
Before Alison had taken two steps, Flora entered the hall, waving her hands in the air.
“I can’t find them! They’re gone! They’re gone!”
***
David refilled his cup with whisky, tossed it back, and wiped his mouth on his sleeve.
He did not miss her. And he most definitely did not need her.
But when he closed his eyes at night, all he saw was Alison. He had to drink himself into a stupor to sleep at all. Even blind drunk, he heard her voice, her laugh, her sighs. He remembered exactly how her fingertips felt on his cheek.
The woman’s hand on his shoulder was familiar, but it was not Alison’s. Her scent was not Alison’s either.
He felt warm breath in his ear.
“Come to bed,” the woman said. “I’ll make ye forget her.”
“’Tis not possible.” Even if it were, he did not want to forget Alison. Memories were all he had, and he clung to them like a man lost at sea grasping a broken plank from his sunken ship.
“I’m willing to try,” the woman said in a throaty voice.
David shook his head, which made the room spin and blur. “Just pour me another.”
Soon after, his forehead hit the table and his vision went blissfully black. He had no idea if hours or days had passed when next he woke, but his neck was stiff from the awkward angle his head lay on the table.
“How long has he been like this?”
David heard Alison’s voice as though through a thick fog. But he’d heard her voice in his head so often that he knew better than to believe it was truly her. She was miles away in Blackadder Castle, out of his reach, enjoying her freedom and hating him. Which was what he deserved.
“Someone should have sent for me.”
He smiled at the irritation in Alison’s tone. Usually he thought of her in her softer moments, but he liked to see her riled, too, with her violet eyes flashing.
“David!”
Her voice in his ear and the touch of her hand on his shoulder were so real this time he wanted to weep. Ach, what a ruin of a man he was.
“Get up,” she said, and shook his shoulder hard. “I need ye, David Hume.”
She needed him? Not likely.
All the same, he risked spoiling the illusion by cracking one eye open. Her lovely face was just inches in front of his. Her violet eyes were startlingly beautiful this close.
“Is it really you?” he asked, his tongue thick in his mouth.
“Aye,” she said, and brushed his hair back from his face with her fingers in a soothing gesture he never thought he’d feel again.
