Page 16 of Highland Seduction

It was not Tor’s imagination that something passed between them. And then her eyes flew to his bruise. “Does it hurt?”

“Nay,” he said. “I’ve been injured much, much worse than this.”

“Ye didnae hesitate,” she said. “Ye were the first to jump into the fray.”

Tor handed her another piece of meat. “How do ye know such a thing?”

She looked away. Against his better judgment, Tor reached out a finger and turned her chin toward him. “I dinnae bite,” he assured her, dropping his hand. “Nor judge.”

“Because I watched ye. But then, ye knew as much already, yet still, ye asked. Ye like to have control.”

“I will no’ deny it,” he said.

“One of the many reasons we could no’ work. I do as well.”

She turned her attention back to the rabbit.

“So many reasons,” he agreed. “To start, we hate each other.”

“Aye, we do.”

“We both like control, a situation that would surely get us into trouble.”

“As I said.”

“Can ye no’ think of one reason we should remain married?” Wildly, Tor thought of more than one. Because he wanted to kiss her more than Tor had ever wanted to kiss a woman in his life. Because she was capable with her mount, kind to her niece, and so beautiful that he would surely waste his life taking her from town to town, Ainsley on his arm, showing every man in Scotland how lucky he was to have her as a wife.

Lack of sleep was clearly beginning to jumble his thoughts.

“Nay,” she said finally. “I cannae.”

Tor laughed, whether she intended it as a jest or not. They ate in silence then, listening to the crackle of the fire he’d made. Staying out of doors this way was an invitation to be robbed if they were indeed come upon in the night. He’d sleep little, and perhaps was rash to have denied any escort. Tor’s need to get to Berwick had quickly overtaken his mind.

The decision had naught to do with his being alone with his wife. One he did not want.

“Then we are in agreement on that, at least.” He said it with a laugh in his voice, but the words still silenced them both. There was little to say that had not already been said. They would get to Berwick, find Ian and Marta, and end this farce of a union. One that, if it stayed the course, would do little on its own to stop a decades-long feud between their clans.

Catlin and the Shaw laird may have fallen in love, but that meant little to the rest of them. Including him and Ainsley.

“We should rest,” he said, standing and handing Ainsley the remainder of the cooked meat. “Tomorrow will be a long day.”

If he could not rein in the way his heart nearly leapt out of his chest when he sat close to her, when she looked at him too closely . . . tomorrow and the day after and the one after that would be long indeed.

Chapter 10

She’d managed to remain calm near the fire. But when Tor laid out two bedrolls under the tarp he’d positioned above them and Ainsley laid her head on a makeshift pillow—pieces of cloth stuffed with leaves—it was not the hard ground beneath them that bothered her.

Knowing he lay behind her helped, at first. But then the sounds became louder. Some she could identify, and others she could not. Ainsley forced her eyes closed but sleep eluded her. Despite years of putting it from her mind, she watched herself enter the woods after Rhona had scolded her for sneaking off from her daily lessons. She was not her mother, Ainsley had thought at the time. Shehadno parents.

At first, Ainsley had not been scared because the sun hadn’t set. But eventually, darkness surrounded her. Her bare feet grew cold. She wandered and wandered; sounds that she’d never heard before grew so loud Ainsley’s ears felt as if they were bleeding.

“Ainsley.”

She sat at the base of a tree trunk, shivering.

“Ainsley.”

So much time had passed, and when no one came for her, Ainsley stood, terrified and freezing, and attempted once again to find a break in the woods.