Wild Highland Magic (The Celtic Legends Series Book 3)(40)

She flinched and stepped away. She dipped down to grab her shift off the floor, and then held it against her breasts as she turned. Her face was stony. Her eyes gleamed with accusations that made him feel shame for no reason at all.

Then her expression changed. She narrowed that gaze upon him like she used to do on Inishmaan, and her words came back to him with force.

The deeper I look into a man’s eyes, the more I see.

Now he understood what this look meant. Without his consent, she was trying to strip him of the privacy of his own thoughts. He became aware of his nakedness with a keenness he’d never experienced, and it was not the lack of clothing that made him feel so.

He said, “Stop.”

She startled and the fierceness of her look eased. He was no coward, but he’d rather face the gleam of a claymore in the hands of a Campbell than have anyone see all his sins, weaknesses, and secrets.

Anger rose like bile in his throat. “You lied to me, woman.”

“No,” she countered. “You lied to me.”

He clenched his jaw and strode around the end of the bed, to where his clothes lay strewn in the rushes. He wrestled into his undertunic as certainty pinched him. Now she knew everything. Lachlan of Loch Fyfe was no mighty warrior. No great avenger. Few people ever saw beyond his name and the gleam on his fine chain mail.

She said, sharply, “When were you going to tell me?”

“Tell you what?” He’d be damned if he’d speak of such things aloud.

“Are there so many deceptions that you don’t know which to choose?”

“At least I can only accuse you of one.” He reared up to face her, thankful for the dimness of the room. “In Inishmaan, you told me you couldn’t read my mind.”

“I cannot.”

“You just did.”

“I did not.” Her voice broke and her gaze skittered away. “At least, not just now, though I tried.” She made theater out of the act of shaking out her shift. “Your mind is shut and barred like a fortress again. The only time I can read you is when—”

She hazarded a glance toward the rumpled linens. It took him a minute to realize what she was saying.

She could read his mind while they made love.

He let out a long, harsh breath. No wonder he’d felt such closeness as he touched her, kissed her, made love to her. An intimacy like he’d felt with no other woman before, because she had slipped into his mind.

He shook off the thought and reached for his surcoat. “You should keep out of a man’s mind when he’s in his weakness.”

“Maybe a man should control his thoughts better.”

“How does anyone do that? Even the lowest slave considers himself free to keep his own thoughts.”

“You speak as if I can choose not to hear.”

He ran his hand through his hair, flummoxed. “None of this makes sense.”

“Magic never does.”

“You must know others like me.”

“If there are, I’ve not yet met them.” She swept her shift over her head. Her breasts lifted with the gesture, her nipples tight and tilted. “But you haven’t yet answered my question.”

He had not. He’d been debating how much she could possibly have seen during the time they spent absorbed in one another’s bodies. Surely it took more than a few moments to see into the true heart of a man.

So he told her the only truth he knew. “I’ve never lied to you, Cairenn.”

“You made love to me and withheld the truth. That is no different.” She curled her arms around the bedpost, pressing her cheek against it. “When were you going to tell me about your betrothal?”

***


His promised bride was beautiful. In the brief moment when Cairenn had been coherent enough to peer into his mind, she’d had only a glimpse of the woman, but the image had burned like a brand. His someday-bride had hair as dusky as a winter night. She had a mouth that always pouted, like she was constantly begging to be kissed. The woman wore a belt of beaten links that hung from a slim waist. Her breasts stretched her tunic tight, and her hips swayed when she walked.

Now, standing before Lachlan, Cairenn felt like a bundle of hay, flat and skinny with poky elbows and knees.

Into the silence he murmured, “I said nothing about it because I didn’t want to cause you pain.”

“That’s not an answer.” If he had told her about this woman from the start, maybe she would never have opened her heart. If she’d known he was promised to another, maybe she would have had the sense to stop herself from wanting more. “You kept it a secret on purpose, for your own ends.”

“You are my weakness, mo chridhe.” He spread his hands. “From the moment I opened my eyes on the strand and looked upon you, I felt like I had died from my old life and awoken to a better one.”

Accusations gathered in her throat but never made it to her tongue. She knew, deep in her heart, that she could no sooner have stopped loving him than she could stop breathing. Now his voice was so tender that it stole all the air from the room.

“I tried to tell you,” he said. “I confessed to being the firstborn of a noble family. It was a shield I put between us.”

“On Inishmaan we walked and talked as equals.” Yes, yes, she knew she had no right to feel betrayed, but she couldn’t help herself. “I saw you as a man—not a chieftain.”