To Kiss a Highland Rose (Kiss the Wallflower #6) - Tamara Gill Page 0,38

bring to the marriage, and please remember what we're like together. How much you love me. How much I love you."

Chapter 16

How much she loved him? Elizabeth almost scoffed at the absurd notion. She had been played the fool, and she had been the only one who had not known it. How many other people attending the Scottish Season knew Lord Hasting was there with an ulterior motive? To marry her and gain his ancestral home back.

What a slimly, English bastard.

"How dare ye? I was the laughingstock of London before, and now ye have made me so a second time. I shall never live down the shame of marrying a man who tricked me into the union simply to gain his old estate back. It will not be you, an earl, who'll suffer the snide remarks and snickering giggles as ye walk past. Oh no, they will be reserved solely for me."

"No one will say such things, Lizzie. I shall not allow it, and it is not true."

"That is absolute horse dung, Sebastian." She paced away from him, a fury running hot through her blood. "That you say ye no longer care what happens to the estate is also a lie. You care, quite a lot, and it was why ye were so keen on an elopement so soon into our courtship. Ye did not want me to form any affections with anyone else. Ye have taken from me the ability to make a match with solid foundations. Your love is a pack of cards similar to your brother’s, which were destined to crumble."

He ran a hand through his hair, and she could see the frustration thrumming through his body. "Yes, I did court you originally to regain the house, but it was days only before that all changed. I want you, Lizzie. And no matter what your brother says," he said, pointing to Brice, "what I feel for you is stronger than anything I've ever experienced before. I have never told a woman that I love her. And I do love you so much. I do not want to lose you."

"And yet ye will for you are the worst of what lives beyond the Scottish border. A selfish, self-serving Englishman who dinna care for anything or anyone except himself."

Her brother grunted his approval to his sister's words.

"You stay out of this argument. This is not your battle." Sebastian pointed at the laird, glaring at the bastard.

The laird stood, his chair scraping on the wooden floor. "Ye best stop talking now, Lord Hastings."

Sebastian heard the warning in his tone, but he refused to listen, to concede. He needed Lizzie to believe him. To love him and be with him as she'd promised she would. He could not lose her now. Not for this reason, not when that reason no longer mattered to him.

"Make me," he said, prepared to defend himself, defend his future with Lizzie.

"Enough!" Elizabeth's voice cut between them, pulling Sebastian out of his impending thrashing with the Laird Mackintosh. "Brice, please give me a moment with Sebastian."

Her brother glared at him one last moment before he stormed from the room, the door slamming hard behind him.

Sebastian did not move, scared that if he did, she would bolt, and his chance of explaining, of getting her to understand, would be over. "Lizzie, please try to see the situation from my side. I did not mean to hurt you."

"No, I suppose you did not. You did not expect me to find out. A stupid assumption considering who my brother is and his association with yours. What made you think that you would not be called out for your shady actions?"

Before he had a chance to answer, she waved his words aside. "You never thought to not get away with it, did you? You knew my brother would make the connection, see your reasons for marrying me, and call you out on it. But if I was already married to you, the marriage consummated, well, there would be naught my brother or anyone could do to undo our union."

When put like that, Sebastian could see he looked like a right bastard. He had pushed her quicker than he ought, needed their marriage watertight before he met her brother. What she said was true, and he could not defend himself against the charge.

Even if he now loved her, wanted her above anything else in the world, his words would fall unheard by her, for he'd ruined what chance they had by being