Liam said nothing, setting his tea down. It wasn’t merely Mena he’d run from. It was himself. The mortification caused by the admissions he’d given her in the dark. He’d shared some of his own secrets with her. Imparted his pain. Unleashed the force of his need …
And it had frightened her.
So he’d promised to leave her be, but even as he’d said it he knew he’d been lying. There was no leaving her alone. Miss Lockhart had somehow become a part of him.
“Is it love?” Mary asked gently.
“It’s … complicated.”
“Love is always complicated, darling.” She laughed. “That’s why I do what I do instead of falling for someone who deserves it. Complications are tedious, unless they’re happening to someone else, of course.”
Liam thought it was her casual attitude toward the situation that allowed him to admit to her what he not only feared, but suspected.
“She doesna want the Demon Highlander.”
“You have a great many other titles,” she reminded him wryly.
“She doesna seem to be interested in those, either.” A fact he found he admired about Mena, though he’d gladly use them to get what he wanted from her if he thought it would help.
The woman shrugged. “Then be Liam Mackenzie,” she said simply. “The man.”
“I … doona ken who that is.”
“If she’s a good woman, she’ll help you find out.”
He could only shake his head as his heart became heavier and heavier in his chest. “She’s been mistreated and she knows I’m a violent man. She’s terrified of me…”
“And yet?” Mary prompted.
“She yelled at me,” he said incredulously. “It’s been decades since anyone dared … she told me I couldna issue her orders, and that she was a woman with free and independent will. She called me an overbearing brute.”
“Oh, Lord.” She hid a laughing smile behind her fan. “What did ye say to that?”
“I kissed her. And she kissed me back.”
“Marry her, Liam,” she ordered, snapping the lace fan closed. “As soon as you can. Tomorrow if possible.”
“She’d not have me,” he said, rather dazedly.
“Doona be ridiculous, any woman would have you.” Mary regarded him curiously over a sip of her tea.
“Not her. She has secrets, painful ones. She avoids me, I think. But sometimes … she looks at me like…” Like she desired him. Like she understood him.
“Every woman has her secrets.” With an impatient sigh, Mary set her teacup next to his none too gently and rapped him on the knuckles with her closed fan to get his attention. “It still shocks me that this comes as a surprise to most men, adorable idiots that ye are, but doona ye ken a woman who is not after you for yer title and yer fortune needs to be wooed?”
“Wooed?” The word tasted as foreign in his mouth as the idea was to his thoughts. “Ye mean, gifts and jewelry—”
“Nay, dammit.” She pressed a beleaguered and dramatic hand to her forehead. “The most precious thing you can give a woman, a worthy woman, is intimacy, time, truth, safety, and friendship.”
“Friendship?” He lifted his own hand to his temple, pressing at the place where his head was starting to pound.
“Talk to her. Know her and let her know ye, as well. Intimacy is not only in the bedroom, ye know. To love each other, ye must first like each other. Do ye like her?”
Liam considered that. He liked the way she treated and talked with his children. He liked the way that, for such a practical woman, she was rather idealistic. He liked the way she ate, with as much relish as manners. He liked how she did her hair and the way she wrinkled her nose, the books she read, even the ones he didn’t understand. He liked that he could spill his secrets to her in the dark, and she never shamed him. That she treated him with sympathy that never smacked of pity.
He liked what his heart did when he heard the clip of her shoes against the floors of his keep. In fact, he couldn’t think of one thing that he didn’t like about her.
Her secrets, he supposed. Whatever put the shadows behind her eyes and caused her to fear him.