A Scot to the Heart (Desperately Seeking Duke #2) - Caroline Linden Page 0,99
longed to throw herself into his arms and hear him tell her it would all come out well, somehow—but her heart and nerves had been shredded raw, she hadn’t slept in days, and it was too much.
“Why?” she demanded bitterly. “You have no idea what’s been said about me and my family this week, how our supposed friends and neighbors have turned on us, called me and my aunt accomplices, liars and thieves as bad as Papa—”
Drew held up his hands as her voice rose. Agnes had warned him that Ilsa had been through hell in the last two weeks, that she looked haunted and tense and was not herself. He still wasn’t prepared for the changes in her. Three weeks ago she’d been bright and carefree, smiling dreamily in his arms, the picture of poised elegance and beauty—except when she whispered in his ear to ride her harder and bit the side of his neck as they combusted together.
Today her eyes were red-rimmed, sunken, and shadowed. She’d lost weight and she looked as exhausted as he felt. She wore a plain gray dress, as opposite her former garb as possible, and he felt how her hand shook beneath his as she wrestled for the door handle.
“I won’t,” he promised, trying to gentle his tone. Saints, he was tired, and in consequence he was doing this very badly. “I won’t stop you.”
Her throat worked. “Why would you even want to come with me?”
“Because I care for you!” He plowed his hands into his hair, striving for calm and logic when his brain seemed to be tripping over itself. “Because I’ve been mad with worry since Felix Duncan sent a man pelting up to Fort George to warn me there were dangerous rumors about your father. I got on my horse and raced back. I don’t know what you’ve endured, beyond what Duncan and my sisters poured out on me last night—and I’m not sure I even understood half of what they said, since they spoke all at once.”
She inhaled sharply. “Did you send them this morning? To stop me?”
He looked up in dismay. His sisters had roused him and Duncan from their beds early this morning, clamoring to know what he’d learned during the night. Winnie and Bella had been loud opponents of everything he proposed to do, certain that he was mucking up his one chance to help Ilsa. Agnes had listened to him, and to Duncan, but when her sisters ran out, saying they would stop Ilsa if he would not, she went with them. He’d told them not to go, not to cause a scene for Ilsa’s sake, and still they’d bolted from the room before he was fully dressed. “I tried to hold them back. They would have had me break down your door in the middle of the night to keep you from going.”
Ilsa turned her face to the window, where the scenery had shifted to the farms and meadows that lined the road south. They were almost free of Edinburgh. If she tossed him out now, he would have a miserably long walk.
Her next words cut deep. “You said you would return within a fortnight,” she said, her voice wobbling.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly, cursing himself for giving in to all the entreaties to stay for one more farewell dinner. He hadn’t thought there was reason to hurry. “It took longer than I expected.”
She nodded stiffly.
“If I had known—or suspected—I would have rushed back,” he added.
“No,” she said. “Of course you shouldn’t have. It is not your problem, nor your fault. I know you could not have changed anything had you been here.”
But he heard the pain. Perhaps he couldn’t have changed anything, but she wouldn’t have had to endure it alone. He was in love with this woman, and when she needed him, he’d been drinking with his mates a hundred and seventy miles away, in perfect ignorance of the ordeal she was facing.
“What happened?” He’d heard from Agnes and his sisters, from Felix Duncan, from the sheriff-clerk and the procurator’s deputy. None of them could tell him what he most needed to know.
A single tear slid down her cheek. Hastily she swiped it away. “A nightmare.”
With a harsh sound he caught her hand and pulled her across the carriage into his lap. Ilsa resisted for a moment, but he wrapped his arms around her and she melted against him, her hands creeping around his neck.
“There,” he breathed, holding her close and stroking