She covered his big hands with her dainty ones, and Liam had a hard time meeting the understanding that lurked in her eyes. “I’ve known ye a long time, Liam Mackenzie. And I’ve wanted ye since before ye came to me, back when ye were still faithful to yer mad wife.”
“Careful, lass,” he warned, pulling his hands from hers.
“Ye wanted me, too, wanted me something fierce if I remember correctly.” She turned and moved deeper into her sumptuous parlor, draping herself across a soft green chaise that matched the extravagant gold drapes. Even the room was decorated to make her look more fetching. The colors illuminating her own dusky shades and contrasting with the dark bronze of her dress.
Flicking her fan a few times, she made her loose ringlets flutter with a practiced grace. “I knew that when ye finally gave in to come and take me, it would be the kind of encounter that would require recovery. As usual, I was right. I didna walk the same for a week.” Her face glowed with the fond memory.
So why were they wasting time? “Get naked and I’ll no let yer feet touch the ground for days.”
She shook her head, her eyes glimmering with regret and a fond sort of pity. “Nay. If ye’re not already in love with whoever she is, ye’re nigh to falling. I’d have ye off one time and then ye’d be so full of shame and regret that ye’d leave. I doona want us to part like that.”
“Tell me,” he asked acerbically, “does fortune-telling pay as much as prostitution?”
“Don’t be cruel because I’m right,” she said sharply.
He glared at her, and she gave as well as she got.
“Sit down, my laird, and have a drink,” she invited. “Ye can tell me about her.”
“No, thank ye.” He was wary of drink at the moment.
“Tea then.” She motioned toward the set at her elbow and Liam acquiesced, settling himself in the lone high-backed leather chair next to the fire, the only furnishing obviously placed for a male visitor.
She poured silently and he watched her, his insides churning with need, disappointment, and, if he was honest, a great deal of relief.
He took the delicate ivory china cup from her when she handed it across the small table, and tried his best not to drink the brew in one sip. He’d never been much for tea, or comfortable with breakable things in his hands.
She was regarding him with shrewd affection when he looked up. “I like that I can never quite figure ye out,” she said. “Ye are Lieutenant Colonel Mackenzie, the Demon Highlander. Ye dash toward the fray, ye charge into the most dangerous situations with not even a blink. But caring for a woman … that will frighten ye enough to run?”
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?”