She swallowed a few nervous times before asking, “Shouldn’t you don a shirt, my laird? This cannot be seemly.”
A dark chuckle spilled from his throat. Always the proper lass, his charming Miss Philomena Lockhart. “Look around ye, woman,” he challenged. “Dancing with a half-naked marquess is the least unseemly thing happening at this very moment.”
As he led her in the slow, undulating dance, she glanced at the other couples, and then to the periphery of the tent city and even the woods beyond, where more hedonistic goings-on filled the shadows with writhing forms and suspect sounds.
Distracted, she stumbled, and Liam used the opportunity to stabilize her against his body, pulling her in tighter.
“What do you think you are doing?” she asked rather breathlessly, as she tried with little success to regain a respectful distance between them.
“Just being careful of your toes, lass,” Liam replied with mock innocence, enjoying her discomfiture more than he should. “I’m a clumsy ogre sometimes and might cause ye harm.”
“I know you would never hurt me,” she said, covering her gaze with her long lashes.
“Ye think me a better dancer than I am,” he jested.
“No.” The word sounded like a lament, and she had yet to relax into his arms, despite his efforts to lighten the mood. “You think of me better than I am…” Her voice hitched, and she made as if to turn away. “Please excuse me, my laird, but I think it’s time I retired for the evening.”
Liam tightened his hold on her, refusing to let her escape. “Doona run away from me, Mena.” The intimacy of her name on his tongue tasted sweeter than the finest Scotch. “Doona run from this. From us.”
“There is no us,” she hissed. “Now please, let me go without a scene, I beg you.”
“Ye’ll listen to me first, woman,” he ordered. And for once, she complied, though her brows snapped together in a mutinous scowl that she directed right at his collarbone.
He gentled his words as he spoke from the heart. “I meant what I said, that I want Ravencroft to be yer sanctuary.” He kept his voice and his hands gentle, though his grasp on her was unbreakable. “These stones. They will always be here. They are the clan. They have strength and integrity and have withstood the weapons of countless enemies. This is a place to build a life, Mena. And this is a night of new beginnings.”
“There are no new beginnings for me,” she said in such a soft voice, he had to strain to hear her. “It would be better for you, for us both, if you stopped this now, before you or anyone else gets hurt.”
“I’ll not stop until ye order me to, lass, and likely not even then,” he admitted, pressing her harder against his aroused body. Letting her feel the pulse of his desire against her. “Tell me you doona want this. Tell me that ye didna feel this storm brewing between us since the very first day we met. That a part of ye didna know that this was an inevitability. I knew from the first time I saw ye that it was my destiny to claim ye here in the mists. And ye must take me, Mena … all of me. Make demands of yer own. Lay claim to the pleasure I’m willing to offer ye.”
Her body quivered at his words. Her muscles clenched and seemed to swell inside of her dress. Her hand went from tentatively resting on his arm to gripping it desperately, as though to keep herself upright.
When her face lifted to his, her jade eyes shimmered with unshed tears. The bleak despair surprised and confounded him. Of any effect he’d anticipated his words to have, this was most definitely not it.
“I—I must confess to you something that might change your feelings.” Threatening tears lent her voice an even lower register, and Liam spun her away from the dancers and the musicians to occupy the shadows next to a deserted table piled with two empty casks and countless empty tankards.
“There is nothing you can say—”
“There was a man,” she said fervently. “Back in London, he—”
Liam pressed a single rough finger against the ripe ridges of her lips. “I know this,” he soothed.
She turned her neck and twisted her face away from his touch. “No, you don’t. You can’t possibly know. He laid claim already, don’t you understand? He hurt me, Liam, but he didn’t force me. I let him. I had to. He did things to my body, to my soul, that changed me utterly.”
Liam’s demon rose within him, and he did his best to fight it back. “Give me his name, and I’ll see his bloody, broken corpse delivered at yer feet.”
She shook her head, taking a step back against the rage that must have gathered on his features. “No. No, don’t you see? My only means of escape is to be other than I was. You know I have a secret. A terrible secret. You can’t imagine the depth of it. The scope of it. You don’t know who I am … what I’ve become. To tell you would be the end of me.” Her last words escaped on a broken voice.
He reached for her, pulling her close. He wanted to erase every bad memory from her tortured thoughts. To ease every fear she had and smite all her dragons. He wanted to destroy this man who’d caused her such pain, such shame. If only she’d give him the means with which to do so.
Unable to go to war, as was his first instinct, he tried to give her some modicum of peace, instead. “I have secrets of my own, lass. Terrible ones. The kind that will damn me in the end. Let us leave our secrets to the past where they belong, and let us have this moment. Tomorrow is tomorrow, yesterday is yesterday. But tonight. Tonight is for us.”