Amanda Scott - [Border Trilogy Two 02] (34 page)

“Is it easier to get an annulment if a man and woman
don’t
couple?”

He stared at her, visibly checking whatever impatient or angry words had nearly burst from his lips. When he did speak, his voice and his patience were under control. “Don’t tell me you still want one,” he said. “I won’t believe you.”

“I just—” Breaking off to lick drying lips, she tried to sit up, but he held her firmly in place.

“No, Amalie, just tell me what is wrong. Why did you ask me that?”

“Because I’m sure you will want to give me back, and if it is easier without coupling, I think we should stop.”

“Not unless you tell me exactly
why
you think I’d want to give you back.”

“My mother said that a man can tell if his wife is a maiden or not. If she is not, the law says he can give her back. What if you should think I’m not?”

“Faith, Molly-lass, any man could tell by just looking at you that you’ve nowt in that to worry yourself. If you were the sort of lass to give favors out of wedlock, you’d not be handmaiden to the princess. Also . . . well, one only has to know you for a short time—”

“I’m not,” she said, unable to listen to more.

“Not what?”

“Not a maiden,” she said dismally, tears welling in her eyes.

The tears sparkled, and Garth stared at them, unable to believe what she had said. He felt nothing at all, and felt that way long enough to make him think she must be lying to give him reason to abandon her. But she had willingly responded to him—and tentatively at first, innocently, not as a woman of experience would.

But perhaps, a voice in his head countered, not the way a truly virginal woman whom no one had kissed before or who had never . . .

He shook his head, clearing it, realizing he wanted to kiss her tears away and that he felt utterly stunned. Well aware that shock could numb a man’s emotions even quicker than disbelief, and feeling anger now as well, increasing anger, he said with forced calm, “Tell me what happened.”

“What do you think?”

He brushed away a tear with his thumb and said, “Sweetheart, you’ve lived for nearly two years with a woman we both know takes great care of her reputation. If any man out there could brag of having seduced you into granting him favors of any sort that could sully your name or hers, others would know. Certainly Isabel would, because someone would deem it a duty to tell her. She would also take note of any behavior on your part that encouraged men to take liberties.”

“She let you be alone with me,” Amalie said.

He frowned. He had not thought of himself as taking liberties, but of course, he had. And it was true that Isabel had encouraged him. Sakes, she had pushed him to declare the marriage. She had to have noticed before she had done it that he might be willing to marry the lass. He had scarcely had time before—or, to be truthful, the inclination—to wonder about Isabel’s reasons.

Considering them now, he shook his head again. “I don’t know how women think,” he said. “But it would take no wizard to discern my attraction to you. Nor to note your failure to rebuff me the way you did that villain Boyd.”

With a wry look that made him want to kiss her again, she said, “Sibylla said you wear your feelings on your face and in every gesture. She said that I do, too. But, although I like her, I don’t always think she knows what she’s talking about.”

“Faith, I think she may be a witch,” he said with sincerity.

“She also predicted that we’d be happy,” Amalie said as another tear trickled down her cheek to her ear. She rubbed the ear. “That won’t come true now.”

“It won’t if you don’t learn to listen to your husband, my lass. I have made it as plain as I know how that I do
not
believe you encouraged any man to lie with you, so tell me what really happened.”

“One did so without encouragement,” she said with a catch in her voice.

Ruthlessly stifling rage that threatened to reduce him to a gibbering dafty or overwhelm him to the point of bellowing at her as he shook the name of the villain from her, he drew a long breath. Letting it out slowly, he eased far enough away from her to let him gently retie the strings of her shift.

“I knew it,” she said dolefully, as she moved to turn away.

“You said you wanted to talk, sweetheart, so we are going to talk,” he said, pulling her back to face him. “Now, I want a round tale, and we’re not going to do anything else until I get one. I don’t want you or me catching our death of cold before then, so under the covers with you unless you want to close those shutters and sit with me on that well-cushioned window seat under them.”

She had not expected him to demand an explanation, and the thought of providing the gruesome facts brought the incident rushing back to her as if it had happened two hours before instead of two years.

To think that just a short time ago, he made her feel safe!

Avoiding his gaze, she said, “Is it not enough to know I am no longer a maiden, sir? Must you force me to dredge up all the details?”

He had not let go of her arm after pulling her back, and he did not release it now, but his grip was gentle. He said, “I’m your husband, Amalie. I
should
know.”

“Why?”

He did not answer right away, and that surprised her as much as anything else he had done. She knew what Wat Scott would have said if Meg or she herself had ever asked him why
he
should know something. Wat asked a question and just waited silently until one gave him the answer. But if that person refused . . .

Meg had once told her that Wat believed it was his duty to know her secrets and her dreams, and her duty to confide them to him. As her husband, he said, he was responsible for her. Therefore he also insisted on being the one to decide how much she should tell him and, in return, how little he need tell her.

In truth, and despite such declarations, Meg dealt admirably with Wat, and he loved Meg. But Amalie had expected the same uncompromising attitude from Garth. That it was not forthcoming disconcerted her.

He remained silent now though, his hand still on her arm.

“You cannot tell me why you should know, can you?” she said.

“I can answer,” he said quietly. “It was a reasonable question. I was just trying to think how it must have been for you to be forced, as I’m sure you must have been. It cannot be easy to talk about something like that to anyone, let alone to a man you scarcely know, despite being married to him. Yet, if you cannot talk to me about the things most important to you, I cannot be a good husband. And I’m realizing, sweetheart, that I want more than anything to be a good husband to you.”

Her tears spilled over then in a veritable flood, and she cried as she had not cried since the day her world had changed from one in which she believed the only danger came from English invaders or Scottish ones, to the real world, where the greatest dangers came from the least expected people.

Both of his arms came around her then, and he held her close without saying a word, letting her tears spill across his bare skin without notice. Even when he shifted slightly to a more comfortable position, he still held her close and did not speak. One hand rubbed her gently between the shoulder blades, soothing her as if she were a weeping bairn.

She sobbed until she realized her nose was running all over him along with her tears. With an embarrassed gasp, she tried to stanch the flow and sit up.

“It’s all right, sweetheart,” he said then. “Cry as much as you like.”

“I don’t
want
to cry anymore. I’m dribbling all over you!”

“I clean up easily.”

“Most men
hate
weeping women.”

“I can do without most of them myself.”

Her tears ceased altogether then. “What a thing to say!”

“Why? It is the truth.”

“Well, you need not always speak the truth so wholeheartedly, sir. Sometimes you might try for a little tact.”

“I’ve never really understood the difference between tact and a lie,” he said. “If you want me to tell you what you
want
to hear, just ask me what I think that might be. Like as not, I’ll get it wrong most of the time, not being equipped with the ability to read your mind—at least, not yet. But I’d be gey willing to try.”

She tried to glower at him but knew she had not succeeded when his twinkling gaze caught hers again. “That’s better,” he said. “Now, tell me.”

Her first instinct was to evade it again, but a stronger instinct warned that it would serve no purpose but to pit her will against his.

She knew who would win.

“I won’t tell you all the details,” she said. “I can’t do that without reliving the whole horrid thing, and I simply won’t. As it is, I still dream about it and wake up terrified and in a cold sweat.”

His lips twitched then in what she thought might be sympathy, but he only nodded and said, “Tell me what you can.”

The one thing she knew he would want her to tell him, she could not and would not. So she began with their ride to the old mill.

Garth had been watching her closely, but when she mentioned her dreams, she struck a respondent chord in him. After her warning that she would not tell him everything, he wondered how hard he dared press her.

Hearing that the bastard had taken her to a mill near Elishaw, he realized it had been someone she trusted. No wonder she had told him she trusted no man.

That she trusted
him
enough to tell him any of it touched him deeply. But what she would do when his resolve to know the villain’s name knocked up against her stubbornness—and doubtless her fears, as well—he could not tell.

He’d do well, he decided, to listen carefully and hope she continued to reveal more than she realized. Then, when he learned the bastard’s name, he’d kill him.

Chapter 18

A
malie lay quietly after telling Garth what had happened at the mill, her head resting in the hollow of his shoulder. She felt drained but still fearful. He had fallen silent again and, for once, had not expressed his thoughts or demanded more details.

He had listened.

His body had relaxed too, some time before—all of it.

He turned his head until his gaze captured hers. “I want to know his name.”

“I can’t tell you,” she said, meaning it. That much she would keep to herself.

“I am your husband, lass. In such a thing as this, I have the right to know.”

“Well, I won’t tell you. You may think you can force me—”

He winced, silencing her, then drew a deep breath and let it out before he said, “You need tell me only what you want me to know. But you should consider that I will meet all the men in your family, many of their friends, and most of the men who live or work at Elishaw. I’m going to wonder about every one of them.”

“I expect you will,” she admitted cautiously. “But I still won’t tell you.”

He kept that intense, steady gaze on her for a torturous time longer, but she met it until, with a nearly indiscernible nod, he sighed.

“What?” she demanded. “Why do you look like that?”

“Because your silence has persuaded me that the number of suspects is more limited than I had thought. I can rule out the servants, for example.”

With that discomfiting gaze still upon her, she could scarcely breathe.

“I think I can rule out friends of your family as well.”

“How could you possibly?”

“Think, lass. You would be unlikely to protect a servant, let alone to go into a lonely mill with him. And although your father might have missed noticing one male friend or another hanging around you closely enough to ride to that mill alone with you, your mother would not. Moreover, had either of your brothers taken note of such a man, surely they would have pressed him to declare his intentions.”

She could think of nothing to say to that.

“I am also fairly sure, sweetheart, that your attacker was not Simon.”

“Mercy, you cannot know that. Do you pretend to read minds, like Sibylla?”

“Nay, but had Simon been the one to deflower you, he would surely know that you cannot prove yourself a maiden by examination. Yet he agreed to one.”

“But, don’t you see?” she protested. “Simon nearly smiled when he said that! Sithee, I think he changed his mind about my dowry when he inherited Elishaw, because Fife insisted that a portion of the estates be part of it. Simon is not a bad man, sir. I do not like him much, but in fairness, he is years older than I am and was mostly away from home. So I scarcely know him. I think he viewed me, not as a sister—Rosalie is the only one of us who stirs fondness in him—but as an asset he could use to increase his favor with Fife. Then, when our father died—”

“So Simon
is
the one!”

“No!” Amalie exclaimed, horrified that she had led him to accuse an innocent man. “I did think he must have told Sir Harald, and thereby led him to treat me with such detestable familiarity, but Simon cannot have done that. Neither Sir Harald nor Fife mentioned it, or seemed to know that their vile examination would do them no good. And surely, if one had known, the other would have as well.”

“So Simon did know you had been attacked.”

“Aye,” she said, remembering. “But he would not believe it was an attack. He believed it was my fault, that I was wanton and provoked it.”

“Then your attacker was Tom or your father,” Garth said flatly.

She could not answer. The easy speed with which he had reduced the field from a host of possibilities to two astonished her. Realizing she could not let him blame her father any more than she could let him blame Simon, she remembered that Wat Scott knew the truth and that Tammy and Sym knew things, too, and that she trusted all three to keep her dreadful secrets to themselves.

That thought made her look at him again. If she could trust the three of them, she had been wrong to declare all men untrustworthy. As it was, Sym had nearly . . .

His brow wrinkled thoughtfully as he returned her look. She realized that his mind had taken a track much like the one hers had followed when he said quietly, “That lad, Sym Elliot. He said he knew things about bir—”