There was a long pause.
Nia felt her throat tighten. His expression didn’t alter, but there was new tension in him, like the warning hum from the electric fences on the estate.
‘Hey, let’s not do this right now.’
He spoke easily, but again she sensed the tension, and could hear the unspoken plea. Don’t mess with the mood.
She hesitated, but she couldn’t sit there and leave other words unspoken.
Her mouth firmed. She should have said something earlier. Only with his green gaze resting on her face, and his warm body so close, she had got lost in the moment and in her memories.
It would be so easy just to lie here next to him and listen to the sound of his breathing. But soon he would get up and leave, and once again she would be left with only memories.
It had been seven years. She needed to live. To move on. To kiss again, to love again. She couldn’t do that unless she put the past behind her. And to do that she had to face what she had done—admit the truth.
‘I need to say this. There were so many things I got wrong b-before—’ the word snagged on her tongue ‘—things I didn’t say. I want to say them now. I want you to know all of it.’
Maybe not everything.
She couldn’t betray her aunt and uncle like that.
But she could make him understand.
‘When we went to Lamington that day I was nervous. I knew my parents wouldn’t be happy for me, but I didn’t think they would be so utterly opposed to the idea. When they were, I panicked.’ Her eyes found his. ‘I should have left with you, but I thought I could talk them round.’
‘But they talked you round instead.’
The bitterness in his voice whipped against her skin.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘No. Of course, I listened to them—’
‘Why “of course”? It was our lives—not theirs.’
‘I was nineteen, Farlan.’ She only just found the words. ‘And I know you don’t like them, and what my father said was completely unacceptable—’
‘Unacceptable?’ He shifted backwards. His whole body was shaking. ‘It was appalling. He said I was a nobody.’
Her body felt as if it was splitting in two. To hear her father say those words had been horrifying. Hearing Farlan repeat them now made her feel sick—ac
tually physically sick.
‘He was wrong. You were never a nobody. You were—you are—the most amazing man I’ve ever met.’
Her heart was pounding and the need for him to feel the truth of her words was overriding everything else, even the shuttered expression on his face.
‘But this is my life, Farlan. I don’t think you ever understood that. I don’t think I really understood it either. Until that day when we came back to the estate.’
He let his hand drop down to his side. ‘You were my life, Nia, and I was supposed to be yours.’
‘And you were…’ She faltered for a moment. ‘But even if I had done what you asked of me—if I had left my family, my home, Scotland—it wouldn’t have been for ever. I would have had to come back to Lamington in the end.’
He grimaced. ‘Lamington. Always Lamington. It’s just a house, Nia. A really big house, but still just a bunch of bricks and mortar. And you’re a snob.’
She felt a fluttering anger rise up inside her. ‘And you’re an inverted snob. You know nothing about Lamington. Or me.’
‘Oh, I know everything about you, Lady Antonia.’
‘No, you don’t,’ she snapped. ‘Lamington isn’t just “a really big house”, it’s part of the village. We employ local people, train them, support them—’