"You told me to leave you alone." The deep voice was flat.
A dismissive snort escaped her. "That didn’t mean you had to forsake me forever."
"It sounded like it. I said in my letter that I wouldn’t bother you again, unless you asked me to come back."
"So you decided I didn’t want to hear a single word from you in the meantime?"
He frowned. "You
haven’t inundated me with mail either."
Hamish had a point. "I assumed once you’d returned to your real life, you wouldn’t want to hear from me."
"We seem to have made a lot of assumptions."
"We do." She paused then went on in a more measured tone. "Perhaps a few of them were wrong."
For a long moment, they stared at each other. Emily wondered how different things might have been if Hamish had stayed in London. She had an inkling that he was thinking exactly the same thing.
Eventually he straightened in his chair and sent her a direct look. "Just what are you doing here, Emily?"
She swallowed. The moment had arrived to explain why she’d come in pursuit of a neglectful husband. She was sick with nerves. Which made no sense at all. She’d traveled for days to reach this tower. The whole way, she’d practiced what she had to say, and for a good few weeks before she left London.
Now she knew that Hamish had missed her and that he’d stayed faithful, her task should be easier. But those revelations remained too astonishing for her to feel like she could rely on them.
She swallowed again and cursed the way her voice emerged reedy and unsteady. "I decided my place was with my husband."
If she expected him to greet that announcement with any gratification, she was to be disappointed. The chiseled features remained unreadable as he said slowly, "Did you indeed?"
She rose on legs that still felt wobbly. Perhaps standing might make her feel less at a disadvantage.
"I did." When Hamish didn’t respond straightaway, she forced out the hardest bit. "I hoped…I thought if you were willing, we might try to find some common ground in this marriage."
Hamish stood, too. He hitched the sheet higher and wheeled toward the steps.
Speechless, Emily watched him go. What on earth was he doing? She felt as though she’d sliced out her heart and laid it at his feet, and all he did was run away. Again.
"Hamish?" Her voice shook. "Did you hear me?"
"Yes," he said without turning back.
"So what do you say?"
At least she no longer sounded like a squeaky ninnyhammer. Shock receded under the more familiar urge to biff him with the nearest hard object.
He didn’t glance back as he started to descend the stairs. "I say that if this is what you’ve come all this way to talk about, I need to be wearing more than just a bedsheet."
Chapter 17
Fuming, Emily stayed behind on the tower roof. Since the moment she first contemplated this expedition, she’d questioned the wisdom of coming north. Never more than now, when she felt so vulnerable. And her husband, instead of reacting with joy or even, curse him, meeting her halfway when she suggested a normal marriage, turned his back on her.
She heard voices below and crossed to look over the stone parapet. From here, it was a long way to the ground.
Hamish, still in his bedsheet, was talking to Big Billy. Probably arranging for the removal of his inconvenient wife back to Lyon House. Or London, more like.
Emily was too far up to hear what they said, especially with the wind rising. She’d never been to Scotland before, but the weather on this first visit proved mercurial. Once she crossed the border, her carriage spent a lot of time bogged, or making little headway through driving rain. Although the sun had shone as she journeyed further north. What a pity that it didn’t turn out to be an omen for a brighter future.
Hamish wasn’t sending her away, it seemed. Billy bowed and went off to catch his piebald pony. He left her stocky gray grazing near the trees. Wondering whether she should be pleased or alarmed at being marooned here with Hamish, she watched the brawny Highlander trot down the narrow track.