"This just shows what a complete state I’ve been in. I’ve been so blind. I swear, my brain hasn’t worked since I got to Scotland. I should have seen what you felt. How did I miss seeing it?" She shook her head, still looking as if he’d tossed her world upside down. Self-disgust turned down her lips. "In your whole life, you’ve never had an emotion that you didn’t broadcast for fifty miles. For weeks, you’ve been showing me you loved me."
He was glad she believed he loved her. At least that should stop her scurrying back to London. But he needed more than a one-sided declaration. He needed Emily to offer some hope that she might one day return his feelings. His voice flattened. "Now all I need to do is make you love me."
"But I do love you. So very much." Before he could process that miraculous statement, she rose on her toes and kissed him quickly. He could never think straight when she kissed him. "I’ve been in love with you for a long time, too. I was certainly in love with you by the time I chased you down in your lonely tower."
"You were?" For the second time in half an hour, his voice cracked with emotion. These past few weeks, he thought he’d been happy. Discovering that Emily loved him back showed him that he’d only tasted the beginnings of joy.
"I was."
A great wave of elation swelled inside him, until he was smiling like a lunatic. It might be incredible, it was certainly undeserved, but this gorgeous woman loved him as much as he loved her. They’d come through all their tribulations to find safe harbor at last. He could hardly believe it. Yet he must because when he looked into her beautiful eyes, they shone gold with an adoration he never imagined he’d see there.
He swallowed to shift the poignant emotion constricting his throat. "I call that a very happy coincidence indeed."
Emily smiled back and rose on her toes for a more leisurely kiss. This time, their lips met with a heady mixture of passion and tenderness. The kiss made a silent promise for a lifetime of love ahead.
With visible reluctance, she shifted far enough away to speak. "I don’t hate Scotland, even if Scotland hates me. I’m happy to stay in Glen Lyon with you."
"Scotland doesn’t hate you, you lovely, misguided creature. Once Scotland knows you, it will love you almost as much as I do. If anyone doubts your place here with me, they can jump off the top of Ben Nevis, for all I’m concerned."
"Even if Scotland does hate me, I can bear it as long as you love me and I love you. You don’t have to give up your home for me. You don’t have to give up your best friend. Fergus wasn’t as tactful as he could be, but he just wanted to make sure that I had no plans to run off to London."
"Fergus should mind his own damn business. He sometimes forgets that I’m no longer the ten-year-old boy he rescued in the mountains and that now we’re men, the four-year age gap doesn’t mean a farthing."
With a sweetness that made Hamish’s heart cramp with love, Emily stroked his cheek. "I wonder if he guessed you loved me and was just trying to save you from more heartache."
He shifted with discomfort. "Men don’t think like that, my love. He’d be more likely to punch me in the head and tell me to stop moping."
"Hmm," she said, clearly unconvinced. Then she looked horrified. "I didn’t even ask – what on earth happened to Rory?"
An unimpressed grunt escaped him. "I sent the foul-mouthed buffoon home in one piece. He has orders to come to terms with us as the Laird and Lady of Glen Lyon or pack up his tools and leave."
Puzzlement drew her eyebrows together. "But you were angry with him."
"I’m still angry. He’s always been a nasty drunk. He’s a dashed good carpenter, though, which is why I put up with him. But tonight he went too far." When she didn’t speak, he frowned. "What is it?"
This time, she smiled at him as if he was sunrise on a chilly morning. "Hamish, my darling, I’m proud of you. I’m proud of myself for marrying you. Despite all my fears, it turned out that I married a reasonable man. Who would have dreamed it?"
He liked hearing she was proud of him. He particularly liked it when she called him her darling. But he was still confused. "What on earth are you wittering on about, you daft lassie?"
Her smile widened further. "You didn’t lose your temper."
"No, although if I had, that clodhopping brute would have deserved it. But however angry I was, I knew it would reflect badly on you if I gave him the thrashing he asked for. You wouldn’t like it if I started snapping and snarling like an angry bear in front of all our friends and neighbors."
Emily cupped his jaw with a tenderness he felt to the soles of his feet. "Now I really do believe you love me. A year ago, you would have run amok. You wouldn’t have given a fig who you inconvenienced."
With a theatrical sigh, he drew her closer, reveling in how willingly she snuggled up to him. "You’ve turned me into a mere shadow of my former self, you wicked girl. You’d better have plans to make it up to me."
Her low laugh played sensual music up and down his spine. "That can be arranged." She drew away to cast a lingering glance at the chaise longue. His blood lit to flame as she leveled those lovely eyes on him, lovely eyes bright with an unmistakable message. "In fact, there’s no time like the present. Do you think our guests will miss us if we’re absent for an hour or so?"
His laugh rang with triumph as he caught her up and kissed her with all the love overflowing from his heart. "To Hades with them if they do. Why should I care, when I have my beautiful English bride in my arms?"
Hamish’s English bride gave a very unscientific giggle and surrendered to his passionate kiss with wholehearted delight.
***
Author's Note
Sadly, Hamish Douglas, Laird of Glen Lyon, is not credited as the discoverer of Saturn’s moon, Hyperion. Hyperion was identified in 1848, twenty-five years after the events in The Highlander’s English Bride, by William Lassell in England and by William Cranch Bond and George Phillips Bond in the United States.