No, Daphne thought harshly. If she had had more sense, if she hadn’t done anything, then Edward would have married his dear Miss Winston and she-she would have lost him forever. She would have been married off to some bland, nice enough, gentleman who could never make her heart sing, who could never make her soul shatter.
“I had a strange feeling when I came home that I might find you in here.” A soft voice murmured from the doorway.
Daphne choked and spun on her heel, turning around, and coming face to face with her husband. “Edward, I’m sorry!” she blurted immediately.
“Sorry?” he echoed her, cocking a puzzled eyebrow. “Sorry for what?”
“You know what,” Daphne whimpered, clenching her eyes shut so that she wouldn’t have to see his face as the pain of the memory broke over him. “I didn’t mean for it to happen like it did!” she continued breathlessly, her words tumbling over each other in their haste to finally be heard. “I didn’t mean to force you! I never thought that we would be caught,” she cried. Edward nodded. That was all. He just nodded at her. “Well?” Daphne croaked, needing to hear him say something.
“I know that,” he muttered, looking down at his foot as he kicked at the carpet. “I think perhaps I always did, but I didn’t want to admit it.”
“W-why not?” Daphne stammered, licking her lips anxiously.
“Because it would have made me ask too many awkward questions of myself.”
“What-what do you mean?” Daphne asked slowly. “What questions?” She looked up into his face, reading the hesitation and the uncertainty that was gathered there, but she still needed to know the answer. “Edward?”
“You were sixteen, Daff. A child. You didn’t know what you were doing, or understand the consequences of your actions,” he shrugged gruffly. “But I should have-I did.”
“But you-you didn’t do anything,” Daphne puzzled. “I came up here to find you. I-I-” she blushed crimson, but couldn’t force the words out.
“You kissed me,” Edward said simply. Daphne glanced at him closely, trying to read his face, because there was something in his voice, and it wasn’t disgust or disapproval, it was hot and shivery, and it almost sounded like it could be desire.
“But that was me-” Daphne started to say again, but Edward interrupted her before she managed to finish.
“And I did nothing to stop you,” he murmured thickly.
Daphne licked her lips uncertainly. Well, that had been because he had been too shocked to move and push her away… hadn’t it? Daphne asked herself shakily. “There wasn’t… really time for you to do anything though,” she mumbled weakly, desperate for Edward to explain himself further.
“Maybe I didn’t want there to be time though,” he growled difficulty. “Maybe I didn’t want to stop you at all.” He took a step forward, and Daphne instinctively took one back. Edward seemed so large, so powerful all of a sudden, whatever it was that was threatening to bubble to the surface was about to break free, Daphne was almost certain of it.
“Please, don’t tease me, Edward,” she whispered, backing all the way across the room, her husband following her every step, until she bumped into the windowsill and was forced to stop.
“I’m not,” he rasped, his voice coming out slightly strangled.
Daphne gasped sharply and then she twisted away from him, casting her gaze out of the window so that she wouldn’t have to look up into Edward’s face. What did he mean? What could he mean! She tried to concentrate on the horizon, on the low dark overcast sky. It would rain soon, maybe even thunder, Daphne tried to keep her thoughts on that, on the mundane; she was afraid of the prickle of wild hope that Edward was stoking.
“I dreamt about you that night, Daff,” he breathed, standing so close that she could feel his words puffing, warm and insistent, against her hair. “Before you burst into my room, I was thinking about you.”
Daphne felt her spine stiffen. “That can’t be true,” she argued shaking her head stiltedly. “You weren’t-”
“I was thinking about you,” Edward argued firmly, his arms slid persuasively around his wife’s waist. “I was thinking about how much you had changed from the gangly little girl I’d grown up with,” he whispered into her ear.
“Edward!” Daphne exclaimed, wrinkling her nose at being called gangly, but anything else she might have said was lost when her husband continued.
“You were so beautiful, so perfect, I wanted you.”
Daphne was sure that she stopped breathing. Edward could not have just made that confession! She spun around again, this time to face her husband… only… she didn’t know what to say. She didn’t even know how she was feeling-so she tried to work that out at least… anger, that was definitely part of it, and betrayal, but also a terrifying sort of hopefulness, that maybe she hadn’t been such a fool after all, maybe she hadn’t misread him so very badly.
However, it was anger that simmered to the surface first.
“Wanted me?” Daphne heard herself hiss. “You left me!”
“You were sixteen, Daphne!” Edward barked back, as if this explained, if not everything, then at least something. “Why couldn’t you have waited?” he demanded harshly.
“You were going to marry Miss Winston!” Daphne wailed. “I didn’t have time to wait!”
“I was not going to marry Miss Winston,” Edward snorted. To which Daphne gasped again, and this time looked faintly scandalized. “Well, maybe I thought about it,” he growled. “But then I saw you again and-”
“Are you making this up?” Daphne blurted suspiciously. Edward looked like he wanted to throttle her all of a sudden, but Daphne pressed on regardless. “I think that it’s rather cruel of you if you are,” she sniffed. “Because-”
“Damn it woman!” Edward snarled, clamping his hands on her arms and dragging her against his chest, probably meaning to intimidate her by the sheer masculine size of his body, but only actually succeeding in fiercely increasing Daphne’s heart rate. “I’m trying to make you understand-”
“That you wanted me so badly that you left the country for six years?” Daphne snorted inelegantly.
“Yes,” Edward hissed. The tiny word hung ominously in the air between them. He moved one of his hands from her arm to the small of her back, crushing her against the hard planes of his body. “I wanted you, but I was furious with you. Do you have any idea of what that might have meant for you?” he growled, suddenly pulling Daphne away from the window, dragging her towards the bed.
“Edward, no!” Daphne gaped. He couldn’t mean to-! Not now surely, not when they were both so clearly smarting from old, unhealed wounds that the will to lash out at the other was painfully strong.
“Daphne, yes,” he rasped. “You think that love is only good and pure and kind, but it’s not, it-”
“You don’t know what I think!” Daphne railed. “I know that my love for you became my curse! It almost destroyed me, Edward,” she cried madly. “But I made myself strong again-so strong! And then you-you sauntered back into my life and-and-”
“And?” Edward demanded, his lips quirking arrogantly. Daphne saw red. She raised her hand to slap him, but Edward’s soldierly reflexes were far too fast for her to be able to inflict any damage. He caught her wrist, hard enough to elicit a small gasp from his wife, and then he kissed her.
At least, Daphne supposed that it would have to be termed a kiss, but it was like no other kiss that she had ever experienced before! Edward’s mouth was cruel and bruising in its force. He didn’t ask - he took, breaking through the seal of her lips ruthlessly and then sweeping into her mouth.
Daphne pushed hard against Edward’s chest, but he easily ignored her token effort to escape, ensnaring her tighter in his arms as she struggled, and then quickly admitted defeat, hating the way that her body betrayed her. The swirling heat of desire was building in her womb, throbbing to life against her will.
Why fight it? She wondered bitterly. Why not use it?
Daphne
raised her hands to Edward’s head, twining her fingers roughly in his hair, drawing from his lips a low grunt of pain. Perhaps she couldn’t stop him from doing what he intended, but that didn’t mean that she was going to let herself be his victim again. She felt his jolt of surprise when she started to kiss him back, matching his ferocity step for step.
“Don’t,” he growled, his voice thick and husky. “Don’t push me any further, Daff,” he warned gutturally.
“I’m not afraid of you,” she panted, tauntingly, scratching her nails down the back of his jacket, wishing that she could do the same to his bare skin. She wanted him marked.
“Perhaps you should be,” Edward groaned, running his hands heavily, possessively over her body, fondling and groping her tender curves. Daphne was almost ashamed of the way her body instantly responded to his selfish advances … almost.
“I won’t be made to feel afraid,” she hissed daringly, unsurprised, but electrified.
“Why not?” he demand. “I am,” he groaned, claiming her lips again to silence her. “I could break you.”
“Try,” Daphne dared him, “Try and break me,” she goaded him. “I’m not as weak as you think. I want you to show me this darkness, because it can’t be any worse than what I’ve lived through without you!”
She gasped as Edward cursed, “What do I have to do?” he begged. “What can I do to make you forget?”
“Nothing!” Daphne spat back. The raw pain in his eyes made her try to shrink away. “But I might be able to forgive,” she breathed quietly, only Edward didn’t appear to hear her, or if he did then it didn’t seem to help. The hurt didn’t leave his eyes.
“Then I’ll have to learn to live with that,” he rasped. “And given that you already hate me, there doesn’t seem to be much more point in continuing with this charade, does there?” he asked, his piercing gaze boring down into Daphne’s eyes.
She tried to swallow the lump in her throat. “W-what do you mean?”
“Do you want me, Daphne?” His hands stole beneath her body, cupping her bottom and pulling her closer. “Do you want this? Or do you want to go home to Dunnely and your brother, where everything is safe and bland, and you don’t have to take any risks?”
“I want you,” she whispered, feeling as though she had just come up from under water for the first time in years. “I always have.”
Edward froze as Daphne’s confession washed over him. All of his bravado failed. “Daphne…” he breathed weakly, but his wife didn’t let him finish.
“You don’t have to say anything!” she blurted swiftly. “You just have to know that I love you.”
“I thought you’d stopped,” he said softly, his voice thick with wonder.
“I stopped liking you,” Daphne sniffed, “I never managed to stop loving you though,” she whispered, a few embarrassed tears spilling out from under her eyelids. Edward caught them with his fingertips, before kissing them away.
“I never deserved your love before,” he said, in a tone of voice that might have been saturated with self-loathing. “But now I’m determined to be worthy of you, Daff,” he growled firmly.
Daphne chewed her lip and looked pained. She didn’t want him to be worthy of her, although she supposed that would be nice, she just wanted him to love her back! Edward was evidently incapable of that, or surely he would have said something by now?
“Daphne?” Edward frowned as his wife refused to meet his gaze.
“We should go back downstairs,” she blurted, pushing against Edward’s chest, but not managing to move him.
“We should stay here.”
Daphne refused to look at him. Edward licked his lips uncertainly, and whispered the words Daphne thought that she would never hear.
“I love you too.”
Daphne gasped, and tried to struggle away, but he refused to let her go. He kept her held tightly atop his chest. Daphne didn’t know if she could believe her ears, and if she could believe them, then could she trust them? She forced herself to lift her eyes to her husband’s face however, to try and gauge his honesty. Edward looked sincere. He looked like he was holding his breath. He appeared to be waiting on pins and needles for her response, but Daphne had been hurt too deeply in the past to trust appearances.
“You don’t have to say that, you know,” she said slowly. She thought that she was coming to know Edward well enough to know that he wouldn’t have made such a declaration with the intention of hurting her. He would think that it was what she wanted to hear. And in so very many ways it was, but she needed to know that he meant it, really, and truly, and forever.
“Daphne,” Edward sighed, reaching to brush her damp hair from off of her face. “I love you,” he repeated, perhaps hoping that if he said it enough times then she would have to believe him. “Why would I say it, if I didn’t mean it?” he demanded gently.
“To get me to stay?” Daphne murmured hesitantly. She was chewing her lip uncertainly, and frowned at the sudden look of triumph that flashed across Edward’s face.
“Ah, but why would I want you to stay if I didn’t love you?” he argued passionately.
Daphne opened her mouth to point out that there might be any number of reasons. Hadn’t he told her that he had come back for an heir, after all? And most of the married couples in England were not in love, but there was something in Edward’s tone that made her pause. He certainly could have declared his “love” a lot sooner if it was part of his plan-either to convince her to stay, or to convince her that he wasn’t a lost cause-but Edward hadn’t. He had waited until now.
“You didn’t used to love me,” Daphne whispered sadly, burrowing her head into Edward’s shoulder. She felt him release a heavy breath.
“You mean when I… left you?” he asked awkwardly. Daphne gave her head a silent, stilted nod, fighting to hold back her tears. “I thought that we’d established I was an idiot then?” he murmured.
“But you didn’t love me,” Daphne sniffed, again trying to pull away, and again she was thwarted. “If you had loved me then you never would have left me.” She heard Edward swear again, this time under his breath, choosing an expletive that Daphne had never even heard before.
“I’ve fallen in love with you, Daphne,” he said firmly. “With the strong, amazing, beautiful woman you are,” Edward declared. “I don’t think that there is another woman in England-or on the continent-or in the whole world that I could ever love even half as much. If you aren’t ready to believe me, that’s all right,” he said difficulty, pressing a kiss against the crown of Daphne’s head. “Because I’m not going to stop-not ever.”
THE END
ALSO BY STEPHANIE STERLING
A BEAUTIFUL LIE (THE CAMARAES, BOOK 1) – EXCERPT FOLLOWS!
A YEAR AND A DAY (THE CAMARAES, BOOK 2)
ANOTHER LIFETIME (THE CAMARAES, BOOK 3)
THE PERFECT CANDIDATE (MODERN ROMANCE)
AND COMING SOON:
HIS GREATEST TREASURE (THE CAMARAES, BOOK 4)
A BEAUTIFUL LIE
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Clan MacRae and Clan Cameron had been locked in a bitter feud since before Lachlan MacRae could remember, since before his father could remember, since before his father’s father could remember, and so it went on, back down the branches of the family tree so far back in fact that no one alive was quite sure what had started it all in the first place. This didn’t do anything to lessen the hatred or stem the killings.
MacRae children were brought up to despise the Camerons; to loathe them as if they were the very lowest of the low. Fed on the sour milk of hatred from the time they were babies in arms, it quickly became ingrained. It festered in their blood, taking so deep a hold on them and becoming such an integral part of them that it was impossible to purge. Lachlan supposed the reverse was also true, which was one of the many reasons why he thought Graem’s idea was ludicrous.
Lachlan sighed deeply and stared down the road ahead. He kept his bay gelding moving at an even pace. T
here was no need to hurry. He might be under strict instructions from Graem, his laird, to convey his “olive branch” but that didn’t mean, under any circumstances, that he was going to rush towards Castle Cameron.
At least, that’s what he’d told himself. However, when Lachlan rounded the next bend in the road a rather surprising sight met his eyes.
A woman sat on the roadside miserably prodding her ankle while a grey mare beside her ripped up clumps of grass to eat. When she heard the clatter of the approaching horse and rider she looked up with a fearful start.
She was uncommonly pretty. Lachlan admitted to himself that she would probably be beautiful if she didn’t look such a sorry state. As it was, it appeared that her long auburn curls had suffered a drenching in the last rain shower. They hung in a tangled mess about her shoulders. Her clothes were in similar state of disarray. Wet and muddied, Lachlan could hardly decipher their original color.
He rode until he reached the woman and then stopped. “You look like you’re in something of a fix, lass,” he said kindly, and then dismounted. When he looked at the woman again she had a small dagger clasped in her hand. It was pointed directly at him although she remained on the bank.
“Don’t come any closer! If you touch me I’ll-I’ll”
She stopped speaking, and looked highly affronted when Lachlan burst into a fit of laughter.
“You’ll what, lass?” he chuckled, taking a step towards her. “Ah, I mean you no harm,” he assured her in the same tone he used sooth skittish horses.
“A likely story! You’re wearing the MacRae tartan!” she said accusingly, waving the dagger in the direction of Lachlan’s plaid.
Lachlan glanced down absently. “Aye,” he agreed. “That’s true enough.” He rubbed a hand over his short beard. “And I assume from that reaction you’re a Cameron?”
“I am,” she said, hefting her chin with an arrogance that Lachlan would have struck away had she been a man. “Muira Cameron.”
“Muira Cameron?” Lachlan repeated softly. “Well, Miss Muira, I repeat my original observation. You seem to be in something of a fix.”
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