A Laird for All Time by Angeline Fortin (room on the broom read aloud txt) 📗

“Now what are ye talking about?”

              “I think you know what I am talking about.  I can think of at least one other instance when someone denied you what you wanted.”  Emmy raised a brow and waited for him to catch on.  It didn’t take him long.

“So ye denied me once,” his eyes narrowed.  “Why should I allow ye to do it again?”

“I would defy you if only to prove to you that you are not a god, Connor,” she snapped back.  “You might be the laird here, but you cannot command everyone in Duart like they are dogs.  People have a right to their person and their privacy, at least.  Life, liberty and property!”

“I have read yer American constitution, but in my house…”

“In your house you are king,” she interrupted sarcastically.  “You are god, blah, blah, blah,” she made a hand puppet to deliver those words. “You know what?  I’m glad she left you!  Yea, that’s right!  You obviously need to be brought down a notch!”  She poked him in the chest.

“Glad?  Do ye have any idea the humiliations I have born these past ten years because of that?” he accused his usually heavy brogue so thick now that Emmy could barely grasp his words.

“So you punish everyone around you for your pain, is that it?  Your pride, your ego!” She faced him with hands on her hips and anger rising over his stubborn refusal to face the truth.  “Well, they might suck it up, but I will not be treated that way.  It isn’t all about you, you know?  And I don’t have to stay here!  I can leave any time!  I don’t have to put up with a tyrant!”

“Run away, then,” he roared.  “Run away like ye did before!”

“Sometimes you are worth running from!” she yelled back.

“If ye didn’t want to marry me, you should have said so – I wouldn’t have made ye do it, but ye just left without a word.  Do ye have any idea how humiliating that was?  The Prince of Wales was there!” he shouted poking his finger back at her.

“Now you’re getting to your real issues!  But it was all pride, Connor!” she went nose to nose with him.  “You didn’t care that she was gone for anything more than your pride!  You have let it rule your entire life.  You have already said that you didn’t love her, it wasn’t like you had your heart broken!”

“I didn’t, that’s right!  I didn’t love ye then!” his anger was still running awry making him almost unaware of the words he spoke.  “I only married ye because it was what my father wanted.  I didn’t even meet ye until the previous day.  How could I have cared about ye?  Aye, twas all pride, I’ll admit it.”

“Then?” Emmy echoed hearing nothing past that one word and all the hot air went out of her.  Similarly deflated, Connor sliced his hand through the air to halt her but she ignored him.

“You said ‘then’.  That you didn’t love her ‘then’.  Do you love me now?”  He turned his back away from her and faced the window, arms crossed in that same defensive posture he had used the first day she met him.  She ran her hand up his shoulder blade.  “Connor?”  Both hands slid under his arms, around the hard ripple of his ribs until she was hugging him from behind, resting her head against his back.  Relaxed against his tense body with her heart pounding forcefully between them.  “Do you, Connor?  Do you love me now?” she whispered with longing.

His hands clasped hers tightly for a moment.  He drew a breath as though he were about to speak but then exhaled heavily.  “Go get dressed and we will leave.”

“But, Connor…”

“Just leave me be, Emmy.”

Sighing heavily in defeat, she dropped hers arms and moved soundlessly to the bathroom closing the door behind her.  It wasn’t until she was washing her hair in the bath that she realized that he had called her Emmy instead of Heather.

He had called her Emmy.

Chapter 29

What a horrid day!  The long periods in the carriage had been sickening and awful but what had really made the day excruciatingly long was Connor’s absence from it.  Ian, not Connor, had been waiting at the carriage that morning when she arrived to escort her on her rounds.  Ian had cheerfully explained that Connor had urgent business in Glasgow and would be gone for several days.  He had asked Ian to aid Emmy in her medical pursuits.

Ian had filled their time in the carriage with pleasant chatter and anecdotes that Emmy regretted hadn’t done more to distract her.  Business in Glasgow?  She didn’t think you so.  There was no doubt in her mind that Connor - that big, fat chicken - had run off rather than face her.  Perhaps he regretted suggesting that he loved her before he was certain of her feelings and he was avoiding her to allow her time to digest his revelation unsure, but she doubted it.  More likely, he hadn’t meant it the way it sounded at all and he was afraid her feelings would be hurt.

That thought caused her breath to catch.  God, she hoped not.  She was pretty sure he liked her beyond the physical, had even had cause to think that he cared for her…maybe more than he knew or wanted to?  It had only been four days, she thought realistically.  It was an impossibly short time in which to fall in love with someone.  Things like that took time.  Love at first sight wasn’t something she had ever believed possible before.  Just because it had happened to her didn’t necessarily mean it he felt the same.

Oh, Lord, I love him, she moaned inwardly.  What a fool she was!  Had she truly fallen in love at…well, almost at first sight with Connor?  He was completely wrong for her.  Truthfully he was completely