The Scottish Bride - Catherine Coulter [72]
He didn’t see Donnatella standing quietly behind the drawing room door.
Kildrummy Castle
Mary Rose’s voice was as thin as the stem of the yellow rose that sat in a vase atop the mantel when she said, “Do you really think I am kind?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Kind, did you say?”
“Yes, you are the one who said I am kind. I want to know if you really believe it.”
A touch of acrimony, just excellent, and yes, he’d also heard just a tiny thread of hope there as well.
He laughed, he couldn’t help himself. He grabbed her and hugged her tightly. Then he closed his hands around her waist and lifted her above his head. Her hair swirled about her head, falling in a rich red curtain of curls about his face. He breathed in the sweet scent of her, a woman’s unique scent. It had been so very long. He hadn’t forgotten, but since he couldn’t act on such thoughts, he’d shoved them way back to the recesses of his brain and avoided ever going there in his thinking.
Tysen looked up at her, this girl with her wonderful scent, hair so rich and deeply red he wanted to bury his face in it, but now he wasn’t smiling. He looked more serious than a vicar—namely, a man like himself—in a roomful of pickpockets. “Enough is enough, Mary Rose. I will hold you off the ground until you say yes to me.”
Her hands were on his shoulders, her fingers kneading him. “You will truly ask the Harker brothers to give me a racing kitten?”
“I promise. However, they must deem you worthy and responsible. A racing cat requires great commitment, I’ve heard Rohan Carrington say. That means that you must begin to have a better opinion of yourself. If you do not believe yourself worthy, then why should they? Now, why would you ever doubt that you are kind?”
“You are the first person in my life who has ever said that. Why should I attribute something to myself when no one else has?”
“Because I’m telling you to, and since I will be your husband, since I haven’t told an outright lie since I turned eighteen years old, you must trust what I say.”
“What do you mean, you’ve told no outright lie?”
“One must shade the truth a bit on occasion, to avoid wounded feelings. I learned to do that very quickly. That, or one simply keeps quiet. Now, to prove my worthiness to you, if the Harker brothers decide you would make a good mistress, I swear that if the racing kitten upsets Ellis and Monroe, I will not complain. I will not force it to live in the stables.”
He would swear that at that precise moment, he saw a gleam of wickedness in her eyes, a wickedness to match Sinjun in her finest moments. She said, all demure as a nun, “If I say yes, Tysen, will you kiss me again?”
Dear Lord, he thought, and found that all he could do was nod, mute as the village idiot.
“Wait. What if after we are married you discover that you do not like me overmuch?”
“I even like your toes, and that includes the crooked one you must have broken when you were younger.”
Any wickedness was long gone. She looked utterly appalled. Her fingernails dug into his shirt. “You looked at my toes? I mean, why would you look at my toes? No one I know looks at toes. Oh, my goodness, when?”
He kept his voice very matter-of-fact. “I had to wipe you down when you had the fever. No, don’t start twitching. No maidenly yells. There was no one else to do it, Mary Rose. You have not even heard me complain about that, have you? I have not upbraided you for keeping me awake nearly all that night. So you see, I am a good-natured fellow.”
“You saw my broken toe,” she said again, and he would swear that in that instant he’d never seen a more mortified face in his life. “You saw even more than my broken toe.”
“Well, yes.”
“It’s very embarrassing, Tysen. Only I have ever seen myself without my clothes on. Oh, goodness, you’re a man.”
“Well, yes, I am. Mary Rose, if you do not tell me yes very soon now, I just might drop you. Though you are not large, you are beginning to push my limits here.”
Still, her face was full of questions. To