Page 67 of The Scot Beds His Wife

“I understand.” She had her own terrible secrets; shecould leave him his, safe and somehow comforted with the knowledge that both of their souls were stained with sins.

Maybe they were both beyond forgiveness.

Maybe… they deserved each other.

CHAPTERFIFTEEN

Gavin didn’t stay and hold her precisely because he wanted to do just that.

And because… the lass saw too much.

It struck him anew, while he’d subdued Alison’s wildly trembling body, how intensely vulnerable someone was whilst asleep.

How strange, then, that he’d invite so many into his bed, or join them in theirs. Perhaps because he didn’t see women as a threat.

Or hadn’t, until recently.

After dressing with all haste, Gavin made for the stables, looking forward to another hard ride with which to work away whatever seemed to be searing and fizzing in his blood.

It didn’t surprise him to find Callum there, seeing to the faithful horse, Rowan, that’d conveyed Alison as far as she could go, and then did not desert her once she fell.

“Yer beast can have his pick of oats, barley, and grain,”Gavin said as Callum glanced at him over the slight curve of the horse’s back. “He deserves the best.”

“I’m grateful to you,” the Mac Tíre replied, not missing one rhythmic stroke of his brush across the glossy coat. “Are you after investigating Erradale at dawn?” he asked mildly. “Is that where you’re off to at this ungodly hour?”

“I’ll go to Erradale directly after Ravencroft,” Gavin said shortly. “Is Eammon abed?”

“Aye, me old man had a dram or three after doing what he could to sew Calybrid’s guts together and is snoring in his chair.” Flicking Gavin a look of speaking curiosity, Callum asked, “Why are you going to Ravencroft an hour before dawn?”

“I told Alison that Calybrid was going to be all right…” Gavin let his silence ask the question, even as he evaded Callum’s.

“Aye, he’ll live, so long as the stitches hold and don’t turn putrid.”

“Good.”

Callum patted his steed on the withers and stepped out of the stall, brushing dust and hair from his old, fingerless gloves. “I’ve cooled Demetrius down, but I’ll saddle ye another to take to Ravencroft.”

“I can do it.” Gavin turned away from his friend’s eerily perceptive gaze to gather saddle and tack, and worked alongside his friend as dim striations of gray began to filter into the open stable doors.

Lifting his saddle onto a light-footed Arabian-thoroughbred mix, Gavin suddenly remembered something he’d long forgotten. “Callum.” He turned to his friend. “Didna ye know Alison Ross well when she was a wee girl at Erradale?”

His friend’s impassivity slipped for only a moment, one too quick to read what emotion filtered through.

“Aye. I knew her.”

Were the Mac Tíre’s lips tighter than usual, or was that his imagination? Damn the man’s unruly beard.

“Ye used to complain about the lass ceaselessly bothering ye. In fact, ye’d come to Ravencroft to escape her, did ye not?”

“I did.”

“Is she at all like ye remember?”

Had Gavin been paying closer attention to his friend, instead of cinching the saddle, he’d have noticed Callum took longer than necessary to reply. “The woman you know is nothing like the Alison Ross who left Erradale all those years ago.”

A thoughtful sound escaped on a long breath. “Life has a way of turning us into strangers, even to ourselves.”

“Aye, that it does.”