Midnight Honor

shoulder.
    “Anne, honestly I am fine. You should go back to bed before you catch a chill.”
    “Will you at least let me stoke the fire for you? See, there are still some embers—”
    “If
you
want a fire, I will build one for you, otherwise … please. I just want some time to
think.”
    Anne recoiled slightly from the sudden sharpness in his voice—a voice that only a short while ago had been reduced to low and silky groans against her flesh.
    “I'm sorry. I… certainly did not mean to intrude.” She pulled the blanket higher around her shoulders. “Perhaps you would rather I just returned to my own room?”
    He caught her hand before she could turn away. “No. No … Anne, I'm the one who is sorry. I… I don't want you to go. Not at all. Please. Here, come and sit with me for a minute. My head is pounding like thunder and my belly feels full of lead ballast.”
    “So much for feeding you a gallon of claret each night,” she murmured.
    “What?”
    “Never mind. 'Twas a silly thought anyway.”
    Angus pulled her into his lap, and she curled warmly into the curve of his shoulder. “I truly am sorry.” He ran a hand down her back to smooth her straggling waves of hair into place. “I did not mean to bark at you.”
    “And I did not mean to interrupt you. I will go back to bed if you want me to.”
    He debated the offer for a moment before pressing a kiss into a crush of her hair. “No. I like you right where you are.”
    Anne sighed and snuggled closer. A few seconds later, the soft edge of regret she had heard in his voice made her tilt her head surreptitiously upward to study his face in the gloom.
    With the effects of the claret worn away, was he now embarrassed by their behavior during the night? As much as she imagined lust would be regarded as a decided weakness by a man who always kept such a tight rein over his emotions, he had seemed determined to make up for his lack of attentiveness over the past weeks. Was he now wondering how to face her across a plate of breakfast sausage, knowing where she had had her mouth only hours before?
    An uncomfortable flush spread through her body and the lush, rich sense of contentment so recently acquired threatened to vanish between one heartbeat and the next.
    “Is it something I have said … or … or something I have done that is troubling you?”
    Angus took a moment to ponder his answer before he shook his head, dismissing the question. “No, it is nothing to do with you. Nothing you need concern yourself with, at any rate.”
    His tone could not have been more patronizing had he patted her on the head and offered her a sweet.
    “'Twere a fine romp, lass. Ye've done a bonny job distractin' me,” she said with gentle mockery, “now off ye go an' peel the tatties. Aye, milord, I'll just do that, I will. An' should I muck out the stables whilst I'm at it?”
    He stared at her through the gloom, one dark wing ofbrow curling upward. “A distraction? Is that what you think you are?”
    “It's not what I want to think, but you leave me little choice when you as much as shout: ‘Go back to bed and don't bother me.’”
    Angus opened his mouth, then snapped it shut again, the warning implicit if he tried to discount the charge with more platitudes.
    “I did not shout.”
    “You said it yourself: You barked. At any rate, you sounded angry.”
    “Not with you, Anne. With myself, maybe, but not with you. Well, yes, all right, I will confess I was angry earlier tonight, but that was only because I was worried. I had a lot of time to think about a good many things, including what your presence in my life means to me.”
    She frowned. “What does it mean? A warm body in your bed when you need one, a hostess at your table, someone to count linens and occasionally scold a servant for not applying enough wax to your tables?”
    “My
tables?”
    “If you will recall, I came here with nothing but the clothes on my back, so aye, they are your tables, your chairs, your curtains, your plates, and I have never been encouraged to think of them any other way.”
    His hand shifted restlessly on her shoulder, and she knew he was remembering the flower arrangement she had made the first week she had come to live at Moy Hall. She had been out for a long walk and collected some sprigs of heather and bluebells—truly a scrawny offering, in hindsight, but at the time, she had thought it pretty enough to put in an odd little china vase she had seen in the drawing