Or faultless.
The first thing she needed to do was face the consequences of her actions.
“I have recently learned the meaning of such words as forgiveness and redemption.” Liam approached her with narrowed eyes, as though trying to figure a battle strategy.
“Let’s retire to the parlor,” Farah suggested, shooing her many guests into the azure room they’d only just vacated. “I’m certain we have keys for those chains around here somewhere, and poor Jani looks as though he needs to sit down.”
“I could stand here a little longer,” Gavin quipped, watching Liam and Mena with sardonic interest.
“Lord Thorne, I presume?” Dorian stepped to Gavin and hesitated before holding out his hand. “I’ve waited a long time to meet you.” The two shook hands, mirror images of each other in all but their coloring.
“Dorian Blackwell.” Gavin carefully extracted his hand from Dorian’s grip. “Or should I say ‘Dougan Mackenzie’?”
“A long and interesting story.” Blackwell gestured to the door opposite the parlor across the grand entry. “Might I invite you to my study for a drink?”
And then Mena and Liam were alone with nothing but the sound of her rapid breath echoing off the grand marble entry.
His stare was relentless but not hard. Aggressive, but not angry. He stood an arm’s length from her, towering over her like a monolith of potent masculinity, yet he reached for her with nothing but his gaze. It touched her everywhere, as though she were a specimen he’d never seen before. As if he couldn’t make her out, or fathom what—or who—she was.
Mena knew this was her chance, her only chance to apologize for the wrong she’d perpetrated against Liam and his family.
“I cannot excuse what I’ve done,” she began, surprising herself by how her fervency steadied her voice, though the rest of her shook for want of the warmth of his touch. “When I escaped … when I accepted the position at Ravencroft as Mena Lockhart, I felt as though this world had truly carved me away from myself. I no longer knew who I was, so becoming someone else seemed permissible. Harmless, even. It was though everyone I ever knew, everyone I should have been able to trust, wanted to tear my very flesh from my bones and feed me to the vultures.” Tears she did not feel coming spilled down her cheeks as emotion swept over her, causing her flesh to prickle with it.
“I didn’t know,” she whispered. “I didn’t know there was someone like you in this world of cruel and callous men. I thought … I thought my future was a dark and barren corridor with a bolted door at the end of it. And when I ran, my only care was for what I ran from. I didn’t stop to think where—or who—I ran to. I didn’t know it was your arms that would make me feel safe for the first time since I could remember. I didn’t know that your face would become so dear. That your children would steal my heart. That I would learn to trust the very man I so thoroughly deceived.”
Mena swiped at her cheeks, despairing at the unchanging expression on Liam’s sinister features. She couldn’t at all decipher what he was feeling, but he had to know the depth of her regrets, though they did neither of them any good.
“We talked once of forgiveness and redemption, and I want you to know that I neither expect nor deserve that,” she continued. “I have wronged you so absolutely, and I wish I could take it all back, but all I can say is that wounding you, Rhianna, and Andrew in any way will forever be my most profound regret and my darkest shame. For I hold no others on this earth so beloved.”
Clamping her lips together, she blinked her tears away so she could clearly see what fury was to follow.
“Are ye quite finished?” Liam asked shortly.
Swallowing a fresh wave of hopelessness, Mena nodded mutely, awaiting his wrath like a traitor would the gallows.
He was silent a moment as he studied her with bright eyes, his nostrils flaring with the force of his barely controlled breath. When he finally spoke, it was low and even.
“I am a man who has known little but suspicion and violence. I spent my life too much in the company of competitors or adversaries. I thought I’d been born under a bad star, cursed to live a brutal life. I, too, retreated to Ravencroft Keep, and there I found that I sought solitude, even from those who needed me. I was too much alone …
“And then ye came, and ye were in every room. In every corner of my every thought. I could not escape ye, Mena, and then suddenly, I didna want to. I found myself seeking ye out because somehow I knew that I couldna be apart from ye. It was the first happiness I ever knew to look into yer eyes. Ye taught me the meanings to words other than forgiveness and redemption. Desire. Yearning. And love. Ye are my blanket of stars, Mena, my reason to look to the heavens. My map when I am lost and my point of light when all is dark.”
Mena released her breath on a sob, and then another as Liam’s hard expression melted into the most tender regard she’d ever before seen. Relief didn’t seem like a strong enough word for the reaction coursing through her.
Had he said love? It was a word that had carefully eluded them until this moment.
Finally, he reached out and hauled her against his body, crushing his lips to hers in a searing, searching kiss. Branding her with his heat before pulling back to gaze down at her.
“I would make ye my wife,” he murmured.
The word froze in the air between them and Mena went rigid. She was barely a widow … not only that, she was a woman of scandal. All of London knew she’d been institutionalized. That she was barren. To marry her could be his social undoing. She’d been a miserable failure as a viscountess, how in the world could she become a marchioness?
Liam’s grip tightened as though he feared her escape. “I know I’m hard man to love, Mena. A difficult man to live with. I’m a flawed brute with a famous temper. But I want ye to know that I’d cut off my own arm before I’d strike ye. That I’d kill myself before I’d ever cause ye harm. Doona fear me, Mena.”
Her heart melted into a puddle of warmth in her chest. “Is that why you think I hesitated?”
“I remember how frightened ye were of yer own shadow when ye came to Ravencroft. And now ye said that yer experiences had carved ye away from yerself, but I think ye ken well enough who ye are now. I wouldna be the man who took away yer will, Mena. Still less that husband. I doona mean to ever govern ye. Yer life, yer desires, they would be yer own. I would lay claim to yer heart, lass, and to yer body and soul, as well. But ye see, I canna possess those things without losing myself. Ye own me, Mena. I would never be the master of yer will, but there is no question that ye are the mistress of my heart. And I’d make ye the mistress of the Mackenzie clan as well.”
Mena placed trembling fingers over his mouth to stop the flood. She could hear no more or her heart might burst. He was handing her a fantasy tonight, but reality awaited them when the sun rose.
“What about Rhianna and Andrew?” she asked. “What about the fact that I am a barren and disgraced woman? You must think about that before offering me your hand.”
He kissed her fingers and offered her a crooked smile that melted years from his savage, weathered features. “Well, everyone would think ye a bit daft to marry the Demon Highlander to begin with.”