could be.”
“But you are not sure?” Duncan muttered, not liking where this conversation was heading or the anxious looks she kept sending him. “We will search every bloody room if need be.”
Isabel opened her mouth to speak.
“If you know what is good for you, do not even ask me to leave.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she remained silent.
Against the throbbing in his arm, he forced himself to walk by her side, her tantalizing scent doing nothing to improve his foul mood. Neither could he ignore the natural grace with which she walked, or how the fabric clung to her, revealing the soft swells of her breasts.
“And if the Bible is not in any of his rooms,” he pressed, “where do you suggest we search next?”
“I am unsure.” Isabel didn’t look toward Duncan. He was furious, how could he not be, but he didn’t understand how his mere presence was tearing her apart. All he could see was her betrayal.
God, she hated living this lie, how even now, with her father’s life at risk, she couldn’t tell Duncan the true reason she’d walked away from their betrothal. Or of Frayser’s threat to Duncan’s life if she revealed the truth.
She didn’t doubt Duncan’s abilities with a sword. Given a fair fight, he’d outmaneuver Frasyer as he had over and again throughout their youth. But she knew Frasyer. He wouldn’t fight fair.
Over the years, she’d prayed to find a way to set things right, then she could tell Duncan everything. After three years, no answer had come.
Only the passage of time.
And regret.
Until this moment, it had not mattered that she’d never visited Frasyer’s private room, that he’d not wanted her except as a reminder of what he’d taken from Duncan. She’d expected to conduct the search in private, her unfamiliarity of his personal living space going unnoticed. How could she fool Duncan? At least before he had arrived, she’d narrowed Frasyer’s personal chamber down to one door.
“The one at the end.”
“Of course,” he muttered under his breath. “We would not want his chamber to be close.”
In silence, she walked beside him and noticed he seemed to favor his left arm. “What is wrong with your arm?”
Not answering, he pulled his hand closer to his side as he continued forward. Then she noticed he winced.
“You are hurt!”
“It is naught but a wee scratch.”
The stubborn fool, with an ego to match. “Try not to bleed to death before I can tend to the wound,” she couldn’t help but add, appeased when his mouth tightened.
“You would like that.”
She didn’t reply. She needed to keep her thoughts on finding her mother’s Bible and escape. Not on Duncan or the love she’d lost. Though, with him so close, how could she not help but wonder how their life might have turned out if they’d wed?
Or not want him with her every breath.
A muted shout of a guard echoed from below.
Another, father away, replied.
Duncan opened the outer door and nodded for her to enter ahead of him. Thankful for any excuse to change the topic, Isabel hurried inside. She didn’t miss his cool assessment of her, or the determination in his eyes to learn her secrets.
Why would he even care about her relationship with Frasyer? How could he after she’d broken their vows to wed and, from all outward appearances, willfully occupied Frasyer’s bed?
What if by some twist of fate, Duncan still did have feelings for her?
Instead of joy, the possibility resurrected the old disappointment that had never quite faded. That of a home and children with Duncan.
That of love.
And of forever.
Her heart ached with the knowledge that such dreams never would be. Their time together would be limited to a few hours at most. Then they would go their separate ways.
Taking a steadying breath, Isabel halted inside. The scent of chamomile mixed amid the rushes filled her every breath. The welcoming glow of the wax candles greeting her did little to ease her nerves.
She stepped past two large chairs that graced either side of an elaborate hearth. Ensnared by the beauty, Isabel paused before the chiseled stone. Engraved within the quarried borders stood two falcons, their wings arched high. She turned. Beneath the window sat a small, gilt table that held several unopened bottles of wine. Tapestries decorated the plastered walls, each as elaborate as those sprawled tastefully upon the floor. The bold colors of the decoration exuding a proud elegance, one befitting an earl.
Except there wasn’t a bed.
They’d entered Frasyer’s sitting room.
Duncan’s gaze swept the ornate chamber. “The luxury suits you,” he said, a trace of anger sliding through his words.
Turn toward me, she willed, her heart breaking. Look and tell me what you truly see. Wealth matters not to me. Only you. It has always been only you.
As much as she wanted to admit the truth, she remained silent. To try and convince him otherwise would further prod his suspicions of her reason for leaving him for Frasyer. God forbid Duncan’s anger if he ever discovered the truth.
He walked around the chamber. “You think he has hidden the Bible here? There are no chests, no compartments. Unless he planned to hide it in plain sight.”
Heat stroked her face as she tried to think of an explanation for her lack of knowledge about the room. A fool could see the Bible couldn’t be concealed here.
Except she hadn’t known otherwise. How could she. With her own chamber at the top of the stairs, she’d never been allowed entry into any of Frasyer’s private rooms. Her presence on the fourth floor was for appearance only.
“I was unsure.” Another lie. God, she was sick of them. “His bedchamber is beyond that door.” Isabel gestured toward an adjoining entry on the other wall and prayed she was right.
It should have occurred to her that unlike her own chamber, Frasyer would insist on an elaborate suite of interconnected rooms instead of a single chamber. As with everything else, he thrived on luxury, a show of his wealth.
Duncan crossed to the door and opened it. Fury hardened the sharp angles of his face as he surveyed Frasyer’s bedchamber.
She drew in a slow breath, aching at what he was thinking, even though for the last three years she was the one who’d encouraged him and everyone else into believing her actions were self-serving.
Not even her father and Symon knew the complete truth of her private arrangements with Frasyer.
“We need to hurry,” she urged.
“Aye,” he drawled, his burr rich with sarcasm. “I have no desire to remain in your lover’s chamber longer than necessary.”
With a heavy heart, she followed him inside. As with the adjoining chamber, wax candles fragmented the blackness of the chamber, framing within their tainted glow the massive bed centered against the back wall.
A bed Duncan believed she warmed.
Isabel tried not to focus on the large bed. Or on how the thick posts arched upward in a magnificent display, each adorned by swaths of crème linen that connected and curtained the massive oak frame.
In horrific fascination, her gaze was reluctantly drawn past the golden ties that secured the yards of the finely woven material and offered a blatant view of Frasyer’s intimate domain.
Bile rose in her throat at the notion