His Heart's Home (26 page)

“Duncan?” 

The sound of Ciaran’s sweet anxious voice stoked Duncan’s anger hotter.   How could Sean have been so vile to a woman who was so tender and gentle?

“Duncan, say something?” Ciaran begged, but Duncan
couldn’t
say anything.  He was far too furious with Sean to speak.  The things he
wanted
to say lodged in his throat and choked him.  He eased his wife off his lap and began pacing the room like a caged animal. 

Ciaran watched her husband with wide eyes.  She shuffled backwards on the bed until her back hit the headboard Duncan had made and then she
curled herself into a little ball.  She had known telling Duncan the truth would only make things worse!  He was disgusted, revolted - he slammed his fist into the wall and Ciaran couldn’t help but give a small shriek of terror.

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed.  “I’m sorry, Duncan!  Please,
please
don’t hate me

“Hate you?” he echoed her, then turned and saw the frightened state she was in, and he swore under his breath.

“Christ, Ciaran, I don’t hate you!” he said gruffly.  “I hate
him
for what he did to you, but I love you, you know I do.” 

A few tears trickled down Ciaran’s cheeks. He edged towards her slowly and she steeled herself not to shy away.  He was still radiating anger, something that she had never experienced before with Duncan, but she tried not to let it frighten her.

“I would have killed him if I’d known what he’d done to you!” he swore violently.  “God, I wish I had known you back then,” he said hoarsely.  He sat beside her and wrapped a protective arm around her shoulder, drawing her against his chest.  Ciaran sank against him, sank into all that male strength and power he had laid at her disposable.  “I would have saved you.  I would have taken you away!”

Ciaran smiled tremulously, but she felt compelled to say, “I doubt your real wife would have liked that very much.”

“My
real
wife?” Duncan frowned, confusion was etched across his face, but Ciaran couldn’t bring herself to look up at him.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, although she burned with jealousy whenever she thought about the woman that Duncan had
truly
loved.  “I shouldn’t have mentioned her.  I know it’s not my place.”

“What are you- not your place?  Ciaran, what do you mean?”

Ciaran dashed her eyes with the back of her hand and tried to calm down.  It did no good to be jealous of a dead woman.  She supposed that, in much the same way, it couldn’t really help them in any way to have Duncan so angry with a dead man either, but that
did
make her feel a little better, however unchristian it might be. 

When she looked at her husband she saw a man who wanted to drag Sean out of hell just so he could have the pleasure of sending him back there again… he had to- he had to love her
a
little
bit to want to do that for her, didn’t he?

“I wish-” she said quietly.  “I wish I could have come to you as pure and unspoiled as she did…” she murmured, and then gave a shuddering sigh. 

The first Mrs. MacRae would have been a virgin on her wedding night, Ciaran had no doubt about that… she would have been complete.  She would have had a perfect body to give Duncan along with the whole of her heart.  Duncan had
her
heart!  He had stolen it from her long ago, but she still felt unworthy at times.

“What
are
you talking about?” Duncan murmured, gently running his fingers through Ciaran’s hair.

“I- I don’t know really,” she sniffed, fresh tears falling.  She decided to take a gamble, to risk everything on her next confession
.  “I just love you so much, Duncan.  I just want to know that I have a  piece of your heart!” she sobbed.  “Just a
little
piece!”

“Ciaran- Ciaran, you’re crazy,” Duncan whispered, his face was lined with disbelief.  “You have it all!” he told her fiercely, gathering her up in his arms as he spoke, and crushing her against his chest.

“But you love Aileen!” Ciaran cried brokenly.

Duncan froze.  He hesitated, should he speak
? Should he explain about his first marriage to Ciaran?  Would he hurt her more than she was already hurting, or would it help her to understand things?

“Ciaran
, I did love Aileen,” he confessed, and tried not to hear her sharp, pained intake of breath.  “But I think you’re imagining my first marriage was something that it wasn’t…”

“What do you mean?” Ciaran gasped, trying to recover from the huge blow of hearing Duncan confess her worst fears.

“Aileen was Thomas’s fiancée before he died.”  Ciaran’s head snapped up in shock.   She stared at Duncan with teary eyes and waited for him to continue.  “If Thomas had lived, Aileen would have married him and I- I don’t
think
I would have regretted it,” he said slowly, as if he was just working through these emotions.  “Thomas’s death was what bound us together you see.”

Ciaran wasn’t sure that she did see
.  “But you still loved her.”

“
I did, with all my heart- but that was something that grew over time,” Duncan said carefully.  How could he make Ciaran understand that just because he had loved another woman it didn’t mean his heart wasn’t hers now?  He had spent so much of his first marriage living in the shadow of his dead brother.  He couldn’t bear to put Ciaran through the same thing now!  “And-” he wavered, conscious that he might be wronging Aileen memory, but then he plunged on regardless “-and that was before I knew you.”

Ciaran drew
in a startled little gasp.  Could Duncan truly mean what he was telling her?  Could he really love a woman like her?  “I don’t-” she said hesitantly, but before she could finish that sentence Duncan had claimed her lips in a silencing kiss.  Only when she was too breathless to speak did her husband free her mouth.

“I don’t ever want to hear you putting yourself down again,” he said fiercely.  “You’re my wife and I love you.  You are the most precious thing in my life.”

“And the children,” Ciaran corrected him, but a small smile was beginning to blossom on her lips.  She was starting to believe him…

“You gave me the children,” Duncan murmured, stroking his fingers over her face.  “You came into my life and made me want to live again.”

“Duncan-!” Ciaran gasped.

“No, listen,” said Duncan urgently, as though he had to speak quickly now that he had found the words.  He had picked up her hand, but hardly seemed conscious of the fact he was mapping little circles onto her skin with his fingertips.  “I had started to think my life was cursed.  I lost so many people I loved.”

“Aileen and Thomas?” Ciaran prompted gently.

“Aye, and my parents, and at Sheriffmuir almost every one of my friends.”

Ciaran had heard the other Scots mention Sheriffmuir between themselves sometimes, but she had never known Duncan to talk about the battle.  She had worked out for herself this was where he had lost his beloved brother though, and that this was when the fortunes of his ‘clan’ began to unravel.

“I watched my home burn… I was hunted out of my own country… I accepted the fact I would never be a father… I buried Aileen…” Duncan’s voice was haunted and low as he listed off the tragedies, but then he lifted his head to look at his wife, and there was a warmth and light shining in his eyes.  “And then I met you.  I had to go through hell to find you, Ciaran, but if I had to do it all again I would.”

“Duncan!”
Ciaran choked.  There were tears glistening in her eyes and her heart was beating almost painfully in her chest.  “Me too,” she whispered.  “Me too.”  She wrapped her arms around his neck and clung to him tightly.  “All the bad things in my life, as terrible as they were, they led me to you,” she told Duncan breathlessly.  “So- so even if I could, I won’t change a thing, because it would mean losing you!”

“Ciaran, love-” he paused for a moment so that he could bestow a fierce kiss.  “My angel,” he murmured adoringly, gently stroking his hands
down her body, as if to reassure himself that she
was
really real.  “I’m going to spend the rest of my life trying to make you happy,” he promised her ardently.

Ciaran couldn’t help from giggling.  “You don’t have to
try!”
  She sighed happily and snuggly against his chest.  “Just love me,” she whispered, still smiling.  “That’s enough, that’s all I ever needed…
for as long as we both shall live.”

Duncan shook his head and grinned.  “For much longer than that…”

THE END

Also by Stephanie Sterling

The MacRae Series:

A Beautiful Lie (Lachlan and Muira – Book One)

A Year and a Da
y (Ewan and Cait – Book Two)

On a Cold Winter’s Night (Novella)

Runaway Love (Maisie and Alec – Book Three (Coming Soon!))

Another Lifetime (Duncan and Aileen – Book Four)

His Greatest Treasure (Cora and James – Book Five)

Stand Alone Novels:

The Perfect C
andidate (Modern Romance)

Just One Kiss (Regency Romance)

Written as Chelsea Scott:

Hungry For More (Modern Romance)