Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-seven

The mantel clock chimed twice. Sabrina started violently, earning her a perplexed look from both Enid and her aunt. Neither of them could understand why she insisted on sitting in her new wheelchair when any one of the upholstered chairs in the salon would have been more comfortable.

Oblivious of their concern, Sabrina turned the page. She’d been reduced to reading one of Enid’s lurid pamphlets and was less than fascinated to learn that Mrs. Mary Toft’s prolific production of rabbits had ceased after being threatened with a gruesome female surgery by the most notorious male midwife in London. A prison sentence for Mrs. Toft was forthcoming.

The clock ticked away the minutes. Sabrina peeked at her reflection in the polished base of the candelabrum sitting on the venetian table at her elbow. Under pretext of scratching her ear, she eased a tendril loose from her stern topknot and unclenched her jaw, making a conscious effort to soften her expression.

A stranger stared back at her. A woman, shy, uncertain, lips parted in trembling awareness of her own vulnerability. She bore no resemblance to the brittle creature Sabrina had come to expect.

Discomfited by the realization, she smoothed the skirts of her pale jade dressing gown. It was one of her prettiest, but she hadn’t worn it for Morgan, she assured herself. He probably wasn’t even coming. He’d only been teasing her as he’d always done. He was as insufferable a man as he’d been a boy.

Enid interrupted the serene nip and tuck of her knitting. “Shall I read to you, cousin?”

“No, thank you,” Sabrina replied absently. “Why should I be read to when I have two perfectly good eyes?”

Enid and the duchess exchanged another puzzled glance.

A maid tiptoed into the salon. She offered Sabrina afternoon chocolate from a silver tray, her chapped hands trembling as if she expected to have the steaming liquid dumped over her head. As soon as Sabrina took the porcelain cup, the servant crept toward the door.

“Beatrice.”

The maid cringed to a halt. Two bright spots of color appeared on her dumpling cheeks. “Aye, miss?”

Sabrina smiled at her. “It’s quite good. Thank you.”

Bea gaped at the young miss, amazed at her transformation. Somehow she’d always thought of the master’s niece as sallow and plain. But she was actually pretty without her lips puckered as if she’d been sucking lemons. Bobbing a hasty curtsy, Bea rushed out, eager to share her discovery with the other servants.

Laying the cup aside, Sabrina licked a chocolate mustache from her upper lip like a nervous cat. The hands of the clock swept away the precious minutes until she felt her heart must surely be beating to its rhythm. She feared the hollow chime that would signal the half hour might stop it altogether.

A masculine voice reverberated in the corridor, its rich tones speeding Sabrina’s heart anew. She dropped the pamphlet, then snatched it back up, studying its pages without realizing it was upside down. She peeped over the top of it as Uncle Willie escorted Morgan into the salon, slapping his broad back as if they’d been friends for years. Sabrina suppressed a shiver, fearing their amity did not bode well for her.

Morgan once again played the solicitous gentleman with flair. He fawned over Aunt Honora until her ringlets were dancing with delight and complimented Enid on the skill of her knitting. When he swung his smug charm toward her, Sabrina ducked behind the pamphlet, wishing herself invisible.

He bent to bring her hand to his lips. The pamphlet fluttered to the carpet.

He brushed his lips over her knuckles, maddening her with a taunting flick of his tongue invisible to the others. The disappointment that clouded his sunny expression would have wrung tears from a rock.

“Why, Miss Cameron, I’m afraid I’ve been remiss. I should have told you to dress. We’re going out today.”

Sabrina stiffened, beset by fresh images of disaster. Pointing fingers. Mocking glances. Sly whispers. Why would a magnificent man like Montgarry dance attendance on a cripple?

“Out,” she echoed dumbly, as if he’d suggested they charter a carriage and fly to the moon. “I don’t go out.”

“You do now.” His smile was so pleasant and his eyes so completely devoid of patience that Sabrina could already see her mangled body lying in a London ditch. “I shall wait while you dress.” Bracing his hands on the arms of the chair, he leaned forward and whispered, “Unless, of course, you’d prefer I assist you.”

His words invoked visions of blinding clarity: sun-browned hands unlacing her corset to reveal the pale, tender skin of her back; petticoats collapsing in a deflated heap; heated lips brushing her thigh as deft fingers peeled away her lacy garters. Sabrina struggled to catch her breath, afraid to examine why they were all visions of disrobing, not dressing.

Aunt Honora’s trill broke his spell. “… quite improper without a chaperone.”

Morgan straightened, his smile as smooth as a swallow of fine brandy. “Nonsense. I’m sure Lady MacLeod would be more than happy to accompany us. As a matron and widow, her reputation should be beyond reproach.”

Uncle Willie’s cheek twitched with the nervous tic he was developing when faced with Morgan’s skewed but irrefutable logic. “Yes, well, my man, I suppose if you say so…”

In an uncharacteristic fit of self-preservation, Enid took charge of the situation. Casting aside her knitting, she swept across the salon and began to roll Sabrina’s chair toward the door. “If the earl will be kind enough to wait for us, I shall help my cousin dress.”

They all ignored Sabrina’s plaintive wail of “But I don’t want to go with him. He’s a lunatic!”

Sabrina endured Enid’s fussing in sullen silence. Using every maternal skill at her disposal, Enid gowned, coiffed, and fluffed Sabrina, even daring to press a kiss to her taut cheek before delivering her into the hands of the enemy.

“Judas,” Sabrina hissed as Morgan rolled the chair toward the side door being thrown open by a beaming footman.

Sabrina had her revenge when they emerged into the bright sunlight and Enid came face-to-face with a liveried and bewigged Ranald. It had obviously never occurred to Enid that Morgan would forgive a crime as heinous as Ranald’s and actually allow the scoundrel to accompany him out of the Highlands.

She turned white, then bright pink. Ranald gaped at her rounded stomach in open astonishment.

Morgan’s amused murmur underscored their shock. “I didn’t tell him he was going to be a da. I thought he’d rather hear it from you.”

Sabrina allowed herself a waspish grin, but her mean satisfaction was short-lived. Morgan snatched her out of the chair, holding her as tightly as if he feared she would bolt, all the while knowing she couldn’t. Their noses brushed as he settled her on the leather seat.

“Bully,” she muttered.

“Brat,” he countered.

Enid tilted her own nose skyward and swept in after Sabrina while Morgan hooked the cumbersome chair on the back of the carriage. He climbed inside, folding his imposing form on the opposite seat with lazy grace.

“Why don’t you just hang a placard on the door?” Sabrina suggested as the vehicle rolled into motion. “ A HALFPENNY TO SEE THE FREAK . They might even publish a pamphlet on me.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” His insolent gaze raked her from the dangling lappets of her cap to the pointed toes of the slippers peeping out from beneath her flounced underskirt. “You’re worth at least tuppence.”

Sabrina folded her gloved hands in her lap, trapped into uneasy silence by the glittering challenge of his eyes. As they rounded a corner, Ranald’s face popped up at the carriage window. Enid snapped down the embroidered shade.

All of their gazes shifted upward at the great noise overhead as if a giant spider were clambering over the roof. Ranald’s face appeared at the opposite window, his nose pressed flat against the glass. Enid ducked behind her fan.

The carriage rolled to a stop. Even in the closed vehicle the air was permeated by the tangy smell of the river. The chatter and bustle of a crowded thoroughfare surrounded them. Sabrina craned her neck to find herself staring up at the forbidding edifice of the Tower of London.

“How fitting,” she said dryly. “Puts one in mind of Castle MacDonnell, although I dare say it’s a trifle cozier.”

“Would you have preferred Bedlam?”

“I would have preferred bed . My own bed at my uncle’s house.”

He slanted her a wicked grin. “A pity you didn’t tell me sooner. It could have been arranged.”

Sabrina’s fists clenched. The wretch was even more infuriating than she remembered.

She held herself rigid as Morgan climbed out of the carriage and lifted the chair down to the stone bridge built over the ancient moat. Disdaining Ranald’s hand, Enid clambered down after him, her pretense of indifference wearing thin beneath Ranald’s pleading gaze. She folded her plump hands over her stomach, looking acutely miserable.

But Morgan left Sabrina little time to brood on her cousin’s unhappiness. As he lifted her gently to the chair, she gripped his forearms, her nerves strumming a discordant tune. People streamed around them. Laughing. Gawking. Whispering. Just as she had feared they would.

A red-haired little boy tugged his haggard mother to a halt and pointed. “Look, Ma, there’s somethin’ a matter wi’ the pretty lady.”

Sabrina bowed her head. At least children had the decency not to whisper.

Morgan saw the color breach Sabrina’s cheekbones as the careless stares of the crowd pierced her armor of defensiveness.

He tucked the lap rug around her legs, his voice resonant enough to be heard even over the curious murmurs of the crowd. “Will that be to your liking, your highness?”

Sabrina’s head flew up. A tendril of genuine hatred curled from her heart. How dare he mock her now! But as she searched his eyes for treachery, all she saw was their sunlit flame burning steady and bright. It was a sight she had long ago forgotten—kindness without pity, compassion without the cloying burden of sympathy. For the first time she felt the joke was not on her, but between them.

The crowd was now staring with open awe and respect, speculating aloud on whether she might be foreign royalty come to visit their beloved Tower. An elderly gentleman paused to explain that the odd wheeled conveyance was probably a variation of the more common sedan chair borne by two footmen.

Words of gratitude caught in Sabrina’s throat. All she could manage was a regal smile for Morgan and an imperious wave toward the gate.

Ranald’s face fell when Morgan skirted the armory, where they might have examined the sword that cleaved off Anne Boleyn’s head. Enid looked crestfallen when he disdained the Jewel Office, where they could have beheld the shimmering glory of the imperial crown. But as he rolled the chair into a nearly deserted yard off the western entrance, where each stone archway was fitted with an iron lattice, Sabrina knew it had been his destination from the beginning.

Morgan hadn’t brought her to see weapons or treasures. He’d brought her to the Tower menagerie to watch the white bear shambling around his den, to laugh at the monkeys scampering free over the courtyard, to marvel at the lion, whose haughty stare was ruined by a yawn of immense proportions. Morgan’s delight at seeing such creatures for the first time was infectious. Sabrina caught herself watching his face more than the animals, starved for a glimpse of that rare genuine smile.

As Morgan fed a handful of nuts to a raccoon, Sabrina felt a prickle of unease at her nape. The scarlet-garbed keeper was dozing by the gate. Ranald and Enid stood a few feet away, casting shy glances at each other. The shadowed archways revealed nothing. She shrugged the feeling away. It had been so long since she’d been out among people that she was given to fancy. It was probably one of the onlookers from outside stealing a peek at the mysterious “royalty.”

She felt a shy tug on her skirt and looked down to discover a tiny monkey. She was so captivated with the little fellow that she didn’t see Morgan give Ranald a signal behind her back.

Ignoring her sputtered protests, Ranald captured Enid with one arm and the bored keeper with the other, leading them toward the far end of the yard. Enid’s dismay turned to fascination as the keeper began to regale them with the tale of an unfortunate viscount who had wandered too close to the lion’s cage.

“Two fingers?” she echoed in delighted horror. “Did the lion gobble them up or spit them out?”

Morgan waited until they were out of sight before dropping to one knee at Sabrina’s feet.

Sabrina started violently as a pair of warm masculine hands slid beneath her skirt. “What do you think you’re doing?”

“Your legs have just been sitting for months. We’ve got to get the blood stirring again.”

Sabrina gazed at his inclined head as his powerful hands massaged her calves, his fingers firm and sinuous against the silk of her stockings. A stubborn strand of hair had escaped his queue. She resisted the urge to brush it back, to test its tensile strength between her fingertips. His deft ministrations were certainly effective. Blood was pounding in her heart, thrumming through her ears, melting through all the sly, greedy pathways of her body.

Everywhere but her legs.

“You’re wasting your time,” she snapped. “I cannot walk.”

Morgan tipped his head back to meet her gaze. “Are you afraid of walking, lass? Or afraid of falling?”

As Sabrina stared into the quicksilver depths of his eyes, she feared she was already falling. There was still no trace of pity in them, nothing to feed the mewling monster that had lodged itself in her soul.

The pads of his fingers fanned in a hypnotic stroke against the back of her calf, glided over the racing pulse behind her knee, wandering up until they caught between the edge of her garter, brushed like feathers against the naked skin above. Morgan’s breathing lost its rhythm. The knowing chatter of the monkeys broke their reverie.

He snatched his hands down and began to rub her calves, chafing her flesh so briskly that a helpless “Oh!” escaped her.

He shot her a guilty look. “Did I hurt you?”

No, but you will . Biting her lower lip, she shook her head.

Without bothering to explain what he planned, he circled behind the chair, bracing his hands beneath her arms, and lifted her. She dangled in the air like an expensive doll. He eased the chair away with one foot, then lowered her until her slippers touched the stones.

Then he let her go.

Sabrina clenched her fists, standing but refusing to attempt so much as a step. “I shan’t play your silly game.”

Morgan gave her a little push. She listed forward like an unbalanced bowling pin. He caught her by the starched bow of her gown and set her upright again.

“There we go. That’s a good lass. One step is all I ask for today. Let’s try it again, shall we?”

She pinched her lips in a mutinous line and locked her knees. He gave her another gentle shove. This time he wasn’t quite quick enough to catch her. She toppled forward, forced to break her fall with her gloved hands.

Morgan’s smug silence echoed louder than the amused howls of the monkeys.

As Sabrina lay there, studying the stones beneath her hands, she said in a small, tight voice, “They really ought to sweep more often. The dirt is atrocious.”

In the following week Sabrina was to become acquainted with every inch of flooring in London. The smooth, cool expanse of marble at Westminster Abbey, the luxuriant Persian rugs of the shops on Ludgate Hill, the mosaic tiles at the Academy of Music whose pattern she would later trace in expert detail on a stray scrap of her aunt’s stationery. Only the thick grass of the newly restored pleasure garden at Vauxhall afforded her aching rump any relief.

And always above her, behind her, surrounding her—Morgan, pine and sandalwood, persistent, yet distant, his manic good cheer in the face of her failed attempts to walk making her want to scream.

Morgan MacDonnell was twice the monster the first Earl of Montgarry had been. Halbert only took his victim’s skin; Morgan wiggled beneath it with diabolical skill. He became her own green-eyed Satan wrapped in finely tailored knee breeches and lace-edged cravats. He taunted her, prodded her, rolled her through a genteel hell of his own devising.

This was the Morgan she remembered from childhood—stubborn, crafty, mischievous, his eyes never losing their amused glitter at her expense. His humor was brittle, his sarcastic ripostes leaving scratches so invisible, she never had the solace of crawling off to lick them. His mocking smile haunted her dreams.

She despised him.

She loathed him.

She lived for the moment when he would stroll through the door of her uncle’s town house and start her heart thundering again.

She was no longer allowed to languish on the divan in her dressing gown. She was expected to sit, fully dressed, spine rigid and muscles throbbing, on the hard wooden seat of the wheelchair. No matter how horrid, surely not even Halbert could have devised such a torture for his hapless enemies.

Morgan called each afternoon at two without fail, courting her aunt’s and uncle’s goodwill, charming a smile from Enid, infuriating Philip Markham, whose own calls were thwarted when he arrived only to discover Lady MacLeod chaperoning her cousin and the enigmatic earl on some new adventure.

London society buzzed with gossip about Morgan’s slavish attentions to her. He escorted her to card parties and afternoon theatricals. At the balls they attended, he remained steadfast at her side and was never caught stealing so much as a yearning glance at the dancers. His tender benevolence toward one as unfortunate as herself elicited adoration from the women, admiration from the men, and hissed retorts from Sabrina.

More than once when they were out, Sabrina felt again that wary prickle at the back of her neck. She would turn only to find nothing more than a fleeting shadow, an illusion of darkness in the bright spring sun.

One afternoon as Morgan’s carriage rounded a curve, she saw a bearded man and a veiled woman standing on the teeming corner. A startled cry welled in her throat, but by the time she could turn around, they had been swallowed by the crowd. Morgan simply lifted an eyebrow as if to comment upon her sanity. She settled back in the seat, shaken, and wondered if she wasn’t more homesick than she realized.

She still could not fathom why Morgan chose such public liaisons. By the end of the second week they’d visited every amusement in London save for a public hanging and Bedlam. Surely it couldn’t be scandal that concerned him, she thought. Any man who had grown up under the cloud of notoriety cast by Clan MacDonnell probably didn’t give a fig about what others thought of him. Besides, it was her reputation at stake, not his.

Between Morgan’s visits, Sabrina fumed, too obsessed with her new tormentor to waste her malice on the servants. She began to massage her legs each morning upon arising, rubbing them until the blood rushed like spring sap through her veins. She attempted her own simple steps in the privacy of her bedroom. The servants soon learned to ignore the odd thumps, crashes, and oaths that came from behind her locked door at all hours of the night as she met with no success.

By the beginning of the third week, Sabrina was starting to panic.

Morgan simply wouldn’t go away. No matter how nasty her temper, how acid her wit, he kept popping up on the doorstep. He shrugged away insults that would have sent the servants into tearful fits.

In the bleak months since the accident, she’d managed to drive a wedge between herself and everyone she had ever loved—Enid, her brothers, even her parents. But Morgan stood immovable in her path, six feet three inches of taunting male, giving off a flame so volatile, she feared it might thaw even her frozen heart.

She lay in her cold bed one night, heart pounding, body seized with trembling at the thought of him.

Her hands clenched into fists. She had failed once to drive him away, but now she’d had months to practice her art. All it would take was a few well-placed digs, a dagger between the ribs in a vulnerable spot.

Her plan should have given her some satisfaction. Instead, she pulled the quilts up over her head, burrowing like a small, frightened animal into a darkness of her own making.

“But, miss, her grace asked me to tell you—” The maid slammed the door just as the vase crashed into it and shattered.

Sabrina heard the slap-slap of fleeing footsteps. She had been terrorizing the servants all day, knowing word of it would reach Morgan before the night was done.

She swung back to the mirror, the first weapon in her rebellion against him. She had painted her skin stark white, emphasizing the hollows beneath her cheekbones and the rouged bow of her lips. Her hair was drawn up so tightly that it gave her eyes an exotic slant. A frivolous scrap of eyelet crowned her topknot. Frothy lappets trailed from it like gossamer cobwebs. She knew very well that her filmy white dressing gown edged in flounces of lace made her look frail and pitiable, as fragile as the Meissen vase she’d just destroyed.

She saw her future in the flat blue eyes of the woman in the mirror. A future without Morgan. A future without hope. A future spent wrapped in this shroud of girlish lace, her hands withered, her skin shriveled over sunken bones. The neighbors would speak of her in whispers. That eccentric maiden niece of the old duke’s. Came to spend the spring and never left .

For she could never again return to the Highlands. Would never even dare to dream of the mist hanging low over the heathered hills, the cascade of a waterfall tumbling through a lush glen, the heady scent of wild roses clawing their way up a barren hill.

The door behind her inched open a crack. Stefan eased his head in, obviously prepared to snatch it back in the event of flying pottery. “Mama sent me to fetch you. Are you ready, coz?”

“Aye,” she said softly to her reflection. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Sabrina reclined on the plush divan, propped up by a mountain of fluffy pillows. A champagne glass dangled from her pink-tipped fingers. She had charmed the champagne from one of the guests, since the petrified servants had taken to giving her a wide berth. She doubted if any of them would have offered her a glass of water had she plucked a candle from one of the standing candelabrum and set herself afire.

She scanned the milling crowd. Still no sign of Morgan. Aunt Honora was fluttering about, the dim light giving her the appearance of a frazzled angel. She clapped her plump hands for all to take their seats, as excited as a child over her private theatrical.

Sabrina suppressed a groan as a slender man garbed in alternating patches of white, red, and green took the stage. She had never cared for pantomime and was only too familiar with the oft-told comedy of Harlequin and his shrewish wife, Columbine. Brian and Alex had acted it out for her birthday last year. Her chief amusement had been derived from how ridiculous Alex’s hairy knees had looked peeping out from under one of her mother’s petticoats. She felt a pang of nostalgia at the memory.

A stir by the door caught her attention. Without realizing it, Sabrina abandoned her languishing position and craned her neck. A blade of raw yearning stabbed through her as Morgan worked his way through the crowd, flashing his devastating smile like a weapon.

The guests whispered behind their fans and snuffboxes, more entranced by the imposing earl than by the story unfolding on the stage. Sabrina wondered if he realized how effective his late entrances were. Or how taxing on her poor heart.

As he nodded his greetings, his hair gleamed gold in the candlelight. Knowing she might never have another chance, Sabrina drank in the sight of him. When he had first arrived in London, she had believed the tailored clothes had given him his confidence. But now she realized he had always had the grace and bearing of a king. Not even a tattered plaid and bare feet had been able to hide it. She bowed her head, steeling herself against the emotions welling in her throat.

When she looked up, Morgan had been brought to a halt by a frowning footman. The man’s nervous gaze darted toward the divan. Sabrina collapsed against the pillows, drawing the back of her hand across her brow in a gesture of abject frailty.

She was rewarded by the briefest slip of Morgan’s mask of civility. His jaw clenched in the brooding scowl she remembered so well. But he recovered quickly, giving the footman an encouraging wink and winding his way toward the divan.

Ignoring the chair beside it, he sank down at the foot of the narrow couch, narrowly missing Sabrina’s toes.

She jerked them out of harm’s way and sneezed. Dabbing at her eyes with a lace handkerchief, she said, “I do believe your shaving soap is vexing me, sir.”

“It could be the pillows. Perhaps you sucked a feather up your nose.”

Morgan stared fixedly at the stage, fighting the urge to give Sabrina a blast of his temper that would scatter feathers from London to Glasgow. A woman seated in front of them swiveled her long neck and peered over her fan, reminding Morgan of why he had chosen a public forum for their battles. He did not trust himself alone with Sabrina. He was afraid of giving in to his guilt, of coddling her as all the rest had done.

He was even more afraid of giving in to his desire, of surrendering to the dangerous temptation to still her shrewish tongue with a thrust and parry of his own.

That temptation was even stronger with her wrapped in a gauzy confection more suited for trysting with lovers in her bedchamber. The lush scent of lilacs drifted from her skin, making a mockery of the clean, sharp roses he remembered. He wanted to lay her back on that divan in front of them all, rake his fingers through that silly topknot, part her creamy thighs and bury himself deep…

The audience roared as a leering Harlequin tossed a shrieking Columbine over his shoulder. Morgan couldn’t say he blamed the man. He was beginning to understand the terrible temptation of using brute strength to master a woman against her will. Shaken, he clenched his fists, blinded to the antics on the stage by a rush of new fury and old shame.

Sabrina’s foot lashed out, striking his hip. “Scoot over! I can’t see. You’re blocking the stage.”

A loud “shush!” came from the row where Aunt Honora was seated. Several more necks craned in their direction. Harlequin paused in his silent tirade to shoot them an annoyed look.

Morgan reached behind him and caught her foot. His thumb played over its sensitive contours with ruthless skill. “A bit stronger today, aren’t we, dear?”

Her foot immediately went limp in his grasp. “It was probably just a spasm. They’re quite painful, you know.”

Instead of releasing her foot, Morgan pressed his thumb deeply into the valley between its pads, probing with a suggestive rhythm that quickened Sabrina’s breathing. He was so attuned to her that he could feel it like a whisper against his back.

Her foot came to life again. She jerked it away from him.

“Your spasms seem to be worsening,” he said. “Perhaps it’s not too late to reconsider amputation.”

Hoping to buy some time to compose herself, Sabrina said, “My throat is sore. Would you fetch me some champagne, please?”

But a lazy crook of one of Morgan’s fingers brought a footman scurrying over. “The lady would like some champagne.”

With obvious trepidation the footman proffered a glass to Sabrina, his hand shaking so hard that the golden liquid sloshed over the rim into her lap.

“You clumsy wretch!” She dabbed the stain with her handkerchief. “My uncle should fire the lot of you.”

Still staring at the stage, Morgan shot out one laconic word. “Apologize.”

“I’m sorry,” the footman blurted out.

“Not you. Her.”

“Her?”

“Me?” Sabrina said in unison. “I should think not!”

“You were insufferably rude to the man. Now, apologize.”

“Pardon me, my lord,” Sabrina said with scathing sarcasm. “I’d forgotten the MacDonnells were the last bastion of good manners in the Highlands. If he’d have spilled champagne on you, you’d have probably just whipped out a pistol and shot him.”

As the confrontation on the divan showed signs of escalating into full-scale warfare, the terrified footman hastened away.

Morgan swung around to face her. Sabrina recoiled from his thunderous expression. Even Harlequin and Columbine paused to gape as Morgan’s voice rose to a roar.

“I won’t tolerate your bloody tantrums!” Fury broadened his accent, sending the r’s rolling and the g’s flying. “Puir wee lass! Puir pathetic princess! It was easy enough to play angel of the manor when everythin’ you’d ever wanted was shoved into your greedy wee hands, wasn’t it?”

“Not everything,” she whispered, but he did not hear her.

“But one knock to your precious Cameron crown and you turn into a whinin’, snivelin’ brat. Showed your colors true enough, didn’t you?” He leaned forward. She pressed herself into the pillows, but there was no escaping his righteous wrath. His voice softened, audible only to her. A smile of savage good humor lit his eyes. “If I’d have known you were goin’ to be such a bitch about survivin’, I’d have shot you instead of Pookah.”

Sabrina’s hand crossed his face with a solid crack. The crowd gasped, totally aghast. Morgan didn’t even flinch. He was as immovable as a rock. Sabrina’s desperation grew.

She slapped him again, hard enough to leave the mark of her hand on his cheek. He just stared down at her, this man who could crush her skull between his bare hands, the anger in his eyes replaced by a quiet pain that had nothing to do with her blow. His face was so beautiful, so resolute—like an angel hewn of marble.

Its chiseled planes swam before her. Warm tears swelled in her eyes. She was terrified they would spill down her cheeks and she would cry before them all.

The words tore from her raw throat, resounding shrilly through the silent room. “Why won’t you just let me be? What’s wrong with you? Aren’t you man enough for a real woman?”

Morgan flinched then, almost imperceptibly, the sun-crinkled lines around his eyes betraying him. He straightened slowly, as if a great weight rested on his shoulders, and Sabrina knew she had finally succeeded in committing an unpardonable sin. She had humiliated him publicly, and to a MacDonnell there was no worse affront.

His eyes were as distant as the Highland mists she would never see again. He bowed from the waist, the restrained dignity of the gesture damning them both. “My apologies if I offended you. Good evening, Miss Cameron.”

As he wound his way stiffly through the crowd, Sabrina knew he had not meant to say good evening, but good-bye.