His Stolen Bride by Shayla Black

Author:Shayla Black
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Medieval
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Averyl lifted a quilt over her sleeping husband with shaking hands. Sleep softened his angled features, the hard slant of his mouth. He looked tired, and after speaking so much of the past he clearly hated, Averyl knew he needed whatever brief rest the ale could give him.

Disillusionment was exhausting, as experience had taught her. Hope, a brief, shining star against the backdrop of her life, always died a slow, wearying death, leaving behind only bleak reality. Learning to live without her mother, without her father’s approval, and most recently without a husband’s adoration, had taught her to understand such bitterness. Drake had learned, too, from his mother’s rejection, Murdoch’s cruelties, and the Clan MacDougall’s murder accusations.

His self-imposed distance made sense now. After Diera’s betrayal, he had sealed off his heart from any possible hurt that might mirror his beloved father’s. Drake needed love. Instead of feeling the hunger for it, as she did, he guarded himself with mail-clad barricades so tight he could not see that truth.

He seemed determined to believe he was utterly alone in this world and even more determined to convince himself that he preferred life in solitude. Only ’twas not true. Averyl saw now his great need, even as he continued to deny it.

A sad smile floated across her mouth. Drake could pretend evil, could try to convince her of his harmful intent. She knew better, indeed probably understood more than he wished.

With a light touch of her finger, she caressed his stubbled cheek. He needed the very comforts she sought: understanding, acceptance, to believe that someone cared.

’Twas her duty as his wife to provide them. But the burgeoning sentiment in her heart had only to do with a bond she now felt linked them. Aye, she understood him, knew him.

Cared for him.

’Twas a foolish feeling, one he would never return for many reasons, chief among them his scarred heart and her homeliness. Still, she clung to her notion like a treasured secret. She could treat him well when the rest of the world wished him ill and hope he held some regard for her. That seemed her only recourse, for to tell him of her sentiment would only drive a wedge between them the size of Abbotsford’s debts.

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