He did not pine for women, but he'd spent a good part of last night sleepless and aching. And it was all this Englishwoman's fault.
"I am not torturing you."
She was the one torturing him with his need to touch and taste when he knew he should do neither.
She finished her breakfast before saying, "I saw you shake your head at Marta. You wanted her to tell me she could not give me any chores to do when we both know there must be dozens in a keep this size."
He could not believe she was acting offended because of that. "You are not a servant in my household."
"I would rather be a servant than sit around all day doing nothing."
"Is that why your hands are chapped from work? Because you did not like doing nothing in your father's household?" He had noticed that yesterday and wondered at it.
She winced, tucking her hands into the folds of her skirt. "My hands are not unsightly."
"I did not say they were."
"You did."
He sighed. "Will you argue over everything I say?"
"I don't mean to."
"Then stop."
"You make me angry."
"I had noticed."
She cast him a disgruntled look. "Then why don't you stop?"
"I am laird."
"Is that your answer for everything?" She sounded so incensed, he had to bite back a smile.
"It is my answer when it is the right answer."
"Which seems to be all the time, in your opinion," she grumbled.
He stepped away from the bed. He had accomplished his purpose. She had eaten. Now, he had other more important duties to attend to.
She jumped up and grabbed his arm. "Please… do not leave me here again with nothing to occupy my time."
"What would you have me do?" he asked out of curiosity.
"At the Sinclair holding, I helped Cait oversee the running of the keep. I did the same with my stepmother in my father's home as well as seeing to many chores myself. I am used to being busy."
"I have a housekeeper and women to help her."
Emily's face fell and her small hand dropped from his arm. "Very well. I will not keep you from your duties any longer with my unimportant problems."
"They are not unimportant," he denied, even though he had told himself that very thing only a second before. "I simply do not know what you would have me do to fix them. I will not have you treated as a servant and you must wait to see your friend until she and Drustan emerge from his quarters."
Which did not mean Lachlan could not think of anything to occupy Emily's time. He could, all too easily, but it had nothing to do with work and everything to do with getting her naked. He did not think she would appreciate his solution.
"At least let me stay in a room that is not a prison."
"You said you preferred to be kept from my people." She'd been adamant on that point.
"I was overwrought yesterday. I wasn't thinking clearly when I ran from you."
"Why?"
She looked at him as if she could not believe he had needed to ask. "I was kidnapped, then I discovered the only friend I have in the Highlands was to be forced into marriage to exact revenge on her brother, then you made me sit in that tiny boat to cross water so deep there is probably no bottom while your brother glared at me as if I were his worst enemy. When we landed on dry land, my emotions got the better of me."
"The water frightened you?" he asked, wondering if she would tell him the truth.
Knowing an opponent's fears made them vulnerable to you and she did not realize he knew hers already. He'd been shocked when he heard her and Cait talking about it. He had not smelled Emily's fear on the boat and he should have. Humans were not trained to mask their scent.
"Yes."
"Why?"
"I don't want to die by drowning."
"A sound plan, but that does not explain your concern when you were in a seaworthy boat."
"The boat could have tipped. A wave could have crashed over the bow and knocked me into the water."
"I would have pulled you out."
She stared at him, an odd expression on her face. Then she sighed. "I don't expect you to understand, but I don't like the water and the sea terrifies me."
"Why?"
She looked away, her face schooled into an impassive mask that impressed him all the more for the fact that her features were usually so expressive. "It does not matter."
"I will be the judge of that. Tell me."
"You are even more demanding than my father."
"Did your father instill the fear of water in you because he was afraid you would drown?" It was not such an uncommon practice, but it was a foolish one. Better to teach a child to swim than to teach them fear.
She did not answer and she did not move. There was a quality to her stillness that bothered him. It was too absolute. She was barely breathing.
"Emily?"
She looked at him then and her violet eyes were filled with an agony he could not stand.
Without considering his next actions, he sat beside her on the bed and then pulled her into his lap. It was a measure of her inner turmoil that she did not fight his hold, but burrowed against him as if hiding from her own thoughts.
It shamed him that while she was so obviously upset, his body reacted to her nearness with primitive intensity. He wanted her and his sex was soon rigid with the need to take her.
Forcing his thoughts to other paths, he repeated, "Tell me."
She shook her head.
"Why not?"
"It is long past."
"But haunts you like a specter of the night."
She shuddered. "Yes."
"Tell me and I will vanquish your ghost."
Emily marveled at his confidence. Did he really think it was that simple? "You are a man, not a magician."
"I am a laird."
"There you go again, thinking that's the answer to everything," she said teasingly, but her voice was not as light as she wanted it to be.
"It is." No doubts. No questions. Just absolute certainty in his own power.
Was he right? Could telling him cauterize the wound that had bled inside her for so long? She had never told anyone, not even Abigail, why she was so wretchedly afraid of the water.
"My mother died giving birth to a boy child who also died." Memories crowded her mind and she curled instinctively further into Lachlan's strength and heat. "Until then, my father loved me and called me his precious daughter. He was kind to me and smiled often. He loved my mother very much. His grief at her death was terrible. And his affection for me turned to hatred. He blamed me for being born a girl and for Mama's death in the attempt to give him a son and heir. He drank wine by the pitcherful the first months after her passing."
She could still remember the stench of it on his breath, his clothes. She'd been a small child, hurting and frightened by her mother's death and her father's withdrawal.
"One night, I went to him… I wanted to comfort him. I wanted him to hold me and call me precious as he had before she died. But he did not want my comfort and he abhorred my touch. He started shouting at me, telling me how useless I was. He said that when animals give birth to useless offspring, the babies are drowned. That I should have been drowned at birth, I was so useless."
Her throat convulsed and she had to take several breaths before going on.
"He stumbled to his feet and grabbed me. He carried me like a sack of wheat, his big arm pushing into my stomach. It hurt. I was crying and begging him to let me go, but he acted like he didn't hear me. He kept muttering about drowning a useless pup. He carried me outside. It was dark and there was no one around. He took me to the small pond behind the keep. The water was dark and black. Terrifying. I started screaming, but no one came. He gave an anguished roar and threw me in."