“Chloe,” he repeated softly.
“Oh!” Something in her suddenly, simply snapped, and she spun about to face him. Plunking her fists at her waist, she shouted, “I love you! Okay? But I didn’t want to say it that way, I wanted to say it just right and you
ruined it.”
Scowling, she leaped from the chair and stormed from the hall.
• 22 •
Dageus stood motionless in the great hall.
That had been singularly the most unforgettable moment of his life.
When he was his da’s age—in the event he had the luxury of living that long—he had no doubt he’d still be replaying the vision of Chloe perched on that chair before the shield, practicing how to say she loved him, just right.
At first when he’d come abovestairs to fetch fresh candles for the chamber library, and he’d walked into the great hall, what she’d been doing hadn’t made sense to him. He’d genuinely thought she was gushing over the artifact.
He teased her, and only then had he noticed the tension and misery emanating from her. She’d begun to babble, which was always a dead giveaway that she was upset. When she’d given him her absurd spiel about positive reinforcement or some such nonsense, he’d realized what she’d really been doing.
Practicing how to tell him she loved him.
How utterly adorable she was.
She loved him. She’d said it. Of course she’d shouted it at him, but a man could deal with that when the woman loved him more than the whole world was big.
He laughed exultantly, turned sharply on his heel, and hurried off to catch her. And to tell her that, since he was bigger, he was fair certain he loved her more.
But it didn’t work out quite that way, for he didn’t catch her until she was almost to the bedchamber.
And when he caught her, grasping at the billowing skirt of her gown, he tugged harder than he’d meant to and the thin silky fabric ripped. Clear up the back. And she had nothing on beneath it. Only those luscious shapely legs and the round curves of her beautiful behind. The fabric ripped clean to her nape and his thoughts turned instantly primitive and wild.
She glanced back at him, looking shocked, and though he suspected he should assure her he hadn’t meant to do that, he couldn’t seem to manage a word. Her declaration of love coupled with all that naked rosy skin had rendered him witless.
Growling low in his throat, he scooped her into his arms and planted his mouth firmly over hers.
She was stiff at first, but in a few moments she was kissing him back passionately.
“You didn’t have to rip my dress,” she said plaintively when he let her breathe. “I love this one. Nellie worked on it for days.”
“I’m sorry, lass,” he said somberly. “ ’Twas an accident, lass. Sometimes I forget my strength. I mean to be gentle but it doesn’t come out that way. Can you forgive me?”
She sighed, but nodded and kissed him again, locking her arms behind his neck as he carried her toward the door of their bedchamber.
“You have, without a doubt, Chloe, the most lovely behind I’ve ever seen,” he purred, shifting her in his arms to splay his big palm over the twin curves of it.
“Oh!” She squirmed in his arms. “I tell you I love you and that’s what you say?”
He silenced her with another kiss, and kicked open the bedchamber door.
“And I’d love you even if you didn’t,” he said softly.
She melted in his arms.
“And I think that no man has ever been told he was loved in such a memorable fashion, and I shall always treasure the memory.”
She smiled beatifically. “Really? You don’t think I’m the biggest geek in the world?”
He tossed her to the bed and slipped a dirk from his boot. “I think,” he said silkily, as he gripped the bodice of her ruined gown in his hand and slit it down the front, laying the gown neatly in two halves, “that you are perfect exactly as you are and I wouldn’t change one thing about you.”
He tossed the torn dress from the bed and tugged his shirt over his head.
She watched him with wide eyes, then laughed. “Nell is really going to wonder what happened to my dress.”
“I’m fair certain Nellie will never ask,” he said huskily, as he stretched his body atop hers. “I’ve seen a gown or two of hers in the rag heap.”
“Really?” Chloe blinked, pondering Silvan in a new light. He was a handsome man, and it was from his genes that Dageus and Drustan had come. Behind his scholarly mien, she suddenly realized, Silvan MacKeltar probably concealed a lot of things.