“There’s one thing I’m not understanding,” Rabbie said, leaning both elbows on the table. “Why did she get the idea ye were dead?”

Maddie paused. She’d never needed to think through this part. “Well, I . . .”

“There was a farewell letter in my sporran,” Logan said. “To be sent in case I died in battle. I thought I’d lost it, but evidently I’d posted it by mistake.”

Rabbie’s brow wrinkled. “But that explains why she stopped writing you. Why’d you stop writing her?”

Callum put in, “It isna obvious? He believed she’d lost interest. So many of our sweethearts did.”

“He should have had more faith in me.” Maddie reached over and squeezed Logan’s hand. “You dear, silly man.”

He gave her a stern look: Now you’re pushing it too far.

A prickle of awareness went through her. She didn’t doubt that the moment they were alone, he was going to push back.

Chapter Nine

Suddenly, dinner couldn’t last long enough.

It was with a heavy sense of foreboding that Maddie bid her aunt and Logan’s men good night. As she and Logan mounted the stairs together, she felt the unspoken tension between them reaching new levels.

“I had Becky make up a proper room for you,” she told him, pausing at the door of her bedchamber. “It’s just down the corridor.”

He shook his head. “We’re going to share a room, lass.”

He opened the door and walked through, making himself at home.

She said, “Where I’m from, most married ­couples don’t share a bedchamber.”

“Well, you’re in the Highlands now.” He flung his boot to the corner. It landed with a thud. “And here, we do. If you think I suffered through that bloody poem of yours just to leave you at the threshold, you’re gravely mistaken.”

He pulled his other boot loose and set to work on his clothing next.

Maddie couldn’t help but stare. She wondered if he had any idea how attractive he was right now, just going about the everyday business of preparing for bed. His every motion fascinated her.

He pulled his shirt over his head and cast it aside. The muscles of his shoulders and back were perfectly defined by the firelight.

He moved to the washstand and poured water in the basin, then went about soaping his face and swabbing his neck and torso with a damp cloth.

He would smell of that soap if he joined her in bed and pulled her close. Soap and clean male skin.

She shook herself.

“You really need your men to believe in this, don’t you? Our marriage.”

He rinsed his face, then pushed damp hands through his hair. “They’ve had a rough time of it, marching from one hellish place to another, then coming home to find they’ve no home left. I dinna want them to worry they’ll be forced to move on from here.”

As always, Maddie found his devotion to his men distressingly sympathetic, but she could not let it distract her from the topic at hand.

“You,” she said, “are a complete hypocrite.”

He answered her while brushing his teeth. His speech was muffled. “How do you reckon that?”

“You would hold me over the flame for telling a lie when I was sixteen. Yet you have also deceived those around you, and for the same length of time.”

After rinsing his mouth, he turned to face her. “I did not lie. I merely . . .”

“Failed to contradict mistaken assumptions. For years. It is the same thing, Logan. Deceit by omission, if not an outright falsehood. You let those men believe we’ve had a relationship, and now you are every bit as invested in maintaining that lie as I am. Do you know what I think? I think you’re all bluster. I could refuse to cooperate, turn you out of the castle, and you’d never take those letters to the scandal sheets.”

His voice darkened. “It would be a mistake to underestimate me.”

“Oh, I don’t underestimate you. I can see just how deeply you’re invested in your pride. How much the worship of those men means to you.”

“It’s not their worship. It’s their trust. And yes, it means everything to me. I promised them that if they stood by me on the battlefield, they’d return to a life here in the Highlands. I am unashamed to lie, cheat, steal, or blackmail, if that’s what it takes to keep that promise.”

He advanced on her, and Maddie fell back a step, then two, in retreat. Until her legs collided with the edge of the bed. He had her cornered.

“And speaking of traits we have in common,” he said, sliding one finger along her collarbone. “I’ve learned a thing or two about you. I noticed how you flirted with me downstairs.”