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She stumbled to her feet. She wanted to throw up. “All those people on the ship—”
“—are safe. Not one life was lost.” He stood, grasping her shoulders in his strong, steady hands, forcing her to look at him. “I swear it.”
Mary Jenkins, little Alice, her books, all her things… “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”
“It should,” Griff said grimly. “I did it for you.”
Oh, God.
“Which?” she flung at him. “Saved their lives or wrecked the ship?”
A long pause, while their eyes warred and her heart broke all over again.
“Both,” he admitted.
She was no longer numb. Numb was too easy. This…this was agony.
“You didn’t do it for me.” She was shaking, shivering, splintering apart inside. “You did it because your damned lord Conn wanted a damn teacher.”
“The fate of our children was at stake. The future of our people.” Griff’s face was like stone. His voice grated like iron. “Nothing else could be of significance compared to that. You were needed.” His eyes pleaded with her for understanding. “And you have been happy here. Emma—”
“But I didn’t have a choice! Those poor people who lost everything on the ship didn’t have a choice. I may be human and mortal and insignificant, but I know we deserve a choice.”
He was looking at her as if she were the monster, as if she were a strange, rare beast who might suddenly sprout fur and flippers and swim away.
“A choice,” he repeated.
Her chest felt tight. She stuck out her chin. “Yes.”
He nodded slowly. “Very well. I will speak to my lord. Tomorrow, after you have said good-bye to the children, I will take you wherever you want to go.”
Emma’s mouth dropped open. Her chest caved in.
Why? It was what she asked for, what she wanted, what she had always wanted. Wasn’t it? A measure of control over her own life. “You are not serious.”
His mouth was a hard, tight line. “Never more so.”
“But…” She struggled to organize her thoughts. Her words. “What about the school? The children? They still need a teacher.”
“There are other teachers. Conn will have to find one.”
She had been warm and angry. Now she was cold all over, her hands, her spine, the pit of her stomach. “And will you wreck her ship, too?”
He glared back at her, all the heat and frustration and anger she had felt burning in his eyes, and she said, “Or will you seduce her into doing what you want, the way you did me?”
“It’s no concern of yours,” he growled. “Or mine, either.”
“What does that mean?” she snapped, still goading, still wanting…What?
“There are other teachers,” he repeated. “There is no other woman. Not for me. When you go tomorrow, lass, wherever you go, I will follow you.”
Emma looked stunned.
He might as well have clubbed her over the head, Griff thought. Her mouth opened and closed several times like a fish’s, and her eyes and nose were red from the weeping she had done and the weeping she had not allowed herself to do.
He should not have found her beautiful.
He should not love her.
