Underneath The Mistletoe Collection. Marguerite Kaye

no doubts on that.’ Hattie looked at Isabella, adding, ‘But perhaps the lady would like to have the final say.’

      Isabella nearly jumped at the chance to escape this small room. ‘The lady would be happy to take a look.’

      ‘No.’ Dunstan shook his head. ‘The lady and I have other matters to attend.’

      After Hattie left the chamber, Isabella curled her fingers around the handle of the eating knife. At Dunstan’s raised brow, she drew her hand away from the utensil. Not that the short blade could do much damage, but gripping it would have made her feel safer.

      ‘What matters have we to attend?’

      Yawning, he stretched his arms out, over his head and then brought them back down. ‘There is still the matter of the bedding.’

      ‘No. We—’ Isabella pushed back from the table in a rush, knocking over the bench and choking on her reply.

      Dunstan’s eyes glimmered. But it was that familiar twitch of his lips that let her know he had once again intentionally led her mind astray.

      He rested his elbows on the table. ‘It is far too easy to unsettle you.’

      She glared at him, wishing she could find words vile enough to describe what she thought of his amusement at her expense. While his action reminded her of Jared, this man was not her brother, he had no right to tease her in such a manner and she wanted to tell him so. But instead, she righted the bench and sat back down at the table. ‘After all that has happened to me—at your doing—why would I not be unsettled?’

      To her horror, she heard her voice waver. Her hands shook, stomach knotted and her throat grew tight enough to make swallowing difficult. Isabella knew that now, since she was dry, warm, had gained a night’s worth of good sleep and had decent food in her belly, she was on the verge of losing the tight grip she’d kept on her grief thus far.

      She could no more help it than she could stop the sun from rising. It was her way—she could forge through a crisis with her wits about her for the most part, but once all was calm and back to normal, she became inconsolable, weepy and unreasonable. It was a weakness, a fault her mother had brought to her attention more than once. Like a silly fool she’d actually thought she would be able to hold back the heavy sadness weighing on her heart until she returned to the arms of her family. She sniffed back the threatening tears.

      Dunstan reached across the table and placed a hand over hers. ‘Isabella, look at me.’

      The unusual gentleness of his touch and his voice was nearly her undoing. She drew her lower lip between her teeth to keep it from trembling and lifted her head to stare at him.

      ‘Do you remember when you thought I’d turned the ship around to take you home and you knew we were heading south?’

      Unable to reply, she only nodded.

      ‘We did head south, just long enough for one of my men to depart the ship.’

      ‘Why?’ Her voice cracked and she wanted nothing more than to find a reason to grow angry and set her coming bout of sadness aside for a little while longer. Unfortunately, Dunstan’s calm, easygoing manner, while unfamiliar, wasn’t providing her an outlet for rage.

      ‘Everyone knows that Warehaven is Matilda’s half-brother and even though the empress is in Normandy, surely word of her brother’s condition would have reached her. So, I gave my man orders to quickly find news of your father and to return on the Lisette Reynolde.’ He stroked his thumb across her hand. ‘The ship docked early this morning.’

      Oh, no, she didn’t want to hear this from his lips. No. It was not his place, not his right to tell her that her father had died at his hands and that she’d been forced to wed her sire’s murderer.

      She gasped at the pain lancing through her heart and tried desperately to blink away the tears blurring her vision. The rage she’d been seeking should have sprung to life, but it hadn’t. Instead, fear—cold and empty—filled her with a dread she’d not known before this moment.

      Dunstan’s hand tightened over hers, as if offering comfort, and he reached up with his other hand to brush at the tears on her cheeks before cupping the side of her face. ‘Isabella, he is not dead. Wounded, yes, and from what I hear, angry as a crazed boar, but your father is not dead.’

      A roaring, like a gale-force wind, ripped through her ears, leaving her dizzy and muddling her mind. She shook her head, trying to clear the annoying howl. ‘He lives?’

      ‘Yes.’

      She drew her hand from beneath his and rose. Quickly, before she lost the ability to speak, she said in a rush, ‘I thank you for telling me. But if we’re done here...’

      As her words trailed off, Isabella felt his stare piercing her back, but she wasn’t about to turn around to face him. She stood in front of the narrow window, her hands pressed tightly into her stomach and stared through a gathering of tears out at the windswept sea.

      The scrape of the wooden bench moving across the floor let her know that he’d risen from the table. She closed her eyes tightly, praying he would just leave the chamber.

      ‘Are you dismissing me?’

      She nodded at his incredulous tone. Apparently it had been a long time since anyone had sent him away—verbally, or otherwise.

      Thankfully, his heavy footsteps headed towards the door, which he slammed closed behind him.

      Without waiting for more than half a heartbeat, she turned away from the window to throw herself across the bed, burying her face in her crossed arms. This ordeal was not yet over. So why was she suddenly falling into a such a muddled state now? Dear Lord, she’d not wanted this to happen, not now, not here, not until she was safely home, but she couldn’t stop the tears, or the gasping breaths from escaping.

      A firm hand on the small of her back surprised her until she realised it belonged to Dunstan. His nearness tore a strangled plea from her. ‘Please, just leave me alone.’

      Richard sighed and sat on the edge of the bed. ‘That’s not going to happen.’

      Her odd behaviour moments ago had caught him off guard. It wasn’t until he’d left the chamber and taken three steps away from the door when he’d realised what she was doing.

      He’d heard her gasping sobs before he had come back into the chamber. The twisting of his gut had nearly kept him from pushing the door open, but he managed to swallow his unnerving response to her tears.

      What was he supposed to do? Agnes’s tears had fallen nearly every day, but he doubted that a single one of them had been anything other than a means of manipulation. However, it had taken him months to figure that out and in the meantime she’d made him suffer the pangs of misery.

      For months he’d been left feeling confused, frustrated and consumed by guilt. It was hard to determine which gut-wrenching emotion unmanned him the most. Regardless, he had no intention of going through that again.

      Richard drew his hand along Isabella’s spine, knowing that whatever he did now would set the stage for their future. He didn’t want more endless months of tears and guilt, but Isabella of Warehaven was not the type of woman who easily dissolved into tears for little reason. Quite the opposite, in truth. He’d seen her fight to hold them in more than once.

      With a silent curse, and a fervent hope that she wasn’t toying with him on purpose, he eased further on to the bed and pulled her up against his chest.

      She stiffened, then tried to shove him away. ‘What are you doing?’

      Her broken words tore at his heart and he had no desire to determine why that should be so. The only thing he wished to determine right this minute was how to make her stop crying.

      He held her tightly against him, not permitting her to escape. ‘Tell me what has upset you so. I thought word of your father’s well-being would make you happy, not sad.’

      ‘Of