She met his regret with her own pain, nipping at his lips until she finally pushed him away.
“Go,” she whispered.
Alex nodded, blood a thumping pulse in his throat.
She stood still, fingertips pressed to her swollen lips.
Alex drank her in one last time. The wisps of silvery hair escaping to frame her face. The elegant swoop of her jaw. The endearing birthmark on her cheek. The pale pink of her bee-stung lips. The haunted pleading in her china-blue eyes.
It was too much.
He snatched her to him with a hand around the back of her neck, pressing one last plundering kiss to her mouth.
He pulled back and touched his forehead to hers.
“Goodbye, Lady Charlotte,” he whispered against her lips. “It has been a pleasure to know ye.”
Alex released her and backed up two spaces.
They stared at one another.
And then he nodded his head, pivoted, walked out the door, across the entrance hall, and into the waiting carriage.
He did not look back.
But the image of two tears spilling down her cheeks burned behind his eyelids all the way to London.
22
Trust you to do nothing by halves, Alex,” Rafe said, sitting back and taking a sip of his whisky.
“Aye. Ye have the right of it, Rafe,” Andrew said, shooting Alex a wan smile.
Ewan saluted them all with his own glass.
For his part, Alex sighed and took a sip of his tea.
The four men were seated in the library of Andrew’s Mayfair townhouse in London.
The only female present was Lady Isolde Langston, Andrew’s five-month-old daughter. Andrew bounced the wee babe on his knee, refusing to give her to a nurse.
I love her too much tae be parted,he had said earlier.
Isolde had adorably plump cheeks—verra kissable, Andrew pronounced them—and sported a shock of red hair that stuck out at all angles.
Jane cannot get it tae lay flat,Andrew had grinned with pride.My lass’s hair is just as stubborn as herself, I ken.
At the moment, Isolde was hell-bent on sticking her father’s entire thumb into her mouth. She gnawed at it with her four teeth, causing Andrew to wince with stoic verve.
Watching one of his best friends revel in his role as father amplified the emptiness in Alex’s chest.
Alex had arrived three days previously, his leg aching and his heart bruised from the journey.
How could one wee woman leave such an outsized hole in him? The logic of it made no sense.
And yet the vacuum of Lottie’s absence consumed an inordinate amount of his mental energy. She was a phantom limb, constantly aching and making her lack known.
“Truly, Alex, it is astonishing,” Rafe continued. “Ye hide your competitive streak well, but sometimes it comes racing to the forefront.”
