Every head turned.
Oh, dear God.
“Och,” her voice emerged on a frog’s croak. “There’s been a misunderstanding.”
“There most certainly has.” A gentleman of older years and distinguished bearings swept forward. He took Lucy’s hand and gave it a warm pat. “It is more than that. The fact my nephew and godson should fail to say anything to me or his mother about his betrothed. It is insupportable.”
The Earl of Abington.
Lucy could hardly determine what was more shocking: that an earl was not instantly repulsed by her lowly station…or that he cared more for the supposed slight of an unannounced betrothal.
She placed a trembling hand to her chest. “Forgive me, my lord. I am not…” Her gaze again came to rest with the menacing stranger’s.
Everything she meant to say vanished.
The man’s eyes—cold, sharp, impossibly focused—pinned Lucy where she stood. Suspicion tightened the hard planes of his face, but there was something else there too… Something that stole the breath from her lungs.
A piercing whistle cut across the courtyard.
“Bring her forth this instant!”
The command came from the regalest woman Lucy had ever seen. With skin as fair as the falling snow, the older woman could command the winter storm. She possessed dark hairthat’d been artfully arranged and accentuated with diamond thistle pins that glimmered in the night.
“That is my mother,” Miss Fleur McQuoid whispered at Lucy’s side, confirming what Lucy already knew.
“Does Lucy have a surname?” the countess asked, a blend of kindness and steel.
“LeBeau,” Uncle Tasgall supplied. “Miss LeBeau.”
The countess looked Lucy over and then nodded. “Miss LeBeau,” she murmured. “Come then, join us inside.”
Before Lucy comprehended anything, she was surrounded on all sides.
Warmth. Noise. Acceptance she had never known.
As much as she adored Aunt Nettie and Uncle Tasgall, she had been their caretaker for years.
Perhaps that was why she failed to correct their mistaken belief.
As she passed the surly gentleman—the one who still had not spoken a word—her gaze caught his.
Up close, she saw the truth of those eyes: an inky, storm-dark blue, so deep it nearly consumed the black of his pupils.
Cold. Suspicious. Unyielding.
Heart hammering, Lucy jerked her gaze forward and allowed herself to be guided past the menacing McQuoid.
Chapter 4
Strategically positioned at one entrance of the guest chambers occupied by a Miss Lucy LeBeau, Arran folded his arms and stood in rigid stillness, a sentry carved from stone.
The McQuoid-Smith family hadn’t learned their bloody lesson.
Correction.
With the exception of Arran, no one had learned a bloody thing when it came to letting strangers into their fold.
Last time, it had been Arran who had convinced the close-knit McQuoids to trust an outsider.
