“Nay, Arran.” Lucy stared at the floor and her tangle of hair fell across her cheek, which was good. She could not face him. “Ye dinnae,” she croaked. “Ye been a perfect gentleman. Good. Kind.”I cannot let this go on…
A warm, powerful hand came up and brushed aside the sweep of curls. Her heart fluttered like the wings of a thousand butterflies in concert.
“Stop.” The thick rumble of his baritone resonated within her, bringing her eyes closed. “I’ve been a boor. I need you to know why.”
Lucy didn’t deserve the warmth of his touch. This had gone on too long. She had to tell him the truth before he went sharing the deepest parts of himself with a deceiver. “Ye dinnae owe me any explanation, Arran.” Taking his hand in hers, she reluctantly drew it from her face.
This time, she made herself look him in the eye. “Ye’veeveryreason to be wary of…” Me. She couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud. “A s-stranger to yer family,” she said, tripping over herself. Continuing to display the perfidy of her spirit where this man was concerned, Lucy couldn’t bring herself to release his long fighter’s fingers from her smaller, more fragile, hand.
A strained laugh emerged from his throat. “Lucy.” Arran gave her palm a deep, reassuring squeeze. He dropped his brow to hers; their eyes locked; their breaths mingling. “Will you stop defending my behavior and allow me to speak?”
Then it hit Lucy square in the chest.
Arran needed to speak. Not so much for her…but for him. Selfish as she’d been with him and his family, it’d be even more so to refuse him the chance to share when he so clearly yearned to—needed to.
Lucy gave an uneven wobble of her head.
While he spoke, they remained with their foreheads touching. “I invited a stranger within my family’s fold once before.”
Somehow, she kept still, knowing the unfurling story to be one of pain that’d changed him, and understanding when hertime here with the McQuoid-Smiths ended, he’d have even more reason to be wary of outsiders.
“A gentleman named Culross. He wasn’t a stranger to me,” he murmured. “We were long-time acquaintances. We got on well at university, went our separate ways, but reunited in a business partnership, and became friends.”
He lifted his mug in a mocking salute. “What could be a finer union than one between a close friend and Linnie? The lady had several Seasons. She was unwed and wished to find a grand match…”
Linnie?
Arran saw the confusion in Lucy’s eyes.
“Campbell’ssister?” he clarified, frowning slightly.
The fires of the hearth cracked and hissed in the background as the devil toyed with Lucy.
“Aye.” Her cheeks burned hot. “Ah recall.” At least, she recalled Arran’s earlier mention of Linnie this evening.
“Linnie’s always been special.” His expression grew wistful. “She’s as sweet as the linnet’s song she was named for.” Just speaking about the young woman expelled the self-loathing he wore like tarnished armor about him. “Bright-eyed. Romantic. Innocent.” His expression twisted, raw and anguished, and the force of his suffering slammed into her, stealing her breath. “Or she was.” His hard lips formed a grim set. “I introduced her to Culross. They got on well. Unbeknownst to me, Linnie was in love with a man who had been like a brother to me.”
“A man who’dbeenlike a brother?” Her muscles seized up with dreaded anticipation.
“Aye.” Arran raised his glass for a quick drink, but not before Lucy caught the way his features spasmed. He buried a ragged chuckle into the contents of his mug. “Captain Jeremy Tremaine and I were friends since we were smallest lads, but I…” His gaze moved past the top of Lucy’s head, his eyes distant, glinting withcynicism, anger, and pain. “I committed the greatest betrayal a fellow captain can.”
They sat in silence a moment, each sipping while the gingerbread scent fully took form—sweet and sharply at odds with the ugliness that hovered in the air.
“You want to know what sin I’m guilty of?” he jeered.
Despite the heat that poured from his body to hers and the fires burning in the kitchen, Lucy trembled with cold. Did he intentionally try to scare her off the rest of his telling so he could protect Lucy? Or himself?
Lucy bit the inside of her cheek hard, alternately wanting to know everything and nothing about a story that’d inflicted such pain upon him. Arran, however, needed to share with Lucy and that mattered most.
Lucy wouldn’t pry his secrets from him, but she would gratefully take what he was willing to confer. “Only if you want to tell me, Arran.” She kept her tone solemn, her gaze somber.
Her words seemed to touch a lock within him, and it gave way. A guarded part of him yielded.
“I proposed a partnership between our lines and Captain Culross. Tremaine was reluctant.” He grimaced. “Morethan reluctant, but eventually he conceded. On our first collective mission, we faced a battle at sea. A brutal one. We were three captains at cross-opinions of how to navigate the conflict. We took it to a vote. I voted in line with Culross.” A bitter laugh shook his broad shoulders. “Just one of many mistakes I made where the gentleman is concerned.” Tremaine’s ship suffered a catastrophic hit, and it went into the sea that night. He was mad with grief.” As he spoke, his voice grew more and more graveled, like shards of glass mixed with rocks. “Tremaine insisted I leave him.” Arran closed his eyes, but not before she caught the glitter in his eyes. “That night, when fire raged upon the waters, he begged me to let him go down with his ship.”
Lucy went absolutely still.
Her heart rattled in a sickly beat against her ribcage.
