“They really are quite delicious,” Fleur said, availing herself of another. She offered the chintz porcelain plate to Lucy. “You must have one. Before Quillon goes eating them all.”
Lucy quietly demurred.
“Hey, now,” the young man chimed in indignantly. “I had three.” The wicked young man plucked three more from the tray Fleur set down. “Now, six.” He flashed a roguish wink Lucy’s way, and she saw glimpses of a charmer he’d be, and saw them very clearly because of the roguish winks and smiles belonging to Arran.
Oh, God.
She squeezed her eyes shut to keep pain at bay.
She finally understood irony, because it had just settled squarely in her life. All these years she’d spent admiring one man, fancying herself in love with him, when he had always been a stranger. And Arran McQuoid, whom she had known mere days, she understood far more deeply. A nobleman by birth, a self-made man by action, fiercely devoted to family.
“Cook didn’t bake them,” the Marchioness of Winfield declared, prompting a wave of confusion.
The earl who had gone back to reading, lowered his paper with a noisy rustle. “Well, the mystery must be solved, especially when they are this good. Who did?”
Lucy’s skin prickled under the heat of Arran’s stare.
One of them had to speak.
Just as it hadn’t made sense for Arran to remain in the kitchens last night, neither could he possibly take credit for baking dozens of biscuits. Not when Lucy had just finished cleaning up when the first servants began trickling in.
“Lucy did,” Lady Winfield piped in as proud-sounding as any baker introducing his mentor. “I went in search of a middle of the night snack and discovered Lucy there.”
Silence swallowed the table.
And she wished it would consume her, too, and spare her all this attention.
There was to be no quarter.
“Oh, come, Lucy,” The young marchioness appeared determined to bolster Lucy before her big, noble family. “You mustn’t be modest.”
Modest?
If only the family had an actualclueabout Lucy’s character deficits.
Lucy forced herself to speak. “It is something I did often with my mother and father,” she managed. “A recipe passed through our family for generations. I know it is hardly done for a lady to bake or cook, but—” She caught the truth before it slipped free…but I was not raised as a lady.
Lady Cassia, Marchioness of Winfield, laid a warm hand over Lucy’s. “It is perfectly fine, Lucy. You have outdone yourself. We are grateful.”
Lucy expected pity from the rest of Arran’s family. Instead, they regarded her with wonder.
Must they all be so kind? Because she found herself in an impossible situation: she had not only fallen in love with Arran McQuoid, but with his entire, boisterous, warmhearted family.
It was too much.
“If you will excuse me,” she whispered.
Rising so quickly her knee knocked the table, she turned and fled the room.
The McQuoid-Smith families remained quiet only as long as it took for Lucy to leave. Then, all around him, everyone was talking all at once.
Ravaged, tortured, Arran followed Lucy’s flight from the breakfast room.
It took everything within him to not take flight after her—to not seize her wrist, pull her back against him, and demand she look at him.
Accusations went flying across the table.
What have I done?
