As he stalked the halls, he did a frantic, cursory search of each parlor he passed.
Even as her presence had healed him, he had hurt her—as was his way.
He’d committed enough wrongs. He would swallow one more lie, keep the truth from Campbell, and keep Lucy in Campbell’s life.
Even if it meant breaking himself open and bleeding out for it.
Grief sent him stumbling. Out of breath, his chest threatened to cave in on itself—and wanted to—just so he would not feel this…
Squeezing his eyes shut, Arran shot both palms out and gripped the brocade wallpaper.
He’d cut off all his limbs to keep Lucy from suffering.
But the realization…the implications…
Arran would bear witness to her union with Campbell.
His heart knocking against his rib cage, he forced himself upright.
Arran would stand in the pews as she marched past him, down the familial aisle all other McQuoid-Smith women had walked for generations.
He’d partake in a wedding breakfast as the McQuoids and Smiths toasted the beaming couple.
And he’d die inside. Not bit by bit. But all at once. A violent, blade-to-the-heart kind of death that he’d suffer over and over again.
But the agonizing moments continued to play out in his mind. Unrelenting. Unforgiving.
For there would come a time when Lucy’s supple waist—the one he’d spanned and gripped in his hands hours ago—would expand with a babe.
Lucy and Campbell’s babe.
Arran curled his fingers so sharply the recently installed silk wallpaper shredded under his hands.
Their child would be a forever reminder Arran wouldn’t be able to look away from—that Campbell would have laid claim not only to Lucy’s heart, but to her body as well.
The harsh rasp of his own breathing filled his ears, deafening. But not so powerful as to distract from the images continuing to parade across his mind.
Lucy, sprawled as she’d been under Arran in the kitchen—except this time, with a feather-tick mattress and silk coverlets beneath her back as Campbell came down over her.
Stop. Stop.
He silently pleaded with the devil in his head to cease his torture.
But the devil found cruel delight in exacting the worst misery upon the pitiable.
Campbell’s hands on her hips—where Arran’s had held her fast.
Campbell’s mouth descending to the soft places Arran had tasted first.
Lucy’s body yielding—not to Arran, but to another man.
The strangled groan of a wounded beast echoed from somewhere distant.
Arran clamped his hands tight over his ears to blot the sounds.
Me. It is me.
I am that savage beast.
