“Arran,” Meghan said sotto voce. “Join me in the hall.”
“And leave all this?” he flashed a tight smile. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He wouldn’t. He’d rather stand, suffering in silence near Lucy, than part himself from her. And with the entire family otherwise occupied with Campbell, Arran looked his fill.
A flicker of disquiet ran through Arran. He cut his gaze away from Lucy—too late.
Meghan stared at him with a keen knowing that sent heat crawling up his neck.
“I wasn’t asking, Arran,” she said quietly.
His hand flexed at his side. He’d revealed too much. Nothing good could come of the conversation to come.
Giving his younger cousin a tight nod, he exited and strode a safe number of paces away.
Arran stopped halfway down the corridor, realizing belatedly where he’d stopped. He stared blankly at the carved oak panel.
Lucy’s guest chambers.
A muscle rippled in his cheek.
Would these eventually become the chambers she shared with Campbell? Or would the happy couple do so in the same rooms Campbell had called his here in McQuoid Manor.
Arran settled his arms across his chest.I do not want to do this. Not here. Not now. Not with Meghan. Not with anyone.
“Just say whatever it is you’d say, Meghan,” he said between gritted teeth. And be done with it. “I received word earlier about certain business in London I must see to before your wedding to the duke.” The Duke of Hartwell, and also Tremaine’s eldest brother. The joining of their families was to be cemented even further.
Meghan’s face knotted with emotion. At that, not the happy sort either of a starry-eyed bride to be on the cusp of a winter wedding.
Oh, hell.
He froze. He’d seen that same sentiment before—in her sister, Linnie, when Culross had been courting her, and then again when Tremaine jilted her immediately after their wedding.
Arran let his eyes fall shut for just an instant.
God’s blazes. Not again.Do not think of it. Do not even attempt to stick your bloody nose into matters of the heart…He’d done that before and what in blazes had that gotten anyone? Nothing that was good.
“Meghan,” he pressured.
“I see how you have been, Arran,” Meghan whispered, her voice trembling with emotion. “You’ve changed.”
“This?” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Well, at least she’d be honest enough to admit aloud that which everyone else in their family tiptoed around.
“I mean since Lucy arrived, Arran.” The fiery bite of panic lit his veins. “Well, before that too,” she continued. “Back when youand Linnie returned, but even more so now, only in adifferentway…”
Unnerved, he grabbed his fob and made a show of consulting his gold timepiece.
Meghan was unrelenting. “I see how you look at—”
Arran jerked his head up. “Careful.” He let the metal chain fall from his fingers and stuffed the ancestral piece back inside his jacket. “Not another word, Meghan,” he warned darkly, as he’d never been with her or any of the McQuoid and Smith ladies. For that matter, any woman. Nay.You were plenty cold to Lu—“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Arran glanced up and down the hall at the footmen stationed throughout.
What Meghan was all too willing to speak freely of would tear apart the family for good. There’d be no coming back from this.
“But I do,” she persisted, her voice so low he needed to strain to hear. At least she understood the peril of what she’d speak about and in this place of all places. Meghan lifted her palms. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I am not asking you to s-speak about it, Arran. I just want you to know, I know what it is like to…”
The dark look he fixed on the younger woman, too careless for her—or his—own good, sent her words trailing off.
