“I hope you and your bloodywaysare correct and that Lady Rhiannon will indeed be in attendance this evening,” he grumbled, feeling as if his white necktie were choking him and just narrowly resisting the urge to tug at it.
Before King could respond, Whit, Rhiannon, and their mother were announced.
His friend was no doubt giving him a smug look, but Aubrey didn’t bother sending so much as a glance in King’s direction. He was looking at Rhiannon. She was pale, he thought, though elegant and beautiful as ever. Her fair hair was plaited in a Grecian braid and secured at her crown, a few curls spilling free. Her gown was fashioned of gold silk with a leaf pattern, and sheresembled nothing so much as the goddess of dawn, bold and glorious.
She was so bloody beautiful, and seeing her again was like taking a fist to the gut. He thought he’d been prepared, but he wasn’t. He didn’t deserve this woman, but he intended to make her his anyway. Because King hadn’t been wrong.
Aubrey was in love with Lady Rhiannon Northwick.
He loved her, and that knowledge was terrifying. Without the haze of the gin clouding his mind, he had been granted the clarity he’d done his utmost to avoid. He should have damned well realized it that morning at the cottage before he’d left her like a coward, but he’d been too foolish to realize. He had believed she would be better off without him in her life.
He still didn’t know what he could offer her aside from his hand in marriage. The past remained as it was. He couldn’t change what had come to pass. He was the son of a madman. His father had murdered his mother and left Aubrey to find her body. He’d been sixteen, and he had done everything in his power to protect his mother’s memory and to keep the salacious whispers of what had happened out of the gossip’s mouths.
Fourteen years later, he was no better equipped to handle the wretched violence of that day than he had been then. But King had been right. Aubrey wasn’t like his father. He would never harm Rhiannon.
No, all he had done was break her heart.
And now, he had to do everything in his power to mend it.
“Godspeed, old chum,” King told him quietly.
Aubrey nodded, eyes on Rhiannon. “Thank you.”
CHAPTER 19
Hewas here.
Rhiannon had felt his presence before she had even looked across the crowded ballroom and found him watching her. The clash of his emerald gaze with hers was electric. Her heart stumbled. Her stomach upended.
Shock washed over her like a cold rain.
She almost tripped on her gown, but somehow, she managed to hold her head high and paste a serene smile to her lips as if she hadn’t a care in the world more pressing than who would fill her dance card. As if the man she loved, the man who had left her without a word and betrayed her with another woman, was not staring at her through the sea of guests.
Aubrey.
She had thought he was in the country where she had left him. She had hoped she would never have to set eyes on him again. But that hope, like the belief that he would return her love, was dashed.
How was she to see him and not run to him? How was she to pretend as if he were a mere acquaintance, when she had been in his bed, in his arms, when she knew his body as intimately as she knew her own? When she could be carrying his babe?
Her breathing was coming fast, and a slick sheen of perspiration trickled down her spine. The heat of the blazing chandeliers and the bevy of revelers was too much.Hewas too much.
Mumbling something to her mother and brother, Rhiannon hastened away, slipping along the edges of the crowd in search of a place where she might take some air. Hide from prying eyes. Where she could spend the rest of the night until enough time had passed so that she could politely take her leave.
Somehow, she found her way to a terrace and slipped onto it, walking to the walled edge and taking in gasps of cooler night air. She didn’t have long for her respite, however.
“Rhiannon.”
His voice was a low caress.
She stiffened, eyes closing as she summoned her strength before spinning to face him. He moved toward her, faultlessly elegant in a dark suit and crisp white tie, his burnished hair falling in rakish waves and his beard longer than before, though still neatly trimmed.
“Your Grace,” she forced out, dipping into a formal curtsy.
He was before her, his gaze searching hers. “It is good to see you.”
Her smile felt brittle. “I wish that I could say the same for you.”
His jaw tightened. “You’re angry with me.”
