Roderick thought for long moments. “That’s what makes you special, I suppose.”
“He’s not that open with me anyway. You just happen to catch us when I’m forcing him to answer some dumb question or another of mine. He’s not revealing all his secrets to me or anything crazy like that. My grandmother says only love can soften strong men.” I shrug. “But she also says I should beware tha wicked deep, for the fairy lover lures young lasses with love’s last kiss to drown in the shallowest of waters.” I twirled my biggest toe in the water and watched a tiny bright-orange fish swim through the reflection of Roderick and me.
“My brother is strong and stubborn. He would never say this, but he loves you. I know he does.”
“You’re crazy. We hardly talk. I see you much more than I see him. He’s taken to avoiding me ever since your father found us in the woods that day as kids.”
Roderick shook his head. “I know he does, Olympia, because I do too.”
His fingers laced with mine, and he dotted kisses along each of my knuckles. “For as strong and stubborn as he is, I am as patient and kind. By every measure, Olympia Aberdeen, I love you, body and soul, and every beat of my heart drives me another step closer to—”
“Stop.” I pressed a finger to his lips. “Please don’t say things like that.”
“But they’re true, all of them. I know I’m only seventeen, but my scores in arithmetic are high, and Father has been teaching me how to operate Leith and the entire estate. I have ideas to make it more profitable and—”
“Roderick, please.” With frustrated tears in my eyes, I shook my head, wishing I’d cut strings with him earlier if we could have avoided this heartache. I thought of my grandmother’s other saying.The water grants wishes.I didn't believe her. If it was true, Alaric would be sitting across from me professing his love right now. My wish seemed lost in transit, delivered to the wrong brother.
“It’s you and I who are meant to be, Olympia.” He gathered both of my palms between his cool ones. “I know you can feel it too. We talk for hours, and it’s always too little time. You’re too good for him, too kind. It’s you and I who are meant to be.”
Roderick rested a hand on my own gloved one.
“I-I don’t think—”
“Well, speak of the devil,” Roderick interjected, eyes focusing over my shoulder before turning dark.
“Oh no. Is it your father?” I spun on the rock that overlooked the fairy pools to find Alaric’s angry eyes holding mine. “Oh, it’s just your brother.”
“Just my brother?” Roderick gripped the leather-encased knife he always kept strapped to his belt.
“If Father catches you with that girl—”
“My name is Olympia.”
Alaric’s eyes darted to mine and narrowed, anger flaring in the irises. “I know your common name.”
Something hot bubbled under my skin, something that made me want to scratch and bite and kiss him in the same breath. While Roderick’s attention was sweet and doting, Alaric’s was hard and uncompromising. Though it wasn’t the first time Roderick had asked me to run away with him, I always knew he meant it as no more than a joke. The unspoken expectations he was to live up to according to his family name hung over his head like rain clouds. Besides, it was Alaric who secretly drove me to distraction in all of my waking hours…and some of my sleeping ones.
“Then it would serve you well to use it. I’m not just some common girl you can walk all over.”
“You’re not?” Alaric invaded my space, breath washing down the high collar of my dress. “Beg pardon, and here I thought you were just another lowly commoner looking to marry into a title. Forgive me, madam. Ishan’tmake the mistake again.”
Heat burned up my neck and cheeks. I hated Alaric Macgregor, only because I couldn’t understand why he hated me so much. We’d practically grown up together, my mother the head housekeeper at Leith since before I was able to walk. At some stage, though, our friendship lodged under the baron’s skin, and he forbade the three of us from mingling again.
But that hadn’t stopped us.
For years, we’d snuck through the woods and across the glen to meet at the fairy pools. We’d told stories and acted out plays and played endless games of hide-and-seek until daylight faded and Alaric and Roderick went home to Leith, and I to the tiny one-room cottage that flanked its territory.
I was forever the outcast, but it didn’t seem to matter to them. Or not until Alaric reached an age when his father expected work from him. They spent more time together discussing family business and going on hunts, and our threesome faded into a duo.
Alaric had seemed to resent that Roderick and I remained close, or maybe it was that less was expected of his younger brother. The way Alaric clenched his jaw and the broad stretch of back muscle rippled with annoyance when I spoke was enough to make me want to run.
But I couldn’t do it.
I remembered himthen.
Before expectation and bitterness weighted down his shoulders. Alaric deserved to smile and laugh as easily as Roderick, as carefree as all three of us had once been. Alaric deserved happiness too.
“If you don’t do all my chores for a fortnight, I’ll tell Father I found you up here—” his gaze washed over me “—skinny-dipping withher.”
