Jonathan felt like he’d been doused in ice water.“Not bloody likely.”Abruptly, he stood.“I’ve heard enough.”
Adam jumped to his feet and reached for Jonathan’s arm.“You could at least do me the courtesy of listening.”
“I don’t want to hear anything about your heartless sister,” Jonathan replied with as reasonable a voice as he could manage.
“I understand how you must feel.”
Jonathan stiffened.“Do you?”
“Well, maybe I don’t,” Adam admitted.“But listen to me.I received a letter from Annie telling me that Elizabeth has grown wild, and she wants me to come over right away.”
“Wait a minute, Annie?”Jonathan stared at Adam, baffled.“Then Elizabeth is at Briercliff?”
Adam nodded.“That is correct”
“So that’s where she went.”Jonathan’s lips thinned with irritation.“Well, she can rot there as far as I’m concerned.”
Adam was hoping that Jonathan had lost some of his bitterness.Apparently, that wasn’t the case.But the fact remained that he still needed Jonathan’s help.Adam would love to tell Jonathan about the child, but he’d promised his sister that he wouldn’t, and Adam was bound by that promise.“I understand your bitterness, but Elizabeth needs a husband.”
“I hope the bloody hell you don’t think it will be me,” Jonathan said curtly.
“Of course not,” Adam quickly responded.But deep inside he believed if he got Jonathan and Elizabeth together again, they would work out their differences ...or kill each other.“I know you don’t love her,” Adam lied.“However, you do know her very well.”
Jonathan threw his head back and roared with laughter.“I know her too bloody well.”
“See?”Adam let out a sigh of exasperation.“You’d be the perfect one to find her a husband.”
“Adam, you are asking the impossible.”Jonathan shifted in the chair.At the moment, he couldn’t find any comfortable position and the conversation wasn’t helping.“I want nothing to do with your sister.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I could go myself, but I need you to do this for me,” Adam persisted.“Besides, you have no feelings for her, so it shouldn’t bother you to seek out a perfect husband.”
Damn, the man was being persistent, Jonathan thought.If Adam were not such a damned good friend, Jonathan would have stormed out at the mention of Elizabeth’s name.“I cannot do this!”
“Why?”Adam asked with a pensive stare, knowing he was pushing Jonathan, but in the long run perhaps doing the right thing by them both.“Maybe I was wrong, and you still care for my sister.”Adam arched an eyebrow.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Then who better than her childhood friend?”
“You’ll owe me the world for this, ol’ boy.”
“Then you’ll do it?”
“Yes, Adam.”Jonathan gave in as he swallowed the lump in his throat.“But I warn you.I just might stick her with the oldest, ugliest bastard I can find.”
Adam laughed.“I believe you’ll find my sister has changed a good bit since you parted.She might not be the easiest person to find a match for.”
“Then this shall be an interesting reunion since I, too, have changed.”Jonathan offered a salute with his goblet.“May the best man win.”
On the rockyshores of Cornwall, a lone rider raced along the beach, the ocean spray shooting from her horse’s hooves.
Elizabeth felt alive and carefree when she rode, but all too soon the ride came to an end, and she remembered she was a lady with many responsibilities.She glanced up at Briercliff, her childhood home.It stood high on the granite cliffs, overlooking the sea below.Its massive gray rooftop gave the castle a grim appearance, but it wasn’t as it appeared.One couldn’t call it cozy, however, because it was cold and drafty.
The castle had thirty-four rooms; the rear of the building had the most beautiful leaded windows that stretched across the back of the house and overlooked Annie’s lovely gardens.
Reaching down, Elizabeth patted Star, Adam’s horse, on the side of his neck.“You miss Adam.Don’t you, boy?”
Star pawed the sand as if he understood.“I miss him, too,” Elizabeth breathed in a choked voice.And most of all, she missed Jonathan.No matter what she did, she could never put Jonathan completely out of her mind.A thousand times she had asked herself what would have happened if she’d just confronted Jonathan with her problem.She would never know.It was too late for them, she thought sadly.She wasn’t even sure what he was doing.Adam was still angry with her and refused to discuss Jonathan.
