“We’re going to end it.”
Chapter 36
I never knew my mother, of course, as she lost her life by giving me mine.(I love her memory for that alone if nothing else.) But if she were here now, I would have to ask her what madness possessed her to burden this world with ten more MacKintosh males.
And if my father were still here, I’d want to know what he had been thinking to leave me in their care.
They will drive me to the brink, I swear!
~From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh—May 1895
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“She was what?”
Fiona winced as her brother’s deep voice boomed through the marbled foyer of the Eaton Square townhouse and echoed back from the plastered walls.
“Francis, can we take this somewhere else?”she asked, laying a hand on her brother’s arm to gain his attention.
His arm was taut and steely beneath her fingers as he tensed against the sudden news.It was too bad he had been coming down the stairs as they entered.He had noted her less-than-pristine toilette and asked quite sharply where they had been.
Too bad Harry had chosen to answer him with the truth of it so bluntly right there at the foot of the stairs.
Fiona was nearly kidnapped this afternoon, Glenrothes.
No points for subtlety for him, but she wasn’t about to air her laundry before the half-dozen maids and footmen lingering in the hall.
Glenrothes opened his mouth and then snapped it shut, a muscle jumping visibly in his cheek as he clenched his jaw.With a curt nod, he turned and led them back up the stairs.Instead of leading them down the hall to the privacy of his study, as Fiona expected, he paused at the head of the stairs and looked to the right.
“Oh, no, no.Your study.Your study,” she urged under her breath.
Then her brother turned and disappeared into the family parlor.
“Damn, damn, damn!”she cursed, her steps lagging.
“What?”Aylesbury asked as he caught her elbow and led her up the rest of the way.
