Chapter 4
He’s back!I could scarcely believe it when I went down to dinner tonight!I thought I would never meet him again after his brief visit to Edinburgh last summer.But I could not forget him in the interim...what lass could?He is yet the same as before: jovial, dashing, and gay.
It is mesmerizing to know a man so ever buoyant.Abby labels him blithe, which is true enough, though she calls him such in so teasing a manner that he accepts it with patent pride, making me feel as if I am missing some jest.Still, his humor is far more attractive than any other attribute I have known in a gentleman.
That I am now confident he has been focusing his expert flirtation in my direction is also in his favor...
~From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh—Jan 1893
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The Glenrothes Townhouse
117 Eaton Square
Belgravia, London, England
Late that night
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Fiona flipped throughthe pages of her diary, looking back over the entries surrounding the time when she had initially met Harry Brudenall, the Marquis of Aylesbury, almost three years before and again when he returned to Edinburgh the following winter.
Every page told the embarrassing truth of it.She had been head over heels from the moment she had met him.
Her gushing prose went on for pages about how her heart had skipped giddily at his presence, galloped at his slightest acknowledgement ofherpresence and sprinted madly at his smile over the short time she had known him.
Then, it seemed her heart had not beaten at all in the last two years.That is until she had seen him again tonight.Now it was careening wildly, alive once more.
Having just seen his face again.
But it wasn’t the face she remembered.Not the one that continued to linger with unwelcome redundancy in her dreams.
She’d never met another man she considered as affable as the marquis.Throughout their acquaintance, humor had constantly lit Aylesbury’s features.His blue eyes had creased at the corners in a perpetual smile and always danced with mischievous light.Tonight, those eyes had been flat with sorrow, a furrow embedded between his brows.
What had happened in the two years since they last met?
Who was theshehe was looking for?
A wife?A lover?
The woman he loved.
Her heart twisted painfully at the thought.A wounded heart, regrettably filled with feeling once again.Not with the hint of excitement that had sent her blood racing before.Not with the first blush of attraction.Not even with the pinch of unrequited love but with the sting of heartbreak she had ruthlessly buried years before.
