“You’re still angry with me.”
Did he really need to sound so surprised?A low growl tightened in her throat.“You’re bloody right, I am!”
Swinging around, she was surprised to find Aylesbury just behind her.With a gasp, she stepped back, nearly teetering off the step.He caught her around the waist, steadying her but also effectively halting her retreat.Her breasts were pressed firmly against his solid chest, which was even more unyielding when she brought her hands up to push him away.
“Let go of me!”
Much to her surprise, he not only did so immediately but stepped up two more steps to the landing just above.As quick as it was, that brief embrace was long enough to steal her breath away and infuse her with an unwelcome heat that had nothing to do with anger.
“Won’t you give me a chance to apologize?”
“For what exactly?”she asked, widening her eyes with feigned bewilderment.Still unwilling to have him look down on her, she also climbed up to the landing, oddly thankful for the relative stability she found there when he had her so off-kilter.“After all this time, it’s hard to recall.”
“You are being difficult.”
“A family trait.You always did say that I was the worst of the bunch, didn’t you?”
“I said many things I regret.”Aylesbury sighed, resisting the urge to pinch the bridge of his nose between his fingers.While he appreciated her anger from a distance, he had forgotten how exasperating Fiona could be in a direct confrontation.She had a knack for deflecting his point with such off-topic comments.“I wanted to apologize for leaving Edinburgh so abruptly.I meant to do so straight away but was called away on a family emergency.”
Dropping her contrived expression of incomprehension abruptly, her wide green eyes narrowed as her brows snapped together irritably.“You’re apologizing for leaving Edinburgh?Is that all?”
“No.I also wanted to apologize for hurting your feelings as I did,” he began awkwardly, having not rehearsed what he meant to say.“As I said, I once said many things that I regret.Not the least of those was...”
“My feelings?”Her brows shot up in disbelief as she cut him short.“Do you believe that you hurt only my feelings?That is was nothing more than that?”
“You were a girl with a crush...”
“I was in love with you!”Fiona cried out, immediately regretting the admission.
Turning away, she ran up the next flight of stairs, determined to leave him once again in the past where he belonged, but his short bark of disbelief had her whirling around, stomping back down to him until she was able to point a finger directly at his face.
“You think I was too young or inexperienced to know my feelings?I may have been young, but I knew what love was, Harry.And what it wasn’t.”She struggled to keep the tears she was fighting out of her voice.“I saw it every day all around me.I loved you, wanted you.Wanted more than anything to share a love with you like the love my brothers have with their wives.”
Aylesbury felt her words like a blade through the heart.He’d never meant to toy with her affections, telling himself it had just been a lighthearted flirtation.That, at eighteen, she had merely been honing her skills on him, practicing for her Season ahead or that any affection she had borne for him had been nothing more than girlish infatuation.He liked to believe that his rejection hadn’t truly pained a girl of such tender years that she would rebound quickly with the benefit of youth.That by now, she would have been wed and started on a family of her own.
That he had been denying no one but himself.
“Just leave me be, Harry!”
“Fiona!”Catching her by the arm, he trapped her before she could run once more.“Let me explain.”
“There is nothing to explain.Don’t you see?It doesn’t matter any longer.I’ve met a man I l-love very much.”She almost couldn’t say it.“I’ve moved on.Please let me go.”
This time, when she pulled away and raced up the stairs, he didn’t try to stop her.
He couldn’t say that trusting her words would have changed anything two years ago.Despite the death of his father when he was twenty and the burden of the title and its responsibilities, he had been alarmingly untroubled about life then.Abby’s teasing assessment of him—that he was too blithe to be believed—had never been far off.
The attraction he had felt for Fiona had unsettled him more than Aylesbury cared to admit back then.But even while he was disturbed by just how much pleasure he took in her company, he had conversely continued to enjoy it, unable to forgo her presence.
Being around her had brought him a great deal of happiness, though he had refused to consider it anything more at a time when there was enough joy in life to fill his heart.
But he, who had been carefree for the better part of his life –had been wallowing in misery for so long now.Nothing appealed to him more than finding that warmth of heart once again, than seeking happiness for himself.
Finding it in the one place he had staunchly negated that it could be found.
With Fiona MacKintosh.
It wouldn’t be an easy conquest by any means.Along with her claim that she was in love with another man, Fiona had hardened herself against him, though with admittedly justifiable enmity for the wrong he had inadvertently done.
