Chapter 12
The wedding was today.Vin and Moira are now safely wed.I watched Harry all the way through the ceremony—I mean, of course, I watched Vin as well!I am so happy for my brother—but while Harry didn’t seem heartbroken to have lost Moira, there was still something somewhat melancholy about his expression.
Perhaps I should see what I can do to cheer him up?
~From the diary of Lady Fiona MacKintosh—Feb 1893
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Two years, Aylesburythought as he watched Fiona once again do her best to avoid and ignore him.Two years since they’d last met, last argued, and still she was angry with him for the way they parted.
What an infuriatingly stubborn woman she was!
Not that he blamed her, really.In many ways, he deserved the sting of her displeasure, but in some ways, he did not.She didn’t know his reasons for acting as he had because he’d never bothered to explain them.
If she kept avoiding him, he might never get the chance.
And he did want one.
A chance for forgiveness and so much more.
More than he had even allowed himself to consider two years past.Two years back when he had forced himself—as a man of honor and a friend to all the men of the MacKintosh clan—to treat her as they did.A young sisterly lass and nothing more.
It had been the hardest thing he had ever done, but since coming upon her again, Aylesbury had been unable to gainsay his less-than-brotherly thoughts about her.Nor did he try to repress his attraction to her.Instead, he allowed himself to look at her in a way he had once denied himself.
As a beautiful, desirable woman.
Sure, it might still be wrong—the MacKintosh brothers were still, one and all, his friends.He had no place lusting after their only sister, but he was done denying it.He’d had a thousand indecently carnal thoughts for her in the past.He had hated himself once for wanting her, but now, when there was so little in his life to enjoy, he intended to relish it.
Aylesbury sipped his whiskey and watched her over the rim of his glass.She was gorgeous, but the anger he had roused in her, keeping her color high and her eyes snapping at him, somehow made her even lovelier.
Lovelier even than Abby, whose pale beauty was almost ethereal.Lovelier even than Eve and her sister Kitty, who were both carved in cool, blonde perfection.And still more than the Madonna-like splendor of sisters Ilona and Coline.Even Moira, exquisite Titian beauty that she was, couldn’t hold a candle to the stunning woman Fiona had become because not only was she a match to them all in looks, she waslife.
Vibrant, irrepressible life.It emanated from her laughter and even her anger like a beacon guiding him like a lost ship to the shore.
Yes, seeing her as she was tonight, it was difficult not to drift to her side.Though she wasn’t dressed as opulently as she had been at the Onslow ball, her gown’s simple bodice seemed to hang precariously at her shoulders, leaving her arms bear before plunging low in the front, displaying the delicate curve of her collarbone and the ample swell of her cleavage without a single piece of jewelry to hinder his view.The clean lines accented her narrow waist and hugged her hips before falling in straight lines to the floor.
