“Your sarcasm is unneeded,” he ground out as he practically lifted her into his carriage.“I did ask you to allow me to explain, did I not?”
“Explain why you are forever leaving me to chase after other women?”she asked tartly, lifting her skirts to wring out the wet hem.Her ivory leather boots were turning brown, she noticed.
Aylesbury gave instructions to his driver and sat back, eyeing her boots and embroidered silk stockings with some speculation.Ha, Fiona thought, flipping her skirts back down.Interest was unlikely.Indeed, he eagerly covered her with a carriage blanket and tucked it around her legs to prove the point.The rain was pelleting the ground now, thudding dully against the soft leather of the folding top over their heads and on the floorboards at their feet.
“I was not abandoning you,per se,” he said as he completed his task.“I thought it was...that it might be...”
Fiona’s curiosity to learn the identity of the mysteriousshegot the best of her.“Who?”
“My sister.”
She blinked.That was not at all what she expected.“Your sister?”
“Piper.Phillipa,” he said, his voice heavy with sadness.
“I didn’t know you had a sister.”The words were unwittingly soft, encouraging a response.
And he gave it to her.“She’s my half-sister.My father remarried after my mother died.His second marriage was not at all like the first, but he did at least manage to get something good from it.Piper.She disappeared more than two years ago now.Since that spring I was in Edinburgh.”
Though it didn’t explain everything to her, it explained much.“That’s why you left like you did.”
Aylesbury nodded shortly, clearly uncomfortable with the topic.“She disappeared just after the new year, though my stepmother did not notify me until the spring.I had wondered why my letters were not being returned.Piper and I always kept up a lively correspondence.That’s what I was saying just then...before.My days have been filled searching for her.My nights consumed with worry.I haven’t fully lived since she’s been missing.I’d like to change that.Iamchanging that.”
Fiona’s heart turned wretchedly.She had thought he’d been referring to her before when in fact he had been talking about his sister.Upsetting for her yet so sad for him.She couldn’t imagine what it might be like to lose a loved one to the unknown.To not know their fate.“You’ve been searching for her all this while?”
“There’s never been any evidence of her, though I’ve searched myself and had Scotland Yard on the case as well.They’ve given up but I cannot.She couldn’t have simply vanished without a trace, could she?”He sighed.“That’s why I am here in London now, why I stay here.I’ve searched the country over, but Piper always wanted to come to London.I frequent balls and parties hoping to overhear some gossip, something that might lead me to her.”
“Like Miss Langston,” Fiona said.“You think she knows where your sister is?”
“Perhaps,” he allowed with a shrug.“If not that, then something.She was Piper’s closest friend.”
“I can’t imagine.Harry, I’m so sorry.”And she was.As much as he had earned every ounce of resentment she rained on his head, such a loss did lift it enough to be truly remorseful and compassionate.“Have you ever considered...?”
Aylesbury was shaking his head in denial before she could even finish the thought.“No!I cannot.Nor can I dwell on where she might otherwise be.This—meeting you again—has brought me the greatest measure of pleasure I’ve had in all that time.Brought a smile to my face once more and reminded me that I’m alive.That I’ve done all I can but it might be time to move on.”
His fingers skimmed lightly over her cheek, tweaking her chin affectionately before his hand dropped to his side.He leaned forward to point out the Glenrothes townhouse to his driver as they neared, depriving Fiona the opportunity to respond.Which was just as well.
She didn’t know what she would have said.All this time, she had thought he’d left Edinburgh to get away from her.To relieve himself of her constant ‘pestering,’ as he called it.
To discover that he’d had a valid reason for his departure...
To know that the sorrow that clung to him was grounded in such despair...
To find out that theshewho held his heart was not a lover but a sister...
Aylesbury tucked the lap rug more snugly about her hips before he sat back once again, wrapping an arm around her wet shoulders and drawing her into his embrace, sharing his body heat with her as he chafed her arms for good measure.
Fiona was incredibly conscious of his body pressed scandalously against hers.Their thighs touching, her shoulder tucked snugly under his arm.Her cheek against his shoulder and the wet, spicy scent of him assailing her.The damp chill of her wet clothes against her skin transmuted to steamy warmth, clinging humidly instead.
Something brushed against the hair at her temple and Fiona wondered if it were his lips.Why would he kiss her with such tenderness that it was hardly there?Why would he be comforting her with such concern?Why now?
Why was she letting him?It would do her no good to soften her heart toward him.No good to savor the warmth of him next to her.Oh, why had she asked him about his sister?She didn’t want to care about him, worry for him.
Bloody hell, she didn’t want him.Not anymore!
That was when Fiona realized that beneath the wrath she’d harbored for him for so long, time had done nothing to heal a broken heart, to dull the hurt of rejection.Anger and resentment had been nothing more than a comforting bandage, a salve to suppress the sting of an open wound.Rip off the bandage and the pain was still there and just as raw as it had been two years before.
That anger was all she had now, her only defense against the heartache.Every bit of curiosity she felt for him, every care she had picked away at it.Threatened to strip away that ire and leave her emotions bared before him.Without it, there would be only a thin layer of pride between her and humiliation.
