He’d made a right hash of matters, and that was a fact.
The time had arrived to fix them.
“I don’t care that Miss Dalhousie is returning,” he said. “I’ve never cared.”
Juliet’s eyebrows formed a straight line. “Never cared?”
“Not in a few years, at least.”
“A fewyears?” With every word she spoke, the famously cool, calm, and collected Miss Juliet Windermere became increasingly agitated.
“Further,” he continued. If she didn’t like what he’d already said, she certainly wouldn’t like this next bit. “I won’t be needing the poem.”
Juliet opened her mouth, but no words emerged, only stunned disbelief. Finally, she recovered herself and pushed off the outcropping. “What do you mean you won’t be needing the bloody poem?”
She stuck a hand down the front of her dress and began rummaging about, finally emerging with a neatly folded bunch of papers. She held them up accusingly. “I lost an entire night’s sleep finishing this.”
Rory crossed the short distance separating them and took the proffered papers. With the gibbous moon directly overhead, he was able to give the pages a quick scan. Five total, front and back, the script dense. “It’s quite, erm, prodigious.”
Juliet sniffed and lifted her chin. “I found a lot to say.”
“About Miss Dalhousie?” he asked, skeptical.
“Well, about waterfalls and such.”
He held a page close and squinted, just making out a few lines. “And about Hamish?”
She gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I figured shemust love Hamish. Who wouldn’t?”
“Miss Dalhousie, methinks,” he said. Oh, why wouldn’t they stop talking about that blasted woman? She was beside the point, entirely. “I’ve never seen her take to an animal now that I think on it.”
Juliet’s observant eye narrowed upon him. “You lied to me.”
There they were. Some of the words that needed airing.
“Lie is a very strong word,” he said. “More false pretenses than outright lies, I would say.”
She exhaled a long-suffering sigh. “You sound like Archie.”
Rory snorted. She wasn’t wrong.
“Deceived,” she amended.
That was a worse word.
It was only the naked, unfiltered truth that would do.
And even then, he wasn’t so sure… But he had to try.
“I wanted to spend time with you,” he said. “And I wasn’t sure how.”
“You could’ve asked.”
“Truly?” he asked, incredulous. “Juliet—and I say this as a man who appreciates this quality about you—you’re not exactly the most approachable lass.”
Her eyebrows looked as if they might lift clear off her forehead. “That excuses you lying to me?”
“Perhaps a little.”
