Lydia chided gently, “Ballaburn.”
“I’veneverwanted anything as much as I’ve wanted you,” he repeated. “Ballaburn be damned.”
She placed a finger over his lips. “No, don’t say that. I’ve come to love Ballaburn, too. I know it was wanting the land that brought you to me.”
Nathan hesitated. “It was partly that,” he said after a moment. “It was partly something else. You suspected it a while back, I think.”
“Brigham.”
He nodded. “I didn’t want to let Brigham out of my sight. If Irish’s child had been a boy, Brig would have killed him. He wouldn’t have settled for a third of Ballaburn. When I arrived in Frisco and discovered Irish had a daughter, I was only a little less worried. I know how Brig appeals to women and I didn’t think Irish’s daughter would be immune.”
“I wasn’t,” she said honestly, and felt Nathan’s wince. “But that’s when I was stupid.”
He brushed her mouth with his. “You know I don’t really think you were that.”
“I know. But I was painfully eager to accept Brig’s attentions. He appeared to be wealthy, immune to my mother’s attraction, and interested in my work with the orphanage. He was pleasant, attentive, kind, and—”
“All the things I wasn’t.”
“Someof the things you weren’t,” she corrected. “Don’t forget, the circumstances of our first meeting were quite different.”
Nathan laughed shortly.“Ourfirst meeting wouldn’t have happened without Brig. That altercation in the alleyway was his doing. Those thugs were his hirelings. He set the whole thing up to have the opportunity to rescue you. You don’t know how often I wished I had never overheard his plans. Instead of being grateful for my interference you were resentful.”
“I told you I was embarrassed,” she said. “Not resentful. Why did you intervene at all?”
“Because I thought Brig had gone too far. You could have been hurt.”
Lydia snuggled closer. “I was grateful,” she whispered. “For that and other things.”
“Other things?”
“For your help with Charlotte and her baby. No, don’t say that you weren’t helpful. You were. I know that it didn’t end as we might have wished, but you gave Charlotte a chance that she didn’t have with me or Dr. Franklin.”
“I saw you at the cemetery. You bought a headstone for her and Ginny Flynt, didn’t you?”
“You were there?” She remembered standing in the cemetery, George Campbell close at hand while she said a prayer by the graves. There had been someone on horseback higher up the hill and later a carriage had disturbed the silence. “You were following me?”
“Not exactly. I was following Brig. Sometimes it was the same as following you.”
“I suppose it was,” she said. One of Lydia’s hands slipped inside his shirt. His flesh was warm, his heartbeat steady. “I know what you did for Kit, setting him up at Saint Benedict’s and all. I realize you didn’t do it for me, but I’m grateful just the same. Grateful, I think, that I’ve fallen in love with such a good man.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
She smiled. “That’s all right. You can pretend you don’t know. I even find your modesty becoming.”
“I still don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Lydia kissed him. “It’s enough that I know.”
He held her close, his embrace the secure circle of his arms. “Suppose you tell me something,” he said. “What made you decide to come out here tonight?”
“I told you that already. I didn’t want to be left at the house alone.”
“I thought perhaps you’d tell me the truth this time.”
“That is...” She stopped. Didn’t she owe him something more than another lie? There had to be trust between them. “...not the truth,” she said, sighing. “I came out here to protect you.”
“I see,” he said softly. “Where did you get the idea that I needed protection?”
