“Tempting?”
He sighed. “You’re still an innocent in many ways, I’m thinking. Run now, lass, or I’ll be kissing you here, wi’ no care for who’s watching.”
She hadn’t understood what he meant by tempting, because he hadn’t said how she was apparently tempting him. For all she knew, he could have meant tempting him to clobber her. But she understood that last well enough. And although running in skates on a snow bank was hazardous, she managed to get back on the ice quickly.
That his chuckle followed her as she hurried away put her in a rotten mood for the rest of the day. Had he only been teasing her again? She wondered about that later, when it was too late to find out.
20
“I’m thinkin’ we should’ve stole his fancy stallion when we had the chance tae,” Gilleonan remarked in a grumbling tone as he and Lachlan stopped to watch a pair of young thoroughbred horses being exercised in the training yard attached to the closest stable. “’Tis no’ as if he would’ve missed it, as many’s he’s got here and even more breedin’ each year. And it would’ve fetched a fair price.”
“No’ so loud,” Lachlan admonished.
He glanced to Gilleonan’s right, where a couple of the other houseguests were leaning against the fence, also admiring the pair of young horses being put through their paces. The other guests weren’t actually close enough to have heard Gilleonan, and they certainly weren’t paying attention. As far as Lachlan could tell, they were deep in a discussion themselves about the prize thoroughbreds bred and sold here at Sherring Cross.
Still, he moved down along the fence a few more feet, tugging his cousin with him, before he added, “There was no point tae stealing his horse, Gill, when he would’ve took it back same as he took the lass back. Besides, I dinna steal horses, and well you ken it.”
It was the Duke of Wrothston they were discussing, and the horse he’d had with him the day Lachlan and his cousins stopped his coach to rob it, and Lachlan took off with Megan instead of the money they’d been after. Lachlan was beginning to wish he’d stayed home that day.
“Och, well, ’twas just a thought,” Gilleonan admitted. “Though all in the same thought, I’m thinkin’ ye’re no’ takin’ this wife-findin’ business seriously.”
Lachlan raised an auburn brow at his friend. “And just where does horse stealing and wife finding have anything a’tall in common?”
“Ye dinna see it?” Gilleonan replied. “Why, in the money they’d both bring, which is the reason we’re here, or have ye forgotten that again?”
It was the question, not the answer, that brought a frown to Lachlan’s brow. “Tell me something, Gill? Is it that you dinna think I take my responsibility seriously? Or d’you just feel a need tae complain more often wi’ us living among the Sassenachs?”
Gilleonan at least looked suitably embarrassed now and even sighed. “It mun be the latter, aye, it really mun be, especially after bein’ here well nigh a month now. Has no one caught yer fancy then, now that ye’ve come tae yer senses and give up on the duchess?”
Lachlan’s expression changed to one of vexation and he mumbled, “Aye, one lass has.”
“Faith, why did ye no’ say so? When will ye be proposin’ then?”
“I already did.”
“And?”
“She willna have me.”
Gilleonan snorted. “That’s no’ the least bit funny, Lachlan. Any lass would be pleased tae—”
“Except this one.”
Gilleonan paused. “Ye’re serious?”
“Aye.”
“She—ah, had another commitment then?”
“Nay, she just doesna like me.”
Gilleonan almost chuckled at Lachlan’s look of vexation but managed to restrain himself, just, and shook his head instead. “Och, well, ’tis lucky we are that there be more lassies showin’ up here nearly every day, thanks tae yer aunt’s efforts. Ye’ll find another, Lachlan. ’Tis heartenin’, though, truly, that yearegettin’ serious aboot it finally, and have put aside yer feelings for the duchess for the sake o’ the clan.”
Lachlan snorted to himself now. Put aside his feelings? That certainly hadn’t been very difficult to do, when all things considered, it should have been extremely hard. And that made him wonder if Megan hadn’t been right.
Had he been deluding himself all along about his feelings for her, wanting her only because she was so beautiful, and because she’d escaped from him before he’d had a chance to charm her? Or did the fact that she and the duke had a child, and a son at that, change his mind?
That child did make a world of difference, especially since a duke would never give up his heir, and rightly so. Lachlan could never be so cruel as to take a mother away from her child, no matter his own feelings about the lass. But he gave up trying to figure out what those feelings had been. They simply were no more, as if they had never been.
