“He is mad!” Haldane spat out. “I did nothing of the sort!”
“When?” Malcolm asked Bram.
“Does it matter, brother? Surely the point is that he did it,” Bram gritted out. “Perhaps considering you have a daughter due to make her entrance soon, you could imagine her being treated as this young lady was. He kissed her for a bet, which could easily have ruined her reputation.”
Malcolm’s nostrils flared, something he’d always done when excessively angry.
“What do you want done?” he asked after a long pause.
“I want him gone from here before I return. I am going to get some air.”
“I will ensure it is so.”
The bond of brotherhood, he was pleased to see, was still inside his brother, even though it was buried deep.
“My thanks.” He bowed to the viscount and left the room, anger riding his every step.
He walked out of the house and inhaled a deep lungful of air.
Ivy would have heard Haldane say he’d kissed her for a bet, and it would have hurt. Sweet Miss Birdwhistle, with her lovely gray eyes and determined attitude. The woman who wanted no one to see what she really was. But Bram had seen, because he liked to watch people and, more importantly, her. She’d intrigued him from the moment he’d sat down to his morning meal beside her.
Were Haldane’s actions the reason Ivy was the woman he saw today? The one with hair that was pulled back into a severe bun. The dresses designed to camouflage, not entice. Had what happened in that room forced her into hiding in plain sight of society?
He wished he could remember what she’d looked like four years ago.
“Christ, Ivy.” He felt sick for her humiliation.
Kicking a pebble, he walked along the well-trodden path, wondering what to say to her. Should he let her know it was he who had entered that room? Would she be horrified? Embarrassed? Wish he’d not spoken of it?
Looking up, he asked the cloudless sky to help him find the answers. Nothing was forthcoming.
“On your own again.”
This far from Nightingale Hall, the paths were not raked each day. A few weeds even poked through.
“For shame, Malcolm.” Bram tsked.
How had Ivy suffered after that night? Had she confided in anyone, or kept the night’s events to herself? He did not know her well, but what he did told him the latter was likely.
Picking up a stone, he lobbed it into the river. This was where he’d come as a boy to fish in the stream or get away from his family. They weren’t horrible to him, and he hadn’t suffered; in fact he had pretty much anything he wanted. Except attention.
He’d missed this place, Bram realized as he walked in the late afternoon sun, letting the familiar surroundings settle him.
The air was cool, but he liked that too. He’d spent years in hot climates.
He reached the bridge he’d run over and jumped off. He had a destination in mind. His private place. Reaching the forest that bordered the right boundary of Nightingale Hall, he walked on and into the trees. He found the small path, overgrown now, but he found it. Ten minutes later, he stopped in an opening in the trees.
Ivy Birdwhistle stood in the middle of the small clearing. She had her quiver and was firing arrows at the target he’d set up as a young boy.
She’d taken off her hideous bonnet, and it lay at her feet with her gloves. He watched as she sighted the target and shot the arrow. It hit just outside the center ring.
“Drat.”
She fired a second arrow, and it went wider.
“Double drat,” she muttered.
“May I suggest you take a deep breath before shooting the next one?”
