Bloody controlling men.
How bloody unfair it was how happy the McQuoid men were when they had manipulated things so.
God must have agreed with Meghan.
All amusement from the billiards room cut out on an unnatural silence.
“Absolutely not,” Campbell shouted. “You can show him the goddamned door is what you can show him.”
“Yes, Mr. Smith,” the Earl of Abington’s butler informed. “I have said as much, and he indicated he will take this meeting on the pavement.”
“On the pavement…?” Mother said confusedly. “Whyever would a gentleman conduct business so? Truly strange.”
Meghan, and every other McQuoid-Smith lass, went still.
Meghan curled her hands—
It is just because you want it to be him…but it is not him, because it has been one fortnight,
—and pulsed them: One. Two. Three.
Somewhere in the house, Brone shouted.
Meghan sprang to her feet.
Oleander, with his sword, beat her there.
Meghan skidded to a stop to keep from colliding into his back.
Which only led to Meghan’s cousins, sisters, and mother knocking into Meghan—and one another.
“Please, ladies.” Oleander took them to task. “Some decorum.” Muttering to himself, the boy unfastened the latches and pushed the doors open. “Afternoon, Culross.”
Culross.
“Mr. Smith.”
Around Meghan, her family whispered and sighed.
The happy sighs.
Not the fake ones.
August. Meghan’s eyes slid shut. It was him.
Every day, she had prayed to God, and then she had pleaded. And when August still had not come for her, she had railed at the Lord.
And then promptly began to pray forgiveness for being so cross with God…and now, well, August was here.
She had dreamed what he would say, imagined it. None of those dreams began with him speaking Oleander’s name.
“May I be of service, as the rest of the gentlemen in my family are a bunch of nobs, and won’t see you.”
She pressed a hand to her racing heart. Just because he is here doesn’t mean it is for me.
“I am here for your sister, Miss McQuoid Smith.”
Oleander paused. “Which one?” The boy grunted as he fielded a number of direct hits from the ladies at his back. “Ow, would you stop. It is important to clarify on account one never knows which one of my sisters Culr—”
