But he was not.
He would use that failure. Exploit it. Turn it to his advantage.
Snow crunched beneath slippered heels. Laughter pealed again. Too loud, too free.
And then one laugh rang out, bright and unguarded.
Trusting.
His ears sharpened on the guileless mirth.
He knew its owner. He knew her voice.
Her laugh marked her.
She had always laughed as though the world was safe and sunny. It’d been convenient to let her believe the lie.
The pert little menace had attached herself to his side last winter, forever slipping into his orbit while he courted the sister he had been meant to marry. Meghan Smith, smiling, teasing, prattling, inserted herself again and again. Present when she should not have been.
At first, her presence had grated. Later, it had required discipline to ignore when it no longer did.
It hadn’t taken long before he, like all men who hunted by instinct rather than by conscience, noticed her wit. Her mouth. There had been a time or two he’d caught himself watching those lips, the very ones he’d come perilously close to testing last night.
Icy rage slithered through his blackened soul.
In the end, Meghan proved herself a skilled tactician. All along, she had played the harmless observer while quietly aiding Captain Tremaine’s pursuit of Miss Linnie Smith. And Culross found himself neatly cut from a coveted alliance.
His gaze caught a flash of emerald as the owner of that artless mirth danced into view. Culross honed in on the oblivious bride.
Her freckled cheeks were apple-red from the bite of cold and unguarded joy. Even with seven paces between them and thewind whipping snow between their bodies, the sparkle in her eyes burned bright.
All this joy—for Hartwell.
His nostrils flared once. Then he stilled, forcing the reaction down, banking it.
She believed herself chosen. That, more than anything, offended him. The current fixture of his thoughts groaned. “You are too good at this…”
Yes. She did not stand a chance.
His breathing deepened, not with haste, but with certainty. There was a grim sort of consolation in what awaited the young bride-to-be, the one who had nearly secured herself the title of duchess. If she were honest, if she abandoned the lie she had clung to at Rutland’s, she would surrender to the truth.
And…she would enjoy every moment spent with Culross. Every lesson. Every taking.
His men’s gazes remained fixed on him, awaiting command. Urging them to patience, Culross lifted his hand, deliberate, measured, the signal poised but not yet given.
Wait.
He had plotted and planned for months.
Wait.
Patiently. Meticulously.
Wait.
Every weakness mapped, every habit exploited.
At last, the moment was here.
