The air grew heavy.
The emotion pouring from her eyes cut him open. But it was not the way a blade splayed a man wide.
“I love you, August,” she said softly. “Beyond reason.”
She gave a little smile, as if to sayI wish it weren’t so, but there it is.
For a moment, Culross could not breathe. “But…”
All this time, all the hours he had spent with her last year, and he had never seen it. He moved his eyes over her face. Hetouched his gaze every place. Her swollen mouth. Her freckles. He could not stop.
He had never seen it because he had not been looking.
He had not opened his eyes until now.
“Hartwell.” His mind spun. “You were going to—” Culross could not force the rest past a sudden tightness in his chest.
“Marry him?” She nodded. “Why should I not?”
Funny, until these past two days, he could have only given one reason.
An ache throbbed in his chest. And had Culross not abducted her, she would even now be the Duchess of Hartwell. Which…somehow seemed to matter more than it had yesterday, for reasons he could not sort out. “This from a woman who believes in love matches but would have settled,” he said hoarsely.
“What did it matter when I was in love with a man who loved my sister and never even noticed me?”
“I—”
That’s what she believed. How could she not see she was the fire that consumed him. Anything before with her sister was nothing, because Meghan was…Meghan was…
His heart knocked sickly against his ribcage.
August froze.
Oh, Christ.
Her sister.
It wasn’t the countess he gave two jots about, but Meghan, and two others: a cousin and a younger sister to be exact.
Meghan’s sister and cousin: Miss Smith. Lady Fleur.
“I…Meghan,” he said, hoarsely. “If you’ll excuse me. There is a matter of great urgency…”
And then with Meghan’s mouth ripe and wet from his kiss and her eyes still clouded with desire, Culross did the hardest thing he had ever done in his life—he left her.
Chapter 13
Curled up, alone in August’s bed, Meghan stared at the cabin walls as they dipped and rose, dipped and rose again, and marveled at how close she had come to having everything.
So very, very close.
August Archdale. The Earl of Culross.
Her almost-husband.
Granted, he had ruined her.
He could easily have left it at that, too. Could have done precisely as Meghan insisted and simply allowed her to borrow his name long enough to protect her passage aboard his ship.
