“I didn’t realize you’d met Miss Forthright before,” Hamish said. “My sister.”
Renard blinked, anger momentarily forgotten. “Sister?” He pointed to Camille. “No,her.”
There were more words exchanged between the men. Then Hamish said something to Camille that had her responding unconsciously. For once, her brain wasn’t working, couldn’t handle the overwhelming flood of reactions from all parties.
Until Renard’s next shout dragged her attention back to her surroundings.
“What do you mean, she’s living with you?”
“Forgive me, Ren. Allow me to make the formal introductions,” Hamish said. “Renard Louis, Duke of Lux, this is Camille Forthright, my sister.”
“No.” Renard stared at her, that one word filled with anguish and betrayal.
“It’s true.” Camille swallowed the next wave of emotion and buried it in the pit of her stomach. “I’m the bastard daughter of the former Duke of Camine.”
“Don’t say that word!”
His passion-laced remark drew her up short, and then she remembered why she’d run from her life in Dockside. Why she’d run fromhim.
After that day at the Pony, she’d never told another soul about what he had done. Neither had Madam, out of loyalty for her or with the same understanding Camille had when she’d fled that the killings would stop with her absence. But now that he’d found her, now that Markus and Hamish had grown close as business partners, Renard wouldn’t be safe.
Protectiveness gripped her. Camille threw back her shoulders and stared Renard down. “You should leave.”
“Like hell I will!”
Charlotte stepped forward, her hands raised, and her bespectacled face drawn into a concerned expression. “Ren, please. There’s no need to shout.”
Hamish rubbed the back of his neck and inclined his head towards the library. “How about a drink? The good kind.”
When no one responded, Hamish shrugged and headed for the door.
Charlotte, clearly indecisive about following her husband or staying to mediate, worried her bottom lip and looked to the open library door and back.
Renard growled. “Go!”
Camille watched her best friend come to attention, Renard’s outburst having the opposite effect of cowing her. Her friend had truly come into her own these past months.
“Not until you regain your senses,” Charlotte said. “I won’t have you lashing out in your tantrum.”
If words had edges, Camille was sure, Renard would have a slice across his chest.
“I would never strike a woman.” His voice was quiet but firm. “Not ever.”
Satisfied, Charlotte nodded and went in search of her husband, leaving Camille to face the Duke of Lux alone.
Silence descended between them, a silence wrought with anger and longing and so painful, Camille dug her nails intoher palms to keep from pressing them to her heart. “You should leave,” she repeated.
“Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer to go?” His eyes went hard. “You are infinitely better at running away than I.”
She refused to flinch. Her armor, her cool indifference and easy sarcasm, wouldn’t crack.
“This is my home. The duke and duchess are my family.” It surprised her how the words matched her feelings. She’d lost so much over the past months, been broken and bleeding inside, but the two people in the next room over had patched her up and given her a purpose.
“Charlotte is my sister,” he said.
Not even he believed that lie past the most basic claim. Charlotte may have been his sister, but he didn’t act like a brother.
She had no idea how he’d become so irresponsible and cold with Charlotte. A year ago, his bright and wonderful little sister had been all he’d talked about, and how much he’d wanted her to be happy. In the thirteen months since she’d run, something had happened. No, it had happened before that, when he’d been so consumed with someone he’d turned into a monster. Her.Shewas what had happened.
