She turned to him in surprise, as if she’d just recalled he was there. “Oh, you don’t know? She and Finn are to go to Huntington Lodge. The servants are packing their things.”
“I see.” It was the right decision, and Lachlan was relieved for his brother’s sake, but a heaviness settled on his chest as Isla’s season vanished like a cloud of smoke before his eyes. “And you and Lady Chase leave for Brighton tomorrow?”
“Brighton?” Hyacinth folded her hands neatly in her lap like a schoolgirl about to recite her lessons, but Lachlan noticed her knuckles were white. “Oh, no. We’re not going to Brighton.”
“Not going? Why—”
“Did you mean what you said the other day?” she asked suddenly, her blue eyes so bright she looked almost feverish.
He shrugged. “I say a good many things. Odds are I mean some of them.”
“You said if I went ahead with my season, you’d consider it your responsibility to look after me, just as you do with Isla.”
Lachlan’s heart began to pound with hope. “I did mean it. Every word.”
She studied his face for a long moment without speaking, as if trying to gauge his sincerity. “I don’t want to do it, you know. My season. I never did, not even before the scandal, when all my family was here to help me along. Even then, I predicted it would be a disaster, but now...” She looked down, as if she were ashamed, and whispered, “I’m afraid.”
He moved closer, and took her hand in his. “I know you are, but I swear I won’t let anyone hurt you. Will you trust me?”
She glanced down at his large, rough fingers wrapped around her dainty white ones. What did she see when she looked at his hands? Did she see a fist crashing into his brother’s face, his knuckles smeared with blood? Did she imagine him grasping Ciaran by his collar with one hand while he bloodied his nose and blackened his eyes with the other? He’d always been a harsh, rough sort of man, but thatsheshould have seen him that way, when he was at his most brutal, filled him with shame.
After a long silence she sighed, and raised her gaze to his. “I’ll have to trust you if I’m to go ahead with my season, won’t I?”
He hadn’t given her one reason to trust him, and more than one not to, but here she was, with her big, blue eyes fixed on his face, offering him something he’d denied to her. He was repaying her trust with secrets and lies.
Not just her, but Finn, and Lady Huntington—all of them. The thought made his gut twist with misery. Surely he could trust them with the truth? They’d welcomed him and Ciaran and Isla into their family, shown them nothing but kindness.
But then their friends in Lochinver had offered their kindness, their friendship, too—right up until they hadn’t anymore. He’d trusted before, and it had been a deadly mistake. If it should happen a second time, and they found themselves adrift again, he wasn’t sure Ciaran and Isla would survive it.
Ciaran and Isla will be the ones to suffer.
“…warn you not to hope for much. I’m hardly a replacement for the Marchioness of Huntington.”
Lachlan brought his attention back to Hyacinth.
“Thetonmay yet laugh us out of Lady Bagshot’s ballroom before the master of ceremonies introduces Isla, and we still need Lady Chase to agree to sponsor her. Iris is speaking with her now, but my grandmother may insist on taking me off to Brighton, regardless of my wishes. This might not work.”
No. It might not work, but it was a chance, and that was more than Isla had ten minutes ago. “Isla will be pleased.” He was a good deal more than pleased, but he wasn’t sure how to thank her, so he only tightened his fingers around hers.
She gave him a self-conscious smile. “I may disappear behind a column as soon as we enter the ballroom, or worse, fall into a swoon the moment some grand lord asks me for a dance.”
“You’ll dance the first dance with me, then.” The first hour of the ball would be the most difficult one for her, what with everyone gaping and whispering. He could shield her from the worst of it if they were dancing, and she couldn’t vanish behind a column if he was holding her in his arms.
What would it feel like, to hold her in his arms? To gather her soft body against his, and urge her closer with his hand on her waist? Damn, it was too bad the first dance was never a waltz.
“It will be my first dance of the season, and it would certainly send a clear message to thetonif I danced it with you. After all, if you were truly a murderer I wouldn’t dare, would I?”
Lachlan went still, the pretty illusions he’d spun splintering into shards.
No, you wouldn’t.
If she knew who he really was, and what he’d really done, she wouldn’t allow him to touch her. She wouldn’t dare to be alone in the same room with him.
He’d do well to remember that. A devil had no business trifling with an angel.
Lachlan dropped her hand and rose from the sofa. “I’m certain you’ll have dozens of better offers—”
“Hyacinth? Where are you, child?”
