Then she sat down on the settee with a great sigh to mourn them and wallow in the intoxication of fury.
And it was very good.
For a while.
But anger receded, bit by bit. And bit by bit she was left feeling muzzy and deflated and abashed, the way one felt the morning after too much ratafia at a ball. She was unused to indulging challenging emotions. They were sounseemly. There simply wasn’t time for them in her home.
Or at least, she’d learned early on that no one had any use for hers.
Steady, steady Daphne.
When she was anything other than steady and kind, her father was cold and her brothers confused and Daphne was distressed. She had learned how tobe. They had taught her to be.
She was coming to realize how they’d taught her to be bore only a passing resemblance to who she in fact trulywas.
This little fissure that allowed in reason also allowed in a little voice. It said: Lorcan probably understands families the way a man missing an arm understands the point of arms.
She sighed and dropped her face into her hands.
Damn Lorcan.
Because when her anger receded, what was left behind was a terrible, seething grief.
For herself, or for her mother, she did not know. Perhaps both. She felt that, along with a sort of hollow panic. Her birthday was the day after tomorrow. She wondered if her father or her brothers would even remember.
She allowed her mind to flow to where it wished.
Doing only this was a luxury and a little unnerving. She was not accustomed to facing swaths of time uninterrupted by responsibility. And because guilt was also second nature to her, her thoughts almost immediately lit upon the expression on Lorcan’s face when she’d called him a heathen. She had perpetuated a cruelty, with relish, to defend herself, and it shocked her. She could not recall ever before doing such a thing.
She sucked in a breath, leaped up, and restlessly poked at the fire again, feeling strangely now as if the crime of burning the stockings had been hers, not his.
When she paused this pointless task, the room seemed to echo with emptiness.
Lorcan’s life force was immense. His presence hummed the way a ceaselessly flowing river did.
How could she miss someone she’d scarcely known a day?
More specifically, how could she miss a man likethat?
She returned to curl up on the settee with her feet beneath her. Where had he gone in the dark, cold house? Was he angry? Was he grieving, as she was, some old wound? Was he tired and uncomfortable?
She gave a start when she heard a little scratching sound at the door. She leaped up and cautiously creaked open the peep hatch.
She saw no one.
The hair prickled at the back of her neck.
She opened the door a crack. She peered down the hall. She saw, and heard, no one. No Lorcan.
But then the sconces had been doused for the night.
And then:
“Prrrp!” Gordon the cat said cheerily.
She nearly leaped clean out of her dress, so startled was she.
“You gave me a fright.” She knelt and offered her hand to him to sniff. “Well, good evening. So kind of you to knock. Would you like to come in? I’d be grateful for your company.”
