I, however, am catching snippets of his. As if the sight of my wet, naked flesh has caused his control to cease functioning.
…need to stop staring at her, you idiot, she’ll…
…looks even softer than I’d…
…hear you! Close your mouth! Get your shit together! Have you forgotten how this ends? With her as yourqueen, for Danu’s sake…
I break the charged silence. “Can you hand me a towel?”
“Fuck.” The curse whispers past his parted lips, so soft I wonder if I made it up. He shakes his head and anchors his gaze to the floor. “Sorry, little queen. Didn’t realize you were in here. I thought you’d still be with the duke.” He side-steps to the shelf, then extends a towel toward me. “I promise I won’t look.”
Look. Please look, I nearly scream. I am battered from my failures, and Lachlan’s face when he opened the door was quite the ego boost.
I grab the towel and wrap it around my figure as I step out of the tub. “All my naughty bits are hidden. You’re safe.”
His smile is rueful, a little sad even, when his blue eyes meet mine. “Am I?”
I should leave, allow him privacy for his own bedtime routine. But my fear that I am running out of time to hear the duke’s clue emboldens me.
“Am I boring?” I blurt.
Lachlan rears back as if I just asked him the most absurd question in the world. “What?”
I finger the hem of the towel. “Duke Áine has no interest in me whatsoever. I don’t … I don’t think I can do this.”
Lachlan cocks his head, eyes narrowing in confusion, but not anger. They’re chivalrously homed in on my face, staying well above my collarbone.
I am not being even half as respectful.
But my spirits are low. And the sight of all his pierced, tattooed, muscled strength—so close I could reach out and touch him if I were feelingreallybold—is the only thing keeping me from collapsing to the floor in a puddle of tears.
“I’ve already been passed over once.”
“What does that mean? Passed over?”
“The man I was in love with before I came here? George? The one I told?—”
“A name as insipid as the man himself, no doubt,” Lachlan snarls, as if unable to stifle the comment.
“I thought he was going to propose. But he … He chose someone else. ArealFavourite.” I’m already physically naked. Might as well get a bit psychologically naked, too.
Lachlan sucks in a breath. “You’re not the Favourite?”
I shake my head. “I thought I could fake it, but … I seem to have reached the limit of my acting skills.”
Lachlan blinks, then clenches his jaw.Nowhe looks angry. Furious. A little devastated, even. But only momentarily. He circles the heels of his palms against his eyes. “You’ve enchanted Desmond, though, and he?—”
“Wants to be king. He doesn’t care who his queen is.”
“He is very focused on that goal, but”—Lachlan grasps my damp chin, forcing me to look at him—“you have a very distorted view of yourself, Charlotte, if you believe you are without charm.”
I cannot bear his intense sincerity right now. I crack beneath its weight, tearing away. “How can I trust your judgment? You barely talk to anyone.”
“That’s not true, I … ” He scoffs, scratching the stubble shadowing his sharp jawline. “Well, I talk to you all the time.”
“Oftenonlyme.”
“You’re very easy to talk to.”
