“They have Alec.”
“Where will I go?” She heard the whining tone in her own voice, knew she’d lost.
Muira shrugged. “Brodie’s mother is your cousin. Ye could go there. It doesn’t matter, as long as you don’t come back here. Ever. Or you can drink that foul brew, but I’ll have your decision here and now.”
Devorguilla stared into the cup. She’d watched her husband die. It had been slow and painful. While she wished that upon Alec, she had no desire to experience it herself. She looked into Muira’s eyes again, saw ice-cold determination that rivaled her own. This was a fight she would not even survive, let alone win. She had no choice. “I’ll go.”
Angus wiped a tear from his eye as Devorguilla climbed onto the pony cart with Brodie and left. “Aren’t you happy to see her go?” Georgiana asked.
“Of course I am! It’s just that it didn’t end the way we’d hoped, and the wedding is tomorrow. It’s a matter of honor, of course—and fortune. Alec promised to marry Sophie, and he canna go back on his word. A MacNabb never goes back on his word.”
“Fortune!” Georgiana scoffed. “He’ll make a dozen fortunes if he follows what he’s started. He’s smart, but he cannot see what’s truly important.”
Angus looked at her sadly. “Ye canna eat love,gràdhach, nor can you roof houses, or feed children with it.”
Georgiana tossed her head. “Love always finds a way, Angus.”
“No it doesn’t. Not for us, it didn’t. Who’s to say he won’t come to love Sophie?”
“Not for us?” Georgiana set her hands on her hips. “And who’s to say this isn’t our second chance?” She left Angus staring at the empty shadows.
CHAPTERFORTY-FIVE
Caroline was packing when Lottie burst into the room. “Happy birthday, Caro!” she cried, and dropped a wrapped parcel on the bed, and gave her aunt a hug.
Caroline smiled. “I didn’t think anyone would remember,” she said.
Lottie beamed. “How could I forget? My birthday is just twelve days after yours.”
“You’ll be an old married woman by then,” Caroline teased, and crossed to the package.
“Yes, I will, won’t I?” Lottie’s smile faded.
“Aren’t you happy?” Caroline asked, putting the gift down again.
“I thought I was. William seemed so kind and charming and—serene. Now I think ‘serene’ may have been the wrong word.”
“Oh?”
Lottie bit her lip. “I’m horribly afraid he’s just dull, and not serene at all, which makes me question if he really is charming and kind, or if I’ve made a dreadful mistake. He is handsome at the least, isn’t he?”
Caroline’s heart went out to her niece. She’d once fancied William herself as the perfect husband. Now she could not imagine anyone else but— She took a breath and stopped that thought in its very dangerous tracks. Tomorrow she’d be gone from Glenlorne, and she’d never see Alec MacNabb again. “Yes, he’s very handsome,” she murmured to Lottie, meaning William.
“I love to dance, but William doesn’t dance. Do you see that as a problem?”
Caroline remembered the way it felt to dance on Midsummer’s Eve, light as a feather in Alec’s arms, her feet bare in the cool grass, her body hot with desire ... Would she ever dance with anyone else and feel the same thrill in his arms?
“Dancing is not so important,” she lied.
“And William refuses to travel, or to hunt. I wished to go to Paris for our wedding trip, now the city is open again and Napoleon is gone. He told me he gets seasick, and wouldn’t think of such a dangerous journey. Dangerous! Why, my friend Anne Thorndale went to Paris to buy a whole new wardrobe, and she says it’s perfectly wonderful, and quite safe. She didn’t suffer even the tiniest bit of mal de mer,” Lottie said. She reached for the parcel herself, and began to twirl the string between her fingers, studying her betrothal ring, a perfectly respectable if not awe-inspiring diamond hemmed in by fat pearls.
Caroline remembered the ruby ring her mother had left her, and rubbed her finger where it had once sat. She had given it to the gentleman on the street in London the night she fled Somerson House. Would she change that now, if she could go back, stay where she belonged? She knew she would not.
“You traveled here all by yourself, didn’t you?” Lottie asked.
“Yes,” Caroline murmured. “I’m sure you think I was foolish to flee like that. I didn’t think of the dangers I might have faced.” Especially if she hadn’t had the stranger’s advice about the Royal Mail coach, and the coin he gave her for the fare.
“Oh, I know mama says you are quite ruined, and I did think it was silly to run away at night the way you did, but look at you now—I’d say your adventures have been the making of you!”
