Stopped when she realized he was serious.
“Oh.Oh.But…” Her mind whirling, she stood up slowly, and as if from a faraway distance, watched her palm slide tentatively along his until their hands were clasped together. “Ten years.”
“Ten years,” he said solemnly. Then he grinned. “Have ye ever been in a pub before?”
“Of course not. Why do you ask?”
“Come on.” Rolling his eyes, he gave her arm a tug and, together, they ran across the village square.
Eleven days later,as she watched Lachlan’s carriage drive away, Brynne realized two very important, life-altering things.
Firstly, she desperately wanted to be more than what she was becoming. While Miss Hardgrave, and her father, and even her brother believed that her entire destiny was to marry well and have children and preside over an estate just like this one, Brynne wantedmore. More happiness, more fun, more leaping out of wagons and gazing at the stars and sneaking into pubs. She’d lived more in these fourteen days than she had in fourteen years. And she’dlaughed. How she’d laughed. She wanted to laugh like that again. She wanted tobelike that again. The person she was when Lachlan was near. Which brought her to her second life-altering realization.
She, Brynne Weston, at all of fourteen years of age, was in love.
With Lachlan Campbell.
And even though it was a child’s love, a sweet love, a love born of innocence and wonder, it was real. It was strong. But most importantly, it was true.
Until it wasn’t.
Chapter Five
Present Day
Hawkridge Manor
After prying herselfoff the sofa by sheer force of will, Brynne managed to go about the rest of her day with a modicum of normalcy. With Weston temporarily in London, it fell to her to see that personal notes were sent to every guest that had attended their annual house party, as well as collect any belongings that had been left behind and send them on their merry way. Then the kitchen needed to be restocked, all of the linens refreshed, the bedrooms–all twenty-two of them, not including the master chambers–cleaned. Tasks that would ultimately fall upon the shoulders of Mrs. Grimsby and the staff, but Brynne liked to have a hand in the organization of it all.
She also had a lingering guest to look after.
Well, two.
But only one was human.
Barely.
“It stinks in here,” she said, her nose wrinkling as she strode into the library and began flinging open the drapes, letting streams of light in the dim, stuffy room that smelled vaguely of cigar smoke, brandy, and a duke badly in need of a good bathing.
Preferably outdoors.
“I’ve gone blind,” Sterling Nottingham, Duke of Hanover, covered his face with a pillow as sunlight drenched the library in a spill of light gold, revealing that he was wearing the same clothes she’d seen him in yesterday, and hadn’t even bothered to remove his boots before drowning himself in a bottle of her brother’s liquor and passing out on a chaise lounge that would in all likelihood need to be burned.
“You’re not blind.” The first time she’d happened upon Sterling in a similar situation, Brynne had felt a stirring of sympathy. A friend of Weston’s, who had also become a friend of hers over the years, the duke was, under ordinary circumstances, a jovial, well-kept, gentlemanly individual. But after his mistress was violently murdered–and he became the prime suspect in the eyes of theton–Sterling had sunk into a state of…well, whateverthiswas.
Drinking until the morning. Sleeping until the afternoon. Dragging himself about with disheveled hair and red-rimmed eyes and wrinkled clothing.
It was pitiful.
Embarrassing, really.
And while she was happy to offer Sterling refuge at Hawkridge Manor for as long as he’d like to continue avoiding the vicious gossip that awaited him in London, such destructive self-indulgence was not to be permitted.
“Sit up,” she said briskly. “There’s a pitcher of water on the table beside you, and your breakfast–while cold by now–is waiting in the solarium. Once you’ve eaten, you will bathe, and put oncleangarments. Then a walk is in order, to clear your head.”
Sterling slowly lowered the pillow. “Can’t I just go upstairs and sleep?”
“No.”
