“What are you doing here?” she asked, carefully laying her fork down beside her plate before lifting her glass of wine. A rich dark red, it disguised her angry flush as she raised it to her lips and took a measured sip. “I thought I made myself clear: you are not welcome at Hawkridge Manor.”
“Do ye know there’s a bluidysheepasleep in the parlor?” Instead of answering her question–or even acknowledging it–Lachlan proceeded to seat himself to her left, leaving only a single chair between them.
“Yes, I am aware.” She flicked a glance at the two scullery maids waiting in the corner of the room. A subtle nod of her chin and they hurried out, discreetly closing the door in their wake. “Her name is Posy, and she belongs to my brother’s fiancée.”
Even with the pins and needles dancing under her skin courtesy of the large Scot sitting beside her, it pleased Brynne to say those words aloud. Lachlan’s unexpected arrival had overshadowed the joyous announcement of her brother’s betrothal, which she’d received via a letter sent from London where Weston and Evelyn Thorncroft, his American bride-to-be, were staying temporarily.
Brynne preferred to think she’d played a large part in their union, as she was the one who had invited Evie to attend the house party in the first place, during which Evie and Weston had fallen in love. She had liked the intelligent, outspoken American from the first moment they’d met, and vastly preferred her to the meek, mild-tempered Lady Martha Smethwick whom Westonhadbeen planning to marry.
It was abitof a tangled web as Joanna Thorncroft, Evie’s elder sister, was also Brynne and Weston’shalf-sister courtesy of a secret affair that had only recently come to light. A secret affair between Brynne’s father and Joanna’s mother that had resulted in a daughter raised in another country as the child of another man.
The only thing that had tied the two families together was a sapphire ring (a family heirloom, such as it were) that the Marquess of Dorchester had given Anne Thorncroft before she fled England for a quiet, peaceful life as the wife of a doctor in the small town of Somerville, Massachusetts.
When Weston asked their father for the ring as he prepared to get down on bended knee in front of Lady Smethwick, he was furious to learn that it had been given away years earlier.Sofurious that he’d hired a private investigator to get it back for him. Unfortunately, that meant stealing it from the Thorncroft sisters…which, as it all turned out, was really for the best as it had led to Joanna and Evie setting sail for London in pursuit of the ring…and Joanna’s heritage.
Brynne had yet to meet her half-sister. It was something she was looking forward to with immense anticipation. Or at least she had been until Lachlan arrived. As she couldn’t very well leave him here at Hawkridge Manor while she flitted off to London to see Joanna and congratulate Weston and Evie in person, she needed him to leave.
Immediately.
“What are you doing here, Lachlan?” More than a decade later, and she wasstillasking him the same question that she’d posed all those years ago when he first came to Hawkridge Manor. So much had changed since then…and yet the words remained the same.
“I told ye at the gazebo,” he said, his gaze unwavering. “I’m here tae win ye back.”
Her fingers tightening around the slender stem of her wineglass, she met his stare without blinking. No matter what happened, she refused to let him know that he still affected her. That his voice still sent tiny thrills of delight racing across the delicate bumps of her vertebrae. That the heat emanating off his large body still warmed every inch of her. And–worst of all–that she still loved him. That she’d neverstoppedloving him. Even after all that he had done.
To her.
To them.
To any future they might have had.
“You spoke nonsense at the gazebo,” she corrected icily. “Pure, unadulterated nonsense. Win me back? I am not a gift that you’ve misplaced, Lachlan. Nor a lamb at a fair.”
“No, ye are me wife.” The clenching of his jaw indicated he wasn’t nearly as calm as he’d like her to believe with his sauntering gait and slouched, devil-may-care posture. “We’ve been separated this past year, aye. Tae give ye space. Tae let things calm. Tae allow cooler heads tae prevail. But we are married, Bry. Ye canna deny that.”
“You’rethe one who is denying what’s crystal clear. We may be legally bound to each other, Lachlan, but you are no more my husband than the butcher down the lane.” Half her plate remained, but she feared if she tried to eat another bite her stomach would reject it later. Setting her wine glass onto the table with careful precision–it was either that, or slam it against the wall–she rose to her feet and stared down her nose at the man who’d once owned every piece of her heart…before he stabbed a knife through the middle of it. “It appears I did not make myself clear enough this morning. You are not welcome here. Were Weston in residence, he would see that you were tossed out on your ear.”
Crossing his arms, Lachlan thoughtfully drummed his fingers along the sharp line of his jawbone where he’d allowed a layer of scruff, darker and shorter than the mane on his head, to grow.
On most men, the beard would have appeared unkempt. But on Lachlan it only served to heighten his roguish appeal, and Brynne’s teeth gritted with annoyance as she resisted her natural inclination to brush her fingertips across his beard and see if it felt as rough as it looked.
No, she told herself sternly, in much the same way she denied herself a second macaroon after dinner.
No, no, no.
“Yer brother toss me out on me ear?” Lachlan smirked. “That I’d like tae see. Ye finally told him about our elopement, then?”
At her blank stare, he chuckled humorlessly under his breath.
“Aye, that’s what I thought. Still tae ashamed to claim a half-blooded Scot as yer husband, Bry?”
She stiffened at the accusation. An accusation that stung all the more because it carried a shard of truth. As much as she’d have liked to deny it. As much as shehaddenied it. Both to Lachlan…and to herself.
“I was never ashamed of you.” Even as she said the words aloud, her gaze slipped away and she bit her lip.
“Aye.” He placed his hands flat on the table. “Ye were. Or ye wouldna have run away with me under the cover of darkness and then hid our marriage from all the world as if it were a terrible secret.”
Her cheeks heated. “Youaskedme to run away with you!”
