He barked out a laugh. “Somehow it’s never the place, is it? Nor the time. If ye dinna want tae admit that ye were wrong, Lady Brynne, simply say as much and be done with it.”
Sterling started to edge backwards. “I’m just going to–”
“I was wrong?Iwas wrong?” She jabbed her finger at him. “I always wanted you to succeed! Always!”
Lachlan snorted. “Then ye have a damned funny way of showing it.”
“Did you hear that?” Sterling asked. “A nap is calling my name.” Tossing his horse’s reins at Lachlan, the duke bolted out of the courtyard with such speed that little plumes of dust rose in his wake.
“Now look what you’ve done!” Brynne cried.
“Aye, it’s forever me fault, isna it?” When the bay gelding shifted nervously at his tone, Lachlan laid a reassuring hand on the horse’s withers, but his gaze remained hard as he glared at his wife. “How much better yer life would have been if I hadna dared ask ye tae marry me.”
She flinched as if he’d physically struck her. “I haveneversaid that.”
“Some words dinna need tae be spoken aloud.”
“If you’ve come all this way to berate me–”
“I bluidy well didna come here tae hear ye offer me congratulations after ye hoped the distillery would fail!”
“Is that what you think? That I wanted you tofail?”
The genuine shock in her voice gave him pause. “What else was I supposed tae think, when ye asked me tae choose between the distillery or ye?”
“And,” she said fiercely, her wee hands knotting into fists. “I was a new bride, with a new home, in a new country, who wanted her new husband to choose herandhis dream. It was never one or the other, Lachlan. Not until you made it that way.”
Something inside of him twisted unpleasantly tight.
Not because he didn’t find truth in her admission…
But because he did.
In his eagerness to make her his bride, he’d blurred the lines between what she needed and what he desired. Shy, uncertain, and–aye–even vulnerable, she had needed solid ground beneath her feet. A stone foundation from which they could start building their life together. A life that her tutors, and governesses, and that fancy school she’d despised, had never prepared her for.
From infancy, Brynne had been raised to rule over a lavish estate with every modern convenience at her disposal and an army of servants to do her bidding. Instead, she’d found herself dropped into the middle of a castle with holes in the roof and straw in the mattresses.
He’d taken her from the lambs and tossed her in with the wolves. And even though she’d gone willingly, wolves were wolves. With sharp teeth and ragged fur and a savage nature. But instead of coddling her, of helping her adjust to her new surroundings and her new pack, he had taken to spending all of his days trying to get the distillery up and running again.
For them.
He had done it forthem.
So that he had a means by which to provide her the opulence she was both accustomed to and deserved.
But he could see now, without the hurt and the bewildered anger that had blinded him then, that he hadn’t managed his time as wisely as he should have.
That he had, in the end, forced an untenable ultimatum.
And they’d both chosen wrongly.
“Bry.” Leaving the bay gelding where it stood, Lachlan approached his wife, arms spread apart and palms raised. He slowed when she shook her head. Stopped when he saw the sheen in her eyes. “Bry, I–”
“Congratulations,” she repeated softly. Then tossing the reins over her horse’s head and swinging herself into the saddle in one smooth motion, she gave a kick and galloped out of the courtyard.
As Sterling watchedBrynne tear off down the drive from the reclusive safety of the parlor, he whistled low under his breath and muttered, “Poor bloke. Better him than me.”
It was clear that there was history between Brynne and Lachlan.
