And Brynne was finally, irrevocably, completely alone.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Running away sosoon?” Sterling drawled as he sauntered into the stable yard to watch Lachlan finish preparing his mare for the long ride to Carlisle, where they’d both board a train that would take them the rest of the way to Glenavon. “I had you pegged for at least another three days. You lost me a bet with the footman, Campbell.”
“Maybe ye shouldna be betting with footmen.” Lachlan finished tightening the girth, then moved to Aislyn’s head to put the bit between her teeth. Brown ears raised and attentive, she lowered her head and stood patiently while he adjusted the noseband and buckled the throatlatch.
It was a good thing he’d tacked her a hundred times before this, for his motions were purely based on muscle memory as his mind and his heart were still in that damned gazebo, going over everything he’d said and where he’d gone wrong.
For surely he had donesomething. Said something. Or not said something. If he could figure out what it was, he could fix it…and he and Brynne could find their way back. Theyhadto find their way back. Unless the way back really was letting go. And if that was the way she wanted it…the way it was to be…then the only thing left for him to do was leave.
He’d have liked tomakeher love him. To insist she remain married to him, and to hell with this judicial separation. But then he would just be exchanging one cage for another, and that wasn’t how you kept a wild bird.
That was how you broke it.
If Brynne flew to him…if she flew to him, it needed to beherdecision. Her choice.
He couldn’t make it for her.
“Pardon me,” he said curtly as he tried to lead Aislyn out of the barn and past the Duke of Hanover, but Sterling refused to move.
“How long have you and Weston’s sister been married?” he asked.
Thatgot Lachlan to stop. “Did Brynne tell ye?”
“No,” the duke grinned. “But you just did. And I guessed. Watching you two go at it was like seeing my parents all over again, God rest their souls.”
As it was apparent that Sterling had no plans to move anytime soon, Lachlan made himself comfortable on a wooden mounting block, knees bent and boots firmly planted, while Aislyn helped herself to a nearby hay bale. “Yer parents hated each other, then?”
Sterling blinked. “Hated? No, they were bloody crazy about each other. It was embarrassing. Always holding hands and gazing longingly. Blech. It was a mercy that when they died, they went together, for I truly don’t believe they would have been able to live apart. A boating accident,” he explained when Lachlan gave a questioning lift of his brow. “Capsized off the coast with nary a survivor. I was sixteen, my brother barely twenty, our sister Sarah a baby at ten.”
“I’m sorry,” said Lachlan.
“It will be eleven years ago, next month.”
“Does it get easier with time? Losing someone ye love.”
“It does…sometimes.” Reaching inside his coat, Sterling removed a silver flask. He tipped it back. Took a liberal swallow. “Although I guess it depends on the permanence of the loss. How long have you and Brynne hated each other?”
“We dinna–” Lachlan gritted his teeth. “We dinna hate each other.”
“Madly in love, then. Squabbling with that much passion, it’s always one or the other.” As he took another sip from the flask, the duke’s voice took on a dreamy, wistful quality. “Eloise and I would fight like the dickens and then fuck until dawn. Like a pair of temperamental rabbits.”
“Who is Eloise?”
“Shewasmy mistress. Until I killed her, chopped her body up into little pieces, and fed her to the lions at the Regent’s Zoo.”
“Ye did what now?” Lachlan asked politely.
“Too gruesome? Too gruesome.” At Lachlan’s blank stare, Sterling sighed. “Didn’t you hear? I’m a murderer.”
Lachlan snorted. “Ye’re not a murderer.”
“How the hell do you know?”
“Because murderers dinna admit tae murdering.”
“Maybe I’m just not agoodmurderer.”
