“Shwoo?” Joanna asked, her mouth full of cake.
“My husband,” Brynne sighed.
“YOU HAVE A–”
“Shhh.” Evie elbowed Joanna in the ribs as she gave a pointed glance across the wide table to where their husbands (or almost husband, in her case) sat side by side, conversing about some manly thing or another. “It’s a secret.”
“You have asecrethusband?” Joanna hissed. “I am going to need more cake for this.”
In hushed tones, Brynne delivered an abridged version of the events that she’d told Evie at great length. All three women then departed the table for the parlor where Joanna poured them champagne from a bottle set in a bucket of ice.
“What are we celebrating?” Brynne asked bleakly as they clinked their crystal flutes together.
“To finding our husbands,” said Evie.
“To finding ourselves,” Joanna added. “No matterwhatpath it took us to get here.” Then she paused, and something flickered in her eyes. “Brynne, I don’t mean to presume, but there is an exceedingly large red-haired man who just entered the parlor and is looking at you as if you were the last piece of strawberry sponge cake. Is that your husband, per chance?”
Fingers reflexively tightening around the slender stem of her champagne glass, Brynne turned around as if in slow motion. When she saw Lachlan standing in the doorway, her breath expelled on awhooshof air and her heart slammed into the wall of her chest.
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Off with you then,” Evie said, giving her a push.
Joanna grinned. “Don’t let us keep you.”
But Brynne resisted.
“I–I don’t know if I can,” she said as the dreaded sensation of suffocating in a room filled with air came creeping in. “I want to. But what if I don’t fly? What if…what if I fall?”
“Then we’ll catch you,” said Evie.
This time, she and Joanna pushed her together.
“Go,” they said in unison.
And so she did.
One look atBrynne’s pale countenance, and Lachlan took her by the arm and steered her out of the parlor and through the hall to the library where they could be alone. He closed the door and then leaned against it, hands draped loosely on his narrow hips as he studied his wife in the muted glow of candlelight and a crackling fire.
She looked…different.
Nervous, he decided.
She looked nervous.
An emotion his wife rarely displayed.
Which, in turn, madehimnervous, given that he’d left the Duke of Oxford’s gallery with the impression that they’d taken a stride in the right direction. Since then–although it had pained him to no end–he’d kept his distance, not wanting to crowd her or give her an excuse to bolt again.
It wasn’t until Robert revealed that she’d come looking for him that he had accepted the invitation to tonight’s dinner. An invitation he hadn’t been expecting, given he’d never received one from Lord and Lady Denbigh before. Hadn’t even known they were aware of his existence, if he were being honest, given that they’d never been officially introduced.
When the envelope arrived, a little bell in his ear had rung, and he’d thought–he’d hoped–that Brynne had something to do with his name being placed on the guest list. But if her white face and shaking hands were any indication, she’d had no idea he was coming.
“Ye should sit down,” he said gruffly, pulling out a chair.
But she remained standing. “You signed the papers.”
At first, he didn’t know what the devil she was talking about. Then his shoulders stiffened. “Aye,” he said. “Yer solicitor was very prompt.”
