“If that is really true, brother, then I suggest you stop talking about it.Because the only person who seems to have a problem with George and Tilly’s honeymoon plans is yourself.”
“Bollocks you.”He sneered.“And by the way, Malcolm, I’ve been stuck in a closet a time or two.I’d bet twenty guineas that you weren’t just talking Miss Perkins down from her fear of tight spaces in there.A tight space,indeed.Yes, I’d wager.”
“You know nothing,” Malcolm growled.“Leave it.”
Severn held up his hands.“If you extend me the same consideration.”
He knew what his brother was saying, of course.
Tell no one of my conversation with Tilly, and I’ll keep your very private audience with Scarlett to myself.
“Of course,” he said, his ire at his brother fading.
He didn’t know what Severn wanted with Tilly.Or if he really wanted anything at all.Either way, it wasn’t his business.
“Come, let us find some luncheon,” Severn said, clapping him on the shoulder.His own anger seemed to have evaporated as well.“And forget about the ladies.They aren’t our concern.That’s George’s trouble.”
“Agreed.”
Malcolm wasn’t sure if he was lying to Severn with that assent.
Or if Severn was lying to him with his own statement of indifference.
But right now, it appeared both of them needed to believe that the Perkins sisters were no concern of theirs.
Chapter Fourteen
“What on earth,Tilly, was that?”
“What does that mean?”her sister shot back.
They were on the stairs, clambering back up to Tilly’s room.
Scarlett was still flushed with the hazy aftereffects of the pleasure that Malcolm had delivered her inside that closet.Now that she had reemerged into the bright light of the summer day, she could not believe what she had done.
She had told the man to leave her alone.
And then she had practically begged him for his touch.
It was beyond the pale of anything she had ever done before.Usually, she was nothing but proper.She hadn’t even had any opportunities, previously, to be scandalous.Her kisses long ago with her fiancé, Thomas Garrison, had been chaste, dry things.
It was something abouthim,about Mr.Malcolm Brown.Yes, that she found him so handsome, but something more too.Perhaps it was because of what had happened two nights ago.It was impossible to think of him as a stranger now, as someone she hadnotbeen intimate with, even though she had been asleep for most of their first encounter.
And it was something more, too, she knew.Something about him made her wild.She had lived nearly her entire life in London.She knew nothing of the country—and he was a creation of this wild landscape.He drove her to do things she never would have imagined possible in London.
“Shhh,” Scarlett said.“In your room.”
She didn’t need anyone overhearing this conversation.Not only were the Perkins sisters perilously close to arguing, but they were hissing to each other about their inappropriate… activities with two of the brothers who belonged to the house.
Of course, Scarlett was supposed to be the chaperone.She had not thought chaperonage necessary for a scavenger hunt, especially since Tilly hadn’t even been paired with George.But—to her ears—it did not seem that her sister was entirely safe with Mr.Westmore either.
They gained the top of the stairs, and Scarlett hustled Tilly into her chamber.
“Tilly,” she repeated.“What is happening between you and Mr.Westmore?”
“Nothing!”Tilly exclaimed.“How dare you suggest it?”
“Tilly!”
