She could have let it go.
She should have let it go.
He outranked her.
There was no blood or romantic entanglement between them.
He wasn’t even her friend as much as he was Weston’s.
But knowing what it felt like to suffer, knowing the allure of wanting to make yourself so small that you eventually disappeared, Brynne had to do something. If nothing else, it would take her mind off her estranged husband…and maybe even save a duke while she was at it.
“You’re not to blame,” she repeated when Sterling’s countenance collapsed into bleakness. “But as long as you keep feeding your demons, they’ll keep convincing you that you are.”
He rubbed his hands down his face. “When did you grow up to be this wise? Yesterday, you were running around in braids while West and I practiced fighting with sticks so that when we grew up we could be knights and defend our Guineveres.” He gave a ghost of a grin. “Mine was much prettier than his.”
“Naturally.” She pointed at the pitcher. “Drink. Then food, then bathe, then get some fresh air. If you care to join me, I’ll be dining at half-past six this evening. Or I can have food sent to your room.”
“How can you be this nice when your brother is such a cold-hearted git?”
The corners of her mouth twitched. “I’ll see you once you’ve made yourself presentable.”
As she quit the library, she thought–of all things–about glaciers. When she was a girl, she’d sat in this very library and read about them. About how they were formed. How old they were. And how the ones with the least amount of ice on the surface were often the largest and the coldest deep below.
When the door to the formal dining room unceremoniously swung inward, Brynne looked up from her plate of baked herring seasoned with white pepper, fresh broccoli sautéed in garlic, and scalloped potatoes. But the welcome she’d been about to deliver to Sterling died on her lips as Lachlan, not the duke, sauntered in, appearing every inch as handsome and arrogant as he had this morning when he’d approached her at the gazebo.
She noted that he had changed into formal evening wear; exchanging his casual square cut lapel jacket for a satin waistcoat and trim smoking jacket that hugged his muscular torso. Gray trousers had replaced his breeches, and he’d even made an effort to tame his hair. Freshly combed, it was secured at the nape of his neck in a style that invoked images of Celtic warriors of old when men had charged fearlessly into battle armed only with their swords and the fierce love they had for those they’d left behind at home.
It wasn’t difficult to imagine Lachlan as a warrior. Having seen him in the nude, Brynne knew firsthand that he certainly had the physique of one. All hard muscle and sinew with nary an inch of softness to be found…anywhere.
“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 bluidy sheep asleep 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 Weston had been planning to marry.
It was a bit of a tangled web as Joanna Thorncroft, Evie’s elder sister, was also Brynne and Weston’s half-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. So furious 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 was still asking 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 never stopped loving 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’re the 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 app
eal, 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 she had denied 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. “You asked me to run away with you!”
“I did. Because I couldna stand tae not have ye for another second, another minute, another hour. And because that was what we both agreed tae. Ten years,” he said, his eyes as flat and unreadable as a blank page of parchment. “Ten years, and if we werena married, we’d marry each other. That was the deal we struck.”
“A deal with the devil,” she whispered. “I was a child when I made it.”
Lachlan’s chair clattered to the floor with a loud bang as he stood up.
She flinched both from the violent sound and the sudden anger swirling in the depths of his gaze.
“But ye were a woman when ye honored it,” he snarled, stepping over the fallen chair and around the edge of the table until the only thing that separated them was an invisible wall of vibrating fury. “Ye made a choice, Bry. I didna force ye.”
“I never claimed–”
“And then ye made another choice when ye walked away.” He leaned in close. So close that she smelled his scent, an achingly familiar combination of evergreen and peat. So close that she saw the flecks of gold surrounding his pupils. So close that the yearning deep inside of her was almost too strong to ignore.
“Aye,” he said huskily when her gaze betrayed her and went to his mouth. “The fire’s burning, Bry. It never went out.” His hands, impossibly gentle for how large they were, skimmed along the outside of her arms until they reached her wrists. He encircled the tiny bones, thumb and index finger easily overlapping. “Which means ye have one more choice tae make.”
Her heart beat like a wild thing inside of her chest. It thrashed against her ribcage, pounding against all of the measures she’d put in place to protect herself from exactly this. From falling back into his orbit, like a star spinning wildly through the galaxy only to become ensnared by the gravitational pull of a planet.
“I cannot.” With her eyes, with her heart, with all she had within her, she implored him to understand. To turn on his heel and walk out the same door he’d come in. To leave her to the life she’d made for herself. A life that wasn’t perfect. A life that fell far short of the one she’d dreamed of. That they’d dreamed of. But at least in this life…in this life, it didn’t hurt to breathe. “We cannot. We tried, Lachlan. We did our best. And…and you weren’t the only person to make mistakes.”
It was the first time she’d acknowledged her wrongdoing.
The first time she’d admitted that some of the fault for their marriage crumbling was her own.
There was a sense of peace in that.
A relief of pressure that she hadn’t known she was holding.
But it wasn’t enough.
It would never be enough.
For they’d gone too far apart to pretend they could come back together now.
“Thank ye for saying that.” His thumbs rubbed light circles on her fluttering pulses. “We might have broke, Bry, but we’re not broken. I love ye. I havena stopped loving ye. Not for a bluidy moment.”
She was tempted–oh so tempted–to give him what he wanted. To rest her head in the middle of his hard chest and begin again. To let go of all past hurts and heartbreak. To take the easy way out.
But what he wanted was not what she needed.
And the easiest path was rarely the best.
Slowly, steadily, she extricated herself from his grip. Took one step back, then another, and another, until the length of the room–and all the pain they’d caused each other–stood between them once again. An impenetrable wall that no chisel could break. “If you truly love me…then you’ll let me go.”
Chapter Six
Let her go? Let her go?
Didn’t Brynne know that if Lachlan could, he would have?
He’d never liked pain with his pleasure.
If he had the ability to release himself from the spell she’d cast over him when he was but a boy of sixteen, he would have done it gladly. But while a man could live without a limb, he needed his heart. And if he let his Bry go, he’d be wrenching the organ straight out of his chest.
Yet he’d be damned if he begged for her on his bloody knees.
“I’m not keeping ye,” he said, gesturing at the door. “But I’m not leaving, either. Not until we’ve figured this out once and for all.”
“There is nothing to figure.” Her hands went to her hips as temper glinted in her eyes. Temper he was glad to see, as he couldn’t abide her sadness…especially knowing he was the cause of it.
“If you will not leave of your own accord, then I shall have you thrown out.”
He snorted at that. “Ye and what army?”
“Why are you doing this?” she exclaimed, her slender shoulders heaving in visible frustration. “Everything was fine. We were fine. You didn’t have to come here. Stirring up old waters best left alone.”
“Ye call hiding away in a house that ye hate fine?” he asked.
“I am not hiding,” she scoffed. “Two days ago this house was filled with over two dozen people and if not for you, I’d already be on my way to London.”
“Ye can be standing in the middle of the room with a hundred people surrounding ye and be hiding, Bry. This isna the life ye wanted. Hosting house parties for yer brother, keeping yer gorgeous paintings tae yerself, pretending tae be the perfectionist that everyone expects ye tae be.”
“There’s nothing wrong with any of that!”
“There’s nothing right, either. Not for ye.” Couldn’t she see? Couldn’t she see that she’d flown right back into that gilded cage that they’d made for her when she was a girl? Except this time, she was the one who had closed the door. “Ye wanted more for yer life, Bry. Ye wanted tae travel, and see the world, and experience all it had tae offer.”
She pressed her lips together. “I can do that yet.”
No, he thought silently. Ye canna, love. Not without someone there tae break ye free.
“Once Weston is married,” she went on, “I have every intention of traveling. Not that it is any concern of yours.”
“And will ye continue tae live here? In this place that ye have always despised?” As he hated the white-walled mansion every bit as much as Brynne did, Lachlan’s gaze frosted over when he took a sharp glance around the room.
After his initial two-week tenure here, he’d returned the following summer as a temporary ward of the Earl of Dorchester. His father had recently married–again–and not wanting to overwhelm his young bride with a gaggle of rambunctious boys, had sent as many of them away as he could.
Lachlan was glad–even secretly overjoyed–to return to Hawkridge Manor. He’d thought of Brynne often, and couldn’t wait to see her again. But by the time he’d gotten there, she had already departed for Cheltenham Ladies’ College.
He had felt her absence keenly. And after the first month of being stuck i
n that frigid, Godforsaken tomb of an estate, he was already counting down the hours to when he’d be able to return to Campbell Castle.
It may have been in a state of perpetual disrepair with crack in the walls and spiders hanging from the ceiling and a wild pack of hounds gamboling through the halls at all hours of the day and night, but on its coldest day his childhood home was warmer than Hawkridge.
When he’d returned to the manor as an adult, he was surprised to find it exactly as it had been when he was a boy, despite having transferred to Weston’s management. Then, it was well-known that Brynne’s brother was just as emotionless as her father. And those who didn’t know his Bry as he did swept her with the same brush.
On more than one occasion, he’d heard her described as an ice queen. Beautiful, reserved, and utterly untouchable. But he knew better. He knew there was warmth there. Warmth, and humor, and an almost insatiable curiosity for life and all the wonders it contained.
Which was why he couldn’t stand seeing her here. Trapped in the very same place that had robbed her of a child’s unique freedom and inquisitiveness and joy.
She was a grown woman now.
He knew that better than anyone.
But that didn’t mean she wasn’t still trapped.
Trapped by a society that benefited from her lack of independence.
Trapped by a series of outdated rules designed to suppress women and elevate men.
Trapped by a family that had never quite understood her.
Not even her own brother.
But Lachlan had. Lachlan did. Often better than he understood himself. He and Brynne…they were two stars in the same constellation. Two parts that helped to comprise the whole. And when one of them dimmed, they both lost their light.
“Ye need a home, Bry. Someplace tae put down yer roots. Someplace tae return to after yer travels. Someplace tae raise yer children.” He walked towards her then. He didn’t direct his legs; they moved of their own accord. He half-expected her to run, and he wouldn’t have blamed her if she did. But his Bry was stronger than that. She may have been as slim as a willow, but there was steel there.
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