“You don’t have to be perfect. That is not what I’m asking.”
“Then what are ye asking?”
She smiled sadly. “You were always so certain of us, Lachlan. Even when we were children. I used to believe that that certainty meant we were supposed to be together–”
“We are,” he cut in roughly.
“–but people who belong together don’t hurt each other as we did. As we might again, if given the opportunity. Which is why I am asking you, once again, to let me go. To let us go. I don’t want to start over. Not if there’s the chance we might end up exactly where we are.”
“When ye build something magnificent, there’s always the chance it will fall apart.” He crossed the gazebo. Took her hands. Cocooned them in his. “But if it does, ye build it again.”
How simple he made it sound!
And for him, maybe it was.
But not for her.
“I have made my decision, Lachlan.”
His eyes flashed. “Well it’s a bluidy stupid one!”
When annoyance stirred, she slipped her hands free of his embrace and put them on her hips. “Why? Because I am the one who made it? For as long as I can remember, people have made decisions for me. What I ate, what I wore, what I did, where I went–even you, Lachlan. When you proposed marriage, it wasn’t so much a question as it was a forgone conclusion. You assumed what my answer would be before you even asked the question.”
“Ye said yes, didna ye?” he snapped.
“I did. And now I am saying no.”
“Bry–”
“My mind is made up. You cannot change it. I…” When tears unexpectedly threatened, she pressed her lips together until she was able to gain control of her emotions. “I am sorry. I know this isn’t what you wanted to hear. The decision you wanted me to make. But it is my decision, and I’d like you to honor it.”
He went to the edge of the gazebo. Braced his arms on the railing and stared out across the lawn. Gray clouds were beginning to roll in, a preemptive warning of an afternoon storm. But the warning was too late. The storm was already here.
“A judicial separation,” her husband said bitterly.
“That’s right.”
A long, heavy sigh. And then…“What do I have tae do?”
“Sign the papers when they’re given to you. My solicitor has told me that we won’t be required to present ourselves to the court.” Thank goodness for small favors, she thought silently. This was terrible enough. If she had to end her marriage in front of a room filled with solemn-faced strangers in wigs… “It shouldn’t take long. A month or two, at the most.”
“Nearly ten years tae make something, and a month tae destroy it.” The wisp of a smile captured his mouth as he looked at her over his shoulder. “This isna where I thought we’d end up, little bird.”
Without anger to dull it, the pain of loss sliced through her with all the force of a Scottish claymore. When her knees wobbled and her breath stabbed, she curled her fingers inward so tightly that her nails left crescent furrows on the palms of her hands. This is what you wanted, she reminded herself sternly. It will get easier once he’s gone, and everything can return to normal.
It would have been easier if he’d never come at all, but–for once–she was grateful for his stubbornness. They’d needed to have this time together. To rip bandages off old wounds. To heal old hurts. Now they’d be able to move forward without resentment or regret. Lachlan could return to Campbell Castle to pursue his dreams, and she’d go to London to ensure her brother had his. Then someday, when she had a clearer picture of what she wanted, she would go after her own.
It wasn’t happily-ever-after.
But it was close enough.
“If you see the children, please give them my best,” she said softly.
“Ye could see them yerself, if ye wanted.”
Her hands squeezed tighter. “I’ve kept in correspondence with Lady Heather. She says they are well, and have enjoyed the presents I sent them for their birthdays and Christmas.”
“And there it is.” He canted his head. “I never saw it before. Maybe because I didna want tae. But it’s as clear as a day now.”
“What is?” she asked, self-consciously unfurling her hand to brush her thumb across her cheek.
“Yer father, Bry. Ye’re the spitting image of him.” With that, Lachlan left.
And Brynne was finally, irrevocably, completely alone.
Chapter Twenty-One
“Running away so soon?” 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 done something. 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. They had to 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 to make her 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 be her decision. 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.
That got 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?”
“She
was my 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 a good murderer.”
“I dinna think there is such a thing as a good murderer.”
Sterling’s brow furrowed. “You’re probably right about that.” He held out the flask. “Fancy a nip of gin?”
“As I dinna make a habit of drinking horse shite and then riding, I’ll pass.”
“More for me, then.” Sterling drank the rest, grimaced, and slipped the empty flask back into his pocket. “It is horse shite, but Brynne locked away the brandy and this was all I could buy off a groom. Where are you riding off to? Back to Scotland, I presume?”
Lachlan gave a brusque nod and rose from the mounting block to gather Aislyn’s reins. “Aye. So if ye wouldna mind stepping aside–”
“I take it your wife isn’t accompanying you.”
“No,” he said shortly. “She isna.”
“Shame, that.”
“Aye.”
“But,” said Sterling, taking up the entire aisle as he casually stretched his arms out to the side, “isn’t there something that can be done?”
“Bluidy hell, man! Canna ye not just get out of the way?” Lachlan knew he shouldn’t have spoken to a duke in such a manner, but Sterling was pressing on his last remaining nerve. It tingled right beneath his skin; a tiny boulder suppressing a flood of emotions that he preferred to release in the solitude of his own company.
“When I lost the person that I loved, I’d have done anything to get them back. Anything. Except I couldn’t, because death is as permanent an ending as this cruel world provides us. You could still have Brynne, if you wanted. Instead, you’re just riding away. Damned cowardly of you, if you want my opinion.”
“I dinna recall asking for it,” Lachlan said bluntly. “I’m sorry ye lost yer mistress, Yer Grace. I am. But a paramour isna a wife. It’s more…complicated than that.”
“Love is love.” Sterling shrugged. “Heartbreak is heartbreak. Do you think that just because I smile more than you I’m any happier?”
For the first time, Lachlan looked at the duke. Really looked. And he saw the dark shadows beneath his eyes from not enough sleep. The flaky paleness of his skin from remaining indoors. The layer of bloat under his chin that came from excess drink. “No, I suppose not.”
“I cannot do a damned thing to change my circumstance, Campbell. But you can.”
His jaw clenched. “She doesna want me. She’s made that abundantly clear.”
“Then do what all gentlemen of all species have done since the beginning of time when a woman they desired cannot be bothered to give them the time of day.”
“And what’s that?”
Sterling rolled his eyes. “Court her. Flowers, poems, the whole lot. Unless you’ve tried that already?”
Court Brynne?
The idea had never crossed his mind.
Maybe because, as she herself had said in the gazebo, there was a part of him that had always known that she would marry him. He’d expected her to say yes because that was what he wanted her to do. He’d taken her for granted. And in doing so, he had treated her no differently than anyone else had her entire life.
“I gave her a barley stick once, when we were children.”
“A barley stick. A barley stick.” Sterling clapped a hand to his forehead. “Do you know what Eloise would have done if I’d presented her with a barley stick? She’d have shoved it up my–”
“I get the idea,” Lachlan interrupted before that mental picture could be painted in his head for all of eternity. “So ye’re saying I should do what all of ye English blokes do and buy me wife’s love with expensive gifts and flashy baubles?”
“I’m saying you put in the effort, you get the reward. That’s how it works. And a pretty necklace never hurt anything. The Season is under way. Plenty of balls and soirees and opportunities to impress.” The feigned lightness dissolved from Sterling’s countenance, leaving him hard, and hollow, and haunted. “Love your wife, Campbell. Love her with everything you have. Because you never know when she’ll be taken from you. And what you feel now is nothing–nothing–compared to what you’ll feel then. If I could have a minute back…hell, a second, I’d grab it in a bloody heartbeat.”
Sobering words from an unsober man.
Lachlan led his horse past the duke and, this time, Sterling stepped aside.
“Where can I reach you for that bottle of whisky?” he called out as Lachlan placed his foot in the stirrup and swung into the saddle.
“London,” he replied, spinning Aislyn in a tight circle before setting his heels into her sides. “I’ll be in London.”
“What are you still doing here?” Sterling asked sourly as he entered the library to discover Rosemary reading a book by the window, her head bent in concentration as she followed along the page with the tip of her finger.
It was strange, but in the swath of afternoon sunlight shining in through the glass, her hair didn’t appear quite as mousy as before. There were tawny streaks in it he hadn’t noticed. Ribbons of gold amidst all that plain brown. And the way she was sitting–curled on her hip, with one leg tucked beneath her and the other dangling off the edge of the settee–allowed him a glimpse at a slender calf clothed only in a sheer silk stocking.
Her leg was far more enticing than he’d imagined it to be, leading him to wonder what the rest of her body looked like beneath the oversized dresses she favored with all of their flouncing bows and nauseating ruffles.
Could it be?
Was Evelyn Thorncroft’s cousin actually…pretty?
Ordinarily, he had a good sense of these things. Put him in the middle of a crowded ballroom and he could pick out the most gorgeous woman before he tossed back his first flute of champagne. Give him a second glass and he’d have her on the moonlit terrace with her skirts rucked up around her waist.
But boring, bookish Rosemary presented an enigma.
A puzzle he couldn’t quite figure out.
At first glance, she was as true a wallflower as any he’d ever seen.
Shy, check.
Socially inept, check.
Blushes easily…double check.
And as a general rule, he did not find wallflowers attractive. Avoided them like the bloody plague, more like. But then why had he come to library, the one place he knew that Rosemary was almost certain to be?
“My grandmother is being seen by the doctor tomorrow, and we hope to be able to return home soon after.” A frown troubled her mouth. A mouth, Sterling noted, that was far more fascinating than he had first given it credit for.
Top heavy, plump, and with a distracting freckle right below the left corner of her bottom lip, Rosemary’s mouth wasn’t traditionally beautiful. Some might not describe it as beautiful at all. Why, then, was he–a rogue extraordinaire who prided himself on his collection of gorgeous bedmates–suddenly possessed with the urge to see if it tasted as sweet as it looked?
“I do pray the doctor permits us to travel,” Rosemary continued as a little line of worry etched itself between her brows. “I miss Sir Reginald dreadfully, and worry how he is faring without me.”
Was the little wallflower married?
Even more complexing, was that a spark of jealousy that he felt?
Surely not.
Sterling did not get jealous.
He had no reason to.
Women flocked to him, not the other way around.
Even when Eloise had tried flirting with other men to get his attention when they’d first met, he’d experienced nothing more than a flicker
of amusement, confident that, soon enough, she’d stop her silly games and they would get down to more serious matters. Which they had. Until she’d disappeared, leaving nothing behind but a room covered in her own blood.
Without knowing quite what he was doing–or why he was doing it–Sterling sat across from Rosemary and crossed his arms. “Who the devil is Sir Reginald?” he demanded.
As if it were a question she’d received many times before, Rosemary’s countenance was one of resignation when she said, “Sir Reginald is my pet squirrel. I found him when he was a baby and fell out of a tree after a storm. I nursed him back to health, but–”
“You have a rat for a pet?” Sterling was sure it was a nice story, but he’d stopped listening after “pet squirrel”. “On purpose?”
That plump mouth flattened ever-so-slightly. “Sir Reginald is not a rat. He is a member of the prestigious Sciuridae family which includes the American prairie dog and marmot. He is highly intelligent, and–”
“It’s a rat,” Sterling said blankly. “With a furry tail.”
Agitated enough to set her book aside, Rosemary swung both legs to the floor and sat up straight. Pink suffused her cheeks. A loose tendril of tawny gold tumbled over her temple. Her luscious lips parted in righteous indignation. “He is not a rat!”
Maybe it was the gin.
Maybe it was the yawning emptiness inside of him that he couldn’t fill no matter how much he drank or how many women he slept with. Maybe it was the fact that when he’d talked to Lachlan about losing the person he loved most, he hadn’t been referring to Eloise. Or maybe it was a combination of all three.
Whatever the reason, Sterling leaned forward out of his chair, cupped Rosemary’s heart-shaped face in his hands, and kissed her.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Brynne left for London the next morning and arrived in Grosvenor Square after dinner.
Stately and square, Weston’s town residence–hers as well, although she supposed she’d soon need to find new accommodations once Evie moved in–sat back from the tree-lined street behind a towering wrought iron gate, the freshly painted black matching the wooden shutters on the windows. It was three stories with an attic for the servants’ quarters, and the high-vaulted ceilings encased in marble tile were one of her favorite features. They loomed above her as she entered the foyer, her footsteps muffled by a thick Axminster rug in a repeating pattern of muted blues and grays.
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