Graham tilted his head, forcing Simon to look at him. His expression held no anger, but it was hard. Cool. “You cannot interfere with what James has planned, Simon. It is what will happen. It is far too late to change it now.”
Heat rose up in Simon, flushing his face and pumping blood through his veins all the faster. He knew this feeling and he hated it. It was rage. Rage directed toward Graham for what he said. Rage that Graham had what Simon had always wanted, rage that Graham didn’t seem to appreciate the gift he had been given all those years ago. And rage that Graham would question Simon’s loyalty. Simon, who had stood by mute as the woman he loved was taken from him by a friend he considered a brother.
He wanted to lash out at Graham. Verbally, physically. He wanted to strike at him, and he hated himself for it.
“I have never interfered,” he growled instead.
Graham arched a brow and was quiet a moment before he said, “Of course.” He turned away from Simon, and the tension of the encounter faded slightly when they were no longer face to face. “Excuse me. I think I see James motioning for me. Good afternoon, Crestwood.”
He walked away then, without a look back. Without another word. And Simon stared at him as he did it, wishing he could call his friend back and repair this rift between them. Knowing he couldn’t until he overcame his feelings for Meg.
The game on the lawn was over now and he sought her out in the crowd. She had not swarmed forward with the rest to congratulate the winner. She stood off to the side, her head bent and her hands clenched at her sides. She looked so very troubled, so very unhappy. But no one else seemed to notice. No friend or family member or fiancé rushed to comfort her. She stood alone and still until she lifted her head and let her gaze shift, slowly but purposefully, to him.
They were far apart. He on the stone courtyard just outside the yard perimeter, she on the other side of the playing field, and yet the connection that had always drawn him to her was strong as ever. It was like she had him on a string and all she had to do was look at him to make him move toward her.
Today he took a step in her direction and she ducked her head, breaking the gaze before he could take another. She shook her head slowly and walked away. She walked away from the players, away from the garden, away from the house and away from him.
And there was no doubt as to what he would do next. He would follow. Even though he knew it was interfering to do so, even though he knew it was stupid and foolish. Worse, it was wrong. It wasn’t his place. And it could lead to something he would not be able to take back.
But he was going to follow her despite all that. Because soon he would be gone and there would be no further opportunity to do so.
As for the consequences of such an action, for the moment he chose not to think of them. Or if he did, he chose not to care.
Meg had been walking for an hour. She had no destination in her mind, she had no plan, she just walked, enjoying the sun on her face when it peeked from behind the gray clouds and the breeze that stirred her hair and skin when it spun up around her.
She was free. In these moments, she was free. And yet she felt the prison walls that would soon be her life closing down around her.
She stopped in the middle of the woods where she had wandered and leaned one hand against a tree as she struggled to regain the composure that was threatening to fray like a shawl that had been pulled and tugged too long and too hard.
Simon and Graham had stood together, talking as she played croquet. She’d seen them looking at her, seen Simon’s gentleness and Graham’s faint disinterest. All the emotion she constantly fought to keep down had risen in her in that moment, and suddenly nothing had mattered except escaping them both.
Escaping everything.
“But you can’t escape,” she said out loud, her tone harsh as she clenched her fingers against the rough bark of the tree. “This is what your life is and there is…no…changing…it.”
The last three words were broken as she whispered them because her breath suddenly became short and her chest tightened with the thought. She bent her head and fought the tears that threatened to fall. She had wept enough these past few days. This was enough. She had to accept the future and stop being a ninny about it.
There was nothing in heaven or on earth that would change what was about to happen.
“Meg.”
She stiffened at the sound of her name behind her, spoken in a voice she knew as well as any in the world. The only voice that had ever mattered.
Simon, she mouthed without daring to say his name out loud. If she did, then this fantasy that he was here with her would be shattered.
Slowly she turned, and her heart skipped in a way it should not. Simon was there. He wasn’t any fantasy or illusion created by her errant mind. He was there, standing ten feet away, watching her.
“Are you following me?” she gasped out, her tone sharper than she had intended in her shock.
His full lips turned down into a deep frown. “Yes,” he snapped back, also sharp. He had never spoken to her like that before, and it made her jump. “For an hour.”
“Why?” she asked.
He arched a brow. “Because I—”
He cut himself off abruptly and turned his face from hers. She folded her arms and waited for him to continue. Waited for him to speak. To say anything.
“I saw you leave the gathering,” he finally whispered, his shoulders rolling forward as if he were defeated. “And I thought you shouldn’t be alone.”
She took a step toward him. “Wh-why?” she stammered.
He lifted his gaze back to her. Their eyes met, and suddenly he straightened and his gaze grew heated. How many times had she seen that warmth in his eyes, that connection, when he looked at her? Every other time he’d pushed it away and she had told herself over and over again that it was only something she imagined even though she knew in her heart it wasn’t true.
Today when they were alone, far from the others, far from whatever propriety dictated, that heat stayed and her body reacted just as it shouldn’t. She tingled from her head to her toes, but especially in forbidden places. Places she touched while she thought of this man.
She shivered and forced those thoughts away.
“Why did you follow me?” she repeated.
“Because of a few nights ago,” he said. “When you were crying on the terrace. I-I know you aren’t happy, Meg. I know you—”
She barked out what she knew was an unladylike burst of laughter. “What do you know?” she asked, taking another long step toward him. The distance between them wasn’t quite closed but it was narrowed significantly now.
His eyes widened as she did so, and it was clear he was aware of the challenge she was putting forward to him. She didn’t care anymore, at least not in that moment. She was playing with fire, and getting burned was the least of her worries. She wanted him to do something.
Anything.
And it seemed like he might. In this magical stolen moment in the woods, he raised a trembling hand, his fingers reaching for her. She held her breath as she waited, her body strung tight and ready for whatever would come next.
Thunder rolled around them and the spell was broken. Simon jerked his hand away and lifted his gaze to the increasingly gray sky. “It’s going to rain, Meg,” he said. “We should go back.”
She pursed her lips, glaring at the offending sky that had kept her from having what she wanted. Or perhaps saved her from doing something foolish. She supposed it could be seen from either perspective.
“Once we go back, it is over,” she said, to herself, but also to him. “It’s over. The future is irrevocably set.”
He held her stare and emotions she had never seen from him washed over his face. Regret was chief amongst them, and a vise tightened around her heart at the sight of it.
“Meg,” he whispered. “It has always been irrevocably set.”
Her shoulders rolled forwa
rd and she let out a shuddering sigh. “Yes, you’re right. Of course you’re right. Then let us go. As you said, the rain is coming. We shouldn’t get caught out in it.”
Simon walked beside Meg, just as he’d done so many times before. Only today there was a tension between them, a push-and-pull they had never allowed into the light until a few days before. Now it sat there, a barrier to their friendship and a window into his soul that he knew was so very dangerous to uncover.
Worse, it was a window into her soul. For the second time in as many days, he saw clearly that she wanted him too. It had been lit up in her eyes and drawn across her face. Margaret Rylon wanted him.
And he couldn’t do a damned thing about it, because she was Graham’s.
“He’ll take care of you,” he said, the words sounding hollow in the quiet of the woods. “Graham will take care of you for all your days.”
She spun on him, her eyes sparking with anger and other emotions that he saw and couldn’t quite believe. “Is that supposed to comfort me?” she snapped. “That he will take care of me? Like I am an animal to be fed and watered and that is enough?”
“That isn’t what I meant,” Simon said.
She waved him off. “I have never believed that Graham would make a poor husband. He is a good man, a decent man, a strong man. A very handsome man.”
Simon flinched at her recitation of his best friend’s better qualities.
“But I don’t want him,” she finished. “James chose him for me all those years ago and I know he had his reasons for doing so. But I never wanted him.” She caught her breath on a sob and took a step toward Simon. “I wanted…I only wanted…”
“Don’t say it,” he whispered, knowing that if those words left her lips he would lose all ability to control himself. He would lose any loyalty he felt to his friends and he would touch her. Once he started, he feared he’d never stop.
He should have left a week ago. He should have never come here at all. Certainly he shouldn’t have followed her because there had been some part of him that had known this would happen.
But here he was and she was staring up at him with wide, wanting eyes.
In that moment, the rain began. Not in a trickle, but a torrent that cascaded from the sky. She yelped out a sound of surprise as the cool water hit her.
Simon hunched against the downpour and grabbed Meg’s hand. “Run!” he cried.
He felt her fingers tighten in his own as they bolted down the path toward the house miles away. She began to laugh and he couldn’t help but join her.
And for one brief moment, it was heaven.
Chapter Four
Meg was in hell. A cold, wet hell. The walk that had taken an hour going out was clearly going to take twice that getting back thanks to the pouring rain, blowing wind and muddy paths. She and Simon had been slogging through it for twenty minutes and she was soaked all the way through to her skin.
Her very cold and miserable skin. And God, but her gown was heavy. It felt like it weighed fifty pounds as it molded to her body.
The only positive thing in all this was that Simon still held her hand as he guided her on the way back home. She clung to his strong fingers, and in the moments when they slid against her cold skin, she wished their walk would never end.
Even if they were both going to catch their death from it.
“Bollocks,” he muttered, his words barely carrying back to her over the roar of the wind and the pounding of the rain.
“What is it?” she asked.
He pivoted toward her. The rain had flattened his hair against his forehead and rivulets glided down his angular cheeks. She caught her breath. Wet Simon was also an utterly beautiful Simon.
If he noticed something different in her stare, he didn’t react to it. In fact, he pressed his lips together in displeasure and said, “The little stream you crossed over on your way out?”
“Yes?” she said. There was a small bridge over it, built by her grandfather decades ago, before she was born.
“Well…” Simon trailed off and motioned his hand forward.
She stepped up, squinting through the torrent, and caught her breath. The stream was now a raging river, water pouring over the bridge and cutting off their path.
“Oh God,” she groaned. “We’re going to have to go all the way around to Glassford Hill to circumvent the stream! It will add at least an hour to our journey.”
“No, it won’t,” Simon said, his tone firm and grim. “Because we’re not doing it.”
She gasped as she faced him again. “What are you talking about? If we don’t do it, we won’t get home.”
“That’s exactly right. We aren’t getting home. Not right now.” He squeezed her hand. “You’re shivering, and if we trod all around the estate in this downpour for the next two hours, you’re going to freeze. And honestly, so will I. But I have an idea of where to go.” He smiled, and she noted the expression didn’t reach his eyes.
“Where?” she asked.
He drew her forward and she trotted after him as he took them back where they’d come from, then veered them off the main path and through the wet and miserable woods.
“Simon, where are we going?” she asked again.
“The caretaker lodge,” he said.
She wrinkled her brow. “God, I haven’t even thought of that place in years. It’s been empty since…I think Father was still alive when our last caretaker lived there. How do you even know about it?”
Simon winked over his shoulder at her and she nearly lost her footing at the cheeky expression on his wet face. “I know a great many things.” He laughed, then said, “In truth, we used to come here when I’d visit. When your father was alive, James needed—”
“An escape,” she whispered, completing the sentence as memories flooded her. She winced at them. “I needed one too.”
Simon’s hand tightened around hers. “I wish we’d brought you. Though I doubt you would have been very interested in duke talk and fishing.”
“Fishing I would have been,” she said, noticing that his pace was increasing. It was exhausting, but at least moving kept her a bit warmer. “I loved to fish.”
“Well, next time we all run away from home, I’ll be sure to invite you,” he said.
She smiled, but said, “Next time you run away from home, Graham will be running away from me. I doubt he’ll approve of my joining you.”
At that Simon’s posture stiffened and he didn’t speak for the next five minutes that he dragged her through the woods. She was beginning to give up hope they’d find the place when they came through the canopy of trees, and there it was.
It wasn’t much. Just a basic two-room cottage that had housed their old caretaker for decades. He had died and their father had not replaced him right away. Once James had taken over the estate, he’d built a far nicer one much closer to the house, since the current caretaker was married to their housekeeper. This old place had been abandoned years ago, and its boarded-up windows and the rusty hinges on the doors spoke to that.
But right now it was better than the finest palace.
Simon released her hand at last, fumbling under a rock by the door. He came up with a folded piece of cloth, which he unwrapped to reveal a key. He grinned at her as he fitted it in the lock and managed to wrestle the rickety door open.
He motioned her inside and she rushed past him, more grateful to be out of the rain than she had ever been for anything in her life. She stood in the very dark room, her eyes slowly adjusting, as Simon entered and then fought to get the creaky hinges moving to shut the door behind them.
There was a big fireplace in the main room with a settee covered in a dusty cloth, set on a thick rug. A small cupboard was in the back corner on the opposite side of the room and a table with just one chair. The door on the back wall was closed, but she assumed it led to the bedroom.
Simon reached out and she jumped as his hand closed over her forearm
. In the close and the dark, he suddenly felt so big next to her. His presence seemed to suck the air out of the room.
The room where they were alone. No one would be coming for them in this mess of weather.
“God, James must be beside himself,” she whispered.
Simon bent his head and his hand slipped from her arm. “I’m sure he is, but if he’s noticed that I’m gone, as well, I hope he knows I would not let any harm befall you if I could prevent it. At any rate, if the rain stops we’ll go back as soon as we can.”
She nodded as a great shiver racked her. Now that they were not moving, the cold seemed to permeate her entire being.
He frowned. “I’ll start a fire. I think I saw wood under the awning around the side of the house. It should be dry.” He crossed the room and bent to clear out some of the old ash collected in the long-neglected fireplace. “You go into the bedroom and look for all the blankets you can find. Then undress.”
She stared at him, unblinking, as shock washed over her. “Undress?” she repeated.
His gaze lifted and glittered in the dim light. “You’ll freeze if you don’t. We need to get your clothes dry, and they won’t dry with you in them. So find a few blankets, wrap yourself up as best you can and leave your clothes in the bedroom by the fireplace in there.”
She shifted. “But what about—”
He rose then, in one fluid movement, and reached out to catch her damp upper arms. That he touched her while he was talking to her about stripping out of her clothes made what he said all the more powerful. She caught her breath, her words screeching to a halt because she could no longer recall how to formulate them.
“Meg,” he said, laughing a little, though she thought it might be a bit nervous of a laugh. “Until you are safe, I’m going to stay wet. And I’m cold. So for my sake, stop arguing and get undressed.”
She worried her lip a bit and then nodded. “All right.” She turned away from his touch and moved toward the bedroom in the back of the cottage. As she touched the dusty handle, she turned back toward him. “Simon?”
Her Favorite Duke Page 4