“Besides men returning to their homes after trysts with lovers,” she snapped, eyeing him. Silence fell. Blast him. “Who is she?” The soft words tumbled from her lips before she could stop them. She was mortified, but she did not take the question back.
“No one you know,” Nash supplied.
Fury and hurt rose up in her throat to almost choke her, but she managed to speak. “Let go of my reins at once, or I will scream so loudly that I will wake this neighborhood.”
“I thought you were concerned about causing a scandal,” he said, his tone challenging her bluff.
“I was,” she replied, infusing tartness into her voice. “But I’ve decided a scandal would be preferable to one more minute with you.”
There.A knot clogged her throat that she could not swallow.
“Why so hostile, Lilias?” he asked, gazing at her with his thickly lashed beautiful eyes as if he were concerned. He had liar’s eyes, she decided uncharitably. And the fact that he sounded genuinely perplexed made her even more livid. He’d broken her heart without ever really knowing it. He had not even thought of her enough to realize he’d had the power to crush her. That should offer comfort to a reasonable person, but she was feeling decidedly unreasonable.
She couldn’t say any of that, though. She needed a believable excuse for her anger. “I am hostile,Greybourne, because men always act as if they have the God-granted right to tell a woman what to do, even when the man in question—” she paused to let the first part of what she’d said sink in “—has no right whatsoever. I am not your sister. I am not your mother. I am not your friend. I am not your betrothed. I am nothing to you.”
He moved in a flash, springing from the street, and landing at her right on the ledge of her gig to clasp her wrist. His hold was firm but not harsh. Everything else about him, however, was an invasion. Smoldering heat from his fingers singed her. His scent—brandy, horse, and smoky wood—assaulted her, making her curl her toes. She sucked in a greedy breath. His size made her want to know what it would feel like for him to cradle her, hold her, protect her from the mess that was her life. She found herself leaning toward him when she should be pushing him away. Their faces were suddenly so close that his sharp inhalation whispered in her ear and his exhalation wafted over her lips. Gooseflesh rose all over her body, and an ache sprang up deep in her womb, making her clench.
“There has never been a second since the moment we met that you were nothing to me. You are… You are—” If he didn’t finish that sentence, she could not be held responsible for what she did to him. Her heart pounded so hard her ears rang. “I—That is,youshall always be remembered fondly as…as…the girl who broke my nose.”
Ire flared within her, and she shoved him straight in the chest as hard as she could. She shoved with all her disappointment, and it was quite a lot. She caught him unawares, and her actions surprised her, as well. His eyes widened, and he fell backward, unfortunately righting himself when his feet hit the ground and the puddle that had formed as he’d stood there splashed up around his boots. She scowled that only his boots had gotten wet and muddy. He really did deserve to land on his arse.
“Lilias—”
“Do not,” she said, seething, “call me by my given name ever again. It is Lady Lilias to you. Being remembered fondly for a brief period we spent together seven years ago gives you no right whatsoever to question me or tell me what to do.”
The rain grew a bit harder and the fog seemed to thicken, which fit her dark mood, and she was enjoying immensely that he was still in the rain. He’d not tried to sit in the small seat beside her, and she’d not offered.
For one brief moment, with Nash’s face tilted up to look at her and the lamplight illuminating his expression, she would have wagered every coin she had, if she had any, that he looked as if he was in misery. As if her words had crushed him.
Impossible.
She was seeing what she longed to see, orhadlonged to see, and not what was true. She squeezed her eyes shut for one breath, determined to stop portraying him as the man he had never wanted to be for her, and when she opened her eyes and brought her gaze to him once more, his dark eyebrows were slanted as he frowned.
“You are correct,Lady Lilias. I have no right whatsoever to ask you what you are doing out and about at night. Alone. Nor do I have any right to demand you go home and never go out unchaperoned again. But I am certain Owen will be interested to know.”
She forced out a derisive scoff, though his words were fairly true. Once she was wed to Owen, he would practically own her, and if he chose not to wed her because she was doing things he did not approve of, things would be dire for her family, indeed.
The fog seemed to grow even thicker, swirling and curling around Nash, and the rain became yet harder, tapping like a drum against the foldable head.
“If you go home now and vow to me that you will stay there at night from now on, I vow to you not to tell Owen.”
“I vow I’ll stay home,” she lied, though what she really wanted to say to the conceited man was to go stuff his cravat in his mouth. It wasn’t as if he was going to lay in wait outside her home and watch to ensure she kept her vow, and Owen was in the Cotswolds to see after his father, so for now she was free to do as she pleased. And she planned to take full advantage of that freedom as long as she could.
“Am I excused now,Father?” she bit out between clenched teeth. She could not say more. She wanted to. Oh, she had a great deal she wanted to say. Such as if he loved her, they could have gone on these late-night missions together. She was positive it would have been the sort of adventure that would have excited him. Nash and propriety had never been intimately acquainted, which was probably one of the reasons she’d fallen for him so hard and fast. Her soul had recognized a kindred spirit. The older Owen became, however, the more tightly he wrapped himself in propriety, and honestly, it had been one of the only things that ever made them fight. She could tolerate him being so restrictive with himself, but she had detested when he made mention of the things he thought she ought not do.
She feared she and Owen would make each other miserable. She feared he would eventually forbid her to work with SLAR. It would be impossible to go on missions and hide them from him. She feared she would never love him as she should, but what could she do? What choice did she have? The man she loved did not love her. He loved ladies who painted their lips and invited him into their homes to do God only knew what. She would not imagine him doingthatwith anyone else, nor would she allow herself to imagine a life with him ever again.
He stepped aside and waved a hand for her to go. “Straight home,LadyLilias, and no more outings. Or remember, I’ll tell Owen.”
“May your tongue rot off,” she muttered and then reached far forward to grab the reins Nash had taken from her that were now dangling from the horse. She grunted when her stays cut into her waist as she struggled to secure the reins, and just as her fingertips grazed the leads, her gown, which had been hopelessly torn at her right shoulder during the tree climb on Frederica’s behalf, ripped even more and slipped off her shoulder. She gasped and made a grab for the reins, trying to get a hold of them while tugging up the right shoulder of her gown. She was so busy with these two things that she didn’t know Nash had moved until her gig dipped.
She looked up to find him standing on the ledge of her gig once more, his face a hairsbreadth from hers once again, but his eyes were narrowed. He brushed the hand away that was fumbling at her right shoulder and tugged her gown up himself. Everywhere his fingers touched, he left a path of heat on her skin that sent her pulse into a desperate gallop.
“Who did this to you?” he demanded, his voice vibrating with unmistakable rage that so shocked her, she could not form an immediate proper reply. In that pause, Nash came fully onto the gig, his arm sliding over her shoulder and tugging her into the rock wall that was his side. Iron and heat—that’s what Nash was made of.
Confusion washed over her. The rage in his voice sounded greater than what would belong to a man who merely cared for a friend’s lady. Perhaps she was merely hearing what she had longed to hear for so many years.
“Shh, don’t fret,” he said, his hand suddenly moving from her shoulder to stroke her head.
