But he forced the fear aside. “Aye, I read your pamphlets. You’ve not frightened me away with your radical ideas, so dinna fash.”
The corner of her mouth came up as she met his gaze. “You’ve not yet read the worst of them. Some are unpublished yet.”
“I expect I’ll bear up somehow.”
Her smile widened. She came the rest of the way to his side and sat next to him on the cot’s thin mattress. He passed her the glass of brandy, and their fingers brushed as she took it.
“You may have to reconsider your desire to abolish the aristocracy,” he mused, “now that you’re to be a countess.”
She tipped her chin up, a little queenly gesture. “If you suppose I will not seek to undermine the system from within, then you are quite mistaken.”
He laughed, and so did she, burying her face in her glass as she drank.
And then, to his perhaps unreasonable surprise, she tucked her legs up under her and eased her body against his. His arm automatically went around her, and she sighed a little, leaning into him.
God. He’d not known anything could feel like this, easy and warm and close-fitting, as though she’d been made to curl up beneath his arm. He ran his fingers along her forearm, relishing her softness.
Could he have this? Night after night, Lydia in his arms, luminous and quick-witted and brave enough to break his heart.
He wanted it. He’d never wanted anything so fiercely, though he knew that wanting was a terrible risk.
She rolled her glass between her palms, slowly, before she spoke. “I’m so sorry about today. About… Davis.”
His grip on her tightened before he made himself relax. “You’re sorry? Why?”
“I know it must have been difficult for you to see those plans this afternoon. To believe that Davis would use the rifle scope for violence.”
He drew a breath, chest tight. “Aye, ’twas not easy. Though in truth I blame myself as much as Davis. Had I not invented the rifle scope, none of this would have happened. If I’d seen him for what he truly was, I’d not have let him know about the device in the first place.”
She tilted up her face, her mouth close to his. “But that’s absurd. You did nothing wrong. You cannot blame yourself for your brother’s sins, Arthur.”
“I assure you, Icanblame myself, and most heartily.”
“Whatever for?”
He felt his lips twist a little, and he choked back the bitterness before he spoke. “I should have known better. I should not have been blinded by what I wanted to be true and failed to see what was perfectly plain.”
“What do you mean?”
Her voice was quiet—so quiet in the shadowed room. The coals in the grate had burned low, but he did not get up to stoke them. He only held her—his Lydia, his love—and thought about her family, all that tangled-up protectiveness and misunderstanding and affection.
He thought she would understand.
“I was five years old when Davis was born,” he said, “and I thought he was mine. Our mam said I was afraid of him those first few months, but I don’t remember that. All I remember was carting his fat wee body around wherever I went—the nursery, the kitchen, the burn. He liked jam cakes. For the longest time, he was afraid of fish.”
It still, somehow, made him want to laugh. Davis had been bright-eyed and mischievous, always slipping away from his nursemaid to find Arthur wherever he was—but when Arthur had tried to teach him to catch trout in the river, the little boy had sobbed and then thrown them, one by one, back into the water.
“He was only nine when our father sent him to Eton. Younger than most of the boys there. He…”
Davis had been terrified. Their mother might have put a stopto it, had she still lived. But she had been dead a year already, and their father’s cool authority had held sway then.
“He cried,” Arthur said, “when our father loaded him into the carriage. Said he’d be good—he wouldn’t tease the lambs any longer. I think he’d gotten it into his head that he was being sent away for something he’d done wrong. That was the worst sin he could think of, I expect. Teasing the lambs.”
Lydia turned into him, her head beneath his chin. Her sweet-warm scent filled his lungs.
He locked both arms around her. “I wanted to go with him, but the earl wouldn’t have it. He told me there was no sense in paying for me to go as well, when Davis had all the potential, and I…” He paused. Swallowed. “I was too young and foolish to oppose him then.”
“No,” she murmured. “Arthur. You were a child, and he was your father. You cannot blame yourself.”
