She’d abandoned her glass of brandy on the ground, and he nudged it away from the cot with the tip of his shoe. “Perhaps not. But I could have done more. When our father died, I thought things would be different between us.” He’d hoped it would be so, with the cause of so much of their rivalry laid to rest. “I thought Davis would come back to Strathrannoch.”
He’d wanted too much. He’d pressed Davis to return from London, where he’d lived with friends in the year since he’d finished at Eton. When Davis had demurred, he’d pushed harder. He could still remember how he’d felt, his pen pressed to paper as he’d looked around at his office, the shelves emptied of the books he’d sold to keep Davis at school. He’d loved Davis and envied him for so long that he could no longer see his way clear.
“I failed to bring him home. I charged him with neglectingStrathrannoch, and in my guilt and shame, I only pushed him further away. I’d had years to observe the changes in him—to watch as our father—” He broke off, not certain how to say it.
Not certain hewantedto say it. Not to her. Perhaps it was foolish—she was here with him now, was she not? She had chosen to be with him, in the end.
But still and all, he did not want to tell her that the earl had always preferred Davis.
“He pitted you against each other?” she asked softly.
“Aye. You could say that.”
But there hadn’t been much of a competition, not really. Arthur had lost before he’d even begun.
He pressed his cheek to her hair. “I think… ah, God. I think part of me has never stopped seeing that little boy in him. Wanting to be good. Wanting to stay by my side. When he came to Strathrannoch Castle this year, it took no work on his part to persuade me that he was there to stay. I wanted to believe it.”
“That’s not a fault in you—never a fault. You love him. That doesn’t just go away because you’ve been hurt.”
“Aye,” he murmured, “perhaps that’s so.”
So many things he’d thought he’d buried—deep in the past, alongside all his childish hurts—had begun to rise in him since Lydia had come to Strathrannoch Castle. A wish, sweet and painful, for a family of his own. A desire to be chosen for himself.
He could not find the words for what he wanted to say to her, to this woman who would be his wife. He did not know how to tell her that he wanted more than her hand in her marriage. More than her body.
He wanted her heart—her love—their future together. He wanted everything.
But perhaps—perhaps she knew, even without his saying it.
She had come, had she not? She was here, and he was not alone, and he had not even needed to ask.
“Thank you,” he said. He found the delicate bones of her wrists and traced his thumbs along them. He felt a fierce and urgent gratitude as he held her, rising as sudden as desire inside him. “Thank you for everything.”
“Oh,” she murmured. Her hands turned over, so that he might press their palms together and interlink their fingers. “It was not me. It was Selina who arranged it all.”
He gripped her hands in his. “’Twas all you, Lydia. You brought us to Haddon Grange. You got us into Kilbride House. You collected Davis’s letters and papers, and you brought us to the person who could help figure everything out. And you—”
He swallowed against the hot unsteady feeling at the back of his throat. “And you’re here. I’m—very glad that you’re here.”
She turned into him and tipped her face up. Kissing her, he found, was as urgent as his next breath. More.
She was warm and brandy-sharp. Her mouth—God, he never stopped thinking about her mouth, never stopped wanting it beneath his. He tasted the soft plump curve of her lower lip, traced his tongue along the arched top. She made a tiny sound in the back of her throat—a needing sound—and leaned into him, pressing her breasts against the thin fabric of his shirt.
He stroked up her waist, cupping one breast. She twisted into his hand, and he felt the taut point of her nipple through her dress. He teased it delicately with his thumb and forefinger, and she made another sound, louder.
Need tightened his belly and stiffened his cock, but he ignored the demands of his body. He nudged her legs to the frontof the cot, bringing her feet flat to the ground. And then he went to his knees in front of her.
He almost did not know what he wanted. He wanted her—the desire to feel her body on his again was almost unbearable—but even more than that, he wanted to make her understand. He wanted to show her that he did not take her for granted. That her pleasure meant more to him than his own.
He wanted her to know she had not made a mistake in agreeing to marry him.
He wanted to believe that himself.
He looked up into her face. God, he loved the look of her from this vantage—the flush in her cheeks, the shadows cast by those rose-copper lashes. He loved the way her legs splayed apart to accommodate his shoulders as he knelt between her thighs.
He pushed her frock up. She wore neither petticoats nor stockings, only the thin dark blue fabric of her dress and her simple white chemise. Beneath her skirts she was all heat and softness, all bared skin. He brought his mouth to the inside of her thigh. “Can I?”
“Yes. Please.”
