Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,2
him but she did not like how hard her heart was pounding or the hundreds of questions that now buzzed in her head.
What had he been doing in Scotland all these years? Had he been heartbroken when Elizabeth and his unborn child had died? Why had he stayed away? Had he felt sad when his father had passed, or had he despised him until the bitter end? Did he regret what he had done to her? Had he ever looked back on it all and realized he had been an utter fool to set her aside so callously for Elizabeth? Elizabeth, who had knitted and danced with grace and never spoke of things like politics.
Drat. She clenched her teeth until pain shot across her jawbone. She would never allow herself to ask these questions. If only she could stop herself from even thinking them!
“I mind,” he said in that same overly confident tone, his voice growing louder as he approached her. “It’s not safe for ye to be climbing a tree alone in the dark. Ye could break yer neck.”
The nearness of him warmed her skin. He was impossibly, unacceptably too close to her. Asher never had cared a whit about the rules of Society that governed proper decorum. Possibly because he had not grown up in Society, and yet, she had been raised surrounded by Society’s rules and she didn’t care, either. She did, at least, try to care, tedious as it was.
His heat enveloped her like a quilt and made it hard to hold on to her thoughts. She concentrated harder. “If one goes by your history with women, a fall from this tree is not the only thing that need concern me.” She forced a steadiness to her voice that was in direct contrast to the way her pulse danced. “You, Your Grace, are just as dangerous to a woman’s well-being as this elm—likely more.”
Without warning, his firm hand gripped her right arm, and she found herself whirled toward Asher before she could even get out a proper outraged gasp. He towered over her, his presence impossibly more commanding than it had been years before. Her stomach clenched, and she became acutely aware of his fingertips touching her bare skin.
His dark, dangerous outline against the pale moon taunted her. When he tilted his head down at her, her pulse spiked, and when he raised his hands and jerked them through his hair, her chest tightened at the frustrated gesture she’d once intimately known. But she’d never really known him, had she? She’d imagined once that he was honorable, that he would do anything to protect her. What a ninny she had been.
“Yer life is not in danger with me, Guin, so ye can hardly compare the two.”
She swallowed. She had never thought she would hear his pet name for her rolling off his tongue again. She wished to God it didn’t cause such a deep ache in her belly, but some things were meant as sharp reminders of treacherous waters.
“Well, my reputation is most certainly in peril.” She strived to sound annoyed and not desperate to get away from him. “So do take your leave. I’m not sure why you are here in the first place.” In England. At my home. In front of me. “The ball is inside.”
“Aye, it is, but if ye recall, I never could stand too much time in the company of the uninteresting, the vain, and the arrogant.”
“Then how do you stand to be around yourself?” She could not resist the barb.
“Are you calling me uninteresting?” The underlying laugher in his voice was unmistakable.
“Certainly not.”
“I thank ye, lass.”
“You should not. I’m calling you vain and arrogant. One with your past could never be considered uninteresting, Your Grace. You provided much fodder for the gossips by ruining Elizabeth and disgracing me.”
She bit her tongue to keep from blurting the rest of her thoughts: Leaving me to bear it all. Leaving me to know you had never wanted me, that you had used me. Allowing everyone to pity me, the poor, pleasantly plump, freckled one with the too frank speech who was cast aside for the Incomparable.
“I did not ruin Elizabeth.”
The warning in his tone both surprised and rankled her. She never had liked that men thought they could silence women with a cool word or harsh look, and she’d never imagined him to be the sort of man to do so. But apparently, she’d been blind to his true nature all along.