Chapter 10

D espite Lachlan’s husky warnings, following their kiss, from the moment he’d decided to share the room with Livian, he’d been nothing but a gentleman.

When she’d unsteadily changed from her dress to nightshift, he’d stood facing the wall.

And when she’d collected a pillow and extra blankets to help make a bed for him, he’d taken them from Livian, and himself overseen the task.

After he’d finished, he’d lain on the makeshift bed, and kept his back to her and his face to the wall.

That’d been—she squinted at the brooch timepiece Verity bought Livian for her last birthday—an hour and twenty-one minutes ago.

While he lay perfectly still, silent, and slumbering, Livian, for what had to be the thousandth time, turned onto her side and punched her pillow several times.

Releasing a frustrated sigh, Livian flopped onto her back, and stared at the ceiling.

How could he sleep so easily? How , after that embrace. Lachlan’s kiss had been the one she’d always dreamed of knowing, and then resigned herself to also being the stuff of mere romantic books and girlish musings.

In his broad, powerful, arms, she’d felt more alive than she ever had before. He’d moved his strong hands over her with a skill and understanding of a man who knew just how to touch a woman to make her feel like she was all he wanted in the world—a mere illusion of every last hopeful woman like herself who’d enjoyed the pleasure of being in his arms for even just a moment.

His kiss had set her ablaze, and she’d lain here, that fire festering within her.

“If I don’t stop now, darlin’, the only way this ends is with me between your legs, and my cock buried deep inside you.”

Livian stared thoughtfully at the ceiling.

She should have been horrified at his crudity, but instead it had the opposite effect. He hadn’t said the things he had to shock or horrify her. He was just a normal man who spoke plainly. He didn’t put on airs and that forthrightness, his ability to speak plainly—that, when she’d ceased believing there was any man to do so—left her feeling…left her wondering…

“Unable to sleep?”

Livian gasped.

Heart racing, she whipped her head sideways and looked over at the hearth. At some point, Lachlan turned onto his other side. He now lay with his shoulder propped up and his head in his hand, facing Livian.

“No,” she confided, bringing herself up onto her elbow so she matched his body’s positioning.

“Bad dream?” he ventured.

“No. I just couldn’t fall asleep.”

Even with the dim lighting, she could make out the way he moved his gaze intently over her face. “Why?”

She lifted her right shoulder. “I don’t know.”

His lips quirked up at a corner. “Liar.”

“Yes.” Livian sighed. “And apparently, a very bad one.”

“That ain’t a bad thing, sweetheart.”

She snorted. “Not for the one whose looking for the truth from me.”

His even, white, teeth, flashed pearl white in the night. “No. That’s true.”

They shared a quiet laugh, and then fell comfortably into a silence.

The fire crackled softly, lending an even greater calm and sense of warmth to their exchange.

“So?” Lachlan asked.

She puzzled her brow.

“What is the truth?”

“The truth,” she echoed, dumbly.

That she couldn’t give him. Reason being, she should be afraid of sharing a room with him, a dark, formidable, stranger. The reality, however, proved even more terrifying; she was twisted up inside at heading to meet a stranger who’d become her husband while secretly relishing these stolen moments spent with a self-made man, who, in every way, was like the husband she’d dreamed of.

“Can I hazard a guess?” he asked, intruding on her unnerving thoughts.

“You can tr—”

“Reservations about your bridegroom?”

Her smile slipped and her stomach lurched.

His accuracy deserved to be met with honesty. “Y-Yes.”

That he, after knowing her so briefly, had known so easily her thoughts, set off a newfound wave of dread. Not because he had, but because she’d always dreamed of a sweetheart whose thoughts moved in synchrony with hers.

“Back in the taproom, you never did say why you were marrying,” he remarked.

He hadn’t missed that. “We got off-topic.”

“ You got us off-topic asking questions about my past,” he all too accurately stated.

“Which you openly shared.”

“Which I openly shared,” he concurred. “And given you clearly didn’t wish to talk about the nob who’ll be your husband, I let the matter rest.”

Clever man. Too intelligent for his—or, more accurately, her —own good; he knew all that.

“You are a self-made man,” she said. “You secured the funds to build yourself and your club by fighting—”

“Hardly respectable means.”

“You didn’t have to resort to selling your body,” she said quietly.

He frowned.

“Women,” she clarified. “Our options at making money and having careers are limited, Lachlan. My sister did good, honest, respectable work. Even with that, we never had enough money for proper shoes with sturdy soles. We still couldn’t stay warm or have enough food that our bellies didn’t rumble.”

Restless energy thrumming through her, Livian sat up, and under the covers, she drew her knees into tailor-style. “Whereas you built a future for yourself, I’m not afforded the same ability.”

“Your brother-in-law is a nobleman, Livian,” he said, more like one trying to understand that patronize. “If you don’t want to marry—”

“If I don’t want to marry, I can be a poor relation, dependent upon the charity and generosity of my family.”

Lachlan sat up and drawing his knees to his chest, rested his back against the wall. “You’d give up your freedom, then?”

“You strike me as a proud man, Lachlan. Even if you had the most loving, devoted, wealthy sibling—let’s say, a brother—would you want to be reliant upon them?”

Lachlan went silent. He didn’t however, say ‘it was different’, and she lost her heart to him for that.

Having finally reached him. Livian didn’t let up. “And if that sibling had a family of his own, a wife, a husband, and two babes how would you feel sharing their household and lives? Would you not feel like a hanger-on?”

“I…understand that,” he said, somberly.

He understood.

Livian stared off into the flames swaying gently in the hearth.

When it came to having someone to confide in, she’d been alone for so long, and aside from Bertha—her entire life, really. Her sister Verity, her brother-in-law Malcom, even her younger sister, Billy, in their own way, babied her.

Lachlan? Lachlan saw her and spoke to her as an equal. Even in the way he challenged her or questioned her, he did so without velvet gloves.

“Livian?”

She pulled her gaze from the fire and put it on Lachlan. “Yes?”

“Is that enough of a reason to be miserable for the rest of your entire life?” Lachlan put that quietly spoken question to her, with genuine curiosity, and more, concern.

“I…don’t know?” she confessed.

Her gut clenched as she, for the first time acknowledged, even to herself, her reservations.

She chewed at her lower lip. “I…”

“Yes?” he urged.

“I want to have funds I am free to use to help charities I’m passionate about,” she said, and all of her heart’s desires came spilling out. “I want to be able to go into streets my sister and brother-in-law forbid me from visiting, to discover what the people there need, and provide them with actual help. And a family!” she exclaimed. “Children,” she clarified.

As soon as the admission slipped free, she felt, somehow lighter—freed.

Oh, it wouldn’t be like her sister’s family, but it would be a family of sorts. Nor was Livian delusional enough to believe she’d find love at the duchess’ house party. “At best, I can hope for a kind, gentle husband who will give me those children, and I want that.”

When Lachlan didn’t add anything, she peered at him.

“What about at worst, Livian?”

Stricken by that question, she stared at him.

His arms folded around his knees, he waved his right hand at the air. “You’re imagining your husband will support your endeavors and fund them, but according to everything you’ve shared, you don’t really know the gent. Hell, your sister doesn’t even know him.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“You didn’t have to, Livian. Either way, the point is, the moment you say ‘I do’, you belong to the fellow in every way. You’ll be no different than property, and though you’re hoping for freedom, darlin’, you and I both know you land the wrong nobleman, and you’re going to be a broodmare without much time for those honorable dreams and aspirations you have.”

She tensed. “You’re trying to talk me from my decision.”

Lachlan scoffed. “Darlin’, I’ve known you less than a night, and even I can tell not even God himself could sway you if you believe in what you’re doing.” He paused. “That is, if you even do really believe in what you’re doing?”

Tears pricked her lashes.

Not from all the worries he’d raised, but for the admiration which filled his voice when he spoke about her and the fact he genuinely cared enough to share his opinion, but not judge her.

Livian fell once more onto her back, folded her hands together, and rested them upon her stomach.

Why should he, this enigma, this stranger who, in the heart of a storm, had come crashing into her life, be everything she’d given up all hope of ever having?

“My partners betrayed me.”

Lost in her own misery, it was a moment before Lachlan’s hushed admission reached her.

She turned her head back towards him. From where he sat, the fire left half of his handsome features illuminated, while shadows played with the other half.

“I’m head of security.” He grimaced. “Or I used to be. The deal isn’t completely closed yet,” he said.

Understanding dawned. “That’s why you were suspicious of my questions.”

He nodded. “Still am, somewhat.”

But he was telling her anyway.

Livian swung her legs over the side of the bed and stood. Cold came up to meet her bare feet. Shivering, she headed over to her belongings and dropped to a knee.

She proceeded to take out the same book Lachlan had come upon her reading and flipped through the pages. The entire time, she felt Lachlan carefully studying her back.

She stopped on a particularly marked page and fetched the small, folded sheet from within. Then, after carefully returning her cherished leather tome, she straightened.

Paper in hand, she approached Lachlan.

He followed her every movement with carefully guarded eyes.

She stopped over him. “Here,” she said, proffering the page.

Lachlan eyed it a moment. Wordlessly, he accepted the small scrap of parchment.

“It’s a note…you can read it.”

Without hesitation, Lachlan unfolded the sheet and read.

As he skimmed his gaze along the letter, she shifted nervously on her feet.

When he’d finished, he looked up. There was a question in his eyes.

“It is from Bertha.” She volunteered that unnecessary information and grimaced. “Which you can clearly see for yourself, and as you’re one who has been betrayed before by people who were supposed to care for you, I’m not sure if this makes you further question my integrity and honor.” She glanced down at the letter. “But I loved her like a mother, and occasionally she will find a way to get a letter to me, and I write her back and knowing that,” her voice grew pitchy to her own ears, “would break my sister’s heart. And you now possess evidence of my greatest treachery, and…it is yours as insurance.” Then it struck her. “I know I do not have anything of material value, but this is the greatest thing I possess and the most dangerous information in my possession, and it is now…yours,” she finished awkwardly.

Lachlan returned his attention to the first note Bertha had written to Livian after being sent away.

Livian’s breath came quickly, filling her ears, and making her chest rise and fall, fast.

Wordlessly, Lachlan refolded the note along its well-defined seam.

He stood slowly, unfurling all six feet, three or four inches of himself, and knocking her further off balance with his nearness.

Unlike Livian, whose every nerve ending remained keenly alert of even Lachlan’s slightest movement, he considered the confidence he still held in his strong, scarred fingers, while Livian’s movements obviously remained an afterthought to him.

Her mouth went dry—not with fear; fear would be far less terror-inducing than these wanton yearnings stirred inside from nothing more than his body’s closeness.

“They were like brothers,” he said gruffly.

She looked at him, waiting for him to speak, and giving him the space and comfort he needed in which to do so.

Her efforts were rewarded when he continued. “Not like . To me they were brothers. I would have done anything for them, and I believed they’d do anything for me. I never felt judged by them for being of inferior birth, and to me, that was everything, so I never saw it coming.”

“Saw what coming?” Livian murmured.

“That I was and would always be an outsider.” His features turned grim. “They welcomed me into their fold, asked me to lead the way in establishing the club, tasked me, and trusted me with the entire security operation.”

His sightless, rage-filled eyes went all the way through Livian, and she knew the exact moment he ceased to see her, and instead played over and over in his mind, the betrayal that’d so hurt him.

“In the end, what did they do?” A sneer pulled hard at Lachlan’s mouth—a mouth that’d both tenderly and passionately devoured her own. “They went behind my back and decided to bring on a new fellow to fill my role. A man who didn’t have sullied bloodlines or dirty hands.”

He chuckled; that droll rumble bereft of any actual amusement. “At least, not dirty in the same way mine were. He was a lord, and me? I was expendable,” he murmured, to himself.

Her heart ached. He’d hate any apologies from her; he’d see them as pity, which she didn’t. She was outraged, disgusted, infuriated, on his behalf, but never would she pity him.

Lachlan Latimer was a proud, guarded, man, who didn’t trust easily, and well, maybe not even at all.

But he trusted you with this , a voice whispered in her head. Selfish in the face of his pain, she couldn’t keep back the lightness that filled her and the indignant fury on his behalf.

“They didn’t deserve you, Lachlan,” she said simply, and his gaze found its way back to Livian.

She took a small breath. “And I know it’s easier for me to say this and sounds like utter rubbish… it is better you learned who they actually were as friends and partners, then spend the rest of your life with men so lacking in integrity, so arrogant,” she said. Despite her best attempts, her voice grew more and more impassioned. “So unappreciative and dishonorable they aren’t fit to clean the boots you earned with your own hard work and skills; at that, ones you didn’t have handed down to you like every last estate, pence, pound, and parcel of land in their lives.”

Lachlan opened his mouth to speak, but she couldn’t make herself stop her rant if she tried. “And for that matter? That club they welcomed you to invest in, the club crafted in your vision? They may have had more funds with which to put up, but those coins, too, came from their family’s purses.”

Fury continued to course through her. “Oh, and they no doubt hold themselves up as ‘self-made’ men?” she sneered. “But had it not been for their titles, they’d have never had a single pound to contribute to the construction of Forbidden Pleasures. In fact, had they been forced to live so much as a single night on the streets as you did, they’d have perished like that.” She snapped her fingers.

That little click split the quiet of the room and also snapped Livian from her furious musings.

Lachlan gave her a curious look.

Her cheeks burning hot, Livian let her arm drop to her side.

Flustered by her impassioned response, she cleared her throat. “Yes, well, all that to again say, you are better off,” she finished weakly.

“Once I have my share, I’m investing in a new venture,” he said.

The unexpectedness of his latest trust in Livian broke through her embarrassment. She gave a firm nod. “Good for you, Lachlan.”

Of course, hard-working, resolute, and driven, he would never simply roll over.

“It’s another gaming hell, this one, even more wicked,” he said.

Did he expect or try to horrify and shock her? Or maybe it was that he sought to dim some of her earlier praise and admiration for him and what he did. He’d be disappointed by the truth—if that was what he attempted to do, it was for naught.

“I’m entering into it with a new partner but this time I’m doing so after having learned an important lesson.”

“What lesson is that?”

“Never trust a nob,” he murmured, directing that admission to the folded letter in his hands.

“Yes, well, that is something we can both agree upon.”

They shared another one of the intimate smiles that came frighteningly easy to Livian.

Without a word, Lachlan held Bertha’s note out.

She glanced from Lachlan to the page, and then back again at Lachlan. “What—?”

“I don’t need your letter, Livian. I’m not looking for collateral.”

Because he trusts me…

The unspoken meaning behind his words sent fresh waves of warmth cascading over her.

Livian held her palms up. “I still want you to have it.”

“I don’t need it.”

“I know,” she said at his insistence. “I just…want you to.” Because giving him that small, important piece of her mattered. In his keeping it, there’d be a piece he’d carry of her, and in that, she’d be with him.

That she wished to, scared the everlasting hell out of her.

Latimer, with a gaze opaque she could make nothing out of it, tucked her note inside the front of his jacket, placing the page close to his heart.

And her own, beat wildly in response.

“It’s late, darlin’,” he murmured. “We should get some rest.”

Rest? “Yes.” As if she could with him lying next to her, and everything they’d shared swirling in her mind.

Except, curiously, the moment she climbed into bed, and rested her head on the pillow—this time, facing Lachlan, and Lachlan facing her, Livian’s eyes grew heavy, and a peaceful calm sent her into a deep, welcoming, sleep.