Chapter Five

Present Day

Hawkridge Manor

After prying herself off the sofa by sheer force of will, Brynne managed to go about the rest of her day with a modicum of normalcy. With Weston temporarily in London, it fell to her to see that personal notes were sent to every guest that had attended their annual house party, as well as collect any belongings that had been left behind and send them on their merry way. Then the kitchen needed to be restocked, all of the linens refreshed, the bedrooms–all twenty-two of them, not including the master chambers–cleaned. Tasks that would ultimately fall upon the shoulders of Mrs. Grimsby and the staff, but Brynne liked to have a hand in the organization of it all.

She also had a lingering guest to look after.

Well, two.

But only one was human.

Barely.

"It stinks in here," she said, her nose wrinkling as she strode into the library and began flinging open the drapes, letting streams of light in the dim, stuffy room that smelled vaguely of cigar smoke, brandy, and a duke badly in need of a good bathing.

Preferably outdoors.

"I've gone blind," Sterling Nottingham, Duke of Hanover, covered his face with a pillow as sunlight drenched the library in a spill of light gold, revealing that he was wearing the same clothes she'd seen him in yesterday, and hadn't even bothered to remove his boots before drowning himself in a bottle of her brother's liquor and passing out on a chaise lounge that would in all likelihood need to be burned.

"You're not blind." The first time she'd happened upon Sterling in a similar situation, Brynne had felt a stirring of sympathy. A friend of Weston's, who had also become a friend of hers over the years, the duke was, under ordinary circumstances, a jovial, well-kept, gentlemanly individual. But after his mistress was violently murdered–and he became the prime suspect in the eyes of the ton –Sterling had sunk into a state of…well, whatever this was.

Drinking until the morning. Sleeping until the afternoon. Dragging himself about with disheveled hair and red-rimmed eyes and wrinkled clothing.

It was pitiful.

Embarrassing, really.

And while she was happy to offer Sterling refuge at Hawkridge Manor for as long as he'd like to continue avoiding the vicious gossip that awaited him in London, such destructive self-indulgence was not to be permitted.

"Sit up," she said briskly. "There's a pitcher of water on the table beside you, and your breakfast–while cold by now–is waiting in the solarium. Once you've eaten, you will bathe, and put on clean garments. Then a walk is in order, to clear your head."

Sterling slowly lowered the pillow. "Can't I just go upstairs and sleep?"

"No."

"But my head hurts."

Her gazed went to the empty bottle of brandy laying halfway under then chaise lounge, then returned to the duke. "I imagine it does. I am having a locksmith install a lock on Weston's liquor cabinet and the wine cellar. Today."

That got Sterling to his feet.

"You can't," he protested, shoving his hands through his hair, black and tangled, as he stumbled to his feet, toddled to the left, and just barely avoided crashing into a chair before he caught his balance. "What am I supposed to drink?"

"As I said, there is a pitcher of water on the table."

"Water?" he said, aghast. "But that tastes terrible."

She rolled her eyes. "It doesn't taste like anything."

"I know. That's what makes it terrible."

"Your Grace…Sterling…I say this as a friend." She hesitated. "And someone who has experienced the pain of heartbreak. You cannot continue down this path you've set for yourself. Nothing good shall come of it."

His eyes, several shades lighter than Weston's stony gray, hardened. "Are you responsible for your best friend's death?"

"You are referring to your brother," she said quietly. "But you're not to blame for what happened to him."

Sterling's mistress was not his first encounter with tragedy, or with death. Brynne did not know all of the details. No one did, except for the men who had been there on the day of the duel that had taken the life of Sterling's brother…the rightful Duke of Hanover. There'd been whispers, even then. Ridiculous, hurtful stories that Sterling had planned the entire thing in order to inherit the title. A title that otherwise never would have belonged to him, as the second-born son.

And then to be accused in the court of public opinion (perchance even the House of Lords, once they convened) to murdering the woman he'd loved…

It was clear why Sterling would want to drink himself into oblivion.

It was even clearer that he'd kill himself in the process.

She could have let it go.

She should have let it go.

He outranked her.

There was no blood or romantic entanglement between them.

He wasn't even her friend as much as he was Weston's.

But knowing what it felt like to suffer, knowing the allure of wanting to make yourself so small that you eventually disappeared, Brynne had to do something. If nothing else, it would take her mind off her estranged husband…and maybe even save a duke while she was at it.

"You're not to blame," she repeated when Sterling's countenance collapsed into bleakness. "But as long as you keep feeding your demons, they'll keep convincing you that you are."

He rubbed his hands down his face. "When did you grow up to be this wise? Yesterday, you were running around in braids while West and I practiced fighting with sticks so that when we grew up we could be knights and defend our Guineveres." He gave a ghost of a grin. "Mine was much prettier than his."

"Naturally." She pointed at the pitcher. "Drink. Then food, then bathe, then get some fresh air. If you care to join me, I'll be dining at half-past six this evening. Or I can have food sent to your room."

"How can you be this nice when your brother is such a cold-hearted git?"

The corners of her mouth twitched. "I'll see you once you've made yourself presentable."

As she quit the library, she thought–of all things–about glaciers. When she was a girl, she'd sat in this very library and read about them. About how they were formed. How old they were. And how the ones with the least amount of ice on the surface were often the largest and the coldest deep below.

When the door to the formal dining room unceremoniously swung inward, Brynne looked up from her plate of baked herring seasoned with white pepper, fresh broccoli sautéed in garlic, and scalloped potatoes. But the welcome she'd been about to deliver to Sterling died on her lips as Lachlan, not the duke, sauntered in, appearing every inch as handsome and arrogant as he had this morning when he'd approached her at the gazebo.

She noted that he had changed into formal evening wear; exchanging his casual square cut lapel jacket for a satin waistcoat and trim smoking jacket that hugged his muscular torso. Gray trousers had replaced his breeches, and he'd even made an effort to tame his hair. Freshly combed, it was secured at the nape of his neck in a style that invoked images of Celtic warriors of old when men had charged fearlessly into battle armed only with their swords and the fierce love they had for those they'd left behind at home.

It wasn't difficult to imagine Lachlan as a warrior. Having seen him in the nude, Brynne knew firsthand that he certainly had the physique of one. All hard muscle and sinew with nary an inch of softness to be found... anywhere .

"What are you doing here?" she asked, carefully laying her fork down beside her plate before lifting her glass of wine. A rich dark red, it disguised her angry flush as she raised it to her lips and took a measured sip. "I thought I made myself clear: you are not welcome at Hawkridge Manor."

"Do ye know there's a bluidy sheep asleep in the parlor?" Instead of answering her question–or even acknowledging it–Lachlan proceeded to seat himself to her left, leaving only a single chair between them.

"Yes, I am aware." She flicked a glance at the two scullery maids waiting in the corner of the room. A subtle nod of her chin and they hurried out, discreetly closing the door in their wake. "Her name is Posy, and she belongs to my brother's fiancée."

Even with the pins and needles dancing under her skin courtesy of the large Scot sitting beside her, it pleased Brynne to say those words aloud. Lachlan's unexpected arrival had overshadowed the joyous announcement of her brother's betrothal, which she'd received via a letter sent from London where Weston and Evelyn Thorncroft, his American bride-to-be, were staying temporarily.

Brynne preferred to think she'd played a large part in their union, as she was the one who had invited Evie to attend the house party in the first place, during which Evie and Weston had fallen in love. She had liked the intelligent, outspoken American from the first moment they'd met, and vastly preferred her to the meek, mild-tempered Lady Martha Smethwick whom Weston had been planning to marry.

It was a bit of a tangled web as Joanna Thorncroft, Evie's elder sister, was also Brynne and Weston's half -sister courtesy of a secret affair that had only recently come to light. A secret affair between Brynne's father and Joanna's mother that had resulted in a daughter raised in another country as the child of another man.

The only thing that had tied the two families together was a sapphire ring (a family heirloom, such as it were) that the Marquess of Dorchester had given Anne Thorncroft before she fled England for a quiet, peaceful life as the wife of a doctor in the small town of Somerville, Massachusetts.

When Weston asked their father for the ring as he prepared to get down on bended knee in front of Lady Smethwick, he was furious to learn that it had been given away years earlier. So furious that he'd hired a private investigator to get it back for him. Unfortunately, that meant stealing it from the Thorncroft sisters…which, as it all turned out, was really for the best as it had led to Joanna and Evie setting sail for London in pursuit of the ring…and Joanna's heritage.

Brynne had yet to meet her half-sister. It was something she was looking forward to with immense anticipation. Or at least she had been until Lachlan arrived. As she couldn't very well leave him here at Hawkridge Manor while she flitted off to London to see Joanna and congratulate Weston and Evie in person, she needed him to leave.

Immediately.

"What are you doing here, Lachlan?" More than a decade later, and she was still asking him the same question that she'd posed all those years ago when he first came to Hawkridge Manor. So much had changed since then…and yet the words remained the same.

"I told ye at the gazebo," he said, his gaze unwavering. "I'm here tae win ye back."

Her fingers tightening around the slender stem of her wineglass, she met his stare without blinking. No matter what happened, she refused to let him know that he still affected her. That his voice still sent tiny thrills of delight racing across the delicate bumps of her vertebrae. That the heat emanating off his large body still warmed every inch of her. And–worst of all–that she still loved him. That she'd never stopped loving him. Even after all that he had done.

To her.

To them.

To any future they might have had.

"You spoke nonsense at the gazebo," she corrected icily. "Pure, unadulterated nonsense. Win me back? I am not a gift that you've misplaced, Lachlan. Nor a lamb at a fair."

"No, ye are me wife." The clenching of his jaw indicated he wasn't nearly as calm as he'd like her to believe with his sauntering gait and slouched, devil-may-care posture. "We've been separated this past year, aye. Tae give ye space. Tae let things calm. Tae allow cooler heads tae prevail. But we are married, Bry. Ye canna deny that."

" You're the one who is denying what's crystal clear. We may be legally bound to each other, Lachlan, but you are no more my husband than the butcher down the lane." Half her plate remained, but she feared if she tried to eat another bite her stomach would reject it later. Setting her wine glass onto the table with careful precision–it was either that, or slam it against the wall–she rose to her feet and stared down her nose at the man who'd once owned every piece of her heart…before he stabbed a knife through the middle of it. "It appears I did not make myself clear enough this morning. You are not welcome here. Were Weston in residence, he would see that you were tossed out on your ear."

Crossing his arms, Lachlan thoughtfully drummed his fingers along the sharp line of his jawbone where he'd allowed a layer of scruff, darker and shorter than the mane on his head, to grow.

On most men, the beard would have appeared unkempt. But on Lachlan it only served to heighten his roguish appeal, and Brynne's teeth gritted with annoyance as she resisted her natural inclination to brush her fingertips across his beard and see if it felt as rough as it looked.

No , she told herself sternly, in much the same way she denied herself a second macaroon after dinner.

No, no, no.

"Yer brother toss me out on me ear?" Lachlan smirked. "That I'd like tae see. Ye finally told him about our elopement, then?"

At her blank stare, he chuckled humorlessly under his breath.

"Aye, that's what I thought. Still tae ashamed to claim a half-blooded Scot as yer husband, Bry?"

She stiffened at the accusation. An accusation that stung all the more because it carried a shard of truth. As much as she'd have liked to deny it. As much as she had denied it. Both to Lachlan…and to herself.

"I was never ashamed of you." Even as she said the words aloud, her gaze slipped away and she bit her lip.

"Aye." He placed his hands flat on the table. "Ye were. Or ye wouldna have run away with me under the cover of darkness and then hid our marriage from all the world as if it were a terrible secret."

Her cheeks heated. "You asked me to run away with you!"

"I did. Because I couldna stand tae not have ye for another second, another minute, another hour. And because that was what we both agreed tae. Ten years," he said, his eyes as flat and unreadable as a blank page of parchment. "Ten years, and if we werena married, we'd marry each other. That was the deal we struck."

"A deal with the devil," she whispered. "I was a child when I made it."

Lachlan's chair clattered to the floor with a loud bang as he stood up.

She flinched both from the violent sound and the sudden anger swirling in the depths of his gaze.

"But ye were a woman when ye honored it," he snarled, stepping over the fallen chair and around the edge of the table until the only thing that separated them was an invisible wall of vibrating fury. "Ye made a choice, Bry. I didna force ye."

"I never claimed–"

"And then ye made another choice when ye walked away." He leaned in close. So close that she smelled his scent, an achingly familiar combination of evergreen and peat. So close that she saw the flecks of gold surrounding his pupils. So close that the yearning deep inside of her was almost too strong to ignore.

"Aye," he said huskily when her gaze betrayed her and went to his mouth. "The fire's burning, Bry. It never went out." His hands, impossibly gentle for how large they were, skimmed along the outside of her arms until they reached her wrists. He encircled the tiny bones, thumb and index finger easily overlapping. "Which means ye have one more choice tae make."

Her heart beat like a wild thing inside of her chest. It thrashed against her ribcage, pounding against all of the measures she'd put in place to protect herself from exactly this. From falling back into his orbit, like a star spinning wildly through the galaxy only to become ensnared by the gravitational pull of a planet.

"I cannot." With her eyes, with her heart, with all she had within her, she implored him to understand. To turn on his heel and walk out the same door he'd come in. To leave her to the life she'd made for herself. A life that wasn't perfect. A life that fell far short of the one she'd dreamed of. That they'd dreamed of. But at least in this life…in this life, it didn't hurt to breathe. " We cannot. We tried, Lachlan. We did our best. And…and you weren't the only person to make mistakes."

It was the first time she'd acknowledged her wrongdoing.

The first time she'd admitted that some of the fault for their marriage crumbling was her own.

There was a sense of peace in that.

A relief of pressure that she hadn't known she was holding.

But it wasn't enough.

It would never be enough.

For they'd gone too far apart to pretend they could come back together now.

"Thank ye for saying that." His thumbs rubbed light circles on her fluttering pulses. "We might have broke, Bry, but we're not broken. I love ye. I havena stopped loving ye. Not for a bluidy moment."

She was tempted–oh so tempted–to give him what he wanted. To rest her head in the middle of his hard chest and begin again. To let go of all past hurts and heartbreak. To take the easy way out.

But what he wanted was not what she needed .

And the easiest path was rarely the best.

Slowly, steadily, she extricated herself from his grip. Took one step back, then another, and another, until the length of the room–and all the pain they'd caused each other–stood between them once again. An impenetrable wall that no chisel could break. "If you truly love me…then you'll let me go."