Chapter 5 #3
“Ah, I begin to see.”
“Based on how grossly wrong you’ve been about everything this night, I highly doubt that,” she muttered to herself.
“You’re glum about being married off to Culross.”
He’d figured it out, after all.
Linnie grunted.
“As much as I abhor the McQuoids,” he said haltingly, as if it pained him to do so, “at least they’re not going to marry you off to some old, toothless reprobate.”
She trilled a laugh. “Oh, I assure you, there are far worse marital prospects than an old, toothless reprobate.”
From the corner of her eye, she detected the small smile tugging at the corners of Jeremy’s lips. “I suppose that’s true.”
“I will just say this, and with absolute confidence: Despite this newfound contrariness in you, if you had heard the rumors about Lord Culross that I have, you’d be of a like opinion.”
They seemed to register at the same time that the cacophony on the other side of the solid oak door had, at some point, come to a cessation.
Her and Jeremy’s time was at an end.
The man who’d forever hold her heart all too quickly stood.
Linnie came more reluctantly to her feet.
They lingered, neither speaking.
Linnie sought to make something out of Jeremy’s opaque stare, but failed.
She mustered a weak smile. “I won’t ever be able to look at him the same.”
Another ghost of a grin played at his lips. “It appears for all the differences between us, on that, we are of a like opinion, Miss Smith.”
Miss Smith.
I miss being “my love,” “sweetheart,” “my siren.”
On the other side of that door, there came the faint but distinct sound of Arran’s curse.
Before she knew what Jeremy intended, he whisked back his cloak.
Click.
Linnie’s gaze went flying across the room.
When she looked back, Jeremy was gone, hidden completely behind the enormous, fully decorated Christmastide tree at the front left corner of the conservatory.
“Linnie?”
Heart racing, she struggled to speak. All her nerve endings remained on alert, in fear for the gentleman hiding in the corner.
“A-Arran?” she finally managed to get out.
Cursing, Arran came rushing over.
“Linnie!” he squawked. “What are you . . . Where have you . . . ?”
Linnie stared with wide-eyed innocence. “I’ve been taking in Lord and Lady Rutland’s holiday decorations.”
“H-how long have you b-been here?” His voice became pitchy, as when it’d begun to change and she and the rest of the McQuoid-Smith girls had teased him mercilessly over it.
With feigned confusion, she tipped her head. “I just arrived. Where have you been?”
Blushing as she’d never seen him, a thoroughly rumpled Arran coughed several times. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said, his voice returning to its normal timbre.
“Oh. Well, here I am.” She shrugged. “I would like to leave.”
“As in return to the masquerade, or leave entirely?”
“I want to go home,” Linnie said too quickly.
Arran gave her a probing look.
Her stomach dipped the same way it had when she’d dined on her first—and last—oysters.
If Arran discovered his former friend and now lethal enemy here, there’d be a duel, and Linnie would wager her own life that it would be Arran who lost.
“Linnie, I’m not wet behind the ears,” Arran said gravely.
Oh, God. He knows I’m lying.
“I don’t know what you are talking about, A-Arran,” she said, her voice climbing this time.
He narrowed his eyes. “Don’t you?”
I’m going to be ill . . .
Somehow, she managed to keep her body from trembling. “Why don’t you just say what, exactly, it is you think you know.”
“You realized the reason we escorted you to Lord and Lady Rutland’s.”
“I did?” she blurted.
Arran’s brows dipped. “You’re a deuced bad liar, Linnie-Lou.”
Oops.
As lost as she’d been in Jeremy and their stolen interlude here, she’d forgotten the fury that’d sent her running in the first place—and her plans to avoid her scheming relations.
Overwhelmed with relief, her entire body slumped. “Very well, I am aware. Given that, I have no intention of staying. I’d ask you to escort me home.”
“I will, cousin.”
She took a step to leave.
“Just . . . not yet.”
Blast, he was determined to do this here.
She could all but see the intensity with which Jeremy attended Linnie and Arran’s private exchange.
“Linnie,” Arran said pleadingly.
Her earlier anger freshly restored and Jeremy briefly forgotten, she glared Arran into silence. “What a fool you both took me for.” And a fool was precisely what she’d been: first for believing her kin’s intentions were pure, and second for actually believing Jeremy cared for her.
“Of course not.”
Her cousin actually sounded like he was the wounded party.
She dropped her voice and did her best impression of him and Campbell. “We understand you are frustrated and disappointed and feeling a bit powerless . . . We’re inviting you to accompany us . . .”
Arran had the good grace to blush.
Linnie wasn’t even close to done. “I thought that would help cheer you from your doldrums.”
Arran winced.
“Can’t have you sour and sad at Christmas. It is, after all, your favorite time of year . . .”
“Our intentions were good and pure, Linnie-Lou!”
“Would you stop?” she cried. Her voice pinged and pealed around the glass room. She made herself take a deep breath. “Will you just s-stop, Arran?”
Her cousin turned his palms up pleadingly. “I don’t know what I’m doing or—”
“You’ll call me Linnie-Lou like I’m still some child, while also trying to plan and set into place my own future.”
“That isn’t what I’m doing. Your brother—” He stopped abruptly.
But he’d already revealed enough. “What about my brother?” she asked, latching on to his inadvertent revelation.
Letting out a resigned sigh, Arran wiped a tired hand over his face. “He is concerned about you. He knows you regret not being married and believes you might just need a bit of help. He asked whether there was a man so honorable that I’d marry my own sisters to him, and I had one man.”
Why couldn’t they have sought to intervene back before Arran went and destroyed his friendship with Jeremy?
If it hadn’t been for the great betrayal at sea, which Linnie didn’t know the details of, perhaps even now she and Jeremy would—
“Linnie,” Arran murmured, interrupting her tragic musings.
“Ours is not a family who’d require any certain match.
We are, however, ones who, if we believed there could be happiness between one of ours and a good, honorable person, would at least attempt to introduce them.
” He held her gaze. “Linnie, that is all I’m seeking to do. That’s all any of us are hoping for.”
She stared at him. “And then, afterward, you’ll leave me be? No more attempting to throw me together with some gentleman whom I have absolutely no interest in meeting, let alone being courted by?”
Arran marked an X upon his chest. “You have my word.” He paused. “Though I will say I’m beyond confident when you meet Lord—”
Linnie swiftly interrupted. “Why don’t you wait for me to make my own opinion about the gentleman you’re so determined to marry me off to?”
Arran bowed his head. “Agreed.”
Her cousin, determined to get the last word in, cleared his throat. “If I might reiterate, however, I’m not determined to marry you off.”
She narrowed her eyes.
“Ah, yes, well, with that squared away, might I suggest we return to the festivities so I might perform—”
“I want to go home, Arran,” she said firmly. “I find the night has been ruined for me.”
If they remained, there’d be the risk Arran and Campbell came face-to-face with Jeremy, and absolutely no good could come of that.
He sighed. “I’m sorry, Linnie-Lou. This was not my intention.”
“Either way, it’s what happened.”
He nodded. “To make amends, if you’ll agree to a dinner with the gentleman and do not wish to continue your acquaintance, I’ll pledge to not include him in our McQuoid-Smith Christmas.”
Her cousin held his palm out.
Linnie hurriedly took Arran’s hand and shook hard.
Whatever. Anything to keep him from stumbling upon Jeremy in the corner.
With that, Linnie allowed her cousin to escort her from the conservatory and away from Captain Jeremy Tremaine—the actual gentleman she intended to marry.