Chapter 22 #2
Not for all the tea in China did she believe the lot of them didn’t know exactly where Linnie could find her husband. “Traitors,” she muttered under her breath. Of course, their loyalty did belong first and foremost to the earl and countess.
The hell with all of them. Linnie might not know where to locate Jeremy, but she knew precisely what he was doing—more accurately, with whom he was meeting.
Oh, her relatives had long considered her a flighty, insensible miss, but she’d always seen and been aware of far more than they’d credited.
It hadn’t taken much of a leap for Linnie to note Cousin Arran had been the sole McQuoid missing from her wedding to Jeremy, and then had come the duke being called away, only to return tense and there to escort her husband.
Jeremy was with Arran.
Steeling her jaw, Linnie continued her hunt through the corridors.
She ducked in parlor after parlor, and the curiosity room that’d nearly been robbed years earlier.
She visited the most popular places in which Jeremy and Arran used to gather: the billiards room, and the roof where the McQuoid-Smith men oft gathered for cigars and cheroots and brandies.
Not that this was a brandy-and-cheroot kind of day.
Having searched everywhere, only to come up empty, Linnie made her way back toward the foyer—and stopped.
August—Lord Culross—stood at the threshold of the western corridor. His cheeks bore the faint stubble of several days’ worth of growth, and his eyes were red-rimmed.
There would have been a time her heart ached at his clear pain, but knowing his role that day in the battle at sea with her husband and Arran?
Knowing Culross saved her cousin and left Jeremy to die?
That she could never forgive. Just as she could never forgive herself for having kissed the man responsible for so much of her husband’s hurt.
“My lord,” she said coolly. Linnie turned to go.
The earl stretched a hand out.
“Linnie,” he begged, his voice hoarse with emotion.
She glared at him. “There is nothing for us to say.”
Sadness twisted his lips into a pain-filled smile. “I am dead to you, then.”
His wasn’t a question, but she latched on to that avowal anyway. “My lord, surely you did not believe we would maintain any form of relationship after my marriage to Captain Tremaine.”
“I didn’t believe he’d permit you any form of contact with me. Hmm.” The earl stuffed his hands behind him. “I just didn’t expect you’d allow him to control you.”
“He is not controlling me, Lord Culross,” she said tightly. “I have chosen my husband. I have no loyalty to you.”
Hatred melded with anguish blazed to life in his eyes. “And on what did you decide Tremaine was deserving of your loyalty?”
“Because I love him,” she exploded.
With sleek steps, he proceeded to stalk her like some kind of caged predator who’d just broken free of its cage.
“You may love him, but you love an illusion. You love a memory of a man he may have been. In truth, though, Linnie? You don’t really know him. You don’t realize he only married you to stop an alliance between our families.”
Fury nearly blinded her. “You don’t know what you are talking about.”
“Did he tell you your cousin and I offered to cease construction on my ship and divert the lumber and builders to Tremaine’s if he withdrew his offer?”
Linnie scoffed. “If what he truly sought was a shipping advantage over you, then why marry me?”
“Oh, Linnie.” The look he gave Linnie was so pitying, her confidence faltered. “It isn’t about shipping.”
“Then what . . . ?” She managed to stop herself from blurting out the rest of that disloyal question.
Lord Culross lifted his hand; he hovered with his knuckles near her cheek.
Linnie tensed.
With a weary sigh, he let his fingers drop. “It was always about revenge.”
“Revenge?” She puzzled her brow. Did the earl truly believe a notorious rogue and consummate bachelor would marry the kin of his sworn enemy, all for a matter of revenge? When in doing so, he’d also find himself bound to the McQuoid family?
The earl incorrectly took her silence as a weakening.
“How better to punish me than by claiming you as his wife and denying me any future with you? Think, Linnie. He’s a bastard but he isn’t stupid.
Not only does Tremaine get you, but he knows after you, there can never be an alliance between me and any other McQuoid-Smith sister or cousin.
” His Adam’s apple moved. “Not when my heart belongs to you.”
Unnerved by the depth of emotion in his eyes—or perhaps the confidence with which he asserted his theory—Linnie found herself backing up until she collided with a gilded mirror.
She eyed him warily.
He shook his head sadly. “The irony of it all, Linnie? You’ll give your allegiance to a man who betrayed you in the worst way. He preyed on your heart.”
By Lord Culross’s tortured visage, it might as well have been his own suffering he spoke of.
Her nape prickled.
He’s trying to stoke the embers of mistrust between you and Jeremy.
Why would he do that, though? a voice at the back of her mind niggled. With her and Jeremy married, Culross stood to gain nothing.
Stop.
Hating herself for having even entertained the question roused by his enemy, Linnie lifted her chin. “My husband is a good man. He would never hurt me.”
August raked a hand through his hair. “What do I need to say or do to make you see reason, Linnie?”
He looked around a moment, and then let his arm fall to his side. “Let me ask you this, Linnie. Has Tremaine told you he loves you?”
She worried at her lower lip.
With a cruelty she didn’t believe he could possess, the earl pressed his point. “If the honorable Lord Tremaine cares for you so greatly, then why not give you those words, Linnie?” His voice contained a thread of desperation that terrified her more than had his cruelly hurled questions.
“Stop,” Linnie hissed.
She slapped her hands over her ears.
Culross wouldn’t allow her that escape and guided her arms back to her sides. “Linnie, I fell in love with you because of your spirit, strength, and cleverness,” he said urgently. “You know I’m speaking truths.” Fury darkened his eyes. “Which is far more than Tremaine ever gave you.”
With his powerful fingers still encircling her wrists, Culross’s gaze slipped to her mouth. His expression darkened. His turbulent eyes grew heavy and hot.
Shaken by the raw desire she saw there, Linnie drew back.
“You’re thinking of the night I kissed you,” he said thickly.
She shook her head. “No! My lord, do not do anything my husband will make you regret.” Linnie hated that her voice emerged like an entreaty.
The earl brought one palm up on the wall behind her head and his other hand followed suit, so that he framed her—trapped her—within his arms.
He moved his lips close to her ear. “Ask him, Linnie. Ask him whether he pursued you all to thwart me. Ask him if he ever would have even looked at you were it not for his plans to stop an alliance between me and the McQuoids. Ask whether if I hadn’t wanted you as my own, he would have ever offered you marriage. ”
“I won’t do that,” she said.
“And why is that, my darling? If you are so confident in his faithfulness now that you are married, he needn’t lie anymore. Ask him. Get the truth from your husband.”
“If I put those questions to him, what would that say about my confidence in him?” she shot back.
He lowered his mouth near hers, and she shrank from him. “S-stop.”
Lord Culross stilled. His breath bore the strong hint of spirits. For the first time since she’d been alone with the earl, he stirred fear.
A cool smile grazed his lips. “Never say you are of a sudden afraid of me, Linnie?” He rubbed the pad of his thumb over her lower lip, and she whipped her head sideways to dislodge his brazen touch.
He chuckled and let his arm fall. “I know you better than you know you. You’re thinking of my kiss. Remembering how good it was, and that terrifies you most. That somewhere inside, in a place you can’t even acknowledge to yourself, you still want me.”
“Never!”
The anger left him and sorrow lent his handsome features an anguished mask. “But you did enjoy my embrace once, Linnie,” he whispered hoarsely. “Just as you enjoyed when I placed my lips here,” he murmured, running a fingertip over that sensitive part of her neck she hated that he knew.
Linnie batted his hand away.
“It was only an embrace, my lord,” she said coolly. “My heart is not, was not, and never will be engaged by anyone other than my husband.”
“Only an embrace?” A cynical laugh shook his chest. “An embrace you enjoyed very much,” he said, either failing to hear or ignoring the most important of Linnie’s assertion. “Even now, you want me to take you in my arms.”
He lowered his head to kiss her, and Linnie turned her head so his lips landed on her cheek.
“I want no such thing,” she raged. “Release me now.”
“You can deny it with words, Linnie,” he said thickly. “But oh, how eagerly you moaned and moved your hips against my shaft when I stroked your nipples.”
Red fury swallowed up her vision. Linnie worked a hand out from between them and let it fly.
His head flew back under the force of her strike.
Her body shook with rage. “You are reprehensible,” she hissed.
The earl rubbed a hand over the place where her palm had imprinted upon him.
“I deserved that,” he said quietly, flexing his jaw. “My behavior just now was unpardonable.”
“Your behavior not only this entire day, but since you joined my husband in battle,” she snapped.
Lord Culross’s expression closed. “You know nothing about a fight at sea, Linnie.”
“I know more than you think, because I know something about loyalty. Now, if you know what is good for you, my lord, you will leave and—”
From the south corridor, there came the echo of heavy footfalls—multiple sets of them.
Oh, God. If she were discovered with the earl and Jeremy found out, it’d be catastrophic. Jeremy would never understand.