Chapter 10
Lucy knew that move—knew it was his attempt to seize back control, to put distance where something dangerously close had been forming.
Lucy had learned so much about this braw man.
Alas, he was bound for disappointment, and likely fury. Lucy had a stubborn Scot’s curiosity and strength.
“Aye, that much is true.” She took several deliberate sips and peeked at him over the rim. “But I also see they’re a free-spirited lot, still up to the antics of younger lads and lasses.”
A muscle rippled along the hard curve of his jaw. “Let us leave it at this, Lucy. Your opinion of me? That I’m some kind of wonderful brother and cousin?” His eyes, dark as the cruelest storm, shuttered. “It is as false as the legend of St. Nicholas himself.”
Lucy drifted nearer to him. Tension poured from his taut frame. “I don’t believe—”
He broke across her words. “You’ve seen how my kin attempts to protect you from me.”
Lucy scoffed. “That isn’t true, Arran.”
Arran pinched the bridge of his nose against emotions he sought to keep at bay. “If you believe that, then you aren’t very perceptive.”
“I—” Lucy froze.
She called back each exchange with Arran’s family.
“…Do let Lucy join us, and stop keeping her all to yourself, will you?”
The way they’d steered Lucy to another seat…
“You are not sitting beside Arran as Aunt Catherine intends…”
The way in which the McQuoids and Smiths interjected when Arran attempted to speak to her…
Alone, the moments meant nothing. But together…
His family sought to protect Lucy from Arran.
When in actuality, Lucy deserved their judgment and wariness. They’d chosen a stranger over their son, cousin, and brother. What a blow that disloyalty would be for a man as proud as Arran.
She fought to keep the emotion at bay.
“You can let up the charade, Lucy.”
Oh, God.
Her chest tightened until breathing became a chore.
He knows.
Of course he knows.
He’s known all along.
Fear left her mouth dry, a living dread that had nothing to do with terror over lying to nobles, and all to do with having to admit her deception to this man alone.
“You already know all this from Campbell.” Arran pinched the bridge of his nose. “The grief I brought upon the family.”
The grief I brought…
“Linnie.” He drew in a breath that shook at the end. “Captain Culross?”
She had no idea who those people were, only that she needed to, as they accounted for the anguish consuming him, a terrific pain she ached to drive from his tortured eyes and life.
“You don’t know,” he said quietly in a sense of self-discovery.
Lucy shook her head. “Know what?”
His shoulders sagged. Not with relief, but as if the weight of the world he carried upon his back finally crumpled his broad shoulders.
He scrubbed a scarred hand over his suddenly very tired face.
Lucy’s heart twisted. Tell me. She ached to remove his cross. Share your burden with…
Arran dropped his palm to reveal a stunned reaction.
“Ah said that aloud.” Her voice barely crested a whisper.
The muscle in his throat worked. “Aye,” he said gruffly.
His gaze dipped and she followed his stare.
At some point, Lucy crept her fingers into his, their hands joined so naturally, entwined like Twin Trees of Finzean. Together they conferred the same sheltering warmth as those mighty Scots pines.
“I nearly killed my younger cousin, Linnie,” he said thickly.
So quiet. So faint. Like a secret carried on the softest rustle in a forsaken forest. Lucy strained to place the shame-filled words.
Ones that did not fit with a man as clearly devoted, protective, and caring of his kin as Arran McQuoid.
She cursed her lapse of silence, one he took as a rejection, for he drew his palm back, shattering the fulfilling connection.
Arran flashed an empty smile. “Fortunately, Linnie survived.” He lifted his tankard and touched it to Lucy’s forgotten one in a single-sided cheer, then downed his cider.
He grimaced. “But Campbell’s sister now carries the demons and nightmares of any war-scarred soldier.
” Arran, speaking that last part as a hushed afterthought, refilled his just-emptied mug.
Lucy stared blankly at him. Campbell? Who…? “I don’t—?”
A ravaged Arran cut her off. “Know the details?”
“I don’t know anything about it, Arran,” she said quietly, adding yet another lie to the growing web of lies she’d spun around this family.
He barked out a cold, empty laugh. “Campbell is a good man.”
Unlike me.
Where she blurted out her every word, Arran didn’t need to say a single thing; the truth rang clear as a bell peeling over fresh-fallen snow.
Lucy’s heart twisted all the tighter.
The truth was: Campbell Smith was a good man. Arran McQuoid was the best of them.
As for Lucy? Lucy was going straight to hell.
While he searched her face, Lucy remained still, terrified he’d uncover lie upon lie she’d heaped upon this family at every exchange. Nor was it hanging she feared, but rather shattering this fragile but beautiful connection she’d forged with Arran McQuoid.
Whatever he saw, or whatever he didn’t see, pulled a rusty sigh from his chest. He stretched his long, athletic legs out. His mug cradled between his fingers, Arran kept a pensive gaze on the fire. “I’ve been an ogre to you, Lucy,” he murmured.
Her heart cinched.
Around them, the warm, spicy aroma of cinnamon and nutmeg took shape in the air. Even the familiar sweet smells of Yuletide, which ushered in a sense of calm and warmth, failed Lucy.
Lucy took a deep, deep swallow of cider. “Ye have not, Arran.” Guilt shredded her conscience. What had she done? Letting herself get close to this mon? She’d not intended to. It’d happened, as quick as a freshly drawn breath.
“I have,” he said in quiet command, flaying her with his grace. “And you are deserving of my most profound apologies.”
“Nay, Arran.” Lucy stared at the floor and her tangle of hair fell across her cheek, which was good. She could not face him. “Ye dinnae,” she croaked. “Ye been a perfect gentleman. Good. Kind.” I cannot let this go on…
A warm, powerful hand came up and brushed aside the sweep of curls. Her heart fluttered like the wings of a thousand butterflies in concert.
“Stop.” The thick rumble of his baritone resonated within her, bringing her eyes closed. “I’ve been a boor. I need you to know why.”
Lucy didn’t deserve the warmth of his touch. This had gone on too long. She had to tell him the truth before he went sharing the deepest parts of himself with a deceiver. “Ye dinnae owe me any explanation, Arran.” Taking his hand in hers, she reluctantly drew it from her face.
This time, she made herself look him in the eye.
“Ye’ve every reason to be wary of…” Me. She couldn’t bring herself to say it aloud.
“A s-stranger to yer family,” she said, tripping over herself.
Continuing to display the perfidy of her spirit where this man was concerned, Lucy couldn’t bring herself to release his long fighter’s fingers from her smaller, more fragile, hand.
A strained laugh emerged from his throat. “Lucy.” Arran gave her palm a deep, reassuring squeeze. He dropped his brow to hers; their eyes locked; their breaths mingling. “Will you stop defending my behavior and allow me to speak?”
Then it hit Lucy square in the chest.
Arran needed to speak. Not so much for her…but for him. Selfish as she’d been with him and his family, it’d be even more so to refuse him the chance to share when he so clearly yearned to—needed to.
Lucy gave an uneven wobble of her head.
While he spoke, they remained with their foreheads touching. “I invited a stranger within my family’s fold once before.”
Somehow, she kept still, knowing the unfurling story to be one of pain that’d changed him, and understanding when her time here with the McQuoid-Smiths ended, he’d have even more reason to be wary of outsiders.
“A gentleman named Culross. He wasn’t a stranger to me,” he murmured. “We were long-time acquaintances. We got on well at university, went our separate ways, but reunited in a business partnership, and became friends.”
He lifted his mug in a mocking salute. “What could be a finer union than one between a close friend and Linnie? The lady had several Seasons. She was unwed and wished to find a grand match…”
Linnie?
Arran saw the confusion in Lucy’s eyes.
“Campbell’s sister?” he clarified, frowning slightly.
The fires of the hearth cracked and hissed in the background as the devil toyed with Lucy.
“Aye.” Her cheeks burned hot. “Ah recall.” At least, she recalled Arran’s earlier mention of Linnie this evening.
“Linnie’s always been special.” His expression grew wistful.
“She’s as sweet as the linnet’s song she was named for.
” Just speaking about the young woman expelled the self-loathing he wore like tarnished armor about him.
“Bright-eyed. Romantic. Innocent.” His expression twisted, raw and anguished, and the force of his suffering slammed into her, stealing her breath.
“Or she was.” His hard lips formed a grim set.
“I introduced her to Culross. They got on well. Unbeknownst to me, Linnie was in love with a man who had been like a brother to me.”
“A man who’d been like a brother?” Her muscles seized up with dreaded anticipation.
“Aye.” Arran raised his glass for a quick drink, but not before Lucy caught the way his features spasmed.
He buried a ragged chuckle into the contents of his mug.
“Captain Jeremy Tremaine and I were friends since we were smallest lads, but I…” His gaze moved past the top of Lucy’s head, his eyes distant, glinting with cynicism, anger, and pain.
“I committed the greatest betrayal a fellow captain can.”
They sat in silence a moment, each sipping while the gingerbread scent fully took form—sweet and sharply at odds with the ugliness that hovered in the air.
“You want to know what sin I’m guilty of?” he jeered.