Chapter 12
The following morning, Lucy couldn’t face him—which, given he was seated diagonally from her at the table, required a concerted effort.
And each time she dared look, she found his hooded gaze already fixed upon her—steady, unreadable, burning with something she did not dare name.
It was not the suspicious scrutiny he’d given her upon her arrival. His suspicion had melted away.
The stares they’d traded last night had been cautious, furtive things.
But this… This was different. This was intent. This was awareness.
This was him seeing her.
But what remained in its place…she could not decipher. And that terrified her more.
What must his opinion be of her now?
She’d not turned away from his kiss—she’d given herself wholly into it. And had Arran not stopped, she would have surrendered herself entirely to him on the oak planks of that kitchen table.
And what would he think when he discovered the truth—her greatest betrayal of this family was against him.
He had revealed tragic moments that had shaped him into the man he had become. He had done so for her benefit, as if she were somehow good and honorable.
When in truth, Arran McQuoid was a man of conviction, loyalty, and fierce devotion to his family. And the very love he held for them accounted for all the mistakes he believed were sins.
That love, that tenderness wrapped in steel, had made her fall more than a little in love with him.
From the beginning, she’d been drawn to him.
Now, she yearned for him.
The parts of himself he revealed—the depth, the vulnerability—undid her. And then there had been his touch. His masterful, glorious embrace. The kind sung of in sonnets and whispered through the halls of kings.
Fisting her hands in her lap, she flexed and unflexed her fingers.
“Lucy, you haven’t eaten a thing,” Lady Alexandra, the Viscountess Crichton, quietly inquired.
Pausing mid-chew of the gingerbread biscuit she ate, Lady Fleur looked askance. “Yes,” she said, with none of the mature viscountess’s discretion. “Are you feeling all right?”
The goodness and kindness of this family would undo her.
Lucy managed a smile. She opened her mouth to reply—
A tiny dark projectile flew past.
A raisin, launched by Arran’s youngest brother, struck Fleur squarely in the forehead.
Fleur let out an indignant shriek. “What in blazes was that for?”
“How do you think she’s feeling?” Quillon waved his fork toward her. “Her betrothed is up in bed, drifting in and out of consciousness.”
A chunk of Cook’s toasted bread soared across the table, thrown from the unlikeliest culprit.
“You cannot say that, Quillon,” the Marchioness of Winfield scolded, giving the young man a pointed look.
Apparently, the title of older sister superseded that of marchioness. Quillon immediately returned fire.
The table erupted into chaos—food flying, siblings shouting, half the family escalating the battle while the other half tried to stop it.
Lucy wanted to slide under the table and disappear.
And Arran looked as though he wished the same.
His broad shoulders, framed in sapphire wool, went taut enough to snap. His eyes found hers. The raw, unguarded emotion in them threatened to split her in two.
Guilt. So much of it poured from his gaze.
Of course he would feel guilty. An honorable man like Arran, who erroneously believed he shared a heated embrace with his cousin’s wife-to-be, would carry a mountain of shame?
But his guilt? It was unfounded.
Lucy’s, however, would never leave her.
Nor should it.
She had to tell him. Now. Immediately.
Yesterday.
A certainty was that the moment she revealed the truth, he would hate her.
How could he not? A man betrayed by so many could never forgive what she had done. Tears prickled hot in her eyes.
“Oh, please, do not worry,” the Duchess of Aragon said gently, while the table remained at war.
Her warmth made more tears slip free down Lucy’s cheek.
“He truly will be all right.” She looked to her mother, the countess, and shouted to make herself heard over the raucous table.
“Isn’t that right, Mother? Campbell will be just fine? ”
Lucy made the mistake of looking up. Her gaze collided with Arran’s. His expression was pale, drawn.
The duchess began raising her voice and then stopped. She turned to her husband and spoke furiously, gesticulating as she did.
A sharp whistle cut through the noise.
Silence rippled across the room as the Earl of Abington rose. Collecting the marble-headed cane at his side, he gave it three sharp thumps on the wood floor. “That will be quite enough.”
Even the highest-ranking offenders—the duke, the marquis, the earl—appeared properly contrite.
The gentleman puffed out his chest. “Now, may we please, all of us, just focus on why Cook failed to make more of this gingerbread.”
With an exasperated sigh, the countess at last cracked under the chicanery at the table and sank her face in her palms.
And Lucy certainly could see why.
Confounded, Lucy cocked her head at an angle.
“They really are quite delicious,” Fleur said, availing herself of another. She offered the chintz porcelain plate to Lucy. “You must have one. Before Quillon goes eating them all.”
Lucy quietly demurred.
“Hey, now,” the young man chimed in indignantly.
“I had three.” The wicked young man plucked three more from the tray Fleur set down.
“Now, six.” He flashed a roguish wink Lucy’s way, and she saw glimpses of a charmer he’d be, and saw them very clearly because of the roguish winks and smiles belonging to Arran.
Oh, God.
She squeezed her eyes shut to keep pain at bay.
She finally understood irony, because it had just settled squarely in her life.
All these years she’d spent admiring one man, fancying herself in love with him, when he had always been a stranger.
And Arran McQuoid, whom she had known mere days, she understood far more deeply.
A nobleman by birth, a self-made man by action, fiercely devoted to family.
“Cook didn’t bake them,” the Marchioness of Winfield declared, prompting a wave of confusion.
The earl who had gone back to reading, lowered his paper with a noisy rustle. “Well, the mystery must be solved, especially when they are this good. Who did?”
Lucy’s skin prickled under the heat of Arran’s stare.
One of them had to speak.
Just as it hadn’t made sense for Arran to remain in the kitchens last night, neither could he possibly take credit for baking dozens of biscuits. Not when Lucy had just finished cleaning up when the first servants began trickling in.
“Lucy did,” Lady Winfield piped in as proud-sounding as any baker introducing his mentor. “I went in search of a middle of the night snack and discovered Lucy there.”
Silence swallowed the table.
And she wished it would consume her, too, and spare her all this attention.
There was to be no quarter.
“Oh, come, Lucy,” The young marchioness appeared determined to bolster Lucy before her big, noble family. “You mustn’t be modest.”
Modest?
If only the family had an actual clue about Lucy’s character deficits.
Lucy forced herself to speak. “It is something I did often with my mother and father,” she managed. “A recipe passed through our family for generations. I know it is hardly done for a lady to bake or cook, but—” She caught the truth before it slipped free…but I was not raised as a lady.
Lady Cassia, Marchioness of Winfield, laid a warm hand over Lucy’s. “It is perfectly fine, Lucy. You have outdone yourself. We are grateful.”
Lucy expected pity from the rest of Arran’s family. Instead, they regarded her with wonder.
Must they all be so kind? Because she found herself in an impossible situation: she had not only fallen in love with Arran McQuoid, but with his entire, boisterous, warmhearted family.
It was too much.
“If you will excuse me,” she whispered.
Rising so quickly her knee knocked the table, she turned and fled the room.
The McQuoid-Smith families remained quiet only as long as it took for Lucy to leave. Then, all around him, everyone was talking all at once.
Ravaged, tortured, Arran followed Lucy’s flight from the breakfast room.
It took everything within him to not take flight after her—to not seize her wrist, pull her back against him, and demand she look at him.
Accusations went flying across the table.
What have I done?
“What did I do?” Quillon asked, affronted.
Anguish nearly cleaved Arran in two.
He hadn’t slept a single moment last night.
“…what did you do, brother…?”
Guilt should have robbed him of his sleep. Hell, it should rob him of everything.
“What did you do? Really, you need to ask that?”
Except he was so rotten to the core that it hadn’t been guilt—though there had been plenty of that. But that honorable emotion came second to the all-consuming hunger for Lucy.
She had lived inside his head. She’d taken up residence in his blood, in his bones, in the very air he breathed.
“…I didn’t find anything strange about it,” Aragon was saying.
Their embrace had been unlike any he’d ever had in his thirty-three years of life.
Not a single mistress did he remember.
“…You wouldn’t, my love…”
Not a single lover’s kiss or touch. Every exchange before Lucy had been animal-like.
Mindless lust.
The countess chastened someone in the background, but Arran barely registered it.
Because what had passed between him and Lucy had been more than heat—more than desire. It had been a claiming. His. Hers. A lock he’d never be free of, even if she begged him to set her loose.
To even think of it as lust felt a sin.
Only when she sat across from him at breakfast did Arran feel the guilt he should.
Even then, it hadn’t been because of Campbell. It had been because of her.
Her eyes ravaged. Her spirit defeated. Her usual loquaciousness gone silent. He had done that to Lucy. He had made Lucy LeBeau feel shame when Arran alone was deserving of that guilt.
She was a respectable young woman.
He should’ve controlled himself.