Chapter 15
“You saved me, Miss LeBeau.”
The last words between the loving couple, as far as Arran heard, and he was grateful for failing to hear a word more.
A veritable chorus of McQuoids’ and Smiths’ joyous tears and relief-infused laughter as they united in happiness filled the room.
Arran gritted his teeth.
A veritable celebration.
Lucy’s and Campbell’s murmurs were soft, private. Not drowned out. No, the pair simply carved a space for themselves amid the noise. The bold, maddening Scotswoman who’d seized Arran’s sanity…leaning into his cousin with an ease that gutted Arran clean.
Arran hung by the doorway of his own hell, inhaling slowly, deliberately through his nostrils and then releasing the air through tightly compressed lips.
Satan had come to exact his due for all the sins on Arran’s soul. Of course he had.
His gaze stayed locked on Lucy, on the graceful column of her swan-like neck he’d kissed, the slight dimple in her cheek he’d memorized. Even across the length of a room, and her profile only partially to him, she was all he saw.
Campbell, newly roused from his head injury, spoke cheerfully beside her.
The family adored it—Arran’s present self excluded. He despised it with the heat of a thousand burning infernos.
Did Lucy hear any of the revelry? Could she when she remained trapped in a world with Campbell?
The moment Lucy had arrived, dragging a half-frozen Campbell inside, Arran had known she held secrets. Something in her carriage, in Campbell’s silence about her… She was a puzzle he’d wanted to solve.
Then a single night beside a kitchen fire had torn down every suspicion and replaced it with something far worse: hope.
The doorjamb he’d fixed his left shoulder to upon arriving was the only thing that kept Arran upright.
Christ, if he didn’t toss his head back and laugh at the bloody irony of it all, he might shatter.
All the prattling and laughter dimmed around him.
Lucy had made him feel alive again. Not because his year had been bleak, though it had been. No—because she’d reminded him of who he once was. A brother. A son. A man who loved and forgave and fought for others.
In a clan like the McQuoids, a person didn’t become lost, one was born lost—swallowed up in laughter and overlapping voices.
Loved absolutely.
Seen? Rarely.
Hell, one Christmas, they’d actually forgotten Myrtle in London.
Cease this! You are not a bloody fool. You’ve known the lady less than a handful of days.
But in this brief window of time, she’d brought so much into his life. She’d shown him that his intentions for Linnie and Tremaine had been good, that forgiveness still had a place in his soul.
A spasm wracked his throat.
His lungs seized, denying him breath. Good. If he so much as moved wrong, his damned heart would explode.
Devil save him, he wanted it to.
Anything would hurt less than this. Even death.
Arran tortured himself with the reminder that after their embrace in the kitchens, he was destined to watch the rest of Lucy’s life play without him in it.
Oh, she’d be in his life.
She’d glow at Campbell’s side. Laugh easily. Smile freely. Campbell would earn every one of those smiles. And Arran? Arran would stand apart, watching what he could never have.
He wanted that happiness for them.
And God help him—he wanted it for himself more.
Warmth slicked his palms. He looked down at the crescents his nails had carved into his own skin.
For an instant, he swore Lucy felt his stare, calling to her, begging her for a single look. Her shoulders stiffened.
Not for him. He was already fading into an afterthought. An afterimage. A mistake in a flicker of time.
In the end, it wasn’t Lucy who looked his way.
Meghan did. She murmured to Campbell and Andromena, then excused herself and made straight for Arran. Running would only make her chase.
“Hullo, cousin,” she said in greeting.
Arran met Meghan with a brusqueness meant to deter discourse. “Cousin.”
Meghan settled her shoulder near his. “She is lovely.”
Who? Arran saw but one woman, and she wasn’t lovely. She was ruin wrapped in grace. An ethereal goddess moving among mortals.
Arran stared over the crowd’s heads, resisting the pull to look at her. And failing. His world constricted to one point. Lucy.
“You would have to be more specific,” he said curtly. “There are many ladies here.”
“Andromena.”
Andromena?
He barely heard the name. He tracked Campbell’s fingers brushing Lucy’s long, graceful ones. Heat licked up Arran’s spine, stoked by possessive fury. He fixed on the rage. Better to hold onto rage than cave to grief.
Meghan sent her shoulder sliding into his. “I am jesting, Arran. Why would I be talking about the ladies in our family?”
“Why wouldn’t you?” he asked, his voice hollow.
Why, with Arran’s heart seizing up again and again, killing him slowly, did they speak about anything at all?
Those fingers Lucy twined about Arran’s neck to drag him closer, while she moaned his name, now lay where they belonged—near Campbell’s. Soon she’d only moan one other man’s name in the throes of passion.
Blackness edged his sight. Violent thoughts, quick and shameful, snapped through him.
Arran with a fist around Campbell’s. Crushing his fingers. Breaking them for daring to—
He focused on drawing slow, even breaths.
It didn’t help.
“Arran,” Meghan said sotto voce. “Join me in the hall.”
“And leave all this?” he flashed a tight smile. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
He wouldn’t. He’d rather stand, suffering in silence near Lucy, than part himself from her. And with the entire family otherwise occupied with Campbell, Arran looked his fill.
A flicker of disquiet ran through Arran. He cut his gaze away from Lucy—too late.
Meghan stared at him with a keen knowing that sent heat crawling up his neck.
“I wasn’t asking, Arran,” she said quietly.
His hand flexed at his side. He’d revealed too much. Nothing good could come of the conversation to come.
Giving his younger cousin a tight nod, he exited and strode a safe number of paces away.
Arran stopped halfway down the corridor, realizing belatedly where he’d stopped. He stared blankly at the carved oak panel.
Lucy’s guest chambers.
A muscle rippled in his cheek.
Would these eventually become the chambers she shared with Campbell? Or would the happy couple do so in the same rooms Campbell had called his here in McQuoid Manor.
Arran settled his arms across his chest. I do not want to do this. Not here. Not now. Not with Meghan. Not with anyone.
“Just say whatever it is you’d say, Meghan,” he said between gritted teeth.
And be done with it. “I received word earlier about certain business in London I must see to before your wedding to the duke.” The Duke of Hartwell, and also Tremaine’s eldest brother.
The joining of their families was to be cemented even further.
Meghan’s face knotted with emotion. At that, not the happy sort either of a starry-eyed bride to be on the cusp of a winter wedding.
Oh, hell.
He froze. He’d seen that same sentiment before—in her sister, Linnie, when Culross had been courting her, and then again when Tremaine jilted her immediately after their wedding.
Arran let his eyes fall shut for just an instant.
God’s blazes. Not again. Do not think of it. Do not even attempt to stick your bloody nose into matters of the heart… He’d done that before and what in blazes had that gotten anyone? Nothing that was good.
“Meghan,” he pressured.
“I see how you have been, Arran,” Meghan whispered, her voice trembling with emotion. “You’ve changed.”
“This?” He scrubbed a hand over his jaw. Well, at least she’d be honest enough to admit aloud that which everyone else in their family tiptoed around.
“I mean since Lucy arrived, Arran.” The fiery bite of panic lit his veins. “Well, before that too,” she continued. “Back when you and Linnie returned, but even more so now, only in a different way…”
Unnerved, he grabbed his fob and made a show of consulting his gold timepiece.
Meghan was unrelenting. “I see how you look at—”
Arran jerked his head up. “Careful.” He let the metal chain fall from his fingers and stuffed the ancestral piece back inside his jacket.
“Not another word, Meghan,” he warned darkly, as he’d never been with her or any of the McQuoid and Smith ladies.
For that matter, any woman. Nay. You were plenty cold to Lu— “You don’t know what you’re talking about. ”
Arran glanced up and down the hall at the footmen stationed throughout.
What Meghan was all too willing to speak freely of would tear apart the family for good. There’d be no coming back from this.
“But I do,” she persisted, her voice so low he needed to strain to hear.
At least she understood the peril of what she’d speak about and in this place of all places.
Meghan lifted her palms. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.
I am not asking you to s-speak about it, Arran.
I just want you to know, I know what it is like to… ”
The dark look he fixed on the younger woman, too careless for her—or his—own good, sent her words trailing off.
“I do not know what you are talking about, Meghan,” he said coolly. “If you have been hurt by…” Longing for someone who could never be yours… “Something or someone, I am sorry.” He flexed his jaw. “But we are not the same.”
A faint, sorrow-tinged smile touched his cousin’s lips. “Very well, Arran. If you insist.” She dipped a curtsy, her frosty meaning clear. “If you’ll excuse me.”
Arran held himself rigid as Meghan hastened back to rejoin the festivities. He watched in unblinking silence until she ducked inside Campbell’s rooms.
The moment she’d gone, the panic he’d held at bay ran riot.
Christ help him.
She’d seen so damned much.
His innocent, young, trusting cousin, Meghan.
And if she had? Arran’s gaze snapped down the corridor; panic clawed up his throat. God above. What of the others? A blade of icy dread sliced straight through him.
I have to get the hell out. Now!