Chapter 17
A short while later, Lucy took her leave of Campbell’s chambers. She drew the door shut with a faint click.
She’d entertained—for a lengthy amount of time—Campbell involving himself in her relationship with Arran. Only on account of being asked to hear him out. And hear him out she had. Dogged, he’d steadfastly pushed back on her declinations.
Though grateful he cared and wished to help, Lucy wouldn’t accept help from any quarters.
She didn’t want to take part in a charade to catch his notice.
She didn’t want Campbell to speak to Arran on Lucy’s behalf to explain what happened. Accept blame for the misunderstanding—as the big-hearted gentleman offered to do.
She needed to do this alone.
And she was ready. Oddly at peace.
Arran was a proud man, but surely if he understood she’d come to love him and hadn’t known how to tell—
A tingling sensation took hold.
“Hullo, Miss LeBeau.”
Arran.
She welcomed his smooth, calming baritone as it washed over her like summer sunshine. He could not speak to her so if he did not care for her even some. And if he cared before, then maybe Campbell was right, and he could forgive her.
Smiling, her heart racing as it only ever did because of this man. “Arran, I was going to…” Her smile faded.
The sight of him defied the silken soft tones by which he greeted her. It stopped her dead.
Unease trickled along her spine. Moisture slicked her palms.
His square chin notched down in such a way that she felt three feet tall. “You were going to…?” The sing-song teasing quality of his reply was wrecked by the tight lines at the corner of his mouth. “Hmm?” he prodded when she didn’t reply fast enough.
“I was coming to look for you,” she said quietly.
Arran crossed his arms at his broad chest; that motion sent his taut muscles rippling. “You’d go rushing from your…” His lip curled in a sneer. “Betrothed’s bedside in search of me? His cousin.”
A pounding started in her head.
How strange. It’d been but an hour or so since she’d last seen him.
He wore the same dashing sapphire wool coat and his snow-white cravat tied in a careful knot befitting his status of captain.
There wasn’t a single strand of dark, silken hair out of place.
And yet he’d stepped into this hall, the sharp planes of his face carved of such loathing, and stood a stranger before her.
Which is how he will forever see you. A lying, deceitful stranger.
The game of cat and mouse he played proved too much. Hands shaking, Lucy slid her palms behind her and braced herself against the thick oak paneling.
Tortured, splintering into a thousand million pieces of pain, she glanced desperately about. “Can we not do this here, please?”
A muscle ticked along the ridge of his jaw.
He wanted to deny her. For the simple reason he hated Lucy that much, but he loved his family more and wouldn’t want to disturb a recovering Campbell.
As proof, Arran’s gaze went to the entrance of his cousin’s chambers, and the nod he finally gave Lucy was nearly indiscernible.
Lucy entered her guest rooms with Arran hot on her heels.
The moment they were inside, he shoved the door closed with the heel of his boot. He sharpened his steely eyes on Lucy…and waited.
“You know,” she said quietly.
Did that steady voice actually belong to her? How when Lucy’s heart and soul were crumpling like a dying star?
“You’ll have to be more specific. I’m not sure to what you refer, Miss LeBeau.” The dreadful grin he curved his lips into told a different tale.
Grief slumped her shoulders. “Yes, you do, Arran.”
He quirked a brow. “Ah, because being skilled in deception yourself, you’re adept at calling out lies as you hear them? Say it, Lucy.” He raised his voice. “Bloody say it! For the first time since you entered my family’s home, be honest about some—”
“He is not my betrothed,” she cried out.
Arran took an angry step towards her. “Or your sweetheart,” he spat. “Or anything to you.”
Miserable, Lucy shook her head. “N-No,” she whispered.
Arran drew back in feigned shock. “And there we have it.” Holding his hands aloft, he brought them together in a jeering clap.
She’d always known he’d meet the truth with anger.
But this? Nothing could have prepared her for the agony knifing at her insides.
Her eyes grew damp.
“I believe you have something in your eye, hmm?” Arran gestured cruelly to her tears.
He only made them fall.
Lucy clamped her lower lip between her teeth to still its trembling.
Something flashed in Arran’s eyes. She thought it might be a flash of pain. But she merely saw what she wished to see.
Releasing a sound of disgust, Arran yanked a kerchief from his jacket and hurled it at Lucy. “Here, dry your tears.” The black scrap, embroidered with his initials in gold, sailed through her fingers, where it fell forlornly upon the floral Aubusson carpet.
Ignoring Arran’s part order, part angry offering, she wrestled with her lower lip. “I don’t like you this way, Arran.”
“You don’t like me this…?” His eyebrows soared.
“You don’t like me this way?” A dark, ugly laugh burst from Arran’s lips.
“My God, the bloody gall of you, woman. You don’t like me this way?
” This time, he spat that echo. “Madam, you are a damned stranger to me. I do not care what you like or don’t like about me or bloody anything.
” He gave her another cool once over. “You are nothing to me. You are even less than nothing.”
Had he hurled those words in fury, it would’ve been easier to bear than this undisguised pity.
“Please hear me out,” she entreated.
“Are you talking to yourself again or openly begging me, Lucy?”
Lucy sucked a sharp breath in through her nostrils. The ease with which he took intimate knowledge only he knew about Lucy and hurled it like a barbed lance struck worse than any actual spear to the heart.
She’d seen him in so many lights. Teasing and tender. Cold and cynical. But never, God save her, never malevolent.
This cruelty proved the greatest cut yet, the one to break her.
Lucy’s body shook on silent sobs. Hot tears of misery left tracks upon her cheeks.
Arran’s eyes went so wide the entire whites of his eyes were exposed. “Do not, Lucy,” he hissed.
His disgust of Lucy and her weakness made Lucy only cry harder. Gasping between sobs, Lucy hugged herself in a small embrace.
Arran jerked. Grief ravaged his beloved face.
Grief? That was impossible. For that to be so, he would have to care about her. But he didn’t. He abhorred her.
“Stop this bloody instant!” Arran came up on her so fast, she reflexively drew tight against herself and angled away from him.
He recoiled. Shock, coupled with outrage, blazed from his eyes—along with an emotion that looked very much like hurt. “Do you believe I’d hurt you, madam?”
You already have… Lucy bit the inside of her cheek to keep those words inside. She managed a watery smile. “As you said, Arran,” she said, her voice husky with tears, “we are strangers.”
His cheeks tanned from years on sunny seas faded white.
Arran found his voice. “Oh, no. You do not get to turn this around.” His sneer returned. “You do not get to play the role of wounded party, madam.”
No, he was right.
Lucy jerked her head sideways against his scorn. “I-I’m s-sorry.” For so much. For everything.
Arran’s flinty, unfeeling gaze slashed her soul in two; the force of his loathing robbed her of breath. Lucy’s chest heaved, and she fought to drag air into her aching lungs.
She’d always known he’d be enraged. That this ended with him hating her. She’d refused, however, to let herself imagine this moment or how it’d take her apart inside.
Only Campbell had forced some hope into her like some magical elixir. In the end, it’d proved to be a charlatan’s brew.
A fool through and through.
He didn’t want to hear her out, but Lucy needed to explain so that when he tossed her out, and erased her from his memory, she’d not forever wonder if telling him would have made a difference.
“Let me explain,” she begged again.
“You think to explain your treachery?” he chuckled. “As if I might somehow forgive you or forget that you, madam, entered this household and wound your way into my family’s graces and affections on a bloody lie?”
The downward sweep he did of her person contained enough disgust that grief tore her open and hammered her all over again.
“You have five minutes of my time,” he said icily. “And these are the last minutes you’ll ever have with me. Is that clear?”
“I’ve fancied Campbell half my life,” she said, her voice breaking.
So why did Arran’s body jerk?
Lucy wandered to the gilded frame painting.
She stared at the blissful couple frozen in a happy tableau; two adoring lovers under a great sycamore.
“He always visited,” she said softly, her eyes on the young, bewigged man who pushed a flaxen-curled maiden on a broad white swing.
“He made me smile. I did not lie when I told you his kindness made me care for him.” She drew her gaze from the painting and glanced over her shoulder.
“The night he came to be injured, I convinced him to come have some of my gingerbread.” She tried to smile. “He does enjoy it.”
Lucy searched for a sign of a forged connection between she and Arran. He’d baked biscuits with her.
A visible vein at his temple bulged.
Nothing. Lucy cleared her throat and continued. “I brought him here with Nettie and Tasgall.” She paused. “They aren’t servants.”
“They are your aunt and uncle. Yes.” He flicked his hand dismissively. “I’m aware. Four minutes.”
Fresh sorrow blossomed. It was futile. He’d neither understand nor forgive.
And so she reentered her telling with a soft wistfulness. “On occasion, your family did visit and I saw you all then. When I escorted Campbell home…”
Fury blazed in Arran’s eyes, and she stumbled.
“It did not occur to me that none of you would recall me. I should have,” she added. “I’m just a serving girl. And no one did, and—”
Arran ground his teeth.
She spoke faster. “There was so much confusion and someone mistook me for Campbell’s sweetheart, and I couldn’t get my thoughts clear or my words in and—” Her shoulder sank. “And then I didn’t know how to correct the misunderstanding.”
Her throat moved painfully.
“Lie.”
She looked blankly at Arran.
“It was a lie, madam.” He glanced down the bridge of his refined aquiline nose. “Call it what it was.”
Lucy drew back her shoulders. There was no way to bring down the protective walls he’d erected. Not this time. Well, she had regrets about how she’d conducted herself, but she’d be damned if he made her a villain.
“It was a misunderstanding at first, Arran. A lie of omission that, after my failure to correct, became a lie.” Lucy notched her chin up and met his punishing gaze directly.
“Hate me for my mistakes and for wronging you, but I will not let you repaint the entire situation as some nefarious plot I constructed. It wasn’t. ”
An illusion of a smile, warm and not cruel—some vision she yearned to see—ghosted his lips.
Or…maybe not.
“What was the plan, Lucy?” he asked flatly.
“The…plan?” Lucy shook her head. “I’m not sure what you—”
“Did you think to come in as Campbell’s savior and make m—” Her ears picked up on that one syllable. “My damned family fall in love with you? That Campbell would fall in love with you?”
“There was no plan.” Her chin trembled. “I never had one in my life, on account I never n-needed one, Arran.” A numbness left her feeling empty inside.
They stared at one another. It was a grim-faced Arran who looked away first.
Lucy stopped him. “Arran?” she said softly.
“I… I want to tell you,” she began when his steely gaze returned to her. “I need to tell you…I…did not love Campbell. It wasn’t love.” It was never that.
Something hot flashed in Arran’s eyes.
Cautious hope stirred to life. “It wasn’t love,” she repeated softly, willing him to understand. “I…just didn’t realize it until now. Until y—”
“Do not finish that.” His already closed-off features grew more shuttered.
As if he couldn’t stomach to look at her, Arran looked about. His eyes landed at the center wall where rested the four-poster bed and its white satin harrateen curtains, drawn wide to reveal matching white satin coverlets.
She knew his thoughts because they were the same wicked ones flashing through her mind: Arran taking Lucy in his arms. Him driving her back into the mattress as he’d done with the kitchen table. Her bending, bowing her body for him.
Warmth settled in that place between her legs; her body trembled.
What power did this man have over her that—even teeming with loathing—she still ached for him to take her in his arms as he had last night? A lifetime ago? Time had ceased to matter since Arran McQuoid burst into her life.
He swung his gaze back so abruptly, Lucy didn’t have time to school her composure.
For a moment, shared hungering passed between them. His eyes were a window into her own soul, a tale of yearning so great it drowned out all that had come before and centered them in the now.
His desire proved more powerful than his hate, and Lucy again—foolishly—surrendered to hope.
A harsh, jeering smile formed on his hard lips. “It is unfortunate you were not forthright in the kitchens last night, Miss LeBeau. If I’d in fact known Campbell had no claim to you, I would have satisfied both our itches.”
She sucked a breath in sharp through her nose.
His words tore like knives through her flesh.
“And Lucy?”
Through eyes glazed with a fresh set of tears, Lucy stared blindly at Arran. “Aye?” she said, her voice scraped raw.
“Your other betrothed, Mr. Joseph—or just Joseph, as he gave leave—indicated the inn is crowded and you are needed immediately.”
So that’s how he’d discovered the truth. She’d never be mad at Joseph. Lucy had but herself to blame.
Arran wasn’t done breaking her heart into pieces. “I want you out now before you bring any further hurt to my family.”
Lucy may have nodded. She lived outside her body at the moment, a voyeur on a tragedy befalling some poor, pitiable, broken-hearted young woman.
And Lucy watched on numbly as Arran let himself out.
Only when he’d gone did she let the full weight of sorrow settle into the marrow of her bones.
Collapsing, Lucy sobbed against the exposed plank floors.
And only after she’d cried her last tear and there wasn’t a further drop to shed—she left.