Chapter Two #3
“Lady Lucy.” There was a step behind her on the path. Lucy froze. She wanted to run, but that would be undignified. It would also end badly. She could not run in her silk slippers and Robert Methven would be faster than she was.
She turned slowly.
“Lord Methven.” The moment of confrontation had arrived too soon. She felt completely unprepared. “I am sorry,” she said. “Sorry for your...” She paused.
“Loss?” Robert Methven suggested ironically. “Or sorry that your brother is such a blackguard that he elopes with another man’s bride?”
His voice was rough edged, rubbing against Lucy’s senses like skates on ice.
No educated man, no gentleman, spoke with a Scots accent, but there was a trace of something in Robert Methven’s voice that was as abrasive as he was.
Perhaps it was the time he had spent abroad that had rubbed off the patina of civilization in him. Whatever it was, it made Lucy shiver.
He was blocking the path in front of her and he did not move. As always, his height and the breadth of his shoulders, the sheer solid masculine strength of him, overwhelmed her. This time, though, Lucy knew she could not allow herself to be intimidated.
“Lord Methven.” She tried again. She smiled her special smile. It was composed and sympathetic and it gave—she hoped—no indication at all of the way in which her heart thumped and her breath trapped in her chest. “I know that Lachlan has behaved badly—”
“Damn right he has,” Robert Methven said. “He is a scoundrel.”
Well, that was true, if a little direct from a gentleman to a lady.
But then Methven was nothing if not direct.
Lucy could feel the hot color stinging her cheeks.
Generally she had far too much poise for any gentleman to be able to put her to the blush.
Perhaps it was because Robert Methven was so blunt that she felt so ill at ease in his company.
On a positive note, however, he was blaming Lachlan for the letters so she was perfectly safe. He had no idea she had been involved.
“You look very guilty,” Methven said conversationally. “Why is that?”
Suddenly Lucy felt as though she was on shaky ground after all.
“I apologize for that too,” she said shortly. “It is just the way I look.”
Methven’s firm lips tilted up in a mocking smile. Lucy felt mortified. She never lost her temper and was certainly never rude to anyone. It simply was not good behavior. Yet Robert Methven always seemed able to get under her skin.
“I like the way you look,” Methven said, shocking her all the more.
He raised one hand and brushed her cheek with the back of his fingers.
The constricted feeling in Lucy’s chest increased.
It felt as though her bodice had been buttoned so tight she was unable to draw in her breath at all. The skin beneath his fingers burned.
“I thought you looked guilty because you knew about the elopement,” Methven said. His hand fell to his side. “I thought that you might even have helped the happy couple?”
Lucy felt the breath catch in her throat. Under his gaze she felt exposed, her emotions dangerously unprotected, her reactions impossible to hide.
“I...” She realized that she did not know what she was going to say. Methven’s cool blue gaze seemed to pin her to the spot like a butterfly on a slide. She felt helpless.
She took a deep breath and pressed one hand to her ribs to ease the rapid pound of her heart. Her mind steadied. She hated to lie. It was wrong. But she told herself that she had not played any part in the elopement. Not directly.
“I had nothing to do with it,” she said. She could feel her blush deepening, guilty flags in her hot cheeks. “That is—” She scrambled for further speech. Methven was watching her silently. His stillness was quite terrifying, like that of a predatory cat.
“I knew that Lachlan was in love with Miss Brodrie,” she said.
Already it felt as though she had said too much, as though she were on the edge of a slippery slope.
“That is all. I didn’t know about the elopement, or the love letters—” She stopped, feeling her stomach drop like a stone as she realized what she had said, what she had done.
A wave of heat started at her toes and rose upward to engulf her whole body.
“I did not mention any love letters,” Robert Methven said. His tone was very gentle but the look in his eyes had sharpened.
Once again there was silence, acute in its intensity. Lucy could hear the soft hush of the breeze in the grass. She could smell the cherry blossom. She was captured by the look in Robert Methven’s eyes, pinned beneath that direct blue stare.
“I...” Her mind was a terrifying blank. She could think of no way out.
“I hear your brother is no scholar,” Methven said. There was a harder undertone to his voice now. “But you, Lady Lucy...you are a noted authoress, are you not?”
Panic tightened in Lucy’s chest. She could hear the anger hot beneath his words.
“I...”
“So very inarticulate all of a sudden,” Methven mocked.
“Methven, my dear fellow.” The Duke of Forres was hurrying toward them down the path, Lucy’s sisters behind him.
The rest of the wedding guests were spilling out of the church now.
“My dear chap,” the duke said again. “I don’t know what to say.
I do apologize for the incivility of my son in running off with your future wife. Frightful bad manners.”
The moment was broken. Lucy drew a sharp breath and drew closer to Mairi’s side for comfort and support. She could feel herself shaking.
Robert Methven’s gaze remained fixed on her face. “Pray do not give the matter another thought, Your Grace,” he said. “I am sure I shall find a way to claim recompense.” He bowed to Lucy. “We shall continue our conversation later, madam.”
Not if she could help it.
Lucy watched him walk away. His stride was long and he did not look back.
“Very civil,” the duke said. He sounded surprised. Evidently, Lucy thought, he had missed the implied threat in Robert Methven’s words.
Lucy knew better. There was nothing remotely civil about Robert Methven, nor would there be in his revenge. It was not over.