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.
CHAPTER THREE
LUCY HAD NOT wanted to attend the wedding breakfast, but her father had, for once, been adamant.
“Methven has invited us,” he said firmly. “The least that we can do is support him. This way we minimize the scandal of your brother’s appalling behavior and ensure that there is no more bad blood between our families.”
So that was that. Lucy sat through the banquet fidgeting as though her seat were covered in pine needles. She had no appetite. The food and drink turned to ashes in her mouth. She could barely swallow. She endured the gossip about Lachlan and the stares and the whispers with a bright and entirely artificial smile pinned on her face while inside, her stomach was curling with apprehension. She was seated a long way down the table from Robert Methven, but she could feel him looking at her, feel the heat of his gaze and sense the way he was studying her. Yet when she risked a glance in his direction, he was always looking the other way and paying her no attention at all. It could only be her guilt that was making her feel so on edge.
The meal ended and the dancing began. By now the wedding guests were extremely merry because the wine had circulated lavishly. Dulcibella’s elopement with the wrong bridegroom had almost been forgotten.
“Damned fine celebration,” Lucy heard one inebriated peer slur to another. “Best wedding of the year.”
Lucy sat with her godmother and the other chaperones, awkward and alone on one of the rout chairs at the side of the great hall of Brodrie Castle. Lucy hated the fact that at four and twenty she was still required to have a chaperone simply because she was not married. It was ridiculous. She knew it was society’s rule, but nevertheless it made her feel as though she were still a child. And since she had no intention of marrying, she could foresee the dismal prospect of being chaperoned until she was old enough to be a fully fledged spinster of thirty-five years at least.
She was desperate for this interminable party to end, but it seemed she was the only one who felt that way. Everyone else was having a marvelous time. She could see her sister Mairi twirling enthusiastically through the reel. Mairi always danced. She was an extrovert by nature. Some said she was a flifrt. No one said that of Lucy. She was considered too serious, too well behaved, and the tragedy of her dead fiancé had added a touch of melancholy to her reputation.
Her sister Christina was also dancing. Christina was not a flirt. She was firmly on the shelf, companion to their father, housekeeper and hostess, destined never to wed. Yet despite that, she was dancing while Lucy sat alone with the other wallflowers. It was a state of affairs that happened with increasing frequency over the past couple of years. Lucy knew she had a reputation for being fastidious because she had rejected so many suitors. The gentlemen had given up trying, swearing they could not live up to the memory of the late, sainted Lord MacGillivray. If only they knew. If only they knew that no one could measure up because no other bridegroom would accept a marriage in name only.
Intimacy with a man was out of the question for Lucy. She was not going to make the same mistake as Alice. She had to protect herself. That was why Duncan MacGillivray had been her ideal; he had had absolutely no desire to bed her. He had an heir, he had a spare and he had no interest in sex.
Lucy’s gaze wandered back to the dance. Mairi was spinning down the set of a country dance, passing from hand to hand, slender, smiling, a bright dazzling figure. Lucy felt a curious
