The Lady’s Sinful Secret

by Kelly Boyce

  Why had she kept it?

  He shook his head. It mattered not.

  He’d spent the past two months avoiding any contact with the Sheridans. He’d forbidden his sister or her offspring to comment on any of them while in his presence. He wanted nothing to do with the clan created by a man who was instrumental in destroying the life he’d wanted. And he wanted even less to do with the woman who had forsaken her promises to him in order to join them.

  The pain should have lessened over the years, blunted by the passing of time. He’d learned today how wrong such an assumption had been.

  She was breathtaking. Even more so than the first time he’d seen her. The years had been more than kind. If anything, they had softened where they should have and defined where they needed to. And her eyes—those damnable silver eyes—even from the distance that had separated them he could see they had not dimmed in the least and the thick blonde hair, though coifed and controlled, still curled softly along the arch of her cheekbone. How well he remembered its silky texture drifting between his fingers.

  He poured another glass and downed it as quickly as the first. How many did he need to dull the burning in his chest, the sense that he had fallen down a rabbit hole and landed in a life he no longer recognized as his own?

  He’d been rude to her. Beyond rude, really. Positively surly. He did not regret it.

  He regretted it a little.

  Another drink, yet the numbness continued to evade him. “Bugger, hell and damn!”

  He shoved the glass away and let it skid across the smooth mahogany surface of the bar. The same bar where his father had given him his first taste of whiskey. He’d been all of nine years old and his mother had just died. A grief he and Callum shared in common, though Arran had not given his son the same remedy his father had him. He shook the memory off. One painful remembrance at a time was enough.

  He stalked to the window and glared out at the bucolic setting. He’d been a fool to think he could avoid the meeting forever. He’d been aware of Blackbourne’s death. His sister, Beatris, had informed him practically the moment he’d arrived back at Havelock, thinking he’d want to know. It was then he’d decreed the subject off limits.

  That part of his life had ended when Glory refused to respond to his letters. Pathetic letters where he’d begged her to leave Blackbourne and run away with him. Letters that came back; return to sender. As if he’d ceased to exist. As if what they had shared no longer mattered.

  Had it ever mattered? Or had he been nothing more than a diversion? A plaything.

  God, what a fool he’d been! Even worse though, was that piece of him he could not root out. The piece that took one glance at her and wished to have her still. To hold her in his arms and feel her skin against his.

  He closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against the cool glass pane. He despised her. And he loved her. A truth he could not deny. A torment he could not escape.

  He should never have returned.

  “There you are. I have been looking all over for you.”

  Arran opened his eyes and turned. Beatris stood in the doorway of his study, her hands folded across her belly.

  Until his return to Havelock Manor, it had been half a decade since he’d seen his sister. Older than he by a handful of years, she’d turned pleasantly plump and seemed happy with her husband, and their two grown children, though, according to their regular correspondence, rather dismayed that neither her son nor daughter had yet to marry.

  Correspondence had seemed preferable to visits, though Beatris had been to see him on a few occasions. A favor he had not returned. He had hoped distance and a new life would erase the pain of his past.

  It had not.

  “Good morning, sister dear. You’re up earlier than usual.” His sister kept what he referred to as London hours. He, on the other hand, preferred to rise early and greet the day. There was much work to be done, as the estate had lain fallow during the last year of Donald’s illness, despite his niece Judith’s best attempts to manage things while tending to her father.

  “I have had little choice. The Assembly is this evening, if you’ll recall.”

  He did; he simply cared little for the social goings-on of his neighbors. Such gatherings were rife with the possibility of running into his past. Once was enough for one day.

  “Patience is excited, I assume?” Beatris’s daughter, despite a disastrous first Season, had thrown herself into each entertainment offered with such fervor it was a sight to behold. It was as if the events that had led Beatris to pack her daughter up and hide out in the country had never occurred. Hopefully Judith, being several years older than Patience, would have a tempering effect on his youngest niece’s behavior.

  “She is, though Patience has expressed a wish that you join us this time. Your presence would go a long way toward improving her standing amongst the townsfolk.”

  “She is the daughter of a baron with a rather sizeable dowry. I hardly think she needs her disagreeable uncle to assist her in meeting proper gentlemen. You and Judith will suffice.”

  Beatris smiled and took a breath. He knew what was coming and considered departing before she started, but his sister had tactically blocked the doorway.

  “You cannot avoid them forever.” Them. Meaning her.

  “I am not attempting to avoid anyone.”

  She lifted one eyebrow. “You are an abominable liar, Arran Sutherland.”

  “That’s Sir Arran to you,” he teased, hoping to divert the conversation. His scheme failed.

  “One would think a man with a knighthood would be braver, and not hide out in his castle to avoid running into a lady he once held an affection for, three decades previous.”

  “I live in a manor, not a castle. And I have already run into the lady in question.” The admission left a sour taste on his tongue.

  Beatris’s warm brown eyes widened. “You have? When?”

  Arran cleared his throat and did his best to affect a nonchalant air, as if the encounter had had little effect on him. “Just this morning. Callum was chasing Shadow and found himself on Sheridan Park lands.”

  “Well.” Beatris worried her hands and nodded toward the bar where the decanter of brandy and his empty glass rested. “I suppose that explains why you’ve chosen to imbibe so early in the day.”

  He scowled at his sister’s powers of observation. Did the woman miss nothing? “I happened to be thirsty. Do not read so much into it.”

  “Hmph. If there is nothing to read into, then you will not mind accompanying us to the Assembly tonight.”

  “I am afraid I would mind very much. There is much work to be done and I do not have time for such frivolity.”

  “Arran, I know she hurt you, but it has been thirty years and you have been widowed for over two—”

  He held up a hand, cutting off his sister’s well-meant cajoling that he return to society. “I appreciate your concern, but I assure you, my lack of interest in social goings-on is based solely on my desire to put my energies into running the estate so that when I pass on, Callum will have something of worth to call his own. My reticence has nothing to do with pining for lost loves.”

  “Arran—”

  Again he stopped her. “And if that is all, I need to attend to just such matters. I am certain you and the girls will enjoy yourselves without my presence. I never was much of a dancer anyway.”

  * * *

  Abigail paced the receiving room in a pique while Gloria waved a rattle in front of her grandson’s reaching hands. The boy, lovingly named Roddy, grew more cherubic by the day.

  “I find it rather suspect that each time I have paid a visit they have not been in. Where is it that they are going? I have asked around and while Baroness Elmsley is well thought of, I cannot imagine she spends every day traipsing about the village paying calls. At some point, people would be returning the calls she has made, forcing her to stay at home to receive them.”

  Though Gloria had mentioned in passin
g to Marcus that she had met the new owner, she had refrained from telling anyone else. Her new son-in-law was not one to pry and she gave only a brief mention of the event as he had come upon her when she returned to the stables. Marcus was far too perceptive not to notice something was amiss. She shrugged it off as best she could, and did not speak of it further to the others. There was little point. Neither her son, daughter, or daughter-in-law knew of her past with the Sutherlands. A past that would easily explain the Sutherlands’ reserve in welcoming a Sheridan into their home. It was a slight, to be certain, but not one undeserved. Still, she supposed some explanation was necessary to prevent further prying from her curious and determined daughter-in-law.

  “I’m afraid Blackbourne and Sir Douglas Sutherland had a rather discordant relationship.” An understatement if ever one existed.

  “But the late Lord Blackbourne is dead and buried, as is Sir Douglas. Surely they cannot hold Nicholas responsible for whatever acrimony existed between the two men!” She threw her arms up and flopped down onto the sofa next to Gloria. “Is there nothing you can do to smooth it over? Extend an olive branch of sorts? I would very much like to make their acquaintance and put matters back to rights. They are our neighbors, after all.”

  Neighbors. Indeed. That was how it had all started, was it not? The Sutherlands were landed gentry, their property gifted to them by the crown upon the elder Sutherland’s knighting, an honor bestowed upon him for heroics in battle on behalf of the King. The south end of his property lay sandwiched between the land owned by her family and the countryseat of the Earl of Blackbourne. Her social-climbing parents had wanted little to do with the Sutherlands, convinced the Scots were beneath their station and did not deserve the one they held. Gloria had thought little of it until one day she came across Arran as he and his dog retrieved a wayward cow that had broken ranks and wandered off.

  Then, the Sutherlands—one in particular—were all she could think of. And if she were honest with herself, she would admit there had not been a day since that she hadn’t thought about the Sutherlands. One in particular. But thoughts and memories were all she had. Fate had torn them apart quite irrevocably. She had not expected to ever see him again.

  Yet here he was. Once again in her backyard. Perhaps fate was not done with them yet.

  She tossed the idea aside and leaned down to kiss the downy hair on Roddy’s head, black as night, just like his father’s and his father’s before him. Arran was married with a young son, much as she had been. There was no place in his life for her. That kind of thinking needed to stop this instant.

  Easier said than done. The brief glimpse she’d had of him refused to leave her. For years, she had wondered where he was, what he was doing, how he had fared. Was he as handsome as the man of her memories? Or had the years changed and altered him? As it turned out, time had strengthened and weathered him in ways that only served to enhance the sharp edges and angles of his lean form and broad shoulders. Thin lines fanned out from the outer edges of his deep blue eyes and a hint of gray peppered the temples of his inky black hair. He exuded a masculinity that made everything in her come alive, as if no time had passed at all.

  “Gloria?”

  “Hm? Oh, yes.” Heat crept up her throat and bloomed in her cheeks. “I’m afraid I wouldn’t be much help in repairing the discourse between our families, my dear. I fear my association to the late earl would only serve to rub salt into an old wound. But I applaud your willingness to want to bridge the divide.”

  Abigail leaned back against the cushions and reached over to absently touch her son’s cheek, an unconscious show of affection. Abigail had taken to motherhood with great aplomb, despite her misgivings that she would fail miserably at it. Gloria could not have asked for a better mother for her grandchildren. Hopefully more were in the offing not too far in the future. It gave her something to look forward to.

  “Perhaps persistence is the key, then. I shall simply pay them visits until they have no choice but to be home to receive me, or risk the embarrassment of publically offending us. I’m sure they wouldn’t want that.”

  “I would think not.” Though the claim did not hold much conviction. If left to Arran, she had no doubt he would do just that and consider the insult well deserved, but perhaps his sister would have a change of heart. She had always rather liked Beatris, even if his sister had thought her and Arran a dangerous match.

  Only further proof of the woman’s sensible nature.

  “Then I shall try again today and suggest to them I will sit on their doorstep until they return, if they find themselves not at home yet again.”

  Gloria smiled despite the trepidation that ran through her at the thought of mingling the two families once more.

  No good could come of it. Could it?

  Chapter Three

  “What else was I to do, Arran? We can hardly leave the Countess of Blackbourne standing on our front step awaiting our supposed return,” Beatris said, her voice urgent and nervous as they hurried down the hallway toward the receiving room.

  “I don’t see why not, if that is what she was inclined to do.” How he had become entangled in this matter escaped him. One moment he had been happily working away in his study and the next his sister had rushed in, all in a dither. “I suspect after a few moments she would gone back to Sheridan Park, tired of waiting about.”

  Beatris scoffed. “Then you have not heard the stories about the new Countess. She is a bit of a bold one, if rumors are to be believed.”

  “I am not interested in rumors. Nor am I interested in meeting the new Countess.”

  “Well you’ve little choice. She is here now and she made an express wish to meet both of us. It would be the height of rudeness to deliver such a cut as to deny her request.”

  After what the Sheridan family had done to him, rudeness seemed an appropriate response. But he did not care to explain that to his sister, nor admit how much his past association with the family affected him still.

  “Fine. I will say my hellos and then be on my way. You and the girls can maintain the rest of the visit.”

  Beatris stopped outside the door to the receiving room and lowered her voice. “Judith has taken Patience out to meet the Maynards. And it will look unfavorably upon us if you do not stay long enough for a proper visit. I know you have no interest in society, but it is the world I live in, and given Patience’s disastrous first Season and Judith’s lack of proposals, slighting Lady Blackbourne will not help matters. Please, Arran!”

  He pulled his mouth into a grim line. “Very well. But let’s make this a short visit, shall we?”

  Beatris’s palpable relief at his acquiescence did little to lift his spirits as they entered the room to face the new Countess of Blackbourne. As they said their hellos and Beatris made the proper introductions and apologized for not being home sooner to receive her calls, Arran studied the woman who had displaced Glory as Countess. She was a pretty little thing and while she did not embody the quiet, regal bearing of the previous Countess, she did possess a brilliant smile and energy that, despite his best intentions, he found quite engaging.

  “I am so happy to finally make your acquaintance, Lady Elmsley, and sorry to have missed Miss Sutherland and Lady Patience, but I look forward to receiving all of you in the near future so we might become better acquainted.”

  Beatris gushed at the invitation and Arran had no doubt her nimble mind was already devising a plan whereby she could request the Countess’s assistance in introducing Patience to any number of eligible bachelors bearing the Blackbourne stamp of approval. God save England from matchmaking mamas and their unmarried daughters.

  “And, Sir Arran, how thrilled I am to meet you, though I am most sorry that it is under such sad circumstances. I did not have the good fortune of meeting your brother, but others speak most highly of him.”

  “That is kind of you to say.”

  Lady Blackbourne smiled at him and though his sister and the Countess continued their co
nversation, the latter’s gaze continually drifted back to him, a curious expression on her pretty features. It was as if she were searching for something. Once the conversation turned to babies, he stood to leave and return to his office, but the Countess spoke before he could make his excuses. “Forgive me, Sir Arran, but I have the sense we have met before. Is such a thing possible?”

  “It is highly unlikely, my lady. Unless you have traveled to Dumfries in the past decade.”

  “I think it is quite safe to say I have not. Still…” She shook her head and her smile became uncertain. “You bear a striking resemblance to—” She broke off whatever she had been about to say and let out a little laugh, but it rang hollow. The strange half-sentence hung in the air between them. He took a step forward as if he could somehow pluck its meaning out of thin air. But before he could decipher the comment, Lady Blackbourne waved her hand, brushing it away. “Well, that is neither here nor there, I suppose we all look like someone else to some degree, don’t we? My reason for coming today is a simple one. I wish to personally invite you to a party.”

  Beatris sat up straighter and set her tea cup down. “A party?”

  “Yes.” Lady Blackbourne’s smile widened, the uncertainty of a moment ago gone. “The Dowager Countess’s birthday is approaching and we have decided a celebration is in order. It is in a fortnight and we do so hope you and your family can attend. I understand you are still in mourning over your brother, but—”

  “Oh no,” Beatris held out a hand. “I mean, yes. Of course, we miss Donald very much, but our brother was fond of parties and he instructed us before he passed that we were not to sit about brooding after he left. And truly,” She glanced up at Arran with a firm gaze. “I believe a party would go a long way in helping Judith move forward from her father’s death. The poor girl has not quite been herself since he fell ill.”