“I’ve ruined it.”
“Lady Brynne–”
“I’ve ruined everything.”
“If I may–”
“Now our marriage is over, and it’s all my fault.”
Mr. Jacobson cleared his throat.
Loudly.
“I am terribly sorry,” she sniffled, dashing at her cheeks. “I never cry, or lose my composure in such an embarrassing manner. It’s just that I’ve handled this all wrong from the very beginning, and I hoped that if I could halt the separation then I might begin to make amends. But I’m too late.”
“Yes,” the solicitor said gravely. “You are. When I appealed to the courts to begin this filing, I was given a strict deadline of noon today. Lord Campbell met that deadline. You, Lady Brynne, did not.”
She gazed at Mr. Jacobson in bewilderment. “I…I don’t understand.”
“I sent a letter informing you of the impending due date to Hawkridge Manor, but you and it must have crossed on your way here to London. Simply put, Lady Brynne, your husband submitted the necessary paperwork to file for your judicial separation. But you did not.”
“I didn’t?”
“No.”
“But that’s…that’s wonderful news!” she cried as she sprang from her chair. “Mr. Jacobson, I could kiss you.”
His moustache quivered. “I don’t believe I have ever been the recipient of such joy for not completing the task assigned to me, Lady Brynne. Can I assume that you do not wish to pursue extending a filing for a deadline extension with the court?”
Brynne swung her head adamantly from side to side. “Please do not take this the wrong way, Mr. Jacobson, but I hope to never see you again.”
“In that case, my lady, I bid you farewell…and good luck.”
“Thank you,” she said with feeling. “I am going to need it.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Every Season, the Viscount and Viscountess of Denbigh held a dinner party on the third day of the third week. The tradition had begun when they found themselves in need of husbands for their three daughters. The first party had been so successful–with the girls snatching up a marquess, an earl, and a baron, respectively–that like-minded parents with daughters of their own to marry off had begged Lord and Lady Denbigh to host another dinner party, and another after that, and another after that, until it became a staple of the London Season.
Brynne had never put much stock in the claim that a young woman wanting a husband need only attend the Marriage Miracle Dinner (as it was now called) and they’d magically become engaged before the month was out.
But tonight, she was hoping for some of that magic for herself.
The last time she and Lachlan had been together, he’d told her that he loved her. Then the next day, he’d signed papers to complete their separation. That juxtaposition had her sitting on pins and needles all through the five-course dinner and into dessert, a sponge cake topped with powdered sugar and strawberries with a thick middle layer of cream.
Evie and Joanna ate their pieces in a matter of seconds, but Brynne only poked at hers with the silver tines of her fork, her attention focused on the glass French doors at the end of the dining room.
She knew Lachlan had been invited because she’d implored Lady Denbigh to invite him. And while the viscountess had been visibly confused by such a request, she had honored it without question, proving that sometimes it did pay to be the granddaughter of a duke.
But Lachlan wasn’t here.
At least, he wasn’t here yet.
Which was fine, she told herself. After the sponge cake was cleared, the party didn’t end, but rather spread out to include the parlor, the drawing room, and the rear gardens. As long as her husband arrived within the next two hours, she’d have the opportunity to pull him aside and have a much-needed private discussion, something which she had attempted to do numerous times over the past few days…except she hadn’t been able to find him.
He was not, as she’d naturally assumed, renting the same townhouse as he had every other visit to London. Nor was he staying with his brother, Robert, who had been very surprised–and intrigued–to discover a distraught blonde on his doorstep at half-past seven in the morning.
It was, once more, the very height of irony.
Ten days ago, she’d never wanted to see Lachlan again.
And now, she was terrified that she never would.
Her biggest fear was no longer failure, or being ostracized by High Society, or disappointing her family. It was that she’d done enough damage to her relationship with Lachlan to chase him away indefinitely. And while she sat in her seat shredding apart her sponge cake, he was on a train bound for Scotland.
“Are you going to eat that?” Joanna asked. “Or murder it?”
“You can have it if you’d like,” she muttered distractedly, sliding her plate towards her half-sister who happily scooped up a large plop of cream.
Evie followed Brynne’s gaze to the door. “You’re waiting for him, aren’t you?”
“Shwoo?” Joanna asked, her mouth full of cake.
“My husband,” Brynne sighed.
“YOU HAVE A–”
“Shhh.” Evie elbowed Joanna in the ribs as she gave a pointed glance across the wide table to where their husbands (or almost husband, in her case) sat side by side, conversing about some manly thing or another. “It’s a secret.”
“You have a secret husband?” Joanna hissed. “I am going to need more cake for this.”
In hushed tones, Brynne delivered an abridged version of the events that she’d told Evie at great length. All three women then departed the table for the parlor where Joanna poured them champagne from a bottle set in a bucket of ice.
“What are we celebrating?” Brynne asked bleakly as they clinked their crystal flutes together.
“To finding our husbands,” said Evie.
“To finding ourselves,” Joanna added. “No matter what path it took us to get here.” Then she paused, and something flickered in her eyes. “Brynne, I don’t mean to presume, but there is an exceedingly large red-haired man who just entered the parlor and is looking at you as if you were the last piece of strawberry sponge cake. Is that your husband, per chance?”
Fingers reflexively tightening around the slender stem of her champagne glass, Brynne turned around as if in slow motion. When she saw Lachlan standing in the doorway, her breath expelled on a whoosh of air and her heart slammed into the wall of her chest.
“Yes, that’s him.”
“Off with you then,” Evie said, giving her a push.
Joanna grinned. “Don’t let us keep you.”
But Brynne resisted.
“I–I don’t know if I can,” she said as the dreaded sensation of suffocating in a room filled with air came creeping in. “I want to. But what if I don’t fly? What if…what if I fall?”
“Then we’ll catch you,” said Evie.
This time, she and Joanna pushed her together.
“Go,” they said in unison.
And so she did.
One look at Brynne’s pale countenance, and Lachlan took her by the arm and steered her out of the parlor and through the hall to the library where they could be alone. He closed the door and then leaned against it, hands draped loosely on his narrow hips as he studied his wife in the muted glow of candlelight and a crackling fire.
She looked…different.
Nervous, he decided.
She looked nervous.
An emotion his wife rarely displayed.
Which, in turn, made him nervous, given that he’d left the Duke of Oxford’s gallery with the impression that they’d taken a stride in the right direction. Since then–although it had pained him to no end–he’d kept his distance, not wanting to crowd her or give her an excuse to bolt again.
It wasn’t until Robert revealed that she’d come looking for him that he had accepted the invitation to tonight’s dinner. An invitation he hadn’t been expecting, given he’
d never received one from Lord and Lady Denbigh before. Hadn’t even known they were aware of his existence, if he were being honest, given that they’d never been officially introduced.
When the envelope arrived, a little bell in his ear had rung, and he’d thought–he’d hoped–that Brynne had something to do with his name being placed on the guest list. But if her white face and shaking hands were any indication, she’d had no idea he was coming.
“Ye should sit down,” he said gruffly, pulling out a chair.
But she remained standing. “You signed the papers.”
At first, he didn’t know what the devil she was talking about. Then his shoulders stiffened. “Aye,” he said. “Yer solicitor was very prompt.”
When the skinny bloke with the pointed moustache had popped up in Sterling’s foyer like a bloody jester-in-a-box, Lachlan’s first instinct was to take the official stack of legal jargon he’d been presented with and tear all the papers in half. To hell with a judicial separation. Then he had reconsidered. If this was what Brynne wanted, then he’d give it to her. Wasn’t that what courting entailed? He’d have preferred a bouquet of tulips but, this time, he was trying something different: actually listening to his wife instead of assuming he knew what she needed.
“You signed the papers,” she repeated.
“Wasna that what I was supposed tae do?”
When her eyes filled with tears, he cursed and crossed the distance between them to gather her in his arms. She was slender as a willow, bright as a star, delicate as a rose. And he loved every inch of her. Inside and out. He always would, separation or no separation. Brynne was his and he was hers, their souls twined together in such a way that even if they were to part and never see each other again, a piece of her would exist in him for all of eternity.
“I’m sorry,” she said, lifting her damp countenance from his chest to gaze at him with wide, haunted eyes brimming with regret. “I’m sorry, Lachlan. I…I have made a mess of everything. Of us. Of our marriage. I ruined–”
“Aye and it’s me duty as yer husband tae stop ye there,” he said, tracing his knuckle across her cheek to catch a tear before it could fall. “Ye didna ruin anything, Bry. Or if ye did, then so did I. There’s blame tae be handed out in parcels, and we each have our fair share of it, but then that’s life. That’s learning. That’s moving forward even when things get rough. Because seedlings canna grow in fallow soil, and love canna bloom when ye allow yerself tae be trapped in the blame, and the hurt, and the mistakes.”
“I made so many mistakes. Too many. I–I can’t breathe,” she gasped, and Lachlan’s arms tightened around her in alarm when she began to slip through them.
“What’s wrong?” he demanded as fear coursed through his veins. “Bry? Bry! Can ye hear me?”
Her eyes were closed. Her face waxen. Her breaths quick and shallow. She made no sign that she heard him. No sign that she was even cognizant of him holding her.
Frantic, he ripped at the buttons running the length of her gown. Found the metal teeth securing her corset and tore those apart, too.
He was about to shout for help when her lashes trembled, and her eyes slowly opened.
“Lachlan,” she said weakly.
“Aye, I’m here. I’ve got ye.” And I’m never letting ye go again, he thought grimly as he carried her to a chaise lounge and gently laid her down, then sat beside her and took her hand, her fingers ice cold in his. “Do ye need water?” he asked. “Or a doctor?”
“You.” She struggled to sit up, then sagged against him, her head resting in the crook of space beneath his chin. “I need you.”
“Ye have me, little bird.” He pressed his lips to the top of her head. “Forever.”
“That doesn’t seem nearly long enough.”
He wanted to ask her what had happened. The old Lachlan would have. Would have pushed, and prodded, and demanded until she gave him answers whether she wanted to or not. But the new Lachlan–at least, the new parts of him that he was trying on, rather like a coat at the tailors–reminded him to be patient. To wait. To let Brynne choose when she was ready. In the meantime, he’d enjoy the simplicity of just holding her. Stroking her back. Listening to her heartbeat as its erratic rhythm gradually slowed and evened out.
“The doctor called them anxious mannerisms,” she said finally. “I had my first when Weston left for school. The doctor said they were very rare, and I was only the second case he’d ever seen. He was going to write a paper. I don’t know if he ever did.”
Lachlan’s hand continued to follow the line of her spine. Up and down. Up and down. “What does it feel like?” he asked. “When it happens.”
“A shortness of breath, as if all the oxygen has been sucked out of the room but I’m the only one who seems to have noticed. Sometimes my head swims, as if I was underwater, and dots dance in front of my eyes. I call them Episodes. I had them frequently as a child…and several since you came back to Hawkridge Manor.”
He recalled the gazebo where she’d gone as pale as a ghost and he’d assumed she was with child. “Is there any treatment? Or medicine tae take?”
“No, not that I’ve found. The doctor suggested I merely tell myself not to have them.”
Aye, Lachlan thought sourly, and why didn’t this doctor ask a patient with a broken leg to will themselves better? Admittedly, his knowledge of the medical field was sorely lacking. But even he recognized that an illness brought on by someone’s own mind was no less severe than an injury or disease of the body.
“The doctor sounds like a bluidy useless prat.”
“I never saw him again. Mrs. Grimsby, the housekeeper, who was only a maid then, helped me learn how to breathe through them when they happened. I came to realize they were tied to my emotions. If I was upset, they occurred with more frequency.”
Which meant he was to blame for the Episodes she’d had recently, and wasn’t he a bastard for causing her such suffering?
“Bry,” he said hoarsely, “I never meant–”
“It’s not your fault.” Here, she raised her head to stare him in the eyes. Her own were dry and remarkably clear. “It’s not mine, either. It took a long while to understand that. To accept it. To love myself for who I am, and not what others expect me to be. I never should have agreed to your proposal, Lachlan.”
A knife twisted in his gut. “If that’s how ye feel–”
“I never should have agreed to it,” she said steadily, “because I wasn’t ready. I didn’t know who I was yet, let alone who I was supposed to be as a wife. But your coming here has forced me to reflect on some difficult choices. And I’ve had to ask myself some difficult questions. About who I am, where I want to go, and what I deserve.”
He angled his body so that they were facing each other and bent his head to hers, their foreheads lightly touching as their hands linked together. “What answers did ye find?”
“That I love you, Lachlan Campbell. That I’ve always loved you. You’re the boy who showed me the stars. The man who gave me my first kiss. The husband who broke my heart…and mended it back together again, stronger than it ever was before. I am yours, and you are mine.” She hesitated, and her gaze lowered. “If you’ll have me, that is.”
For a second, he could only stare and wonder if this was a dream. If it was, he never wanted to wake up. But it wasn’t a dream. It was life. Hard, and messy, and imperfect. With swells and rough water aplenty. But through each storm, he and Brynne had managed to find their way back to each other. And while the only thing certain about the future was that it wouldn’t be easy, there was no one he’d rather navigate those rough seas with than the woman sitting in front of him.
“If I’ll have ye?” he said, near bursting with love as he cupped her face between his hands and gently coaxed her to look into his eyes. “Bry, I never let ye go.” Then he frowned as a cloud slipped across their bright, beaming sun. “But the judicial separation–”
“I never signed them,” she said on a breathless l
augh. “My papers. I never signed them.”
Four of the most beautiful words he’d ever heard.
But not as beautiful as these.
“Kiss me, little bird.”
And so she did.
Brynne didn’t know for how long she and Lachlan lost themselves in each other. In soft caresses. Slow, lingering kisses. Whispered words of love and devotion and just a little wickedness.
Long enough for her dress to find its way onto the floor, leaving her clad only in her chemise and drawers and partially unbuttoned corset.
Long enough for the stars to light up the night sky.
And long enough for Weston to come searching for her.
A loud knock on the door, and then it opened as she and Lachlan broke apart and she frantically reached for her dress to cover herself.
“Brynne, are you in here? I…” Weston froze in the doorway. Surprise was the first emotion to register, followed by a wave of rage so strong that it knocked Brynne back a step even before he stormed across the library and grabbed hold of Lachlan by the lapels of his jacket.
“You son of a bitch,” he snarled, his countenance taut with fury. “How dare you lay a single bloody finger on my sister!”
“Wait, you don’t understand,” Brynne said desperately. But when she tried to tug on her brother’s arm, he didn’t spare her so much as a glance, such was his focus on Lachlan.
Who, devil take him, wasn’t exactly helping matters.
“I’ve laid a lot more on her than that,” he smirked, seemingly unperturbed by the fact that Weston’s hands were literally at his throat. “Isna that right, Bry?”
“Lachlan,” she groaned. “What are you doing?”
“Having a bit of a laugh.”
Weston’s face reddened. “You won’t be laughing when you’re dead on the floor.”
“You can’t kill him!” she exclaimed.
“Why the hell not?” her twin demanded.
“Because–because he’s my husband.”
Triumph gleamed in Lachlan’s eyes.
Confusion glimmered in Weston’s. “You…and Campbell…are…?”
Seduced by the Scot Page 25
