Page 26 of What a Scot Wants
Thatwas her father’s excuse for the man’s uncivilized, vulgar behavior? She bit her lip hard. Her so-called charades were tame by comparison. She’d opened her mouth and shut it at the dour look on Lord Kincaid’s face.
“Not another word, Imogen. We will go to London, and you will see that this is the best course of action. You need someone to keep you in line, my girl.”
Her stomach had lurched, threatening to unseat the kippers she’d eaten. “Is that what you do with mother? Keep her in line?”
Lady Kincaid had burst into laughter. “Only when I’m utterly unruly.”
“Which is all the time,” he’d added with an arch glance her way.
Imogen had wanted to scream bloody murder, cast up her accounts, and roll her eyes all at once. Blast their love match! She didn’t mean it, of course. She’d dreamed of a love match herself, once upon a time. But that had been long ago. That dream had withered and was now buried, impossible to exhume.
She was unable to love completely, wholly, without doubt. It simply wasn’t possible. Because she herself wasn’t whole and complete and never would be. Not after what had happened to her dear Belinda. What had happened toher.
And the monster she’d given her heart to.
There were pieces of her missing, stolen away by a man she’d once trusted completely… No man deserved the rest of those pieces, ruined the way they were. Not even a rotted, overbearing Highlander who she’d like to throttle in his sleep—or kiss.
The tormenting thing was, she couldn’t make up her mind as to which one she wanted more.
“I think I should take some air,” she said to Sorcha and Aisla, apologizing with a glance toward them and her mother.
The weather was warm enough to go about without a cloak, and so she ambled along one of the garden paths until she came to a sundial. The light was weak, hidden behind banks of clouds, and no shadow was cast on the dial to mark the hour. If only time was as simple to pause.
“If you’re thinking to catch a cold and stay behind instead of going to London, I should warn you I’m rather good with healing tonics and rubs and the like.”
Aisla had followed her. Sorcha, too.
Imogen wasn’t annoyed, however. She liked the pair of them immensely. Too much, perhaps.
“I’m sure the duke would insist upon my presence even if I had dysentery,” Imogen muttered.
She had already considered and dismissed a number of excuses, from a curious case of amnesia all the way to a broken leg. But from his previous conduct, Imogen suspected Ronan would toss the crutches aside and haul her right over his shoulder, giving her bottom a smack for good measure. The ripple of thrill the thought sent through her was enough to make her feel truly nauseated.
“He can be a devil,” Aisla said, coming toward the sundial. She held little Maxwell, the babe now squirming against her shoulder. “When Niall and I were sixteen, we eloped. Ronan was furious, and good Lord, when that man is angry he can be intimidating. But then, when the marriage didn’t work out and I went to Paris, Ronan would check in on my welfare. I had no idea at the time. Niall told me later, after we fell back in love.” Aisla smiled as she spoke, looking a bit wistful as she swayed her baby back to sleep. “I was still a Maclaren, and he felt he had a duty to care for me, even when he’d rather have taken me by the ear and dragged me back to his brother.”
“I know I sang his praises earlier,” Sorcha said before Imogen could speak. “What we’re trying to say is…well, perhaps you’ve only seen one side of Ronan these last weeks. The angry, dispassionate one. The one who feels as if he’s been forced into a corner.”
“Much like you have been,” Aisla added.
Imogen took a seat on a bench, suddenly ashamed to have been in such a belligerent mood before. Sorcha and Aisla were only trying to help what they knew was a difficult situation for their brother—and for her as well.
“So you’re saying there is another Ronan I’ve not yet met,” she said. If he was so perfect, how had he arrived at the age of seven and thirty without a wife? “Is there some great mystery surrounding him? Some ghastly thing he’s done in the past that makes all the women in the Highlands terrified to accept his hand? Goodness, did he accidentally kill a lady and bury the body in the yard?”
Too far.She saw it in the speaking look Aisla sent toward Sorcha.
“I’m sorry,” Imogen quickly said. “That was appalling.”
Sorcha shook her head and, astonishingly, smiled. “I think it better you know the real story than the ones your alarming mind is churning away.”
Aisla continued walking Maxwell around the sundial as Sorcha sat beside Imogen.
“He had just turned eighteen when he fell madly in love with a lass from a neighboring clan. Grace Donaldson was her name. But the pair of them were far too young to wed, according to her fatherandours.”
A dull pain slashed into Imogen’s stomach, and she frowned. Jealousy? Over some girl he’d fawned over twenty years before? Absurd. She shoved it away.
“Ronan was devoted, so certain that in a few years’ time they would marry and finally be together. Grace, however, didn’t see things the same way—not that she ever bothered to tell him. She became enamored with an English viscount. He and Grace eloped, and off they went to America. She never even bothered to give Ronan so much as a goodbye.”
Imogen winced as she pictured a younger Ronan, swallowing such a betrayal, trying desperately to mask his pain.
