Page 48 of Lady Guinevere & the Rogue with a Brogue
Guinevere could not suppress the bitter laugh that escaped her. “The man’s love for competition is what got the two of us in this horrid mess in the first place!”
“Pishposh,” Frederica said. “Where is our thanks for penning a note to Kilgore? Whatever the reason you are to wed Carrington, it will do him immense good to think Kilgore is offering, as well.”
“My,” Kilgore said, surprising admiration in his tone, “aren’t you two the scheming pair? Or rather SLAR? What is SLAR, if I may be so bold to ask?”
“You may not,” Vivian snapped.
She wanted to be angry with Vivian, Frederica, and Lilias, but she knew they were only trying to help her. “Kilgore, I’m so sorry,” Guinevere said. “I hope you did not have plans for this evening that have now been ruined.”
“Actually, they quite saved me,” he replied.
Before Guinevere could question his statement, movement in the window to her father’s study caught her eye. She turned her head ever so slightly as her skin prickled to awareness. She knew it was Asher before she saw him.
She tried to repress the dizzying current that raced through her body just knowing he was there, but she failed miserably. She would not, however, race inside to him. His words from the woods, and the words he’d written to her father, echoed in her head, making her heart constrict.
Kilgore will never come to heel for ye. He wants to use ye, not wed ye.
Did Asher think she could not make a man fall in love with her? Of course he did! She was anunfortunate circumstanceto him!
She glanced up at Kilgore, surprised to find him studying her, and all her hurt rose up to overcome her. She blurted, “He said what occurred with me was an unfortunate circumstance!”
“Well then,” Kilgore growled, his voice soft but dangerous, “let us show him not everyone holds that opinion.”
And before she knew what Kilgore was about, he kissed her.
Chapter Thirteen
Asher was well past the proper calling hour when he knocked on the door to Guinevere’s home, but he had sent a message to Guinevere’s father this morning inquiring if the man would be here this evening, and Asher had received confirmation that he would be. But the odd look the footman gave him, and then the even stranger one the butler tried and failed to cover, seemed to indicate that Lord Fairfax had not passed the news on to his staff.
Once Asher explained who he was and that he was there to see Lord Fairfax and Lady Guinevere, the butler’s jaw actually dropped. Suspicion rose in Asher, and when the butler requested he wait in the entrance hall while he announced him, Asher declined. The butler merely pressed his lips together and turned on his heel.
As Asher walked through the corridors of the home where Guinevere had grown up, her words from the woods replayed in his head again.
You think because I am a game to you, that no one can want me! I suppose only you think I’m not desirable enough to offer for.
Confusion flared as before. And suspicion. And hope. Hope that was dangerous. Clearly bywantshe meant something more than desire, something like wanting her as a wife. He wanted to rub at the annoying ache in his chest, but he didn’t. Of course, he did not think that! The notion that no one would want to have her as a wife, to protect her, to cherish her, to possess her, was preposterous.
His mind kept circling back to her words. If she believed he’d only been toying with her—truly believed it—maybe even been led to believe it by Kilgore, Asher could see how she would have been hurt. How she would have wanted to strike back at him with, say, a grand performance in a skit she knew he would see.
He should have considered it yesterday during the skit, but again, he did not react reasonably when it came to Guinevere. The desire to protect himself was at war with the need to hang on to the hope, especially now that they were irrevocably bound for life. The kiss had ensured that, or rather, being discovered in the woods had.
His blood pumped hard through his veins. This night would set the course of their life together. Would it be a marriage of hope or distrust? He felt like a bumbling lad of ten summers rather than a grown man.
“Your Grace,” the butler said, waving a hand at the closed parlor door, “Lady Guinevere is just in here with—” the man paled considerably “—the others.”
Asher frowned at the man’s increasingly strange behavior but said, “Excellent. Then should ye not announce me?”
The butler looked distinctly uncomfortable but inclined his head in agreement. He knocked on the door, and when a call to enter was given, the man opened the door and announced Asher.
He hadn’t expected a warm greeting, given the circumstances he and Guinevere had been discovered in, but nor had he expected the words Guinevere’s mother bellowed.
“Oh, good heavens! Not now! Not with Kilgore still here, possibly offering for her!”
Asher’s entire body tensed, and hope slipped, but he tapped the butler’s shoulder, who turned to face him, mouth agape. Asher motioned for the man to step aside and moved into the room, sweeping his gaze over Guinevere’s father first, who arched his eyebrows before narrowing his eyes at Asher, and then Guinevere’s mother, who at least had the good sense to look appalled.
“Oh my. Oh, Your Grace,” she rushed out, but instead of moving toward him to curtsy, she almost tripped over a rug in her haste to move in front of the window. She was too late, though. Asher’s blood went cold at the sight of Kilgore kissing Guinevere.
Damn Kilgore. Damn Guinevere. And damn himself for being such a fool for her again and sodding again.
