Page 108 of The Tempting of Thomas Carrick
They both rose. Coming back around the desk, Richard grasped the chair at the smaller table; he waved at the table’s contents as he sat. “Do you fly-fish?”
Thomas nodded. He picked up one of the intricately tied flies. “But I haven’t assembled a fly in years.”
Richard grunted. “It’s a family interest—at least among us males. You’ll have to get back into it.”
Thomas set down the fly. Richard appeared to have focused his concentration fully on the fly he’d been tying, yet Thomas sensed he hadn’t yet been dismissed.
Sure enough, an instant later, his gaze fixed on his fingertips and the feather he was binding into place, Richard said, “Before you go to seek your fortune, I feel compelled to offer you a word of advice.”
Thomas said nothing. Simply waited.
“You left.” After a moment, Richard shrugged. “I left, too. Like you, I came back.”
Thomas hadn’t known that; he listened even more intently as Richard continued, his gaze still on the fly, “I had to make amends, and you will have to do the same. But I had a fire to deal with and a life-threatening rescue to effect, which illustrated my revised direction and made further declaration unnecessary. In your case, however, given that Marcus and I are both here, you won’t have any dragons of that nature to slay to demonstrate your change of heart, so you’re going to have to find some other way.”
Thomas had already foreseen the necessity of making amends and, while learning that Richard had undergone a similar battle and, like Thomas, had surrendered, was comforting, it offered little material help. He was about to ask if Richard had any suggestions regarding “some other way” when Lucilla’s father grunted and said, “Sacrifice usually works.”
He frowned. “Sacrifice?”
Richard glanced up at him, his dark gaze faintly irritated. “What’s the one thing you have that you haven’t yet laid at her feet?”
Thomas blinked and tried to think.
Richard snorted and looked back at his work. “It’s simple, man—and if you have to, crawl.”
* * *
Leaving Richard once more immersed in his hobby—or at least pretending to be—Thomas walked back out to the foyer, hoping to find Polby and ask where Lucilla was.
Instead, he came face to face with Marcus.
Lucilla’s twin had clearly just come in from the stables; he was carrying his crop and his top boots were dusty.
Marcus’s expression was contained. He nodded to Thomas. “I saw your horse.”
Thomas met Marcus’s eyes, very similar to his father’s dark and rather impenetrable midnight blue. Somewhat curiously, Thomas could detect very little emotion emanating from Marcus—neither aggression nor sympathy, not anger or support. Carefully, he said, “I’m here to see Lucilla. Do you know where she is?”
Marcus tipped his head back along the corridor he’d stepped out of, the one that led to the side door. “She’s in the garden harvesting herbs. Beware of her shears—they’re sharp.”
Thomas blinked.
Marcus snorted. “You did notice she has red hair?”
“Ah.” So she was angry with him—angry enough to attack him?
Marcus hesitated, then said, “Just so you know, it was Mama who insisted that you would come back. Lucilla said nothing.”
Thomas considered the implication of that, especially given who it was who was telling him.
“Mama also said that you would be worth it in the end.” Marcus met Thomas’s eyes, and if it wasn’t quite a threat, at the very least it was a challenge that Thomas saw in the hard blue of Marcus’s gaze.
“If I were you,” Marcus said, “for all our sakes, I’d make sure you prove Mama correct.”
With that, Marcus turned and walked on and up the stairs.
Thomas watched him go, turning over the warnings in his mind.
Apparently, someone had faith in the outcome here, had faith in him, although whether that someone was the Lady or simply Catriona—and whether her words were merely a hope or something more certain—he had no way of knowing.
