Page 36 of Return of the Scot
“Why would I do that?” Lorne had the audacity to sound exasperated.
“It is your child. Most men would take responsibility for their offspring.”
Lorne laughed and swiftly came forward until he was mere inches from her. She stared up into his eyes, feeling heat fill her body. She should back away. Leave this room immediately, but her feet remained rooted in place as she met his gaze and gave him as good as he got.
“I will tell ye this once, Jaime, and I hope ye listen well.” His voice was low, holding authority and warning. But it didn’t scare her. For some maddening reason, she felt…excited. “That child is no’ mine. I never touched your sister. Never even kissed her.” As he said the words, his gaze drifted over Jaime’s mouth.
Suddenly, Jaime felt even more light-headed than she had upon entering this room that was so filled with Lorne. She licked her lips, attempting to breathe, but he was crowding the space around her. The scent of him enveloped her—spicy, woodsy…intoxicating.
“But…” She tried to make her throat and tongue work to form words. “How is that possible?”
Lorne raised a brow, a tiny quirk of his lips showing her he found her question amusing. “Did no one tell ye how bairns are made?”
Oh… Flames shot to her face once more. And the image he put into her mind of Lorne…naked. Corded muscles, long legs, tight chest, strong arms ready to—
Jaime shook her head in frustration, needing to clear the visualization.
“I do no’ feel it is my place to explain such things, wee Jaime.”
The way he said “wee Jaime” as if trying to make her feel infantile. “I know how bairns are made, thank ye verra much.”
Lorne grinned, his gaze back on her lips, and dear heavens, he roved lower to her décolletage. Jaime whipped her hands up, covering her bosom, now quite certain Madame Yolande had cut the bodice lower than she’d agreed to. Air washed over her skin, causing gooseflesh to rise on her arms, and she realized it wasn’t just air but his breath as he watched her.
“If ye know so much, lass”—his voice had taken on a softer tone, low and gravelly—"then I tell ye, if it was no’ me who planted a bairn in your sister, then who did?”
“No one,” Jaime said in a rush, still fighting all the sensations coursing through her. Coming here was a mistake. She should have written him a letter instead. Paper never elicited this kind of a reaction from her, not even her gothic romance novels.
“She is no’ the Virgin Mary.” Lorne huffed in exasperation. “I had no’ planned to tell ye this, Jaime, but I am beyond frustrated with this situation, and I’ve grown weary of your accusations. Shanna had a lover. I caught the two of them together at our engagement ball. Because I’m a gentleman, I took the fall for her. And now ye know the truth.”
Jaime gasped. “What? A lover? Who?”
She searched his face, looking for signs of deceit, but found his gaze steady, his face all too serious. Lorne was telling the truth.
“I do no’ know.” With that admission, he backed away a step, taking with him his alluring scent and the warm rush of headiness his closeness had brought.
She was both relieved for the space put between them and disgruntled by it. Ridiculous. The strange and foreign feelings he’d spawned in her tonight were forbidden. Everything about Lorne was hazardous, and there was a great risk being here with him in the dark.
Jaime forced her hand away from her breasts, back down to her sides, and stood tall once more. She couldn’t let him see how much he affected her. “But ye said ye caught the two of them together.”
“He jumped out the window before I could see who it was.”
“Out the window?” She laughed. “Ye’re lying.”
“Why would I lie? ’Twas a ground floor window; he’d only a couple of feet to drop and then he ran off into the night. I’m a lot of things, Jaime, but I’m no’ a liar.”
If she took her sister’s situation out of the equation, she could believe him. Lorne had only ever been honorable. But the fact of the matter was, her sister’s situation was a major part of both their lives and couldn’t be negated. “Because ye do no’ want to claim the child, or responsibility for the woman ye ruined.”
Lorne let out a bitter, laugh. “Let me ask ye this, Jaime—why would I no’ take responsibility for my wife and child? Why would I throw a woman I’d pledged to marry out if she were carrying my heir? My whole existence, the legacy of my line, is based on the act of reproduction. I would never take advantage of a woman, and I’d never leave my child behind. That makes absolutely no sense.”
Jaime shook her head because everything he said seemed sensible. Even his voice was filled with reason. And now she was remembering small things that she didn’t want to. Seeing Shanna writing a letter and then slipping it in her sleeve when no one was looking. Shanna, staring wistfully off in the distance and ignoring the duke. Shanna, forgetting again that the duke disliked cucumbers or that he’d arranged to take her for a ride in the park, and she’d gone out instead with a friend. All of these things, Jaime had taken as her sister being in love and distracted by Lorne—for who wouldn’t be. Perhaps it had been that Shanna was thinking of another that entire time.
“Oh, no.” Jaime fanned her face and took another step backward. How perspectives changed when looked at from different angles.
Now that Lorne had planted the idea of Shanna’s lover in Jaime’s mind, she could see that it wasn’t the duke her sister dreamed about but someone else entirely. It had been Jaime back then who had kept encouraging her sister to do the things a bride-to-be would do. Inviting Lorne for tea, attending balls and picking out perfect dresses. Telling her sister the things that she’d noticed Lorne liked or disliked. Because Jaime had so badly wanted her sister to be happy, to be a duchess. Jaime’s admiration for Lorne had so blinded her that she’d failed to see her sister didn’t want him at all.
The question was, who had Shanna desired?
That was a question Lorne couldn’t answer, and suddenly Jaime felt so overwhelmed because it wasn’t just the truth of what happened between Lorne and Shanna that crashed into her like North Sea waves in a storm, but the other truth she’d denied for nearly a decade—Jaime had wanted Lorne.
