Page 26 of The Scot is Hers
“She’s his wife?” Lorne didn’t bother to hide his look of horror. “Last I heard, he’d proposed yet Lady Giselle was trying to get out of it. I never thought it would happen.”
Alec bristled at the thought of Keith being able to marry anyone decent, let alone a woman like Lady Giselle. “No’ yet. But a wedding was imminent.”
Lorne raised a brow. “Was?”
“She escaped.”
“Escaped? As in ran away from her wedding?”
“No’ quite—she ran away from the castle. That’s when I found her.”
Lorne blew out a long breath, and offered a glass of whisky to Alec. “What are ye going to do with her?”
“I do no’ know.” Alec took a long sip of whisky, then said, “I need a refill and so do ye.”
“Ye’re changing the subject.”
“Aye.”
Lorne chuckled. “Ye remember when I came into the club looking as if I’d come back from the dead, the suggestion ye made me?”
Alec frowned. He knew exactly what suggestion he’d made, and it wouldn’t work in this situation. “I’m no’ going to seduce her into wedding me. I do no’ want or need a wife. Nor did she swipe my property out from under me.”
Lorne chuckled and then glanced around the room. “I suppose ye could say ye do no’ want a wife, although another two decades of this type of gathering and ye might wish ye had no’ thought that way.”
Alec grimaced as he walked. He uncorked the decanter of whisky and poured himself another round and one for Lorne.
Their two friends, Euan Irvine and Malcolm Gordon, took that moment to enter the parlor, laughing at some unheard joke. Malcolm was Lorne’s cousin. They headed right for the sideboard. Sweat beaded their skin.
“Ye were in my gymnasium,” Alec accused. “Bastards. I wanted to challenge ye myself.”
They chuckled and clapped him on the back. “Almost as good as Lorne’s.”
“Is it true?” Euan asked, changing the subject and pinning Alec with a hard stare.
Alec feigned ignorance. “Is what true?”
Malcolm took Alec’s cup of whisky and drank heartily. “That ye dragged a fairy from the sea and brought her home with ye to irritate the countess?”
“What in blazes are ye going on about?” Alec asked. If that was the rumor that was going about, his mother was sure to box his ears later.
But just then, his words caught in his throat as the doors to the drawing room opened, and his butler said in a loud and clear voice, “Lady Giselle.” As instructed, he left off her surname.
However, the woman revealed standing just inside the doorway was not the same lady he’d rescued from a mudslide near the cliffs. Her golden hair was swept into a neat knot, with tendrils of curls framing her face—and all the while, he’d thought it brown. Her locks shone in the light from the lamps and looked softer than silk. Her cheeks were flushed, likely from all eyes that had turned on her. The lavender day gown she wore fit her like a glove but was perhaps a little tighter than should be at the chest, drawing his attention to her décolletage. Alec quickly averted his gaze when he felt his groin tighten at the beautiful picture she made.
Giselle’s gaze swept the room, her thick lashes coyly fluttering until she caught him staring, and then a slow, taunting grin formed on her lush pink mouth, nearly undoing him.
Bloody hell, he thought, at the same time Malcolm said, “Good God, she’s gorgeous.”
Knowing his friend appreciated the vision before them made Alec want to slug him. To demand that he did not look at her. She was beautiful. The most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. And she knew it—must have from the way she teased the crowd with her blushing and fluttery lashes.
The echoing silence ended in a whoosh of whispers.
He wondered if beneath her gown, they’d see she balanced on one leg, for how otherwise could she be standing there. Was her ankle healed miraculously? A moment later, his question was partially answered when footmen settled on either side of her, their arms about her waist as they lifted her and carried her forward. She looked to be floating, the tips of her lavender slippers peeking from beneath the skirt.
The footmen settled her on a settee that Jaime pointed to. Her foot ought to be propped on a pillow, but that would likely send every female in the room into a fit of the vapors, and the men who were already panting might start salivating over her.
The room erupted into murmurs, and several ladies moved toward the new guest.Hisnew guest. Alec wanted to rush in and rescue her from the crowd, but to do so would also put himself in the crowd, and he wanted to be far,faraway from those high-pitched females cooing over Giselle at that very moment. Also, he didn’t want to act on the possessive impulses raging within himself. Aye, he found her attractive, intriguing even. But he was steadfast in his ideal to not marry, no matter what Lorne said.
