Page 130 of Their Master

“I think you have a better chance of doing so than I ever will.”

Her eyes teared up.

“What is it?” he asked, alarmed.

“You. It’s just—how did you get to be so good?”

“I’m not all that good, Moira. I feel pain and frustration at not being his first choice. He hesitated and said, “I was jealous of you when you came. I think I even h-hated you for a while.”

Moira’s lips parted, but she didn’t know what to say.

“But I saw—rather quickly—that you made him happy. Much happier than he ever was with Charles and much happier than he was with me.” Luke shrugged. “He cannot make himself love where he does not. Just because I am not his choice does not mean I want him to suffer. Don’t you want the people you love to be happy? Even if you are not necessarily the reason for that happiness? Isn’t that what loving somebody means?”

Moira smiled through a sheen of tears—she was so emotional of late!—and said, “I think it is supposed to be that way, but you are the first person—man or woman—I’ve ever met to truly put another’s interests before your own.”

“Well, don’t put me on a pedestal. I do it for myself as much as I do it for Smith. I could never be happy with him if I knew he loved another. And I wouldn’t do anything to keep him apart from such a person.”

She gave a watery laugh. “You won’t talk me out of believing you are one step from sainthood.”

Luke snorted, his eyes flickering over her scantily clad body. “Trust me, the thoughts in my head right now are the farthest thing from saintly.” He removed his hands from hers with obvious reluctance.

“But you won’t act on it?” she said, warming at his words and hot look but just as quickly cooling at the determination on his face.

“No matter how much I might want you, I owe him my loyalty. And so do you.”

Moira’s face heated with mortification, not just because she’d tried to tempt a good man, but because she’d also tried to betray Smith. Again.

Luke didn’t appear to notice her flushed face. “Besides,” he said. “I doubt that sort of, er, behavior would be good for the baby.” He stood and went to fetch her dressing gown.

Moira felt a slight smile tug at her lips. As far as a declaration of interest went, it wasn’t much.

But it was better than nothing.

Chapter 30

Smith squinted, as if that would help him with defective hearing. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Doctor Felson swallowed. Again. “Er, Miss Dunsmuir wished to know if er, intercourse would damage the fetus.”

Smith frowned; Felson knew he didn’t care for that word. It was too… clinical. He didn’t like it.

Felson cleared his throat under Smith’s glare. “I mean the baby.”

“Why?”

Felson blinked. “Because you don’t care for the other word.”

Smith struggled for patience. “I meant why did she want to know that?”

Felson’s eyes went wide. “I don’t know, sir. She simply asked me—she didn’t say why or who—not that there is a who, of course.”

As amusing as it was to watch the other man squirm, he decided to have mercy on him. “So, would it?”

“Would it?” Felson repeated.

“Would fucking her damage the baby?”.

Felson flinched at the crude question. “Oh. Er, no. That is, not in my experience.” An expression of horror seized his bland features. “I don’t mean inmyexperience with Miss Dunsmuir. I meant—”

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