observed the handsome rake, the cynosure of all eyes. Eyes brazenly covetous or envious or disapproving. Eyes that she realized saw nothing of the real man.
"I’m so sorry that you didn’t know a mother’s love. That’s a wound nothing can heal." She held out her hand. "Now stop looming over me and come here."
After giving her one of those sweet smiles that always threatened to break her heart, he crossed to fold himself down on the floor at her feet. "I never talk about this."
He leaned against her knee, warm and solid and somehow more real after sharing those reluctant revelations. She ran her fingers through his untidy black hair in an attempt to soothe his unhappiness. "Thank you for telling me."
"I don’t know why the hell I did. My maudlin tale hardly promotes me in your mind as your irresistible demon lover."
Keeping up the gentle stroking, she smiled. She recalled likening him to a big, predatory cat. Right now, she wanted to make him purr, although it was just as possible that he’d hiss and claw, especially if he discovered the deep well of compassion he’d opened inside her. He wouldn’t appreciate her pity. She had her own pride. She understood his.
"You can go back to being my demon lover tomorrow," she murmured and was pleased to hear him respond with a huff of grudging amusement. "So Bruard holds too many unhappy memories for you."
He sighed and rested against her a little more heavily. "Aye. Which is mad because Mamma spent as little time there as she could, until she was too ill to manage in London any longer."
When she’d crawled back to the one place that wouldn’t deny her shelter, Selina thought with a flash of spite. She assumed the late Countess of Bruard had been unhappy – that was the most sympathetic view she could take of someone who neglected her child so shamefully. Unless she’d just been cold and self-centered and careless about the damage she left behind. Whatever the reasons for her behavior, Selina couldn’t forgive the woman.
"How did your father react?"
Another grunt of amusement. Grimmer this time. "Not well, as you’d expect. But he was a bloodless, upright, self-righteous sod. If he hadn’t tried to keep my mother on such a short leash, I wonder if she’d have gone quite so far to the bad. On the other hand, she bedded any fellow who took her fancy and flaunted her infidelities in Papa’s face. No man can countenance that."
Selina’s hand stopped stroking him, as she struggled to comprehend the horrors of Brock’s childhood. "And you were caught in the middle. How horrid. I’m surprised your father didn’t do his best to turn you into a copy of himself. He must have wanted to counter your mother’s pernicious influence over you."
"Aye, he did. But I’m enough like her to rebel at the whip and the spur."
She already knew that. Brock was a man who would respond to the lure of a reward, but bullying would only drive him to greater excesses. She came to understand how the wicked Lord Bruard, who had so much good in him, had become a byword for vice.
He went on in a hard voice. "Literally the whip. When every other effort failed, he tried to beat virtue into me."
"Oh, Brock," she said, trailing her hand down and gripping his shoulder. She tried to share her strength, when it was too late by twenty years to save that confused, wretched child. "I think I hate your parents."
"I think I do, too. I certainly hated my father. My mother was wayward, but at least she was alive. Papa was nothing but a dry, preachy stick, with no trace of generosity."
"How could you help loving her? If she was as beautiful as you are, she must have seemed like someone from a fairy story. Especially to a lonely boy growing up without a morsel of kindness or understanding."
"It wasn’t all bad. The clansfolk were good to me, and I had companions on some of the surrounding estates. My cousin Fergus is the Laird of Achnasheen. Like me, he inherited young. I always enjoyed seeing him. I would have seen more of him, if my guardians hadn’t sent me south to Eton when I was eleven."
"That must be why you don’t sound very Scottish."
"Aye. And of course, once I was old enough to chase the lassies…"
She couldn’t stifle a sigh, although this part of his story wasn’t news to her. "They were good to