To Kiss a Highland Rose (Kiss the Wallflower #6) - Tamara Gill Page 0,41

fault. He was the bastard who had set out with this plan. She had been merely the innocent party in the affair.

"Lord Hastings did what?" Julia's teacup rattled on its plate, and she set it down with a clank. "He told ye this?"

Elizabeth nodded. "He did, yes. When we traveled to Moy, my brother made the connection and saw through his marriage to me. Sebastian could not deny it, tried to make me see the reasoning as to why he did what he did. I still cannot believe it myself." Elizabeth stood, walking over to the window and looking out over the estate. The grounds that Sebastian thought more of than she did. "He grew up here with his mother, who was Scottish. A lot of happy memories, so it would seem. An ancestral home he was loath to lose and therefore thought to trick me into marriage as an easier way in which to get it back."

"But surely," Julia said beseechingly. "He loves ye. I'm certain of it. Is there a chance that he fell in love with ye during his courting of ye as well? And so, his fixation on the estate shifted to ye, and the home became secondary. I simply cannot believe any man could treat a woman with so little respect. I cannot believe it of him. It is too awful."

Elizabeth shrugged, unable to turn and face her friend. "That is what he says. He says that he fell in love with me while working toward his original plan, but I cannot suppose that." Or perhaps she did, but she could not forgive him for his treachery. That all those sweet words, the long considerations across a ballroom floor, the waltzes they had shared had all been a ploy, a game for him to see how hard it would be for her to fall at his feet.

Heat rushed her cheeks. She had been uncommonly easy to form an attachment, had barely given anyone else a chance after Lord Hastings had started to follow her skirts about town. What a mindless fool she had been. What a cad he had been in turn.

"He looked wretched when he came to see us, Elizabeth, as if he had hardly slept."

"Good," she spat, harsher than she ought. Julia did not deserve her wrath, her disappointment in Sebastian. "I'm sorry. Please know I'm not angry at ye."

Julia came and joined her at the window. "Know that I'm on your side, and I shall defend and support ye to the bitter end if that is what you wish of me, but before you make any hasty decisions, ye must think on this. There is the possibility that Lord Hastings may have started out with underhanded intentions, but that they were soon scuttled when yer charm and warmth, and it caught him unawares. He loves ye, does he not?" Julia asked.

Elizabeth nodded once. "So he declares."

Julia clasped her hands, shaking them a little to gain her attention. "Ye are loveable, Elizabeth. No matter what nickname London termed you. Lord Hastings ignored all that, he came to know ye, the real ye, and he fell in love with that woman. If he did not care, he would not have come back to Edinburgh to your friends and beg them to go to Moy. He would have turned about, traveled to London, and set his lawyers for Scotland to gain back this estate."

"There is still time. He may have already done such a thing for all that I know."

"He was still in Edinburgh when I left."

Elizabeth did not know what to think. Over the past days, her emotions had experienced a range of highs and lows. Of hope and despair. It was no surprise he had not chased her down to Halligale after she had told him she did not wish to see him again. But she knew she needed to take Julia's words into consideration. People do change. Was it possible that Sebastian had done so?

"When people find out that I inherited Halligale and that the previous family who owned it is none other than my new husband, there will be talk. I'll be ridiculed at every party I attend, pitied because people will think Sebastian married me for his lost estate."

"They may say such things," Julia agreed. "But after years of a happy marriage, of children and love, Elizabeth, what can they say after that?" Julia smiled. "They will say they were wrong, and ye can make them eat their words. Ye