Taming of the Beast (Scandalous Affairs #2) - Christi Caldwell Page 0,117

Lothian said.

Tynan bowed his head, and with a giddy sense of lightness, he left.

Chapter 28

Faye’s family had returned.

All of them.

All her siblings were reunited, at last, under the same household.

So much had changed.

Christina came back to them a widow.

Claire had returned from her jaunt through the English countryside, a happy, very much in love bride. On top of that, she was with the unlikeliest of men, the brooding American artist whom Claire had always admired.

Not that Caleb Gray appeared brooding any longer. Why, even he had changed.

And yet, for all the ways in which her sisters’ lives had been so altered, Faye’s remained remarkably the same. She remained the Poplar sister who’d not found love.

Except, she had.

Standing outside in Hyde Park, she hugged her arms around her middle and stared at the frozen Serpentine where Poppy and Tristan glided over the ice. Held close by her brother’s arm was their small child.

Faye, who’d spent years convincing herself that all of this was nothing she wanted, at last acknowledged the lie she’d fed herself. She did want that. She wanted it so very desperately. But not with just anyone.

Tynan.

She bit the inside of her cheek hard. She wanted him. She—

“Oomph.”

—took a snowball to the face. She wiped that smattering from her cheeks, dusting it from her eyes.

“Not the wisest of hiding places.” That slightly winded charge came from just beyond her shoulder, and she glanced back.

“I shall take care of them,” Caleb said, and with a wink, he raised his arms high above his head, and growling, he set off in pursuit of Christina’s children. The two boys and lone girl squealed and took off running.

“You are usually a good deal better at this,” Claire said as she took up a position alongside Faye at the edge of the shore.

“At being brutal in a snowball fight? Yes,” she muttered. “Yes, I am.” In fact, she’d oft been able to successfully take on all of her siblings combined.

“There was an interesting article in this morning’s post,” her sister went on.

She stiffened. “Was there?” she murmured. Either way, this talk was far safer to have with her sister than any including a mention of Tynan. Faye’s stomach muscles twisted in a knot. Thinking about him would never not hurt.

“Oh, yes. A very salacious and striking editorial about Lord Brightly’s involvement in displacing his two orphaned wards, a brother and a sister, and forcing them to live a life upon the streets, working for that vile Mr. Diggory.”

The duchess had stayed true to her word, supplying Faye with the names of men and women who were willing to speak of the sins and scandals they’d been dragged into. The papers had gladly paid Faye a handsome amount for such writings, and those tales had, at last, begun finding their way into polite drawing rooms.

The satisfaction in doing the work she’d set out to do should have felt more fulfilling. It was. It was just also that there was a void. There always would be one with Tynan not part of her life.

Feeling her sister’s gaze upon her, Faye made a show of watching Caleb race about, futilely attempting to hide behind a narrow oak from Christina’s ruthless snowball-wielding little ones.

“Do you have nothing to say about these recent columns?” Claire asked, and Faye tried to make out whether she heard a knowing in her sister’s voice.

Of course not. She couldn’t know. Faye lifted her shoulders in a little shrug. “You know me, Claire. I’ve never been one for gossip.”

“Ah, but I’d not describe this as gossip.”

This time, Faye glanced away from the revelry and over to her sister. “How would you describe it?” She searched her gaze over her elder sister’s face, her answer important even when it shouldn’t matter what anyone else’s opinion was when Faye knew the right she was doing. Claire had always been different. Their bond had always been special.

Claire held her stare. “I would call it long-overdue justice,” she said softly.

Emotion filled her breast. Yes, this was why she and Claire had always gotten on. Where Tristan had also owned the guilt of their family’s association, he’d also been equally fixed on their changed circumstances, on helping his sisters. Christina had been off, attending their family, and as such, Faye couldn’t definitively say for certain how their eldest sister had dealt with the revelation of the Poplar sins.

But Faye and Claire? They had only ever seen the wrong in what their family was linked to and had long wished