Mena blinked profusely in sheer astonishment before Russell rushed to comfort her. “Doona worry, lass. The earl is always trying to get under the laird’s skin. Been that way since they were lads.”
“Oh?” Mena smoothed her hands over her waist and sat straighter in her chair. She found the entire exchange quite vexing. In fact, she didn’t know if she’d ever feel steady again. Not until she put this to rest with both the Laird Mackenzie and Lord Thorne.
“Miss Lockhart.” Andrew put his hand over hers. “I’d like to be excused. I doona feel well.” He gestured with his eyes to his room.
Rune would need to be let out before bed, and now was a perfect time. “All right, Andrew. I’ll accompany you.”
She said good night to Rhianna with a kiss on the cheek, and then excused herself from Russell’s company.
“You must tell him,” she fervently reminded Andrew once again as they found themselves alone in the hall. “Or I’m going to have to.”
“I will, I promise, but I think it’s best to wait until the morning.” Andrew gallantly offered his arm at the base of the back stairs and escorted her up. “Miss Lockhart, do ye know why my father would be so angry with Uncle Gavin over what he said?”
She truly didn’t understand what it was Ravencroft wanted from her. What he saw in her. Why he would be … be what? Jealous? Surely he could see that she didn’t return the Earl of Thorne’s flirtations.
“I can’t imagine,” she murmured.
Andrew flicked her a perceptive look from beneath his lashes and his slash of a mouth quirked up just a little. “I can.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Liam stopped short of shoving his brother into his study, and he slammed the door behind him. His hands shook with dark needs and murderous impulses. Fury sizzled through his blood, riding the waves of the whisky he’d downed at dinner to keep from hurling his knife across the table at Thorne.
Pacing the room, he wrestled with the seething beast clawing its way through him. The study was too small. Why had he chosen to do this here? Oh aye, because this was the only room that didn’t carry the essence of that woman. She’d never been in here. Never left her sweet floral scent to invoke the enticing memory of her skin.
God, he felt as though he’d truly been possessed. A great number of the deadly sins surged within him and fought for supremacy when it came to Mena. Pride, envy, greed, lust. And at the moment … wrath.
He couldn’t even bring himself to look at his vainglorious brother for fear of what he would do. Gavin St. James was handsome in that disarming way the lasses melted for. He’d always been thus. Every time Liam looked at his brother, he imagined Mena Lockhart pressed against him.
Was that why she’d run from Liam after he’d kissed her? Why she had avoided him after that day in the chapel? Why she seemed so guilty and secretive tonight, as if she were frightened of discovery?
Was there something between his brother and his governess? Was he being lied to?
Again?
“Did ye fuck her in the woods, Thorne?” He posited the question in such a low register, he wasn’t even certain he’d heard himself correctly.
“What?”
“My governess, ye daft bastard, did ye put yer sullied hands on her?” he thundered. Had he tasted of her sweetness? Did her lips part for his plunder as they had for Liam’s? He had to know, even if the knowledge might just push him past the edge of his own sanity.
“Technically I’m legitimate, so not a bastard in the truest sense of the word.” The laconic flippancy in Thorne’s tone lit fire to the alcohol already in Liam’s veins.
“Stop saying nonsense to sound clever,” he barked.
“I doona know, brother, ye should try it sometime.”
Liam spun around. Thorne still hadn’t wiped that sly smirk away from his mouth. Though when Liam took a step forward, the smile quickly died.
“Mark me, Gavin, I will rip yer spine out through yer throat and not feel a thing—”
“All right.” The earl put his hands up in a gesture of surrender, knowing that when Liam used his real name, he’d hit his mark. “Nay, I left the woman as untouched as I found her, I promise ye.”
Liam leaned in; his generally uncanny ability to identify a lie with abject clarity had somehow become maddeningly obscure. “Then why talk to her like ye made her yer mistress in my house, at my table?” he demanded through clenched teeth.
Thorne’s shrug was meant to be conciliatory. “I was flirting is all, Liam. I’m a wee sweet on the lass. She’s a bonny lady with a pair of tits I’m not like to get a chance to—”
Liam seized two handfuls of his brother’s suit and nigh yanked the man off his feet. “Open yer filthy gob about her again and I’ll see yer guts spilled on the flagstones.”