Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,49

game had he ever played with her? Questions pelted him—and doubt along with it. Doubt that perhaps he’d been wrong about Guinevere and that maybe Lady Constantine had been correct. He allowed the doubt, and with it, his urge to touch her became uncontrollable. Reaching out, he grasped her gently by the wrists and tugged her closer.

“What are you doing?” she gasped.

“Ensuring ye do not run off,” he said, offering a half-truth. The other half was that he could not hold back the tide of desire any longer. “Guin, I have never played a game with ye in my life.”

Except now, damn it.

But no, the pursuit to save his company had not truly commenced.

“I was always honest with ye,” he said.

But would he have remained honest?

Her eyes narrowed, and her gaze glimmered like hard stone. “Always honest, you say?”

He had been. So far anyway, so he nodded. Hell, he could barely manage that. His attention was torn between her lips and the way her pulse hammered at the place between her collarbones. He wanted to lick that spot and a whole host of others. He wanted to find every shadow, dip, and curve her body possessed and explore each one with his tongue, his lips, and his hands.

“Did you or did you not pursue me to spite your father five years ago?”

He was momentarily speechless that she knew what had originally sent him across the ballroom years before. His momentary intent, show of defiance toward his father, had meant nothing. He had been intrigued by her, drawn to her from the beginning, but it was true that at first, before he knew her, he had decided that she would make going against his father’s command all the sweeter.

She jerked one wrist free of his grasp. “You need not bother answering. Your face has revealed the truth well enough.” Her tone was sharp but pain shimmered in her eyes. That hurt nearly shattered him. She had cared for him. She had.

He curled his fingers more firmly around her other wrist. Not so tight that he would hurt her but snug enough that she could not easily flee him until he could at least explain himself. But how to explain the foolishness that had driven him toward her at the very start? “I do not know who told ye that—”

She arched her eyebrows at him. “Does it matter?”

Good God, it did. Just how much should have sent him running, but he did not move. “Aye, because whoever it is surely had a reason to tell ye such a thing, and the only one I can think of is that they wanted to keep us apart. I have never told anyone that.”

“So it is true?”

Her words were like quick, painful jabs. The lass was angry indeed, and she had a right to be, given she thought his whole pursuit of her before was simply to spite his father. “It’s not.” Well, that was not the complete truth. “Or rather, it was.”

Her eyes narrowed on him. He was making a damned mess of this.

He raked his free hand through his hair. “It was true for a moment.”

She let out a brittle laugh at his statement, which even to him sounded ridiculous. “Let me go,” she said, tugging on her wrist.

He released her, though he didn’t want to. “Guin, whoever told ye that—”

Fire lit her emerald eyes. “Your father told me, Carrington.”

He flinched at the news and stood for a moment in complete surprise. Then fury burned a hot path through him. “When?” was all he could manage.

She bit her lip as if contemplating whether to answer him and finally said, “Shortly after you and Elizabeth were wed and left England.”

He had no damned idea why his father would have told her that then, unless it was in anger for Asher cutting him out of his life. He studied her for a moment, trying to decide what to say. Everything about her stance appeared strong, but her voice had contained a wobble, and he could well imagine how hurt, how mortified she must have been if she had cared for him as he now thought she might have. Was he a fool to allow the possibility?

Fool or not, he wasn’t sure in this moment that he could stop the allowance of it. He swallowed. “I never told my father that, and I do not know why he would have told ye such a thing.”

“It hardly matters now,” she said with a shrug and a dismissive