Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,6

when she’d confessed that he wasn’t a bastard. Wasn’t sired from a man long dead of the lung disease.

He’d even been furious for a moment. But she was dying. And she was his mother. And when she’d explained, there was only one choice—forgiveness. His father had, in fact, wed his mother long ago in secret after meeting her when he was in Oban with his father, Asher’s deceased grandfather. The man had discovered the marriage and given his father an ultimatum: divorce Asher’s mother or be cut off from all blunt and risk losing any part of his inheritance that was not entailed.

Under his desk, Asher curled his hand into a fist. His father had divorced his mother on false grounds of infidelity, but the divorce had not been final until after Asher was born. Still, his father had refused to acknowledge Asher or even see him, so Asher’s mother had thought to protect him by telling him she’d birthed him out of wedlock and his sire was dead. The old hatred did not sweep over Asher like a tide as it once had. It had lessened ever so slightly when his father had publicly set the record straight, and it had ebbed much more over the last few years as he’d built his distillery empire and proved his worth to himself. He didn’t have time for hatred. It took too much energy.

“So?” Pierce asked, rising and making his way to the sideboard that held the decanters of liquor. With his back to Asher, he went on. “Last night? The Fairfaxes’ ball? Where did you disappear to? I searched for you for quite a while before I left.”

Brilliant, sharp-green eyes and dark hair that glistened like polished wood flashed in Asher’s mind. Mounds of that silky chestnut hair, all unfortunately twisted up on top Guinevere’s head. He’d seen her immediately when he’d entered her parents’ ballroom. Of course, he had. Fate had been laughing. He’d stayed away from England all these years, not only because he was avoiding his father but because of memories of her, the vixen.

He should not have gone to the ball last night, but morbid curiosity as to what she now looked like, whether she’d changed greatly had driven him there. She shone brighter than the sun, just as she had when he’d met her five years prior. The fools that made up London Society had taken much longer to recognize what he’d discovered in moments after they were introduced. She was still a wondrous sight and apparently still scheming.

He’d cared for her—more than cared if he was honest. He’d been lost to her seemingly innocent charms. But he wasn’t going to sit there and dwell on how a slip of a lass had made him a fool and how his reaction to seeing her in another man’s arms had set the disastrous course of his young adult life.

He was older, and he damn well hoped he was wiser. He was here to ensure he did not lose the company he’d spent the past seven years building to his competition. Ill luck had been his constant companion the last six months, and he was dangerously close to having to sell a chunk of Loch Glen Distilleries to his competitors, the MacPhersons.

He couldn’t allow that to happen. The families that worked for him depended on him, depended on the jobs he provided them for their livelihood, and the MacPhersons were known to bring in their own people when they took over a distillery. For the people who relied on him, who had believed in him, he would swallow his pride and accept his father’s blunt, which he had refused for so long.

Pierce cleared his throat, reminding Asher that he’d not answered his brother’s question. “I left,” he said, which was partially true. He’d left the ballroom, just not the ball as Pierce would assume.

Crystal clanked against crystal as Pierce clumsily poured himself another drink, back still turned to Asher, which afforded him a few moments more to think of her.

So the lass wanted to be called Lady Guinevere, did she? He clenched his teeth on the desire to smile. She was just as bold—no, bolder—than she’d been when they had met. When he had come to London five years earlier because of his mother’s dying wish—and shockingly then his father’s, as well—that he meet the father who had abandoned him, about whom she had deceived him, Guinevere Darlington had hit him like a storm. He’d meant to