Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,63

needed ribbon, and Guinevere had been too distraught to give it much thought. Instead, they had gone to Lilias’s home; she had also come to Town after the “unfortunate woods incident,” feigning illness, bless her best friend, to be here if Guinevere should need her.

“It was decided in a unanimous vote by the members of SLAR who could be present that it would do Carrington some good to think he had competition for your hand. So we simply had to intervene.”

Guinevere could not suppress the bitter laugh that escaped her. “The man’s love for competition is what got the two of us in this horrid mess in the first place!”

“Pishposh,” Frederica said. “Where is our thanks for penning a note to Kilgore? Whatever the reason you are to wed Carrington, it will do him immense good to think Kilgore is offering, as well.”

“My,” Kilgore said, surprising admiration in his tone, “aren’t you two the scheming pair? Or rather SLAR? What is SLAR, if I may be so bold to ask?”

“You may not,” Vivian snapped.

She wanted to be angry with Vivian, Frederica, and Lilias, but she knew they were only trying to help her. “Kilgore, I’m so sorry,” Guinevere said. “I hope you did not have plans for this evening that have now been ruined.”

“Actually, they quite saved me,” he replied.

Before Guinevere could question his statement, movement in the window to her father’s study caught her eye. She turned her head ever so slightly as her skin prickled to awareness. She knew it was Asher before she saw him.

She tried to repress the dizzying current that raced through her body just knowing he was there, but she failed miserably. She would not, however, race inside to him. His words from the woods, and the words he’d written to her father, echoed in her head, making her heart constrict.

Kilgore will never come to heel for ye. He wants to use ye, not wed ye.

Did Asher think she could not make a man fall in love with her? Of course he did! She was an unfortunate circumstance to him!

She glanced up at Kilgore, surprised to find him studying her, and all her hurt rose up to overcome her. She blurted, “He said what occurred with me was an unfortunate circumstance!”

“Well then,” Kilgore growled, his voice soft but dangerous, “let us show him not everyone holds that opinion.”

And before she knew what Kilgore was about, he kissed her.

Chapter Thirteen

Asher was well past the proper calling hour when he knocked on the door to Guinevere’s home, but he had sent a message to Guinevere’s father this morning inquiring if the man would be here this evening, and Asher had received confirmation that he would be. But the odd look the footman gave him, and then the even stranger one the butler tried and failed to cover, seemed to indicate that Lord Fairfax had not passed the news on to his staff.

Once Asher explained who he was and that he was there to see Lord Fairfax and Lady Guinevere, the butler’s jaw actually dropped. Suspicion rose in Asher, and when the butler requested he wait in the entrance hall while he announced him, Asher declined. The butler merely pressed his lips together and turned on his heel.

As Asher walked through the corridors of the home where Guinevere had grown up, her words from the woods replayed in his head again.

You think because I am a game to you, that no one can want me! I suppose only you think I’m not desirable enough to offer for.

Confusion flared as before. And suspicion. And hope. Hope that was dangerous. Clearly by want she meant something more than desire, something like wanting her as a wife. He wanted to rub at the annoying ache in his chest, but he didn’t. Of course, he did not think that! The notion that no one would want to have her as a wife, to protect her, to cherish her, to possess her, was preposterous.

His mind kept circling back to her words. If she believed he’d only been toying with her—truly believed it—maybe even been led to believe it by Kilgore, Asher could see how she would have been hurt. How she would have wanted to strike back at him with, say, a grand performance in a skit she knew he would see.

He should have considered it yesterday during the skit, but again, he did not react reasonably when it came to Guinevere. The desire to protect himself was at war with the