Lady Guinevere and the Rogue with a Brogue - Julie Johnstone Page 0,91

Town, and she’d not risked trying to contact him again. It had been the most dull-witted decision of her life. She would simply have to prove herself, and in time, when he was ready, he would tell her what mo ghraidh and mo chridhe meant. She would wait. She could wait. He may have not said the words yet, but he was showing her in little ways with his tenderness and his caring looks and gentle kisses. She refused to believe otherwise.

Chapter Eighteen

When Asher had first courted her, Guinevere had imagined what their life together might be like, and the week following their wedding met every dream she had conjured. Asher was attentive in the day and teasing and tempting at night, while being tender when they lay spent in each other’s arms. He would cradle her as they had long talks, making her feel closer to him.

She had embarrassingly told him of her girlhood fantasy to be proposed to in a field of lilies. She knew he had grown up thinking himself a bastard, but she had never known how he’d discovered he was actually the legitimate son of a duke. Her mouth hung open when he started to relay the tale of how his parents met and then came to be divorced, and hearing how Asher’s father had denied him for years until his mother had died made her chest ache.

She propped herself up to better see his face, setting her head against her hand as she lay on her side. His jaw was set and anger filled his eyes, and it struck her just how deep the wound of his father’s treachery was.

“And when did you learn you were not illegitimate?” she asked.

“My mother told me shortly before she died. She said that, at first, she kept it a secret from me, allowed me to think I was a bastard and she a woman of easy virtue because she thought it better than knowing that my own father had not wanted me, had denied me. But my grandfather died shortly before my mother, and when he did, my father sent a solicitor to my mother to tell her my father wanted to—and was prepared to—claim me as his.”

Asher paused, took a long breath, and released her hand to curl his own hand into a fist upon his chest. His gaze came to her, full of anger and agony. “My mother gave me the letter from my father, told me it was up to me whether I responded or not, but then told me it was her dying wish that I meet him and forgive him.”

Asher paused again, and Guinevere could hear him sliding his teeth back and forth.

“Even after everything he had done to her, even after all she had endured so I would not know the truth that my father had denied me, had not wanted me, and was too fearful to disobey his own father and be cut off, she still wanted me to forgive him.” Asher’s voice shook, and Guinevere felt it to her core. “She said it did no good to hold a grudge and that if he had finally understood the wrongness of what he had done and wanted to claim me as his, I should make peace with him.”

“So you came to London after she died,” Guinevere said into the silence.

Asher nodded. “I couldn’t deny her dying wish. I had already started my distillery business, but it was struggling and I needed more backing. I suspected right away that my father’s relationship with Pierce was not a good one—he already imbibed too much and gambled—and I thought perhaps that was why the old devil had finally conceded to acknowledge me.”

Guinevere sucked in a sharp breath of realization. “Your brother was a disappointment to your father.”

“Aye. I will not say my father didn’t feel guilty about what he’d done to my mother and me. I think he did. He did not come out and say it in those words, but he said he wished he had been stronger. But when I got here, he wanted to control me, and—”

“And you were not like your father.” She pressed a kiss to his chest, then his mouth. “You are not a man to be controlled.”

His lips curled up slightly. “Nay, I’m not. So when he told me not to pursue ye, I did.”

She frowned for a moment at the reminder, but Asher gave her a long, deep kiss, and said, “But within a moment