Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid - Julie Johnstone Page 0,10

could not have heard him correctly. “You said he drowned.”

“He did,” Nash replied. “But I was the reason he was on the ice. My selfishness killed my brother. So you see, Lilias, I am not nice.”

Before she could point out that someone who wasn’t truly a good person would not even be worried about whether they were good or bad, her window slammed open and Nora leaned out with her nightcap still on. “Lilias Honeyfield, I see you down there in the moonlight, and in a minute, Mama will, too. I’m going to wake her. Then you’ll be in the soup, as you deserve for never taking me with you!” With that, her sister disappeared from the window.

“You’ve been caught now,” Nash said. To her pleasant surprise, he sounded regretful, which could only mean he wanted to see her again.

She waved a dismissive hand as she grabbed a tree branch. “Nonsense. It would take the house coming down around my mother’s ears to wake her. The laudanum—” Lilias bit her lip on the slip as she struggled to pull herself up the tree, but her ankle hurt something dreadful. “Give me a push?” she asked, not knowing what else to do. Eventually her mother would wake up if that tattletale Nora shook her long enough.

“I’m sorry about your mother,” Nash said, his hands coming to her hips. His touch shot heat through her. “Is she ill?”

“No,” Lilias said, shocked at the husky sound of her voice. She cleared her throat. “She’s sad since my father’s death.” And though she did not wish to leave Nash, she had to, so she tugged herself up as Nash hoisted her. She finally got a hold on the sturdy branch, and her foot found a good knot in the tree so she could make her way to the next branch. She turned and looked down at Nash. His head was tilted up to look at her, and his hands were on his hips.

“You’ll still come to the bridge tomorrow, won’t you?” she asked.

“Yes, I promised I would.”

Relief flowed through her, but then she had a worry. Would he mention what she’d said about her mother to Owen? Truly, she didn’t want anyone to know. She wasn’t even sure why she’d told him. “About my mother—”

“I’ll keep your secret.”

And he thought he wasn’t good… He was perfect. Never mind she’d only spent a few hours in his company, but he was wonderful. And she was going to mend him so he could be hers.

The fall went along in the dreamiest of manners. Lilias, Nash, and Owen met every day for Owen’s swimming lessons. When Owen finally mastered swimming, she feared Nash would not meet them anymore, but that tragedy was skirted when Owen asked Nash to teach him how to fish. The three of them spent September together with Nash instructing them both on the finer arts of fishing—she begged to be included—and the process continued into October when Owen asked Nash to teach him to fence and to ride better. Lilias was already an excellent rider, but as she again did not want to be excluded from Nash’s instruction, she pretended she wasn’t.

Nash seemed to have taken on the role of older brother to Owen, but he didn’t talk about it. She could not bring it up, though, because it was never just the two of them, and she didn’t want to reveal what he’d told her in confidence about his own brother. He was gruff and grumpy at times, but he had honor and a fiercely protective side.

By the start of November, Lilias knew three things for certain: she was hopelessly in love with Nash, she wanted time alone with him, and the only way to get him to herself to find out if he felt the same about her was to seize the day. With that in mind, she sat at her desk and penned a note to Nash asking him to meet her at the bridge before the appointed time she, Owen, and Nash were supposed to rendezvous that evening. She was going to teach the boys about the constellations, which was something her father had taught her in one of his tentative moments.

Just as she was signing her note, her door swung open and Nora stood at the threshold with a grin on her face and letter in her hand. Lilias frowned at the interruption. “What do you want?”

“A rather stuffy footman brought this round for you, but I’m not