Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid - Julie Johnstone Page 0,18

things refused to stay buried.

The rogue had returned.

Lilias Honeyfield stood outside Nash’s home in Mayfair, her fist raised to grasp the knocker on his gleaming dark door. The clop of hooves on the busy lane hummed in her ears as memories assaulted her. Seven years’ worth of memories, to be exact. Seven years of longing, of hoping, of hating and loving. She was exhausted, and she wanted to put an end to it all. As horribly embarrassing as this would likely be, she had to do it. Yet, her gloved hand did not move. It stayed hovering just out of reach of the shiny brass door knocker.

She couldn’t make herself do it. She was a founding member of the Society of Ladies Against Rogues, for heaven’s sake. She was a pioneer of stealthily doing things forbidden to women. For more years than she cared to recall, she had managed to avoid being forced to wed someone she didn’t care for. She was a strong woman, and yet, she was frozen with fear of what was to come, of what might have been, of discovering it had all been the fanciful imagination of a girl who had read—and still did—far too many Gothic novels.

She had been in love, and she had been almost positively certain that Nash had felt the same, but she hadn’t gotten the chance to find out. He and Owen had raced, Owen had fallen, his leg had been crushed, and he had been left with a permanent limp. And before the dust had settled, Nash had fled without a word.

She could still recall in numbing detail going to his house to see him, to cry with him over the horrible accident that had occurred, to take his hand and lead him to Owen’s home so they could sit with him until he was strong enough to get out of bed. She had pictured them helping Owen learn to walk again, and maybe someday to run and ride, but that was not to be.

Nash’s mother, a woman as cold as the River Eye in winter, had answered the door and told Lilias that Nash had left that morning for Oxford, which had apparently been scheduled all along, and that she did not know when in the foreseeable future he would return.

Lilias had been dumbstruck that he had left Owen in such a state, but then she considered Nash’s past with his brother, and she knew in her heart that guilt had driven Nash away. Still, she had thought he’d return. Not the next day, but certainly before seven years had passed. She’d been sad, then angry, then numb, but through it all, hope had remained. She was happy to say the hope was fairly dead now, but this—confronting him face-to-face, seeing him, looking him in the eye—was what she needed to put her love for him in the grave where it belonged.

Owen thought her mad. She knew it. For years he’d been telling her to move on with her life and forget Nash. Even Nash had written her and told her to do the same. The last letter she had written him and the one he had written in response, the only one he’d ever written despite the numerous letters she’d sent to him at school, was seared in her mind and on her heart.

Dear Nash,

This will be the last time I write you. I know I said that in my previous letter, but this time I mean it. Owen’s accident was not your fault. Your brother’s death was not your fault. You are my best friend, and you are… Well, I thought perhaps we might… I miss you. I miss you horribly. Please write. Please come visit. Please don’t just disappear from my life. You are good. I know you said you weren’t, but I know in my heart that you are. I know you are hurting. I know you need me. You said I make you feel—What?

Please write me back this time.

Lilias

Lilias,

Please don’t write to me anymore. I’ve met someone else. And I’m not hurting. I’d have to feel to hurt, and I don’t feel anything.

Nash

Lilias inhaled a deep, steadying breath. It had been that last line—I’d have to feel to hurt, and I don’t feel anything—that made it so hard for her to give up hope. She’d believed that what had begun between them was something special, a love story for the ages like those she read about in her books, and not just the