Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid - Julie Johnstone Page 0,2
replied, her voice barely above a whisper.
The girl was definitely stunned, and his nose definitely felt broken. It throbbed with pain, but before he could comment, the boy yelled, “Bring her to me!”
Nash frowned and looked around to find the boy, who was now at the shore. He was madly waving his skinny arms at them. “Is that your brother?” he asked, turning the girl around so her back was pressed against his chest. She shook her head as he snaked his hand around her waist. “Lean against me. I’ll swim us to shore.”
She did as instructed without so much as a word. By the time they got to the shore, the boy was there, frantically splashing into the water but stopping as it lapped against his boots. Nash released the girl as he stood and then helped her to her feet.
The boy shoved between them and turned an angry green gaze on Nash. “Don’t touch her.”
They were the exact three words Thomas had said to Nash when he’d found Nash and Helen kissing on the ice. Nash released the girl at once, and the boy shoved him out of the way to circle an arm around the girl’s waist.
“Are you all right?”
“I—Yes, I think so,” she replied, her voice shaking and the click of her teeth telling Nash that she was freezing.
“She needs to get out of the water and home into dry clothes,” Nash suggested, looking toward the bridge and his own dry clothes, which he had discarded when he’d intended to take a swim.
“I know that,” the boy said, sounding irritated.
Nash touched a finger to his aching nose as the boy started to lead the girl past him, but she stopped, her friendly gaze settling on him. “Thank you for saving me.”
Before Nash could answer, the boy said, “I would have saved you if I could swim.”
“You can’t swim?” the girl bellowed in a way Nash had never heard a proper girl bellow before.
The sudden urge to laugh shocked him. He had not felt that desire since Thomas’s death a year earlier. Nash clenched his teeth. He didn’t deserve to laugh when Thomas never would again.
“Owen!” the girl exclaimed, snatching Nash from spiraling back into the past. “Whyever did you not tell me that?”
“I—” Owen opened and closed his mouth, his face reddening.
He’d been embarrassed. It was obvious to Nash but apparently not to the girl. She stood there, hands now on her hips and a quizzical look upon her face.
Owen’s blush spread to the tips of his ears just as Thomas’s used to. The instinct to act like a big brother as he’d done for Thomas roared to life.
“I don’t think it’s the sort of thing one goes around announcing,” Nash offered, catching Owen’s grateful look as Nash moved out of the water. Behind him came the splashing of someone following him.
“Wait!” the girl called. “Where are you going?”
Nash didn’t pause. He’d only be here a few months before he was off to Oxford, and he neither wanted nor needed friends. And they certainly did not need to become close to the likes of him. He was a bad seed. He’d caused his brother’s death. No one had said those exact words aloud, but his parents’ silence had told him everything.
“Did you hear me?” she asked, closer now. “What’s your name? Perhaps you’d like—”
“I heard you,” he growled. “And it’s Nash.” He didn’t say his title in case either of them had heard about his brother. Nash hated the pity and the curiosity that always surfaced when someone realized he was the Marquess of Chastain, the son of the Duke of Greybourne, older brother to Thomas, now one year dead.
Tragic. They’d shake their heads. So tragic that Thomas fell through the ice. That he was born sickly. That you couldn’t save him. How did the fall happen?
The question was inevitable, as was the lying.
Fingers brushed his shoulder and then a hand grasped his arm. He stopped and whirled around. He didn’t like to be touched. Not anymore. He shot her a withering glare, even as her large blue eyes latched on to his. He saw the moment she realized he didn’t care for her hand on his arm. Her lips parted, and she released him. No color of embarrassment stained her cheeks, though. Instead, to his surprise, the girl gave him a determined look.
“I was going to say that perhaps you’d like to spend the day with us. I’m Lilias Honeyfield, and this is Owen—” The