Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid - Julie Johnstone Page 0,23

was time to see her out.

She exchanged goodbyes with Nash as one stranger to the other, each syllable that tumbled from her lips increasing the ache in her stomach. When the door closed behind her, and she was alone in the bright light of day, she grabbed her side and barely resisted the urge to double over. Hot tears pricked her eyes, but she blinked them away, determined to hold them back until she was in the privacy of her home.

She inhaled a ragged breath when the door behind her creaked open. Before she could even turn to see who it was, Nash said, “You forgot your wrap.”

His voice washed over her, sounding as inviting as she had dreamed. She frowned as she slowly faced him, caught between warring desires of wishing him away and wishing him near. This was madness! She’d loved him for so long, she didn’t yet know how to hate him, but she would not make a fool of herself anymore. She arched her eyebrows as she stepped toward him to retrieve her wrap. “Thank you. I’m sure you could have simply sent your butler after me.”

She grasped the wrap, her fingers brushing his, tingling coursing through her at the warm feel of his skin against hers. She pulled back her hand, but he grabbed it, surprising her. Their eyes locked, and in his, remorse burned. “I’m sorry, Lilias.”

If she’d been the same woman she was when she’d raced over here, she would have imagined he was trying to tell her something, but she was not that woman anymore. The part of her that had held out hope that her love story with Nash was still to be written was gone. They had no story. They never had. He was not trying to convey anything other than the fact that he felt pity for her, and that blessedly made her livid, which was far better than feeling crushed.

“You needn’t apologize. You did tell me you were not a good man.” With that, she snatched her hand from him in a most unladylike manner. “I was the one who was too silly to listen.” She turned on her heel, prepared to make a grand exit where the scorned heroine leaves the hero standing gaping after her, but as she started away, footsteps thudded behind her.

She stopped and whirled toward him with a glare. “What are you doing?”

“I see you do not have a carriage.”

“My, aren’t you observant. But that does not answer my question. What. Are. You. Doing?”

He smiled. He actually smiled. And it was blindingly beautiful. Hating him was becoming easier by the second. Whyever was he smiling at her? He needed to stop instantly.

“Stop smiling at me.” When he accommodated her immediately, it was even more vexing. He had not once been accommodating since she’d met him. He did not need to start now, not when she was planning to hate him forever. “Stop being accommodating.”

He arched twin perfectly formed, dark, thick eyebrows. Everything about him was annoyingly perfect, except his heart.

“Do you want me to smile or not?” he asked, amusement in his voice.

She served him what she knew from experience with Nora and loads of practice in the looking glass was her best scowl. “I want you to tell me why you are following me.”

“I cannot very well allow you to walk home by yourself. That would not be very honorable of me.”

“Ah yes, you and your honor,” she snipped. It was his blasted supposed honor that had first made her tumble into love with him when he’d made that little speech by the stream so many years ago about not allowing her to aid him in teaching Owen to swim because she could have been hurt. He was honorable, she begrudgingly acknowledged. Which also meant he was good. She begrudgingly acknowledged that, too. What he was not was besotted with her, and he had told her as much. Plainly. Years before.

She felt like such a fool. Again. “I order you not to follow me.” She prayed he’d listen. She wanted to cry, and she absolutely could not do so with him at her heels like a guard dog.

“I’m not the sort of man to follow orders, Lilias. Just as you are not the sort of lady to follow commands.”

“You know nothing about what sort of lady I am now,” she snapped, though what he’d said was true. She had never been good at following commands. She blamed that on her father. He’d