Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid - Julie Johnstone Page 0,47

almost choke her, but she managed to speak. “Let go of my reins at once, or I will scream so loudly that I will wake this neighborhood.”

“I thought you were concerned about causing a scandal,” he said, his tone challenging her bluff.

“I was,” she replied, infusing tartness into her voice. “But I’ve decided a scandal would be preferable to one more minute with you.”

There. A knot clogged her throat that she could not swallow.

“Why so hostile, Lilias?” he asked, gazing at her with his thickly lashed beautiful eyes as if he were concerned. He had liar’s eyes, she decided uncharitably. And the fact that he sounded genuinely perplexed made her even more livid. He’d broken her heart without ever really knowing it. He had not even thought of her enough to realize he’d had the power to crush her. That should offer comfort to a reasonable person, but she was feeling decidedly unreasonable.

She couldn’t say any of that, though. She needed a believable excuse for her anger. “I am hostile, Greybourne, because men always act as if they have the God-granted right to tell a woman what to do, even when the man in question—” she paused to let the first part of what she’d said sink in “—has no right whatsoever. I am not your sister. I am not your mother. I am not your friend. I am not your betrothed. I am nothing to you.”

He moved in a flash, springing from the street, and landing at her right on the ledge of her gig to clasp her wrist. His hold was firm but not harsh. Everything else about him, however, was an invasion. Smoldering heat from his fingers singed her. His scent—brandy, horse, and smoky wood—assaulted her, making her curl her toes. She sucked in a greedy breath. His size made her want to know what it would feel like for him to cradle her, hold her, protect her from the mess that was her life. She found herself leaning toward him when she should be pushing him away. Their faces were suddenly so close that his sharp inhalation whispered in her ear and his exhalation wafted over her lips. Gooseflesh rose all over her body, and an ache sprang up deep in her womb, making her clench.

“There has never been a second since the moment we met that you were nothing to me. You are… You are—” If he didn’t finish that sentence, she could not be held responsible for what she did to him. Her heart pounded so hard her ears rang. “I—That is, you shall always be remembered fondly as…as…the girl who broke my nose.”

Ire flared within her, and she shoved him straight in the chest as hard as she could. She shoved with all her disappointment, and it was quite a lot. She caught him unawares, and her actions surprised her, as well. His eyes widened, and he fell backward, unfortunately righting himself when his feet hit the ground and the puddle that had formed as he’d stood there splashed up around his boots. She scowled that only his boots had gotten wet and muddy. He really did deserve to land on his arse.

“Lilias—”

“Do not,” she said, seething, “call me by my given name ever again. It is Lady Lilias to you. Being remembered fondly for a brief period we spent together seven years ago gives you no right whatsoever to question me or tell me what to do.”

The rain grew a bit harder and the fog seemed to thicken, which fit her dark mood, and she was enjoying immensely that he was still in the rain. He’d not tried to sit in the small seat beside her, and she’d not offered.

For one brief moment, with Nash’s face tilted up to look at her and the lamplight illuminating his expression, she would have wagered every coin she had, if she had any, that he looked as if he was in misery. As if her words had crushed him.

Impossible.

She was seeing what she longed to see, or had longed to see, and not what was true. She squeezed her eyes shut for one breath, determined to stop portraying him as the man he had never wanted to be for her, and when she opened her eyes and brought her gaze to him once more, his dark eyebrows were slanted as he frowned.

“You are correct, Lady Lilias. I have no right whatsoever to ask you what you are doing out and about at night. Alone. Nor