Lady Lilias and the Devil in Plaid - Julie Johnstone Page 0,5
night I’ll discover my inner courage. She’s going to teach me to swim.”
And just like that, Nash saw an unexpected path to redemption. Owen clearly had a tendre for Lilias. It dripped from every word he spoke. If Nash could help Owen get the girl, perhaps he wouldn’t hate himself anymore. He’d failed Thomas, but he could help this boy. Nash’s nostrils flared at the possibility.
Lilias had absolutely known she’d be able to breach the walls Nash had erected around himself. Well, maybe she had not known for certain, she relented as she stood shivering beside him on the bank near the water. She did not really know him yet, after all. But she wanted to. She’d practically been fixated on him since meeting him in the woods four nights prior.
She blamed the obsession on two things. First was her love of Gothic romance novels. Nash was mysterious, just like a Gothic hero, and absurdly handsome, and she could admit to herself that she’d fantasized once or twice or a thousand times about being the heroine in a book with a gentleman who looked like Nash.
Second, and she’d only confessed this to Owen in a weak moment and sworn him to secrecy after she’d appallingly blabbed her secret, she did have a need to try to fix broken animals and people. The compulsion had been with her a long time, ever since her father had started drinking after he’d gambled a great deal of his money away. If her memory served her, she’d been nine at the time. She’d tried to help him by asking for nothing, for trying to make things last, but she’d not been able to fix his problems in the end. He drank himself to death, or at least that’s what she’d heard the doctor say from her eavesdropping position crouched at the other side of her parents’ closed bedchamber door.
“Why do you wear a kilt? Are you Scottish?” she asked as they stood on the riverbank.
“I’m half-Scot on my mother’s side, and I wear it to annoy my mother. She thinks her family wild barbarians.”
Lilias had done things to annoy her mother in an attempt simply to get her attention after her father had died, but it had not been successful. Her mother was too sad to be annoyed. “Does it work?” she asked.
“Not so far. She hasn’t said a word. It’s as if she doesn’t even notice.”
“I’m sorry,” Lilias said, her chest squeezing for him. Her mother seemed to at least notice when Lilias was doing something irritating; she just didn’t care.
Nash didn’t respond. One of his boots clopped against the dirt, followed immediately by the other. Her awareness of him, the broad chest that strained against his white shirt, and the long bare legs she could see because he was wearing a kilt gave her a thrill that was entirely new to her. She’d read about such reactions women had to men. Her novels were filled with such things, but she supposed she had not truly believed that such tremendous emotion was real.
But heavens! It was like an ocean in her chest when Nash chucked off his overcoat and dropped it to the grass. Owen mimicked Nash, and the roiling waters inside her settled. Poor Owen looked like a pup compared to Nash, but she’d never let on so as not to hurt Owen’s feelings. Friends did not do such things to each other. They bolstered each other up; they did not tear each other down.
She stole one last glance at Nash while he had his attention on the water. He had a fine noble nose, strong lips, a square jaw, and chiseled cheekbones. He leaned suddenly toward the water. What was he doing? She glanced to where she thought he was looking. He must have been trying to decide the best place to show Owen how to swim. Moonlight shimmered off the river, and it seemed to glitter off Nash’s skin as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt and revealed powerful forearms. She wished he’d strip his shirt off, but she knew it was too much to wish for. She also knew she shouldn’t wish for such a thing, but the knowledge didn’t stop the yearning.
Her awareness of him felt electric, the way the air before a storm sometimes felt as if it could prick you. It didn’t matter that he hadn’t spoken more than a sentence since appearing in the garden and telling her in a gruff voice to