“What can I say, it had been months…close the door, Caillen.” He nodded to the door where a maid was picking up the basin.
Caillen walked over and closed the door harder than was necessary. He suspected she’d held back as much as possible because when she turned to face him, it was Máira who kept her from charging him like a hellcat.
“It is not his,” Máira insisted with her hands up to block Caillen from attacking him.
“I don’t believe you.”
It was as if Caillen had slapped her sister in the face with her vitriol. Máira stepped back and suddenly her manner was just as confrontational as Caillen’s.
“You are not the only one to have loved and lost, Caillen.”
There was nothing Máira could have said that could have been worse. If anyone knew that, it was Simon. “Ladies,” he interjected.
“Shut up, Astley,” they said in unison.
“Trouble’s brewing,” Charlotte squealed and began flapping her wings incessantly.
Caillen took a deep breath as if attempting to calm herself, but it would be a feat of angelic proportion for her to not show the venom he knew she felt in that moment. When she finally did speak, her tone was softer, if still clipped. “You have the chance to be with the man you love, Máira. He’s offering to marry you.”
Except he wasn’t the man she loved.
“Go to hell, both of you.” Máira seethed before she headed toward the door, ready to push through her sister if Caillen hadn’t stepped out of the way first. When she exited, she didn’t even attempt to hold back on her anger. The door slammed so hard, a painting in the hall crashed to the floor.
Caillen closed her eyes, shutting off her expression from him. He couldn’t stand it.
“Caillen—”
“Don’t, Astley.”
“Let me explain.”
“What is there to explain?”
“There is everything.”
Her voice was calm and modulated. “You took advantage of a young woman, mysister.” She emphasized their relationship as if he hadn’t been aware of it up until that moment. “Left her pregnant and then proposed to her out of a sense of guilt. Not love, just another duty you were obligated to perform to right a wrong. Then you had the audacity to flourish it up with false terms of endearment.”
“I shouldn’t have used them.”
“No, you shouldn’t have. She saw right through them, as did I.”
“You did?”
“Of course I did. You aren’t capable of love.”
He absorbed the blow as if it were physical. Oh, how wrong she was. Yet to tell her would be to endanger her, and this was the quickest way he could remove her from his home for good. Blast his damn luck. He put on the most flirtatious, juvenile expression he had and winked. “I am,‘the rankest compound of villainous smell that ever-offended nostril.’”
She stared at him for the longest time and his smile wavered.Damn it, woman. Recognize my quote from The Merry Wivesof Windsor and leave.I am no better than the dirty laundry a cuckold would hide among.
She sniffed as if she were testing the air for the truth of his statement before she shook her head and turned for the door. “Your servants will be taking care of you from now on, Astley. I have returned the favor of your saving my life. I won’t, however, save your life again when Ross calls you out for ruining Máira.”
She didn’t slam the door. She just exited Simon’s life forever, and death itself couldn’t have hurt more.
It shouldn’t hurt. It didn’t hurt. What did she care if that rake had proposed to her sister? Máira—with child? That was the issue. It wasn’t Simon’s. She knew that. Oh, for a moment she had frozen with the unthinkable horror of it, but it wasn’t his child. He’d traveled across the sea with injuries that would render any man impotent. She didn’t care how masculine and virile he wanted her to believe him to be. No man was performing under those circumstances.
Not even Simon Clark.
She hurried down the stairs and saw Máira being helped into her coat by Mandal, the butler. “Wait!” She called but her sister ignored her, buttoning up her coat with shaking hands. That was the real sign of her distress. Máira didn’t tremble.
