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“Damn.” He hadn’t meant to spill all of that information like a gossiping peahen.

“Verity Hawthorne? Was with you? Birthing a horse?” Dumfounded, Rafe’s hand hung in the air, and Ash wasn’t sure if another question was coming or what.

“What’d she say about that?”

“Well…” And he swore to God this had never happened to him before, but the tips of his ears felt slightly pink.

“What the deuce? Your ears are red,” Soren pointed out none too helpfully. “How long were you two ‘foaling’ for?”

“Good God, man. It was just a kiss.”

“Just a kiss?” Rafe asked, deeper in his stupor. “With Verity? Hawthorne?”

“The very one,” he muttered, agitated at the incessant questions. As if he couldn’t kiss her. As if he shouldn’t kiss her. Damn it. He already knew he shouldn’t.

“I’m having a hard time picturing that, Ash.” Soren’s hands were stuffed in his pockets and he rocked back on his heels, but his eyes were squinting, as if he were really trying to envision it at this precise moment.

“I don’t know why you’re trying to picture it at all. She kissed me—well, we kissed.”

“What the hell does that mean?”

God. He had to come clean. Had to assuage the guilt just a little bit. And he knew a thing or two about guilt, not being the one destined but defaulted to the dukedom. His brother had passed away far too early. Far too young. Far too healthy. Stabbed to death in an alleyway. Robbery gone wrong. And now Ash had to fill the role. He vowed not to let his brother down. To always pursue justice. To take responsibility, even if it wasn’t meant to be his. He’d never been seen as more than a rogue. Someone who had balked at convention and only had what he had because it was handed to him. How eager he was to prove all the backbiters otherwise.

With a clenched jaw that would just not loosen no matter how deeply he inhaled, he confessed, “She doesn’t know that I’m me.”

“That makes more sense,” Soren conceded. which shouldn’t have stung the way it did.

“How doesn’t she know?” Rafe asked.

“I didn’t tell her.”

“She didn’t recognize you?” More questions from Rafe.

Thankfully, Soren supplied an answer this time. “It’s been nearly a decade since she’s seen him, and the man has filled out in that time.” But then he let out a low whistle. “Tread carefully man. That woman is more headstrong than any other—”

“Don’t I know it.”

“Do you though? From what Pru told me about her marriage to Alec, she’s had her head run around in circles, and I get the feeling that Pru doesn’t know the half of it.”

“You’re saying Alec played games with her mind? Her mind is like a vault. I can’t imagine anyone convincing her of anything she doesn’t already believe in.”

“True. She’s always been that way, but more so after her marriage to Alec. It’s like he dug around in there and left a mess for only her to witness. He’d lie nonstop, claiming it to be reality. Then he’d turn the tables and say she was the delusional one. I can’t imagine what his lies did to her.”

“What a cocksucker,” Rafe mumbled just as Ash let fly a string of invectives of his own.

“I’d like to bring him back from the dead and murder him myself,” Ash growled, mostly because the man was a leech and he wanted to punch the evil out of him, but he also growled in frustration at himself for his lie. He was no better. And he needed to be.

Like a hound on a scent, Soren asked, “Wait. You said that the mare almost rejected her baby? And then Verity kissed you?”

“Yes. So?”

“Damn, you don’t know her at all, do you?” Soren shook his head pitifully at his friend. “She had to have been in her most vulnerable state today.”

“Verity, vulnerable? What are you talking about?”

“I probably shouldn’t be saying all of this—”

“Spit it out, man.”