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I was trying, truly. I’d started and stopped about five times over the past few hours, but I couldn’t get the words out. I really didn’t know how to broach the conversation, so it was easier just not to.
I’d do it later.
Or tomorrow.
Or when I had absolutely no choice but to come clean.
Maybe it’d be easier if I was backed into a corner. Like if Carmen and Vincent or Granny showed up and forced me to tell the truth.
I couldn’t believe Granny was in Duncree. How she even knew the Glenrochs, I couldn’t figure out—I knew her parents, my great-grandparents, had been relatively wealthy, but I didn’t think that side had any connection to the aristocracy at all.
Obviously, Mum had become a countess upon marriage, but Granny had never really liked Dad, and I couldn’t recall many times Granny had ever attended any such events where she mightmeetsomeone like Morag Glenroch.
It was baffling, truly.
As for Carmen being here… Ugh. I couldn’t believe she was going to be here. And she was certainly going to tell my father that I was here, then I’d never hear the end of it that I was apparently dating William.
Because of course we’d have to keep that charade up. There was no way we could admit to his grandparents that we weren’t actually seeing each other, which meant this little soap opera was going to play out in my real life.
Christ, I’d made a right mess of all this, hadn’t I?
Amber had been right. It was a terrible decision. I should have known that it wasn’t going to be as simple as I’d convinced myself it would be.
And that was before I admitted to myself how attracted I was to William. I’dwantedhim to kiss me earlier when we were playing around on the sofa. His body over mine had ignited about twenty-bazillion nerve endings in my body, and there was a very big part of me that wanted to make a very bad decision.
By kissing him.
And I might have done. I might have let him. If I hadn’t found out that we were childhood friends.
It explained a lot. When we’d first met, I knew I’d recognised him, and he’d even said as much to me. It made sense that we couldn’t place each other if it’d been twenty years.
And now, I had to tell him the truth.
If only my words would work.
I was getting too hot by the fire, so I dragged myself up onto my feet and onto the sofa instead, then pulled a blanket from the back of it and put it over my lap.
William looked over at me. “You’re getting comfortable there. Aren’t you forgetting something?”
I frowned. “Like what?”
“I promised you that you could see the library today, but we didn’t get around to it.”
“I know, but I didn’t almost melt in front of the fire just now only to leave for the frozen tundra that is the rest of the castle,” I said, tugging the blanket up. “Especially if the power might go out. The last thing I want is to be stranded in a remote part of a castle, at the mercy of the elements.”
William blinked at me. “What do you think is going to happen? Do you think a murderous snowman is going to take advantage of a power outage, climb through a window, and take us all out if we dare venture outside the room?”
“Well, I do now!”
He reached over and yanked the blanket away from me, tossing it onto the floor. “Come on. Our phones are charged if the power goes out, and we can go in our pyjamas. The chance of anyone bothering us is next to nothing.”
“But, but…”
He grabbed my dressing gown from the bedroom and threw it at me, then passed me my phone. “There. You won’t get cold. Grandpa usually goes to the library on an evening, so it’ll be warm.”
“What about this one here?”
“We won’t go for long. I’ll put one log on it before we go. It’ll still be smouldering when we get back.”
