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“You’re…you’re being kind.”
“No, mo chridhe, I’m feeling genuinely sorry for that idiot Ronald, even if I want to knock his block off.”
She blinked back tears. Stupid that Lyle’s praise moved her so powerfully. She fought to keep her voice steady. “I could never match what Ronald wanted.”
“And in the end, your soul rebelled, as it had to. You couldn’t sign up to living a lie for the rest of your days.”
“No.”
Lyle rose and placed his hands on her arms. Immediate strength flowed into her, and she stood straighter. “I’m glad that Ronald was such a clod.”
“Are you?” she said doubtfully.
“Aye. Imagine if I’d met you, and you were already married to a dunderhead who didn’t deserve you.”
She struggled to remember why it was a bad idea to fling herself against Lord Lyle’s broad chest and rest from her troubles. “And you think that you do?”
His tender smile made her wayward heart cramp with yearning. He looked tired and concerned, and unforgettably handsome. Why, oh, why did he have to be so beautiful? “I’ll do my best.”
“I swore then that I’d never let another man make me less than I was.”
His smile didn’t waver. “Very commendable, lassie.”
That wasn’t what she’d expected him to say. After all, her vow clashed with his matrimonial plans. “So that’s why I won’t marry.”
Lyle sighed. “It’s a wee bit unfair to tar all men with Ronald’s brush. A connoisseur appreciates a woman who’s an individual. Devil take it, anything else is a damned dull choice.”
“Ronald thought he wanted me, too, until he realized he faced a lifetime of people describing his wife as an original. And he didn’t want an original, he wanted a biddable little angel.”
His hands tightened on her arms. “Do you think I’d do that?”
“I didn’t think Ronald would.”
He hissed with impatience. “You were little more than a child. You know the world and your heart better now.”
She stared into his face, shadowy in the dim light. She’d come to recognize his ability to find joy in the everyday. She’d seen him retain his good humor through a sea of Hampshire mud. He was clever and perceptive about people. He was kind and capable of patience. Despite her determination to loathe the man her father had so summarily chosen for her, she’d learned to respect the Earl of Lyle. More, she liked him better than she could ever remember liking anyone else.
“How can I be sure that’s true? I knew Ronald all my life, and I was convinced I wanted to marry him.”
“And what do you think when you see him now?”
A reluctant laugh escaped. “That jilting Ronald was the smartest thing I ever did.” Poor Ronald, he’d become a self-satisfied bore, with his well-behaved wife and his perfect children.
“He acts as if he’s fifty instead of twenty-seven, and he’s already losing his hair.”
“My father had a full head of hair until the day he died,” Lyle said, with one of those appealing twitches of his lips.
Charlotte studied him, a mixture of fear and desire warring inside her. She wanted to believe that Lyle was a good man, someone she could trust, but she’d learned in a hard school that self-reliance was the safest route.
Fear won out. Just.
“Well, that seals it, then,” she said, shying away from the building intimacy. “We…we should go and check the sheep in the east paddock.”
He didn’t let her go. “Call me Ewan before we go.”
“I don’t see—” She faltered into awkward silence. Absurd that saying his Christian name seemed more of a concession than last night’s kisses.
“Please,” he said softly, no trace of a smile in his blue eyes.
