Page 40 of Her Magnificent Mistake
Bull’s sister?
Marcia reeled back. It couldn’t be—it couldn’t bethat. “Because…” She shook her head. “Because I was your best friend’s sister?”
“Littlesister, Marcia.Fook!” He turned away, clearly unwilling to even look at her. “Ye were just out of the schoolroom when I met ye, and I did my best to resist ye, but…”
“I thought we had something real,” she whispered, her heart somehow breaking all over again.
“Och, it was real.” She barely heard his mutter over the rushing burn at their side. “Too real. I loved ye. I still do.”
Love.He still loved her?
“Well, I neverstoppedloving you, Maxwell Hawthorne,” she shot back, hating that she was admitting this. “You were important to me!”
His eyes squeezed shut. “I should no’ have hurt ye. I should no’ have disrespected my best friend that way.”
This wasridiculous. Marcia struggled to form coherent thoughts. “Let me get this straight. You fell in love with me, but felt guilty, because my brother was your best friend? Or was my father’s position more important?” She threw out, almost mockingly. “What if Bull was not my brother? If we had met some other way? Would you have…”
Kept me?
The unspoken words hung between them, but Hawk seemed to understand. He had always understood.
His eyes opened, and he faced her as he took a deep breath, shoulders expanding. “I would have married ye, Marcia. Iwantedto marry ye, after what I did to ye.”
“WhatIdid toyou,” she corrected, irritation burning in her lungs. “Our lust went in both directions, Hawk. Do not take my agency from me.”
“I’m sorry?—”
“Butabout the wrong thing.” Exasperated, she tossed her hands into the air. “Hawk, you idiot, Bull loves you! I love you! Our family loves you. Bull would have beendelightedto call you a brother!”
Blowing out a breath, Hawk scrubbed his hand down his face and turned away. “Nay, he would no’,” he muttered dully.
“Hawk.” This time her voice was full of exasperation. “My older brother is my best friend. Bull trusts me to make choices and decisions. He would have known you were my choice for a future, and been delighted by it.” She threw up her hands in frustration again. “And for God’s sakes, it is almost the twentieth century! I use my brain towork! Just because I am the daughter of a duke does not mean I cannot marry a forester?—”
“Bull kenned I wanted to marry ye,” he admitted softly, not looking at Marcia.
Marcia’s jaw snapped shut.
What?
What?
He took a deep breath and turned away. Perhaps it was easier not to look at her? He began to climb the carved stone steps.
“Hawk!” she demanded.
“I didnae tell him what we shared, Marcia,” he admitted quietly. So quietly she had to scramble after him, determined to hear this. “But I…told him I’d found someone special.”
“And?” she blurted when he paused.
Hawk steadied himself against the cliff face, tipping his head upward, as if he could see the cottage. As if he could see into the past.
“Yer brother laughed,” he whispered. “Asked how I was going to keep a wife happy on a forester’s income. I was good enough to be his best friend, but no’ good enough to be yer husband.”
That…No. Marcia shook her head, gathered her skirts, and climbed after Hawk.No. She could imagine Bull saying something like that, perhaps teasing, perhaps in seriousness, but not abouther.
He would know she wasn’t a spoiled Society gel who needed to be coddled. “Hawk. Did you use my name when you told him you had found someone special?”
Hawk had reached the top of the steps, and although she could tell he wanted to storm off, he turned and offered her a hand, his whole body taught with tension.
