Page 107 of Pride: The Rogue
Gasps filled the room.
Blinking slowly, Livian came careening back to the present and the late reminder she and Lachlan were not alone.
Oh, God.
Dazed, she looked up and down the thirty-foot-long breakfast table.
Each of the Duchess of Argyll’s distinguished guests stared at Livian with rabid horror and sick delight. Livian, however, had grown accustomed to those looksyearsago. They didn’t matter.
Livian swung her gaze back to the one man who did, the only man who’d held—and would ever hold—her heart.
She recoiled.
Stiff and expressionless, Lachlan possessed the same air of coldness and tension as the rest of the guests.
What is happening?
The duchess called out. “Miss Lovelace?” There was a question, as well as a warning, within the woman’s frosty, imperious voice.
Livian looked to her hostess—the same woman who’d been so gracious as to host this entire affair for Livian’s benefit—and took in glaring details that in Livian’s earlier shock failed to escape her.
Seated at the head of the table, two men flanked the Duchess of Argyll’s sides. One older, one younger, but each man, with the scars upon their skin, and menacing, midnight black garments, possessed an aura of power.
Livian could care less about the sneering fellow on the duchess’ left.
No, Livian stared with a sick fascination at the exquisite, worldly duchess’ gloved hand upon Lachlan’s naked fingers. The older woman’s touch bespoke both intimacy and a proprietary claim she exerted over a larger-than-life Lachlan.
Livian went motionless.
Then, the duchess smiled. “I trust you are tired, my dear,” the woman was saying.
Livian couldn’t make out the excuses Her Grace now made to explain Livian’s graceless entrance.
A wave of horror kept battering at Livian, and it was only a moment before that violent tide sucked her all the way under.
Oh, God.
Livian’s chest constricted.
Her skin went clammy the way it had when she’d contracted pleurisy, and breathing proved an even greater chore now than it had then when her lungs nearly failed her.
Livian stared, transfixed by the sight of Lachlan’s arm held covetously by that elegant, all-powerful woman.
Her stomach revolted.
As if staring in on someone else’s horrific life, Livian backed away slowly.
It was too much.
I’m going to throw up.
Before Livian mortified herself further by casting up the contents of her stomach, she somehow managed to walk out.
She walked stiffly and briskly and with no real intent.
Tears pricked her lashes and, Livian, to keep the occasional footman from seeing those drops, fixed her gaze dead-on at nothing in particular. That way, she didn’t have to relive in her mind, the memory of some other woman intimately touching Lachlan—suggestively, proudly, possessively.
Livian quickened her stride. Her breath came hard as she set off furiously down the corridor.
