Page 35 of Pride: The Rogue
He scoffed.
The garrulous chit wrinkled her nose. “No, it was far bigger,” she said, glancing about, and then swiveling in her chair, she sized up the hearth. “It was nearly two times the length of this one.”
Fuck! How had he failed to see it the whole while the lady was as innocent as the day, she’d entered the world. It’d been there the whole time.
The whole, bloody, time.
Maybe, you simply wanted to fuck her so bad, you let yourself ignore details you didn’t want to see,the devil in his mind jeered. Well, when it came to this effervescent beauty, he had his head about him now. Latimer wasdonethinking with his cock.
“And where are your bloody servants?” he clipped out, ending whatever it was she’d been saying about her journey to The St. George’s Inn.
She cocked her head. “In their rooms.”
“Their rooms?” he echoed, knowing he sounded like a bloody lackwit.
“The stables were entirely too cold. As such, I had a room made available for my driver, which the boys will have known to share with Mr. Dryver, as I advised—”
“You—” At his raised voice, she shot her blonde eyebrows up.
His temper rising, he managed to lower his tone. “You gave your room to servants?” he managed to calmly ask.
“Well, they already had it, Lachlan.” She wrinkled her nose. “It wasn’t minetotake.”
With that bombshell, he drew back in his seat.
Here, he’d stood over her bed and made all manner of accusations, calling her a self-centered, unfeeling, pompous lady. Only to learn that after he’d thrown her out to join some imagined husband, she’d come down to an empty tap room to sit alone… Until what? The nextbloody morning?
Latimer spoke with a calm he didn’t feel. “And what if some cad came down and you sat here?”
An image slipped in, of some drunken bastard finding Livian here, of that faceless, nameless, shite, snatching her to her feet, bending her over the table.
“What if, the same way, I entered your rooms, and ripped the covers off you—” It was too much.
He inhaled sharp breaths through his nose.
Livian rested soft, gentle, fingers upon his larger, life-hardened hand.
He stared, fixed, on the top of hers.
“Lachlan?” Livian asked softly. “Are you all right?”
How bloody trusting she was. She’d place her palm atop the hands of a scarred stranger who’d invaded her rooms and who, before this point, spoke crudely to her.
“AmIall right?”
She wasn’t his business. She wasn’t his problem period; the only business, and the absolute only thing he cared about was revenge against his partners and the empire he’d build.
Armed with that reminder, he spoke bluntly. “What if you had found yourself confronted as you were with me, Miss Lovelace?” Despite his best efforts, he couldn’t get out all the horrifying possibilities, even if it would have scared her to her senses.
“Given you proved a gentleman and we’re now sitting here conversing?” Livian smiled. “I believe I would be all right.”
Her eyes sparkled.
Hell, he’d never known eyescouldsparkle and certainly he’d never known they could be this pure.
Fuck.
Chapter 6
