Page 37 of Pride: The Rogue
“Pfft.”
Pfft?He’d say? Just…pfft?
“Pfft,what?” she snapped.
“Trust me darlin’,” he said dryly. “If I could, leave, I’d have done so—”
“The minute you learned I was Miss Lovelace and not Mrs.?”
He winked. “Exactly.”
“Oh, you can most certainly go, Lachlan,” she seethed. “Do not let my virginal self keep you here.”
Wonder of wonder, and triumph of triumph his cheeks went flush with color.
Taking advantage of his being welcomely tongue-tied, she pressed on. “In fact, a short while ago when you dragged me out of the same bed you could be sleeping in now, I observed for myself you possess the stamina to do far more with your legs.”
Lachlan choked; his face reddened, and he struggled to breathe.
She frowned.
She’d apparently somehow gone too far. But how?
When her table companion finally regained the ability to properly breathe, Livian spoke more evenly.
“You may go now, Lachlan.” Livian grabbed her book and snapped it open.
As she made to raise her volume and block him out, the smug lummox opened his mouth.
Knowingexactlywhat he was about to say, she cut him off and denied him that choice. “Be careful about instructing me anymore on not using your Christian name,” she threatened. “I have a whole host of far better monikers and names by which to call you that are a good deal more inventive, and a whole lot less respectable than Lachlan.”
Livian made a show of reading her book—as if she could actually read anything or even remember—with this powerful figure seated across from her. She did have the foresight this time, to move her eyes slowly from left to right to put on a better show than she had before when he’d studied her in the same intent way he now did.
“It’s not my legs that are the problem,” he said.
Livian forced herself to continue moving in her gaze along the page.
“You’re the problem, darlin’.”
That really was enough.
With a gasp, Livian slammed her book down on the table. “I am no problem of yours or anyone’s—”
“You see, sweetheart,” he said simply, “that’s it exactly. You’re here, alone, without even the benefit of a room. You’ve got no husband, no brother, no uncle, hell, you don’t even have a maid. You’ve got just two small lads and one incompetent servant, who didn’t have either the sense or loyalty to guard your door and keep you safe from any possible harm.”
Livian frowned. “I’ll not allow you to call the servants accompanying me into question. If you’re looking to find fault, I told Mr. Dryver—”
“I don’t care if you told Mr. Dryver, to take a high, flying leap from the cliffs of Dover.” With every word, the glint in Lachlan’s eyes darkened, turning them to a shade very nearly black. “Whatever protestations you made, whatever rest he may have needed or wanted, he had an obligation to guard you against any possible harm. He should have been willing to lay down his life for you,” he said quietly.
While he spoke, Livian found herself drawn deeper and deeper under some sort of spell, he cast with his every low, sonorous utterance.
Her eyes slid shut. This…concern for her well-being and his worry about her safety revealed Lachlan Latimer to be a man who would guard with his life whatever woman he took as his bride.
And Livian, couldn’t keep herself from envying whoever that woman would be. Or was.
“But he didn’t, Livian,” he murmured, bringing her eyes open.
The way he spoke her name, not mockingly, but as if he’d claimed it for himself, compelled; it altered her heart’s rhythm.
