Page 44 of Pride: The Rogue
“Ah.” Her eyes widened with some kind of dawning understanding.
“Ah, ‘what’?”
“You can’t bring yourself to acknowledge you were wron—”
“I was wrong. Now, if you’ll continue on, Livian.”
She started.
“What? Didn’t take me as one who can acknowledge when I’m in the wrong?”
“Actually? No.” Livian shook her head. “No, I didn’t.”
“I’m not too proud to do so…that is on the rare times when I’m, in fact, not in the right.” He winked.
His enchanting table partner laughed; the soft, exuberant, unrestrained expression of mirth devoid of artifice, and by God, if Latimer didn’t find himself joining in. As he did, Latimer felt like he was trapped outside himself, watching some other man converse with Livian Lovelace.
He’d lived the first ten or so years of his life alternately enraged, afraid, and suspicious. And the ensuing ones, confident, capable, undaunted, and content. Never once, had he allowed himself to sit and laugh with someone for the simple fact there’d not been a real reason to do so.
Not with his partners, equally hardened by their own existence to also be incapable of genuine feelings that were anything other than rage, cynicism, and at best, an ironic amusement.
The sound of Livian’s voice slashed through his unsettled thoughts.
“Very well,” she said, after they’d both regained control of their amusement. “I’ll continue, Lachlan, but only because you are a man who isn’t afraid to acknowledge when he’s in the wrong.
“My mother was hopelessly in love with my father.” Her expression darkened. “He was devoted and loving, but he was careless with his money. When our mother passed, there weren’t funds. He helped my eldest sister secure work.”
“Work?” he asked dumbly.
She nodded. “I was too young, and as such my sister alone, for a very long time, supported us.”
It was a familiar tale—bankrupt lords who made unwise investments or lost fortunes gambling and drinking. Latimer had been the greatest profiteer of that profligacy. He’dalways found the greatest satisfaction in getting rich of those respectable nobs’ recklessness, until this moment.
“Fortunately, Bertha, the nursemaid who cared for Verity and I, remained with us and watched after me when Verity was able to work. She was twelve.”
Twelve.
Here, with Livian’s speech, grace, and elegance, he’d pegged her for a lady who’d never so much as, or in any way, sullied her hands. When in truth, she couldn’t be more different than the privileged ladies of the peerage.
“And your other sister?” he asked quietly.
“Billy. She is found family. As Bertha was.”
“Bertha passed then?”
Livian’s expression grew stricken.
“Forgive me,” he murmured. He’d inadvertently hurt her with that directness.
Livian shook her head, seeming to try and find her earlier train of thought. “It is…fine.”
“And what of your brother-in-law?” Did he need killing? “I take it he’s not interested in having his wife’s kin about?”
She cocked her head. “What would make you reach that conclusion?”
“What? The fact you and your younger sister are out here on your own, without proper protection and security.”
“My eldest sister recently had a new babe,” Livian explained.
