Page 47 of Pride: The Rogue
She flattened those beautiful lips he wanted to kiss, suck, and eat up. “He is a gentleman.”
There it was. He chuckled; this time, he forced out a jeering, cynical, expression of mirth.
The lady’s eyes flashed fury and fire. “You find that, amusing?”
He cut off his fake laughter. “I find it amusing you became so indignant and denied being set up with a nob, when you are in fact, marrying a gentleman.”
“I didn’t become indignant atthat, you great big lummox.” She tossed her hands up. “I was annoyed you were continuing to make assumptions, the last one being that my brother-in-law is somehow behind my impending marital state when, in fact, it is no one, not my sisters, brother-in-law, or even God himself, behind my decision, Lachlan.” She pounded a fist against her chest. “Mine. Either way, what business is it of yours?” Livian’s breath came fast; her chest rose and fell hard.
Was it security? Was it the desire for respectability she seemed to believe herself without because the origins of her birth?
“Why do you careanyway?”
“Why don’t you caremore?” he flung back.
She shrank in her seat.
For all the pain that glowed in Livian’s wide-open, mournful eyes he may as well have struck her across the face.
The lady’s wounded response lasted but a fleeting moment. “How presumptuous you are, Mr. Latimer.” An impressive frost glazed her blue eyes, and she speared him with a deservedly hard, distasteful glare.
Bloody hell.
Latimer scraped a hand through his hair. Since when had he become a fucking bully?
For that matter, what was it about this woman—a blasted stranger—that stirred this riot of emotions inside him?
Chapter 8
Why didn’t she care more?
Livian wanted to throw her head back and rail and rage at the insolent man before her.
How dare he?
How dare he presume he knew a bloody thing about her, when he didn’t. They were nothing more than strangers.
Why, then, did his ill-opinion and judgement hurt so blasted much? Why should she even care at all what he thought about her?
Feeding her fury and drowning out the confusion swirling in her breast, she opened her mouth to deliver Lachlan Latimer the set-down of his life.
He grunted. “My apologies.”
Her indignant rage faltered.
For a second time, he’d owned his mistake and volunteered an apology.
She contemplated him.
What a…peculiar man. In Livian’s experience, all the men she’d known—Malcom, Giles, Bram, Fowler, peers at house parties, peers at balls—they’d all been too proud. Why, in her brother-in-law Malcom’s case, pride had nearly driven him from Verity.
Lachlan frowned. “What?”
She shook her head.
“You’ve got a strange look on me.”
And he sounded so very much like a disgruntled lad, she found herself smiling.
