Page 67 of Her Beautiful Bastard
Lydia stiffened, her hand tightening around his. She glanced up at him, but Sinclair smiled at her and nodded.
“It’s all right,” he murmured. “I will see you in a moment.”
Lydia nodded, though she still seemed uncertain about leaving them alone. Eventually, she dropped his hand, reluctantly edging past Michael. Sinclair fought back a smirk at the warning glare she gave her brother before disappearing inside.
Tearing his gaze away from the sight of those enticing hips of hers swaying beneath those damned breeches, he glanced up at the man towering over him.
Extending a hand, he cleared his throat. “Sinclair Clayton. Lydia has told me quite a lot about you. She speaks of no one as highly as she does you.”
Michael accepted his hand and shook it with an iron grip. “Michael Darling. Lydia tells us good things about you, as well. While she is beyond the age of needing a guardian, my father entrusted me to see to her happiness and well-being. So, I am certain you understand that I wish to have a word with you before anything else occurs between you and my sister.”
He inclined his head at the man, looking past the gruff exterior and finding curiosity and concern in the depths of his eyes. This, he could understand. This, he could handle.
“Naturally,” he replied. “I would expect nothing less.”
“My study is right this way,” Michael said, motioning for Sinclair to follow him.
He took stock of what little of the house he could see on the way to the study, finding it not so different from Buckton, though it was several times larger. The Darlings were a wealthy family, though lacking a title. Lydia had told him it had been Amelia’s massive dowry which had saved Oakmoor from ruin five years ago when a series of unfortunate events had left them in dire straits. Things seemed to be on the mend now, the lands he’d passed through on his way in flourishing, the tenants’ cottages a testament to the generosity of their landowner.
Once the two men were alone, Michael gestured toward two armchairs near the fire while crossing to the sideboard himself. “Drink?”
“Whisky, if you have it,” Sinclair replied.
“Lydia’s favorite,” Michael said while filling two tumblers with the drink.
Sinclair grinned, remembering the first time he’d watched her take a sip of whisky and his shock over her enjoyment of the drink.
“Yes, I know.”
Michael eyed him curiously, as if wanting to ask how he knew that. Instead, he offered Sinclair the tumbler, and the two sat facing one another.
The large man barely fit into his chair, resting his tumbler on one knee and slouching a bit. Sinclair crossed one leg over the other, his ankle rested on his thigh, and took a sip of the drink. It was a fine whisky, as good as the stuff he kept at Buckton.
“Lydia has told us a bit about how the two of you met,” Michael began. “As well as the events that led to her becoming a governess in your home. Needless to say, we were quite concerned at the notion of Lydia becoming involved with a married man.”
They were cutting right to the chase, then. Good. Sinclair appreciated that the man did not seem to want to dance around the issue at hand.
“The circumstances were not ideal,” he replied. “But there are a great number of things you may not be aware of. Such as the fact that my marriage was no real marriage at all. Or that I never coerced Lydia into doing anything against her will, nor did I ever use my position as her employer to gain favors from her. Anything that happened between us occurred for one simple reason. We love each other. No matter how hard we fought not to give in to our feelings, some things just cannot be helped.”
Michael studied him in silence for a long moment before speaking, taking a few sips of whisky while seeming to try to take his measure.
“I understand the intricacies of marriage as well as anyone else,” he said after a while. “Not all unions are loving ones, and many wedded couples live separate lives. My concern, Mr. Clayton—and I can attest that my mother shares this sentiment—is that your attachment to Lydia might have been born out of discontent in your marriage … that perhaps it is not Lydia you love, but the idea of her, the notion that she could offer you something Lady Clayton could not.”
Sinclair stiffened, his teeth clenching as the other man’s words struck him like a blow to the face. He took a deep breath and fought not to lash out, to ask the man where he had been while Lydia had been living the life of a lonely, spinster governess, removed from her family. But, he needed this man to like him, to accept his union with Lydia. As well, he understood that Michael’s concerns were valid only because he did not know Sinclair, did not understand the depth of his affection for Lydia.
“The first time I saw your sister, she was sitting in a tree,” he said.
Michael’s brow wrinkled, but his lips twitched as if he found that amusing. “A tree?”
“A tree,” Sinclair confirmed. “I saw her and wondered what a lovely young woman, obviously one of good breeding, could be doing in such a position. I made it my business to find out, and what I discovered quite knocked me off my feet. I learned that Lydia is unlike any woman I have ever known. Then, when I found her again, I was shown just how true that is. I might not know her as well as you do, but I do know that she loves to walk and run outdoors, that she loves to ride. I know that she can hit a spoon dangling from a bit of twine with a rifle at twenty yards. I know that ham and eggs are her favorite breakfast and that she enjoys lemon in her tea. I know that she loves her family more than anything in the world, and her worse fear all these years has been disappointing you or making you worry. I know that she has shown my son so much love and affection that my heart aches when I see them together. I know that she loves whisky and hates sherry, that she prefers breeches to gowns, and that she is tone deaf.”
Michael chuckled, the smile that split his lips transforming his face at once into an almost boyish visage. It reminded him of the girlish charm in Lydia’s grin.
“Perhaps the worst singer in all of England and an even worse pianoforte player.”
Sinclair smiled at that, but went on, needing this man to understand him. “I spent ten years married to a woman who spurned me at every turn, who made me feel as if I were alone in my own home every hour of every day. A woman who cuckolded me, and attempted to emasculate me at every turn. I have had my fair share of opportunities to conduct affairs, have come across many women who were willing to give me everything Drucilla denied me. I never professed love for any of them. I never longed for any of them. I never cared for any of them. So, you see, that is how I know that this is real. Because, it is not the idea of Lydia that I love … it is the woman who is Lydia that I love. I have promised her a future, and I intend to uphold that promise with or without your blessing. I would rather have it, as I know how close Lydia is with her family, you especially. I would never want to destroy what you have, or force her to choose between us.”
Michael was silent again, taking his measure, the tumbler in his hand moving in a slow circle as he worried it with his hand. After what felt like an eternity, Lydia’s brother finally softened, his expression melting away into something more approachable, the lines between his eyebrows disappearing.
