Page 64 of Never Tempt a Scot
Brodie stared at the amber liquid in his glass. “I dinna rightly know. It’s the way she’s been treated by her own father. The man clearly favors his younger child over her, which makes not one bloody bit of sense. I want to show her thatIcare about her, even if he doesna care.”
“So you admit that, do you?”
Brodie didn’t look at his friend but nodded. “’Tis a bit hard not to. She’s sweet, intelligent, passionate, kind, amusing ...”
Rafe crossed his arms and frowned at the flames, still holding his own whiskey. “Well, now that our evening has been thoroughly spoiled, what are you going to do about Lady Rochester and Mr. Hunt?”
“We must put them off the scent,” Brodie said.
“That might be manageable, but you don’t know Lady Rochester. She is as clever as her children, perhaps more so. She won’t fall for any trick for long.”
“Well, unless you have any better ideas, I say we send her on a wild chase to the north while we leave Edinburgh.”
“As a plan, it has the virtue of simplicity. I’ll have Shelton send her a message tomorrow after we leave for your castle, that we arrived late and left early the next morning for the Isle of Skye. I have a friend there we can send them to. By the time they realize they were fooled, we will be far away.”
“Good. I want to be off as soon as possible.” He didn’t want to run into Jackson Hunt, but he also didn’t want to let Lydia go. At least, not yet.
Lydia rubbeda hand over her bottom and cursed Brodie Kincade with every foul bit of language she knew—which, unfortunately, wasn’t nearly enough to do justice to her feelings.
Her pride had been hurt far more than she had been physically. He had treated her like a misbehaving child, and he’d tried to make her feel to blame for resisting his commands. And on some bizarre level, she did. That made no sense whatsoever.
She should defy him at every turn, shouldn’t she? He had no right to tell her that she could not see her own father. He was the one who’d kidnapped her. Her choosing to stay with him did not change that fact. She had believed him to be an honorable man who had taken drastic action to avenge a wrong made against him. She did not agree with such measures, but on some level could understand it. Even his stubbornness in not believing her was understandable, given Portia’s talent for deception.
But now she’d learned he had known thetruthabout her and her sister, and still he would not let her go. How did he square that with his so-called honor?
Furious, Lydia paced the length of the bedchamber, scowling as she tried to figure out what to do. If Brodie returned here tonight expecting to bed her, he would be sorely disappointed. For the first time in her life, she wanted to behave as Portia would. She wanted to scream and throw expensive breakable things into the nearest wall.
Yet she checked that destructive urge. This was Lord Lennox’s house, who was blameless in all this. She wouldn’t damage his home, especially when he had no idea his brother and brother-in-law were using it for such nefarious purposes.
Lydia paused in her pacing to look at the window opposite the bed. She approached the sash window and pushed it open. The perfumed smells of a well-tended garden came from below. She peered into the gloom, seeing through the growing darkness to the ground below.
It was a decent fall, and she could not jump without severe injury. But there was a trellis covered in ivy directly below the window. Lydia retrieved her reticule that had been packed away in her luggage, which still contained a small bit of coin from Brodie, and secured it to her wrist before she lifted her skirts and hefted a foot over the edge of the window. She found the latticework of the trellis after a moment and started to put pressure on it to see if the thin wood would bear her weight. Then when she was satisfied that it was safe, she began her descent. It wasn’t easy, because her arm was still quite sore, but she was able to favor her good arm as she climbed down.
It was slow work, but when she reached the bottom with only minor scrapes, she grinned and tilted her head back to look at the window above.
“Lock me in, eh?” she muttered to herself. “That will show you, you stubborn Scot.” She brushed dirt and leaves off her gown and then carefully tiptoed through the gardens until she met the tall wrought-iron gate that blocked her only exit. It was most likely locked. She tried the gate anyway and nearly stumbled as it swung open on rusty hinges.
That was certainly unexpected, but it was also to her advantage. She closed the gate behind her, wincing at the sound of it creaking again. But no alarm was raised, and no one came to investigate.
Lydia walked through the narrow passage between Lord Lennox’s townhouse and the one next to it until she reached the street. Streetlamps illuminated only part of the walkways. Lydia was no fool. She knew she had to be vigilant and cautious here. She watched for any passing hackneys that she might be able to hire, but after walking a quarter of a mile, she’d found none.
Suddenly, she heard a small cry for help. She looked around. The street was quite deserted. When she heard the cry again, almost certainly that of a child, she crept toward it. The cries led her down one of the small passages that Brodie had told her were called “closes” and found a small girl of about five or six in a dirty, tattered dress, her eyes wide with terror.
“Miss! Please help me!” the little girl sobbed.
Lydia grasped the girl’s hands in her own. “What’s the matter? Where is your family? Do you need help finding your home?”
The girl sniffed and shook her head. “It’s my mama! They took her!”
“Who?”
“Them ...” The girl pointed into the darkness beyond. Lydia peered into the darkest parts of the close but could not see anything.
“Where’s your father?”
“Dead.” The girl started toward the darkness, but Lydia grasped her shoulders, halting her.
“You must stay here and hide. I will find your mother.”
