Page 62 of The Iron Earl

“And if it does?”

“Then it wasn’t much of an apology.”

She nodded, her eyes dipping down to his chest.

She didn’t believe him.

{ Chapter 14 }

For all that he’d given her no reason to distrust him, he was beginning to realize how very long it would be before his wife managed to trust his words. She was still waiting for the explosion, for her world to shatter.

Her hand lifted, her fingers settling on the crook of skin showing above his lawn shirt. “I did not know I could speak and it would actually matter.”

His fingers curled along the side of her face, his thumb slipping under her chin to lift her eyes to him. “Your words always matter to me, Eva. You need never curb your tongue with me.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled.

Another thing she couldn’t quite believe.

He slid his hands down under her backside and lifted her off the footboard. Her legs wrapped around him, he carried her around the foot of the bed. Setting his knees on the bed, he laid her down beneath him on the sapphire hued damask coverlet. Her legs slipped from around his waist and her auburn hair spread onto the silk, shiny in the light of the fire. No longer matted with droplets of Rupe’s stew. At some point today a bath must have been brought up to her.

He liked her in his bed. Her naked body still flush from sex. The white of her skin a beacon of softness against the dark colors of his room. So inviting, he tugged off his shirt and trousers and then rolled over to lie down next to her. He shifted her head to nuzzle on the crook of his shoulder.

He liked this even more—her bare skin draped over him. Every heartbeat he could feel pumping through her body. The scent of lavender wafting up at him.

She traced lazy circles on his chest. “What did you mean when you said you lost your center, Lachlan?”

“My center?” He sighed and moved his free arm to tuck under his head as he stared at the matching silk damask canopy above. “My brother, Jacob—he was always centered. He always knew exactly what his goals were with the estate—with life. What he needed to do to achieve them. He charged forth without doubt in everything he did. He was never angry, always just moving forth.”

“He sounds exactly like what the eldest brother would be.”

“He was. He took care of Sloane and me after our parents died. And he was heir to the Vinehill title and lands and he knew it his whole life. It was what drove him every day. This land. These people.”

“Yet now it will be yours.”

“Exactly. And my life had been free from all of this. The army gave me freedom that Jacob could never have. Whereas he was never angry, I have always been quick to it. The army gave me an outlet—a way to control my anger. But now everything is in disarray.”

“How?”

“I’m not him, yet I’ve inherited everything Jacob stood for. So I strive for that—his center—but I lose it. Lose it sometimes in the anger. Like I did earlier. I never should have approached you in that state.”

Her fingers stilled on his chest and she angled her head to look at his face. “Why were you so angry—the trial is a farce?”

His look met her gold-green eyes and instead of the anger at the trial surging through his veins and taking over, his heartbeat slowed. “It is. The man on trial for murdering my brother, Robert E. Lipinstein, is about to be set free.”

“What? How could that be?” She jerked upright, sitting and spinning to him.

“The overseer of the clearings that are taking place on Swallowford lands is coming to testify tomorrow that the murderous bastard is not part of his crew.”

The absence of her body long against his vexed him and he reached up to tug her into place against him once more. She resisted, her eyes still wide with injustice. “How is that possible? He was there, you saw him.”

“The man’s defense is that he’s a smuggler and he had nothing to do with the fire. He was just in the wrong place and time.”

“Why would a smuggler have been there?”

“He claims he had stored over-proof gin in the barns of Torrie’s family, and once he heard word the family was to be evicted, he came to move the barrels. According to the defense, it was happenstance that he arrived there just when the brutes who came to evict them did.”

Lachlan’s hand tugging her downward finally succeeded, and she sank down next to him, settling her head along his shoulder once more.