A Question for Harry (35 page)

She had first tried to kiss him again, to renew his unexpected passion
, but Aylesbury would have nothing of it. From there things had gone from bad to worse. Instead of walking away and managing to retain even a shred of her dignity, she had clung to him, confessing her love again, begging him – begging him! – to love her back. He couldn’t possibly love her, he had scoffed. But he had kissed her, she protested! Had kissed her like a woman …

“
He pushed me away, said it was nothing. That it was just a kiss, like a hundred before. Of course even then I could not leave the matter alone. I argued that it was not. That it was so special and that I loved him so dearly.” Her face flamed at the mortifying confession.

“Oh, Fiona.”

“His words became even more brutal then. He said that I was nothing more than a child, far too young for him. Far too spoiled,” Fiona told Ilona quietly, turning Harry’s ring around her ring with her thumbnail. Harry had said that his marchioness would be a woman of polish and sophistication, not a child in the nursery, a spoiled little girl who knew nothing of the love of a person, just love of a novelty. A child who needed to grow up. How could he possibly love a child like that? Fiona swallowed hard as the old pain welled up in her once more.

“Oh dear.” Ilona patted her hand consolingly
. “That must have hurt.”

Fiona agreed with
only an abrupt nod. It had been devastating and should have sent her to her knees but oddly enough, even after having her heart trod upon so cruelly, it had only served to anger her. Her Scots temper had exploded.

There was nothing he regretted more in his life than the cold-hearted bastard he had become that night
. He’d been drunk but not drunk enough. Desperate to escape temptation but even all that could not excuse his reprehensible words. It would serve him right if Fiona could never forgive him. If she could never bring herself to love him again.

“That was about it,” Aylesbury said
. “She slapped me – quite hard, I might add. She’s got a hell of an arm on her – and then I walked away with her cursing me as I went.”

“…slapped him with all I was worth, instead.”

“Oh, my goodness,” Ilona gaped. “You hit him? And what did he do?”

“Nothing
.” A chuckle of disbelief escaped Fiona as she brushed away the tears on her cheeks, tears she hadn’t even known were falling. “He bowed like the consummate gentleman he is and walked away. Naturally, I could not manage a ladylike and contained response even after he had laid me so low. Instead I ran after him and yelled at him that he had had his one and only chance with me and that one day he would be sorry.”

“Oh, my goodness, Fiona!” she repeated. “You always did have such panache!”

“You deserve a fair beating for being such a callous bastard.”

“I do,” Aylesbury said just as agreeably.

Glenrothes did not act on what might be taken as Aylesbury’s permission to be used as a punching bag. Instead, he was silent for a long moment before he asked, “Were you lying? When you said that it meant nothing to you””

“Only to myself,” Aylesbury admitted
. “Looking back I wish I had handled it all very differently.”

“How differently?” Glenrothes asked with a menacingly raised brow.

“Nothing untoward, I promise you. I was lucid enough by that point to keep my head.”

Examining his nails for a mom
ent, Aylesbury considered his next words carefully. “I was a fool, Glenrothes, but the truth of the matter is that I was quite taken with Fiona almost from the moment we met. She was everything that the ladies of the ton were not. Honest, open. Natural. It was admittedly intriguing. It was everything I could do to remind myself of her position, her age … including reminding her of it as well. Again and again as if that might make it all simply go away.”

Everything he said to her that night was meant to drive her away
. Each word worse than the one before when they proved ineffective. He had needed to make her hate him and it had worked all too well. “I deserve some kudos, really, all things considered. I kept my distance, Glenrothes. I stayed away.”

“I appreciate that
. That single fact probably saved your life.”

“Harry left Edinburgh a few days later and I hadn’t seen him since until that night at the ball. All that time I hated him for breaking my heart so cruelly. It is still the one thing I have not forgiven him for, but lately, I have begun to see it all from his side,” Fiona admitted staring down at his ring.

“His side?”

“Aylesbury is an honorable man; I should have known he would never seduce me or allow himself to be seduced. Still, I threw myself at his head and he did everything that he could to let me down gently. Before that night, at any rate. I suppose in the end, I deserved him having to be so blunt about it all. He has said that I am tenacious to a fault. I suppose I actually provoked all his slights by not backing off graciously. He must have been truly desperate to go on as he did.”

It was incredible looking back now, that she could see it all so differently. 
With a sigh of regret, Fiona lifted haunted eyes to her friend and sister. “Oh Ilona! Is it possible? Did I leave him no choice?”

Aylesbury laughed at Glenrothes’ softly spoken words. “It would have been worth it, I think. Fiona was …
is
temptation personified. Yes, I fought it. Fought her. Fought myself. I was incredibly attracted to her. She lived so passionately, taking the world on her own terms. Her effervescence was contagious. And despite her tomboyish ways, lingering on the fringes of womanhood as she was, she was lovely, feminine. Fiery. I wanted her badly… Perhaps I should not have admitted so much to you.”

Glenrothes shifted uncomfortably
. “Perhaps not.”

“But I did,” Aylesbury repeated anyway
and released a sigh. “It is nice to finally admit that. I know as her brother you don’t want to hear that but as a man who loves a woman as you do the countess, I’m certain you can understand. Looking back, I wish I had acknowledged – if only to myself – that I loved her even then.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“She was just a girl.”

“She was eighteen,” Glenrothes pointed out
. “An age when many women wed. If it weren’t acceptable, they wouldn’t be thrown out into Society at that age.”

“
As I’ve told Fiona, having a sister just her age meant acknowledging Fiona as a woman grown, which would have meant extending the same courtesy to Piper. But that isn’t the whole of it. There was my friendship with you, your brothers. Also over the years, I had thought myself in love many a time. It never lasted,” Aylesbury admitted, unable to comprehend that he was confessing so much, and to Glenrothes no less. “I suppose on some level, I had no desire to lead Fiona on, only to break her heart when I came to my senses, as I was sure I would. She deserved happiness. A happiness I was sure she would find without me.”

Ilona clasped Fiona to her for a long hug
. “So what now?”

Fiona
held out her hand to show her sister-in-law the ring. “Now he says he loves me and wants to marry me.”

“It’s lovely,” Ilona
said, fingering the diamond before squeezing Fiona’s hand. “You said yes?”

Fiona shook her head
. “Not yet.”

“
No?”  Her sister-in-law blinked in surprise.  “Why ever not?  Haven’t you forgiven him? Truly, in your heart?”

Being able to talk about everything that had happened between them had been incredibly cathartic, purging her of the
last of the hurt and humiliation in a way that her bitter vexation had never been able to manage. She felt free at last. “Yes.”