The Highlander's Forbidden Mistress (The Lairds Most Likely 7)

"Then she was a fool," Selina said sharply.

Because while this complicated man might have his faults, however good he’d been to her, he was eminently lovable. Too much so for her peace of mind.

"Gerald is

lucky."

She frowned, not following the connection. "I wouldn’t say so. His father gave no thought to his future, and it’s never lucky to lose a parent so young, however feckless that parent might be."

"But he has you." Brock turned his attention back to the fire, she suspected for his pride’s sake. He must know how much this conversation revealed.

"Well, of course."

"Once you pledge your loyalty, you never falter."

Pity flooded her. Because it sounded like his mother had never put her child ahead of her entertainment. "I try to stand by my word."

"And you’d do anything for your son."

"Yes." Although guilt added a rancid taste to the avowal. This affair threatened Gerald’s future, and she couldn’t pretend that she was here for anything other than selfish gratification.

Selina studied the man who had lured her into sin and for once, her hunger for the pleasure he gave her wasn’t paramount. Instead she felt a need to comfort him that was so overwhelming, it was agonizing. Because right now, the man who brooded into the fire wasn’t the emperor of all he surveyed. He wasn’t heartless and invincible and beyond the reach of human frailty. Brock turned out to be vulnerable in a way she’d never imagined possible at the Derwents’ house, when she’d observed the handsome rake, the cynosure of all eyes. Eyes brazenly covetous or envious or disapproving. Eyes that she realized saw nothing of the real man.

"I’m so sorry that you didn’t know a mother’s love. That’s a wound nothing can heal." She held out her hand. "Now stop looming over me and come here."

After giving her one of those sweet smiles that always threatened to break her heart, he crossed to fold himself down on the floor at her feet. "I never talk about this."

He leaned against her knee, warm and solid and somehow more real after sharing those reluctant revelations. She ran her fingers through his untidy black hair in an attempt to soothe his unhappiness. "Thank you for telling me."

"I don’t know why the hell I did. My maudlin tale hardly promotes me in your mind as your irresistible demon lover."

Keeping up the gentle stroking, she smiled. She recalled likening him to a big, predatory cat. Right now, she wanted to make him purr, although it was just as possible that he’d hiss and claw, especially if he discovered the deep well of compassion he’d opened inside her. He wouldn’t appreciate her pity. She had her own pride. She understood his.

"You can go back to being my demon lover tomorrow," she murmured and was pleased to hear him respond with a huff of grudging amusement. "So Bruard holds too many unhappy memories for you."

He sighed and rested against her a little more heavily. "Aye. Which is mad because Mamma spent as little time there as she could, until she was too ill to manage in London any longer."

When she’d crawled back to the one place that wouldn’t deny her shelter, Selina thought with a flash of spite. She assumed the late Countess of Bruard had been unhappy – that was the most sympathetic view she could take of someone who neglected her child so shamefully. Unless she’d just been cold and self-centered and careless about the damage she left behind. Whatever the reasons for her behavior, Selina couldn’t forgive the woman.

"How did your father react?"

Another grunt of amusement. Grimmer this time. "Not well, as you’d expect. But he was a bloodless, upright, self-righteous sod. If he hadn’t tried to keep my mother on such a short leash, I wonder if she’d have gone quite so far to the bad. On the other hand, she bedded any fellow who took her fancy and flaunted her infidelities in Papa’s face. No man can countenance that."

Selina’s hand stopped stroking him, as she struggled to comprehend the horrors of Brock’s childhood. "And you were caught in the middle. How horrid. I’m surprised your father didn’t do his best to turn you into a copy of himself. He must have wanted to counter your mother’s pernicious influence over you."

"Aye, he did. But I’m enough like her to rebel at the whip and the spur."

She already knew that. Brock was a man who would respond to the lure of a reward, but bullying would only drive him to greater excesses. She came to understand how the wicked Lord Bruard, who had so much good in him, had become a byword for vice.

He went on in a hard voice. "Literally the whip. When every other effort failed, he tried to beat virtue into me."

"Oh, Brock," she said, trailing her hand down and gripping his shoulder. She tried to share her strength, when it was too late by twenty years to save that confused, wretched child. "I think I hate your parents."

"I think I do, too. I certainly hated my father. My mother was wayward, but at least she was alive. Papa was nothing but a dry, preachy stick, with no trace of generosity."

"How could you help loving her? If she was as beautiful as you are, she must have seemed like someone from a fairy story. Especially to a lonely boy growing up without a morsel of kindness or understanding."

"It wasn’t all bad. The clansfolk were good to me, and I had companions on some of the surrounding estates. My cousin Fergus is the Laird of Achnasheen. Like me, he inherited young. I always enjoyed seeing him. I would have seen more of him, if my guardians hadn’t sent me south to Eton when I was eleven."