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

He didn’t sound like it would be a pleasure, but at this stage, Brock would take what he could get. "Also could you arrange for someone to return to round up the rest of the horses?"

"Of course."

Brock bowed to Selina and sent her a smile meant to bolster her courage. "Such bad luck that our short trip together ended in grief, Mrs. Martin."

She didn’t look up at him. Brock burned to tell her that everything would be fine, that he would make it so. He burned to claim her as his, and consign Cecil to the devil. He burned to take her in his arms and kiss her, until she looked like the brave, vital woman he knew she was at heart, and not this crushed, frightened waif.

But all this burning did him no ounce of good. While they had an audience, he had to do his best to preserve appearances, despite every man here knowing just why Mrs. Martin had shared a carriage with the scandalous Earl of Bruard. Hell, the horses probably knew.

Derwent offered his arm again. "Mrs. Martin, may I assist you inside?"

Selina cast a nervous glance into the shadowy interior. "I think Erskine should go first."

"Erskine, I’ll help you," Brock said, before Derwent could protest.

"Thank ye, my lord. I’m gey sorry I’m causing all this palaver."

"I’m sorry you’ve been injured in my service," Brock said.

Maneuvering a man with a splinted arm into the confined space took more effort and time than either Erskine or Derwent appreciated. Cecil made his displeasure felt when the coachman settled beside him, but Brock was determined that Selina wasn’t going to sit next to her betrothed. At least if she sat beside Derwent, she’d have some protection. How Brock loathed that he had to let her go without him, although he’d do his best to catch up before they reached the inn.

Derwent took his seat opposite Cecil and Erskine. Brock caught Selina’s arm and spoke under his breath, as she stepped up into the coach. "My darling, I’m hellish sorry…"

"Not now," she muttered and pulled away to find her place. Brock didn’t miss the fulminating glare Cecil leveled on her, but he hoped Derwent’s presence – and perhaps Erskine’s, too – would preserve the niceties as far as the Blue Wagon.

"Shut the damned door," Cecil snarled. "It’s bloody freezing."

His heart heavy with guilt, regret and foreboding, Brock slammed the door and stepped back. As the short, cold day closed in toward night, Plaistow set the horses moving.

***

Selina clasped shaking hands in her lap and told herself she wouldn’t cry. She fixed her gaze on the bleak view out the window, although she didn’t see anything of the landscape. Instead, she struggled to come to terms with the mammoth scale of the disaster that had befallen her.

Brock had done his best to place an innocent gloss on her presence, but not even a babe in arms would believe his flimsy story. Nausea churned in her belly when she imagined what might happen now that Cecil had discovered her infidelity.

Not just Cecil. There were other witnesses, apart from a fiancé who, if he had any sense, might see some advantage in smothering the scandal. After a week with the Derwents, she was under no illusion how far the delicious morsel of gossip about prim Mrs. Martin spreading her legs for that libertine Lord Bruard would travel. A morsel made even more delicious, now it included the spicy addition of the lady’s betrothed catching her in the seducer’s company.

She wanted to sink into the ground and disappear. Shame and fear placed an iron band around her chest, a band that tightened with every second and threatened to cut off her breathing. After the accident, she was sore and stiff, but her physical discomfort didn’t come near to matching the rank wretchedness seething in her belly.

Black spots clouded her vision. She realized she was on the verge of fainting – which would lacerate her pride worse than crying. A sharp pain from her lungs reminded her to suck in some air. Her sight cleared, but that offered no relief. Devastation lay in every direction, and she wanted to die of humiliation.

>

Since Gerald was born, she’d done her best to be a good mother. She’d protected him as far as she could from the effects of his father’s excesses. She’d offered him secure and steady love. She’d tried to teach him right from wrong.

Now the almighty scandal about to break over her head would make her son think that his mother was a round-heeled slut. It didn’t matter that when Brock touched her, she felt purer than she’d ever felt in her life. She was just another empty-headed strumpet who had succumbed to Lord Bruard’s fatal charm. That her stupidity had cost her a marriage to one of the richest men in England provided even greater fodder for tattle. From Land’s End to John o’Groats, people would snicker and point their fingers and click their tongues in delighted disapproval.

Selina’s fingers clenched in her skirts until the knuckles shone white. She didn’t know how she could bear the anguish to come.

Even worse, she’d lose her son. Without Cecil, she had no money to support Gerald. Even if she did, his trustees would insist on removing him from her dangerous influence. His grandmother would take him and subject him to the same suffocating treatment that had turned Roderick into a wastrel.

My darling boy, I’m so very sorry.

Selina couldn’t imagine he’d understand. He was too young. And once he left her, the talk would convince him that his mother was a whore. He’d grow up to hate her.

God forgive her, how on earth could she have done this terrible thing?

A cry of distress rose in her throat. Struggling to maintain a dignified silence, she fisted her hands even tighter in her skirts.