Elizabeth Beacon - Regency Rogues - A Winter's Night - The Winterley Scandal / The Governess Heiress

Her sidelong glare told him he’d better not think that was an excuse for deceiving her. ‘Why did you invent him in the first place?’ she asked distantly.

‘Grandsons of dukes don’t serve in the 95th Rifles, Miss Winterley. I would have been out of place.’

‘And the scandal would follow you?’ she challenged as if he was a coward to hide behind that alias so long.

‘Yes, of course. You know as well as I do that it goes everywhere with me,’ he said bleakly.

‘Which is why you clung to Mr Carter after the war was over and he could be safely pensioned off, I suppose?’

She sounded so indifferent they might have been discussing a stranger. Colm hoped the Viscount was listening and approving of the void that now gaped between his least wanted guest and the daughter of the house. Or did he know how much of a challenge that icy façade of hers was to a red-blooded male? Colm was torn between a longing to drag her into the nearest empty room and kiss her until she forgot all about Carter and his sins and everything else and this thorn in his pride that argued he should limp back downstairs and ride away from a place where a man of his birth would never be truly welcome.

‘Not entirely. My uncle wanted me to bring his new purchases safe back from Derneley House and I could hardly go there as my true self, could I?’

‘I doubt it would have been very comfortable, considering who you really are, but Lord Derneley is hardly in a position to argue with your uncle, is he?’

It would have been damned uncomfortable to live under that particular roof as himself, Colm reflected, but he couldn’t argue with the daughter of the house when he was only supposed to have met her minutes ago. So he gritted his teeth and supposed it was another way for her to punish him for being who he was.

‘The view from here is reckoned to be one of the finest in the Borders,’ she pointed out helpfully as he paused on the half-landing to rest his knee before limping up the rest. She knew he was struggling and had given him a chance to pause even though she still looked furious with him. It seemed that Miss Winterley was an enemy in a million and how he wanted to be disarmed by her, but he didn’t think she would accept if he threw his rifle at her feet and her father might even shoot him with it.

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