Highlander Undone by Connie Brockway

convulsively. He’d been as frightened as she. She looked around at him.
    He was pale, so pale as to appear white, and his eyes glittered fiercely as he stared at her. Silently, with trembling fingers, he reached up and touched her cheek. Then, his breathing rough, he gently tucked a strand of hair behind her ear.
    “It’s all right,” she reassured him.
    “No, it’s not. You might have been hurt . . . killed. I couldn’t hold her. I couldn’t—I am not the man—damn!”
    Angrily, he thrust his left hand out for her inspection and condemnation. The long, artistic fingers shook uncontrollably. Impulsively, she caught them in her own. The shivers in his warm hand translated themselves into some stronger emotion in her heart.
    She laid her cheek against the back of his hand. He didn’t have to be a hero for her. He had tried. That was all that mattered.
    “My God, Addie.” His voice was a hoarse rasp.
    “It’s over. No one was hurt.”
    “If only because of you, your bravery, your strength.” There was no prick of hurt male pride in his tone, only admiration.
    Wonderingly, she studied him. She had saved them. She—timid, cowed Addie Hoodless—had met a crisis without fear.
    “You’re an exceptional woman, Addie Hoodless,” he said. “Most women would have screamed that mare into mortal flight.”
    She smiled, uncertain how to respond to his strange and heady admiration. It felt suddenly too intimate, this fragile thing between them too rare to examine now with danger so recently escaped.
    “Well,” she said, “I wasn’t about to let that handsome lace jabot of yours be soiled.”
    He stared at her, clearly confused. She slowly relinquished his hand and touched the fine lace on his chest. The casual contact sent a thrill of awareness through her.
    He followed her impish gaze to the ruffles spouting from his pristine white shirt. And then, like an actor assuming a role, a mask slipped over his features, hiding his nature behind an instant caricature. She thought she understood. He’d learned to deliberately exaggerate his affectations as a defiant answer to what would have certainly been his family’s military expectations, and now it was second nature whenever his manliness was brought into question. She only wished she could tell him that, in her experience, manliness was a coded word for brutality.
    He fussed with the jabot, plucking at the tatted edges, scowling heavily at the snowy white folds. “Thank God for your devotion to fashion, ma’am,” he drawled. “I am quite fond of this jabot.”
    “It is so special?” she asked, uncertain how to call back the man who hid behind this posturing.
    “Oh, yes. ’Tis a family keepsake, passed from son to son to son down countless generations.”
    “Really?”
    “Well . . . ” He sniffed and without ceremony withdrew his arm from around her waist. Instantly, she regretted the loss of its warm strength.
    “Well?”
    “Perhaps there was some paltry daughter who got her greedy little paws on it at some point in its history,” he said severely.
    “I see.” She chuckled and he matched her smile, apparently gratified his silliness had met with success.
    Having won her laugh, he snapped the reins sharply on the mare’s rump. They passed the rest of the ride in companionable banter, but Addie could not help feeling that something lovely, something precious, had been shunted aside and replaced with nonsense.

W e will leave for London in a f ortnight,” said Lady Merritt. She speared a piece of exquisitely prepared turbot and squinted at it. “Needs more cream. Remind me to speak to Cook.”
    In his chair across from Lady Merritt, Jack offered thanks the servants had not yet lit the tapers. The cavernous dining room, steeped in shadows, masked an annoyance that had grown with each day. Though weeks of practice under Wheatcroft’s critical tutelage had honed his thespian skills, it still took conscious effort to eradicate fifteen years of