Kresley Cole - [MacCarrick Brothers 02] by If You Desire Page A

you’ll be following him.” Hugh skewered his brother with a look. “Much is in your hands, and you canna afford to get distracted. The sooner you kill Grey, the sooner this marriage is annulled.”
    “Then doona get settled in,” Ethan said with a chilling smile. “And best take care with the marks on your face. You doona want them to scar.”
    “Go to hell,” Hugh bit out, opening the door.
    Ethan cursed under his breath, then said, “Wait a minute.” He strode off, returning with the Leabhar , and offered it to Hugh. “Take it. It will remind you as nothing else can.”
    Hugh accepted the weighty book. “And what about you? What if you need it?”
    Ethan’s face was perfectly cold. “I’ve no heart to be tempted, remember?”
    Hugh narrowed his eyes. “What did you do to the girl last night?”
    He smirked, reaching up to rest his hand on top of the door. “Nothing she dinna want me to.”
    “Quin said she’d been afraid.”
    Ethan’s brows drew together. “No. I dinna scare her.” He touched his scar for the second time—something he never did. Either he’d never wanted to remember the injury, or had never wanted to draw attention to the mark. But this morning, he’d been mindful of it for the first time in years. “Goddamn it, I bloody had a mask on.”
    Hugh didn’t think this was a good time to point out that his bearing and demeanor were as disturbing as his face. “Do you know who she is?”
    “Was going by Quin’s today to find out,” Ethan drawled, “but now I find my calendar filled. Did you find out her name from Jane?”
    Hugh saw an eagerness in his brother’s eyes that gave him pause. Though Hugh didn’t have the full details, he knew that Geoffrey Van Rowen was somehow responsible for Ethan’s scar. Hugh also knew that the injury to Ethan’s face had been deliberately delivered in a manner that ensured it would never heal seamlessly.
    In turn, Ethan’s revenge had been protracted and ruthless—and not particularly discerning between those in the Van Rowen family who deserved it, and those who didn’t.
    Hadn’t he done enough to them?
    Perhaps Ethan would lose interest in her over the coming days. “I know she’s a friend of Jane’s, so doona hurt that lass, Ethan, or you’ll answer to me.” He stuffed the Leabhar into his bag.
    Ethan’s cold expression turned menacing. “You think you can stop me if I feel like amusing myself? Go to hell, Hugh. You’re smug about this subject, too,” Ethan said. “But if you get Jane killed, you’ll find you have a lot in common with me. Brother, you’ll end up just like me .”
    Hugh cast him a disgusted look before turning away. As Ethan shut the door behind him, Hugh thought he heard him mutter, “ Just doona end up like me…. ”

Twelve
    T hough well over an hour had passed by the time Hugh returned to the Weylands’, their muffled argument was still going strong in the study, so he sank down into a chair outside the room. He let his aching head fall back against the wall while he anxiously brushed his fingers over the small case in his jacket pocket.
    Everything in Ridergate’s whisper-quiet shop had appeared breakable to a man of Hugh’s size, and he’d wanted to pull at his collar the entire time he was there. But when Hugh had found just the ring for her, he hadn’t hesitated to spend a small fortune on it. What else was he going to spend his money on, if not her?
    He’d known what to buy her because, that last summer, she’d told him exactly what she dreamed of receiving from her future bridegroom: “A gold ring with emeralds and an enormous diamond in the middle. It should be so heavy, I’ll be forever knocking it into things, breaking shopkeepers’ counters and accidentally unmanning pedestrians.”
    They’d been floating in a rowboat, her head in his lap as he played with her silky hair, fascinated as he lifted it to the sunlight, but he’d frozen at her words, tensing with anxiety. As a second son,