Liam loved her so much it ached. “What are ye about?” He attempted to keep his voice gentle, though he’d yet to cull the fury swimming through him.
“Ye know I canna sleep in a storm,” she said with a saucy toss of her curls. “So Jani made me tea and I’m teaching him to play chess, which he’s hilariously deplorable at.”
“Is he?” Liam met Jani’s wide, dark eyes over the expanse of the library. The fire threw flecks of light into his black hair and gleamed off the cream and gold kurta he wore.
Liam had spent many a night playing chess with his valet, and Jani had long since learned to best him at it. His eyes narrowed at the boy he knew better than his own son. Another one of his sins he carried with him. A reminder of his own damnation, but one that he esteemed.
He’d thought the hatred had faded from the boy’s eyes over the years. But Jani was becoming a man. Had he just learned to hide it? It seemed unlikely, as Jani never was adept at keeping the emotion from his expressive features. Especially now, when his eyes shone brilliantly with guilt and not a small amount of anxiety.
“Is there anything you require, Laird?” Jani asked.
Suddenly Liam very much didn’t like the idea of his valet and his daughter being alone in the night together. “Where is Miss Lockhart?” He squinted around the room, wishing the shadows would cease their shifting dance. It made his Scotch-soaked head swim.
He’d thought if he found anyone here, it would be his prim governess. She came to this room often. Liam had spied her more than once, poring over titles and mumbling to the books as though they were old friends.
“Well, you sound intriguing,” she’d observe as she scanned the pages. “But perhaps I’m not in the mood for something so loquacious. What about you?” She’d select another title. “A mystery might be in order.” Liam watched her, unobserved, as she fastidiously returned every book to its proper place, lining the spines just so. She never read in the library, favoring the conservatory that looked out over the hill leading down to the sea.
A creature of the sunlight was Miss Lockhart. The very memory of her voice calmed and inflamed him at the same time.
“Miss Lockhart took Andrew up to bed right after you left,” Jani informed him.
“Aye,” Rhianna confirmed. “He said he wasna feeling well, which solves a mystery because they disappeared twice today and I couldna find them. They were likely down in the kitchens going through the apothecary cabinet.”
Liam nodded, speared with a pang of guilt that he’d been too preoccupied to notice that his son may have been ill. “I’ll go look in on him,” he muttered, his notice snagging on the intimate coziness of the room. The crackling fire, the soft light, the fragrant spices.
The glow in Jani’s eyes when he looked at Rhianna.
“I trust that ye’ll not be up late,” he said carefully. “I’ll send Miss Lockhart down to keep ye company.”
To make certain they weren’t alone together for too long.
“We can stop now, if you would rather,” Jani said alertly.
“No!” Rhianna protested. “Ye only want to stop because ye’re losing. Miss Lockhart says ye’ll never learn unless ye see it to the end. Now sit back down and take yer medicine like a man.”
Jani remained standing, his eyes locked on Liam’s as he awaited his orders. As always deferential. Faithful. Suspicion melted into a gruff sort of affection and Liam cleared his throat, cursing the fact that drink always brought the emotion that constantly roiled within him bubbling to the surface and threatening to overflow.
“Take it easy on him, nighean.” Liam summoned a smile for his daughter.
“Ha! Never!” She pointed to Jani’s vacated seat. “I’m going to wallop ye, see if I don’t.”
Liam turned away, thinking morosely that no one had ever regarded him with the patient tenderness the evening fire illuminated on Jani’s sharp, young features when he looked at Rhianna.
Concern for Andrew propelled him up the grand staircase and to the west wing of the castle where his family slept. Where his governess resided. His stride faltered when he passed her closed door. Candlelight slanted over the dark hall from beneath it, and Liam found himself wondering, not for the first time, what she did in the privacy of her own chamber. He would picture her there, letting her hair down and brushing it with long, thoughtful strokes. Or perhaps she’d be in the bath, soaping her creamy skin, her shoulders, her breasts, her white thighs.
And higher. Running her fingers through soft auburn curls, shades darker than her hair and slipping into the folds of—
Liam growled as a twinge of lust seized the muscles beneath his belt and drove blood south until he clenched his teeth against the swelling beneath his kilt.
Now was not the time for that. In fact, it would never be time for that. Not when it came to her.
Andrew’s suite was three doors past the governess’s, and Liam knocked first, in case the boy was still awake. When no response was issued from inside, he swung the door open.
“Andrew?” His voice echoed in the quiet darkness. Venturing forward, he made a quick perusal of the disheveled sheets of his son’s vacant bed.
A deep intake of breath followed the paroxysm of an illogical suspicion. Liam tried to push it away, but it embedded in his skull like the sharp end of a pick, driven with such force he winced.
Since that day in the distillery yard, when the Scotch barrel … escaped, Andrew and his lovely governess had been thick as thieves. They thought Liam didn’t notice their surreptitious glances. The warmth and pleasure that touched Mena’s pretty mouth when she smiled and winked at his son had, on more than one occasion, licked him with troubling and unreasonable notions.