A Deadly Scandal (Angus Brodie and Mikaela Forsythe Murder Mystery Book 9) by Carla Simpson

Author:Carla Simpson [Simpson, Carla]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Published: 2024-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Sometime later, he retrieved the satin brocade quilt that had somehow ended up on the floor and pulled it over us, then wrapped his arm around me and pulled me against him. His hand moved over mine, his fingers brushing the ring on my hand. And there in the darkness, the ‘lion’s roar’ was gone.

“I know that I hurt ye. It was never my intent.”

I felt the deep breath he took against my back.

“When I told ye that I didna want ye to be part of the case, after what Abberline did and knowin’ the man, what he was capable of,” his voice trailed off, but when I would have said something, his fingers gently closed around mine, stopping me.

“Let me say it,” he whispered, and then was quiet for several moments. Gathering his thoughts?

“Ye were like a gift in my life, something good and true, something a man like me...and what happened all those years before…”

I heard that sudden huskiness in his throat and knew he remembered that loss when he was no older than Rory.

“My worst fear…” he whispered, “was that I might lose ye. There are things I’ve done, things I can bear,” he added. “But never that.”

He spoke of Rory then. “I thought, too, of him. And Lily, as well, in that dark cell. The commitment the both of us made, to be a family. If something was to happen to ye and with me facing the hangman’s rope, what would happen to them?”

It was the first time we had spoken of it after that horrible argument, and something quite extraordinary in a man, particularly a Scot, who was not accustomed to such things.

I fell the brush of his beard against the back of my shoulder as he pressed a kiss there.

“Ye are the strongest, bravest person, man or woman, I’ve ever known. Ye have a strength inside ye that few men have. With what Abberline had already done, I couldna bear the thought that he might hurt ye...Or worse, and there would be nothing I could do to stop him.”

I turned and laid my hand against his cheek, my fingers stroking through the soft beard there.

“You should have trusted me.”

“Aye.”

We were both quiet for a long time, but neither of us slept as I thought of what he’d said.

I took a deep breath. “When I was nine years old, my father took his own life and I saw it afterward.”

He knew that much. But I had never spoken of what I felt, finding him in the stables, and all that blood.

“He was quite handsome and strong, and the center of our world after our mother’s illnesses. And then he wasn’t. He was always gone with his friends, often for days at a time.

“It was only afterward...that I heard the whispers about the women and the gambling debts that eventually took everything we had. His excesses would have put us on the street if not for our great-aunt.

“All I remembered of that time were his absences, the arguments that I didn’t understand.

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