Page 56 of The Forsaken

“Me?” Andromena made big eyes. “Never.”

Their laughter, his deep and resonant, hers light and airy, tangled together, like an Aeolian harp, caught in a sudden, joyful breeze.

She loved his laugh—this deep, resonant one that wasn’t forced or used to seduce. The first time she heard that rumbling beside her at Aunt Catherine’s, Lord Culross had been sharing a story about one of Edgar’s first sailings: he’d allowed too much skylarking during a calm, and when the wind suddenly picked up, Edgar’s mistake sent half the crew tumbling from the rigging in a tangle of ropes. She’d been too fascinated by him, to laugh. All her male kin and their usual company took themselves too seriously to laugh at their own mistakes, let alone admit them.

Somehow, she went on to tell the story of when she, as a lass of fourteen, sneaked out for the first time.

Dressed in Oleander’s dark blue tailored tailcoat, high-collared white linen shirt, long trousers and knee breeches, she first stepped inside Kenwood House. It had been easy enough to do so with no one the wiser. Aunt Beatrix, as wild as any McQuoid, let her niece and nephew have free run of the countryside until night fell—and, depending on how many glasses of Scotch, oftentimes, after dark—with her not knowing. In their later years, she still didn’t know where her brother spent most of his days.

“Your sneaking about is something of a pattern.”

“It’s very easy to do when you are the youngest of six. Throw in six cousins who are like siblings, and you are practically invisible.”

He didn’t smile or laugh as she thought he would.

Andromena cleared her throat.

“When I sneaked inside Kenwood House, John Constable had already begun his lecture. He paused and glared at me.” She smiled in remembrance. “I was sure he saw through my disguise.” Aunt Beatrix would not have cared or said anything to her parents. But neither did Andromena care to be publicly humiliated. “But he looked up and said in a very stern way: We see nothing till we truly understand it, so I suggested you sit down, lad, or you will neither see anything nor learn anything.”

Heads swiveled and found Andromena.

They hadn’t rained down fury at a lady being in their midst.

“Sit!”

Someone had hissed, and she fell into the nearest chair.

And listened. And learned.

“That is my favorite day ever.” Or it was, until now, being in the presence of an art connoisseur. That it was Edgar, so knowledgeable, painted him in a new light. He wasn’t just the witty, charming captain who strewed broken hearts wherever he went.

This was dangerous. Very dangerous.

He lifted his head, looking as confused as Andromena herself. “You have a rare talent.”

“I d—”

“Stop,” he commanded. “You’re a clever woman. You aren’t one of those ladies who simpers and searches for compliments. You know you’re this good. You have to.”

Andromena’s gaze slipped to the sketch that had flipped her world upside down. “I…”

A low whistle resonated in the space. “My God, you don’t.”

She managed to shake her head.

Within the deeper, harsher quality of his voice dwelt undertones of his once mellifluous baritone. The same ones he’d used when her brother had made light of her at the dinner table and predicted she wouldn’t have a single suitor.

That night, Edgar leaned over and whispered in her ear: “You’ll have a legion of suitors to prove the lad wrong…”

When she lifted her starry-eyed gaze to his, he winked. “And I’ll be among them.”

It turned out in one way or another, both her brother and Edgar were wrong that day, she thought bitterly.

His study became too much for her.

“You are versed in art,” she said.

Andromena brushed the curls her maid left down, behind her ear. His gaze tracked that movement.