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Sian reddened all the way to her toes. How could Christopher ask her such a direct question while he was holding her? And how could she answer?

I like everything about you. Your hair, your mouth, your eyes, your arms, of course, but even the parts I’m sure no one has noticed before, you included.

The bones on your wrists, the three little blond hairs between your collarbones, the scar under your right ear, the vein running down the side of your neck, the shape of your nails. Everything.

She could not say any of that. So she decided to focus on what she liked about his personality instead. It was far safer. “I like that you listen to me and never balk at my questions or comments.”

He never made her feel like an oddity. In fact, he usually asked for more. To prove it, he smiled. “That’s because your questions and comments are the most stimulating I’ve ever heard. You constantly outdo yourself. I dread the day you won’t have anything odd or shocking left to tell me.”

Sian knew a challenge when she saw one, and she was only too happy to rise to it. Straightening her spine, she delivered what she knew would be a blow. “I was abducted once.”

The satisfaction she felt at seeing his eyes bug out of his head was ample reward for her efforts. It wasn’t hard to guess Christopher Harrison was not a man easily shocked, but she had managed to do just that. What had he said? That she constantly outdid herself? It seemed he hadn’t been lying.

“Ab— Who dared?” His left hand actually went to the hilt of his sword, while his right arm tightened its hold around her.

“An enemy of my father, a Welshman called Gruffydd ap Hywel. He blackmailed my mother into handing him over to a group of rebels by abducting me. I was seven at the time, and my father had just arrived in Wales.”

“Dear God.”

Sian stared at Christopher in amazement. His reaction was far stronger than she had imagined it would be. She had only wanted to play along with his game, tease him, but he seemed horrified and ready to skewer the man.

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” she couldn’t help but soothe.

“He never hurt me. I didn’t even realize I had been abducted at the time.

He took me to his house and left me in his niece’s care for the night, leaving my mother to imagine the worst. It was only years later she told me what had actually happened. ”

“That is no excuse. The bastard should be throttled for what he did.” He sounded as if he would be only too glad to do the honors.

“He’s dead now,” she said in a low voice, regretting having raised the subject. “My parents never told me exactly what happened, but I know he went into hiding after Uncle Matthew rescued my father from his clutches. A couple of years later, he was found and … punished.”

“Good. I hope they made him suffer.”

My … He sounded so fierce that Sian actually recoiled. Here was a side of the charming, carefree rogue she had never seen before. Her resolve to marry him only strengthened. With a husband like that, she would be well protected.

“I’m sorry I upset you. I should never have talked about this.”

“Ah, Little Lamb, you are too?—”

“Stop calling me that,” she snapped, extracting herself from his too-dangerous embrace.

It wasn’t the first or even the second time he’d called her that, and suddenly, she couldn’t bear it.

It made her sound meek and helpless when, in his presence, she felt strong and determined.

Christopher was the last person she wanted to consider her a harmless little creature.

“Why should I stop?”

“Because that’s not what I am!”

A brow arched over his mischievous blue eye. Did he have any idea what it did to her when he did that? Probably. And he loved unsettling her, that much she knew by now.

“You mean you’ve been lying all this time?” he asked, his tone provocative. “You aren’t truly Welsh? What is that language I have heard you use with Jane then?”

Oh, the infuriating man! He knew very well that the Welsh was not the part she objected to. She did not bother answering, not wanting to give him the satisfaction. “How would you like it if I called you a small English … goat?” she finished, seizing on the first word that crossed her mind.

How had she thought for a moment that Christopher would feel contrite? He gave her such a devastating smile that her insides started to sizzle.

“I would tell you that I am English and that, while I just might look like a goat in a certain light, there is nothing small about me.”

Oh.

She had better put an end to this conversation before it turned into an utter disaster. Christopher would never relent. To ward off any ill-advised impulses to throw herself into his arms, she asked what she had always wanted to know.

“Why were you so nasty to my sister growing up?”

He stilled. The change of topic had thrown him.

“Never have I met anyone like you. You constantly surprise me.”

It could have been a way to avoid giving her the answer she wanted, but she knew he had paid her a heartfelt compliment.

She did not allow the pleasure of knowing that her unpredictability delighted him to distract her, however.

The question had not been merely a way of steering the conversation away from dangerous paths; she genuinely wanted to know, needed to know, why he had behaved so appallingly toward Jane.

By now, she’d seen he was not just a monstrous rogue, so there had to be an explanation, and she dearly wanted to hear what he had to say.

“Would you mind answering the question?”

Stalling, Christopher ran a hand through his hair. It was longer than it had been the year before, she noticed. Was he too lazy to see it cut, or did he think it suited him better that way? If that were the case, she could only agree. He looked more handsome than ever.

“I guess I was jealous,” he finally said. “And it pleased me to see that I could not easily rile her. She was tougher than most people I knew, and it made me twice as determined to try and twice as delighted when I did manage to upset her.”

Sian had not expected such an honest answer. “Jealous? How?”

He shrugged. “It was hard not to be envious. She was so obviously her father’s sweetheart, whereas mine cared nothing about me.

He had sent me to my grandfather as a boy because he could not muster the will to raise me.

I didn’t want much, I don’t think. I didn’t go as far as expecting him to love me, but I would have liked him to show some interest in me and my achievements—keep me with him in Kent at the very least. But he never cared, never wrote, and barely visited.

When he died four years ago, he did not think it necessary to send me a last message. ”

Sian was appalled. “How is that possible?”

Raised by Connor Hunter, a man who, despite not being her real father, had given her all the love and support a child needed, she could not imagine being ignored by one’s real parent.

“He never loved my mother, so I imagine it was enough for him to know he had his all-important heir. There was no need to actually live with me. My existence meant he had fulfilled his duty to his family. He did not have any interest in knowing me, caring only that there would be another Lord Ashton after him. I grew up with no children my age and a cold old man for sole company. And every time I went out of Throckmorton Castle, desperate to escape the gloom, I saw Jane running in the fields with her beloved twin sister, Jane sat astride her father’s big stallion and him looking on with pride, Jane laughing at something he’d said, Jane, Jane, Jane.

I took my revenge on her, and, sad as it is, it did make me feel better—for a little while at least—to know that for once, all was not perfect in her life.

” Christopher looked at her from under his lashes, looking as shamefaced as she imagined he could look. “She told you about it, I suppose?”

“Yes.” There was no point denying it.

“Did she suffer much?” Her hesitation was too long for him not to understand what her answer would be. “So she did.” He nodded. “I’m sorry. I see now it was pathetic, but you asked.”

“I did.” A silence. “I think I had better go.”

Her absence would have been noticed at the noon meal, and the longer she stayed away, the more difficult it would be to make anyone believe she had simply forgotten the time. Uncomfortable questions would be asked.

“Thank you for coming,” Christopher told her as she led Angel to a fallen log that could act as a mounting block.

“’Tis nothing. And I promise we will find a way to prove Elsie is lying about the babe.”

He simply nodded. A moment later, she was galloping back to Sheridan Manor.

With her discussion with Christopher preying on her mind, Sian found it hard to fall asleep.

She had wanted to hear his reasons for tormenting Jane, but his answer had horrified her.

Because now she knew he was the one to be pitied.

Her sister had been harassed, admittedly, but each time he had mocked her, she had gone back to her family and forgotten all about the cruel boy’s taunts, safe in the knowledge that she was loved.

Whereas he had gone back to an empty home, a dead mother, an absent father, and an indifferent grandfather.

Was it any wonder he’d become the man he was after growing up in such a home?

Even his womanizing was not the proof of a debauched nature but that he was lonely and desperate to be seen and appreciated.

When she married him, he would be seen and appreciated—nay, loved. Perhaps with such an assurance, she might manage to lure him in. Yes. If she made him understand that once she was his wife he would never again feel ignored, she could?—

“What’s the matter?” Jane’s voice sliced through the silence of the night. Damnation, she had thought her asleep.

“What do you mean?”