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Chapter Two

S ian skidded to a halt and almost dropped the puppy she was holding.

Fortunately, she had become somewhat less clumsy than she’d been as a child, so the poor beast wasn’t hurt, but it had been a near miss.

In front of her was the last person she had expected to see in the bailey.

Christopher Harrison. And today, there was nothing left of the boy in him.

His body was unmistakably that of a man; the tight tunic and hose did nothing to hide the fact that he had fully developed.

His face had lost all traces of youthful roundness, and the copper-colored stallion next to him was even more enormous than the black beast he’d ridden eight years earlier.

He was a knight in all his splendor.

What was he doing here? Couldn’t he have chosen to come at a better moment, when she was wearing a more elaborate dress and carrying something other than a filthy pup in need of a bath?

Oh well, at least he was here. She had been racking her brain to find a way to contrive a meeting with her future husband since she’d arrived from Wales two days earlier. Because she was now nineteen and it was high time she started putting her plan to execution.

She released the puppy, who scuttled away as quickly as his legs could carry him. It was as if he’d known she’d been on her way to the tub of water.

“Lord Ashton,” she whispered, dropping a quick curtsy.

Having heard through Uncle Matthew that both his grandfather and father were dead, she knew she could call him by his new title.

The greeting seemed to surprise him. “I’m afraid you have the advantage over me, my lady. You seem to know me, but I have no idea who you might be.”

It was a good thing she had released the puppy because this time, she might well have dropped the animal.

How can you not know me? We’ve already met three times , she wanted to scream.

Once at Iorwerth’s christening, where we admittedly didn’t exchange a single word, and then at Christmas the next year when cousin Rhian was born, when you told me I looked rather normal for someone who lived in a house made of bones and had the wild mane of a beast.

The third time, when the family had come to Sheridan Manor to meet their third cousin, Eirlys, Christopher had told her she was rather small for her age. Since then, she had not seen him once.

Sian would have liked nothing more than the opportunity to rectify her first disastrous impression of Christopher Harrison. He could not be that scathing, insufferable man. There had to be a reason for his loathsome attitude.

Well, here it was, the long-awaited chance to make him redeem himself in her eyes.

Except … the first thing he had told her was that he had no recollection of ever having seen her. It was hardly encouraging.

But why was she even surprised? He was certainly not the first person to overlook her.

She had always been the shy sister, the one who stayed in the background while the more self- assured Jane led any conversations.

People tended to address her only when they had something specific to ask her or no better option.

It was even more the case here in England.

As soon as they were told that she was Welsh, English people tended to consider her a simpleton barely worth the effort of talking to even if they could hear that she spoke their language as well as they did.

Usually, she didn’t mind, as it suited her temperament to be hidden. But not with Christopher Harrison, the man she had thought about for years, the man she was hoping to marry one day.

“I’m Sian, Jane Hunter’s sister,” she said, knowing that the name, at least, would mean something to him. He would not have forgotten the girl he’d so dearly loved to rile once.

“You are?” The incredulity in his voice matched the disbelief in his eyes.

“Well, stepsister really. We were raised together from a young age, you see—seven or so—but we don’t have the same mother or father.

My father, Gwyn, died when I was six years old.

I hardly remember him at all. Lord Sheridan is the man I consider my real father, and Jane and my mother created a bond the moment they met.

We have two sisters now, Gwenllian and little Seren, and a brother.

My uncle Matthew always jests that Rhys must be another man’s child, as he knows for a fact that Connor Hunter is only capable of fathering girls. It is true that Jane had two?—”

Sian stopped her blabbering abruptly. Had she really been about to mention the two sisters Jane had lost before leaving England? Thankfully, she had stopped before she’d revealed such intimate and painful information to a man who could not be trusted with it.

Christopher crossed his arms over his chest in a gesture she remembered, highlighting the fact that he had indeed grown larger since they had last met.

From such close proximity, he seemed huge.

Then again, it was hardly surprising. He was a man of four and twenty, at the height of his potency.

It was becoming urgent that she did something about her intention to marry him.

It would not be long before another woman wanted him.

“So you share no blood with Jane?” he asked calmly.

“No.” Any fool could have guessed that Jane was taller, more generously endowed.

She had black hair that fell to the middle of her back in one sleek sheet and piercing green eyes, like their father.

By contrast, Sian was petite and slender, her honey-colored hair fell in a profusion of curls that refused to be tamed, and her blue eyes were too pale to ever be called piercing or anything else.

“I see.” He smiled the smile she remembered. The dangerous one. “ Now it makes sense.”

It seemed to Sian that Christopher’s blue eye twinkled while the brown one remained cold. Was that even possible? She didn’t know. But that was what she thought she’d seen.

“W-what makes sense?”

“If you do not share blood with Jane, I understand why you are so pretty.”

“Oh!” Sian recoiled in outrage. “You cannot be serious. My sister is the prettiest?—”

“She is no such thing. She might be beautiful, but she is too perfect not to stir people’s animosity and too haughty and imposing to ever be called pretty. You, on the other hand, are lovely.”

She stilled. Too busy being offended on Jane’s behalf, she had not noticed he had called her pretty before.

But he had. And now, he was calling her pretty again.

What should she make of it? Was he teasing her?

Unfortunately, experience told her it was not impossible.

Regardless, he had called her pretty. To be complimented thus when men usually ignored her was flattering, undeniably, and went some way toward soothing the disappointment of not having been recognized.

Hearing Jane being disparaged for being haughty was painful, though, because she was nothing like that.

“Yes. I am so pretty, apparently, that you’ve no recollection of having spoken to me,” she couldn’t help but mock. “Both times.”

Christopher was suitably confused by the sally. “When did we speak, pray tell?”

“Once eight years ago and a second time two years later.”

Far from being chastened, he let out a bark of a laugh. “Why, you would have been a child then. That is why I cannot recall our encounters. I am not in the habit of lusting after infants, you know.”

Lusting? He’d called her pretty, which was an acceptable compliment, but then he had said he was lusting after her, which anyone would agree was much more scandalous.

Though lust was not the emotion she’d hoped to provoke within him, she couldn’t help a surge of …

she was not sure what it was, but she knew exactly where it was located.

Between her thighs.

“I was hardly an infant,” she whispered. “I was fourteen the last time.”

“A child, then, which is much the same thing.” He shrugged. “I only ever take an interest in people I can either fight with or f?—”

Instinct had made her raise her hand before he could finish the sentence, and she was mighty glad she’d been able to stop him before he could utter the word.

He took an interest in only the men with whom he wanted to pick a fight and the women he sought to lure into his bed, and she fit in neither category.

“What are you doing here anyway?” She had to regain control of the conversation, and fast. Nothing in her somewhat sheltered life in the Welsh hills had prepared her to face a man like Christopher Harrison. “I see no reason for you to be at Sheridan Manor today of all days.”

For good measure, she looked around. Today was no one’s christening. There were no Christmas festivities to explain the presence of a guest in the castle, and she knew the members of her family didn’t hold him in much esteem. It was doubtful they would have invited him.

The smile Christopher gave her was carnality itself.

He leaned in to whisper in her ear, something that required him to lower his head by at least a foot.

“You wouldn’t see the reason for my presence here, as Elsie is currently lying on a bale of hay in the stables, recovering from my … attentions, shall we say.”

That was such a shocking thing to tell a woman that Sian stared at him for a long moment. Had she heard him right? Were the “attentions” he’d just mentioned what she thought they were? Had he just told her he’d been to the stables to?—

There was no avoiding it. Her first impression of him, formed the day he had gone out of his way to mock her sister and disparaged Welsh people, had been the correct one.

It had not been an unfortunate misunderstanding, and he had not, contrary to what she’d hoped, grown wiser in the interim.

He was a rogue, through and through, and that was all there was to it.

Her heart broke at the same time as her temper exploded.