And good luck to the lad when the time came. While he did possess the fire, he yet lacked the size to take on Rory. She only hoped Rory went easy on him.
Of course, he would. He was Rory.
He wasn’t the sort with a burning need to prove his manhood.
An irritatingly attractive quality.
Juliet resumed her place at the back wall and picked up the wind chime, letting the hollow tubes knock lightly together.Ambience.
Her eye immediately caught on Rory as he strode across the stage, wearing a…kilt.
She swallowed, her mouth gone suddenly dry.
Oh, how well the garment suited him…and his thick, muscled thighs. Even his calves showed to particular advantage through woolen socks.
She couldn’t have been the only lady to notice—or feel that the room had grown warm.
He threw out his arm at an awkward angle as he spoke his lines a little louder than necessary. He was an atrocious actor. It was objective fact. He had to know it, but it didn’t seem to bother him as he always went along with whatever japes the Windermeres planned.
She supposed she found that quality irritatingly attractive, too.
“I’m madly in love with you, Juliet.”
Oh, those words… The look in his eyes when he’d spoken them.Sincere…determined…
Those words didn’t speak to the girl who’d harbored a secret infatuation.
They spoke to the woman she was now.
The woman who was damnably angry with that damn fool man.
An entire poem… He’d had her write anentire poemfor another woman.
That fool man… those three words were the only ones her brain had been able to form this morning.
It was easier to hold on to her anger that way. Otherwise, different words would try to worm their way in—words that would want to come tothat fool man’s defense.
And she wasn’t ready for those words.
Not yet.
A throat cleared at her side. Juliet tore her gaze away from Rory to find a familiar—and somewhat unwelcome—figure at her side.
“Miss Dalhousie,” she said. Perhaps she wouldn’t notice Juliet’s lack of enthusiasm. “Aren’t you meant to be sitting in the audience?”
“I only just arrived and didn’t want to interrupt the performance,” Miss Dalhousie whispered, though there was hardly a need. The audience was growing decidedly rowdier in its appreciation of the performance. “I’ll take my seat at the intermission.”
“That’s very thoughtful of you,” said Juliet.
Miss Dalhousie…never put a foot wrong.
Juliet’s eyes might’ve rolled just a little and she found herself asking, “Don’t you ever feel the need to break the rules, Miss Dalhousie?”
Juliet’s mouth snapped shut. She didn’t have any right to ask that question.
A little smile ticked up the side of Miss Dalhousie’s mouth as she shed her travel pelisse. “Sometimes.”
Another impertinent question was falling from Juliet’s mouth, “Then why don’t you?”