Page 19 of The Rogue’s Redemption

“Why were you forced to lie to her?” he asked between moves.

“’Tis complicated.” This time, she was able to block him even sooner than before.

“As it tends to be between siblings.”

Again and again they practiced the same move.

“How much do you know about my sister and Lord Covington?” Allie asked, keenly aware that it might be another test.

“I know she was betrothed to him, and that she and Graeme married after being caught in a compromising position.”

Allie laughed despite knowing she was at a disadvantage for doing so. “Most people put it more delicately than that.”

He stopped suddenly, and she did the same. “I am not most people.”

Of that, she was aware.

Allie was breathing heavily and, grateful for the break, forged ahead with her story. “When Gill left for Scotland, my father promised I would marry Covington in her stead.”

She’d managed to surprise him.

“I’d not heard that.”

She shrugged, pretending it had not mattered that her father had attempted to pledge both his daughters to an old man whose alliances along the border were questionable, his character even more so.

“Aye,” she continued. “As you are likely aware, he was killed. And so the wedding never took place.”

“And the conversation you referenced?”

“My sister came to Lyndwood desperate to save me from the match. I was forced to lie to her. I told her I had a plan to get out of the marriage.”

It took him a moment to understand.

“But you had no such plan?”

“Nay. Only a desire for the happiness of the one person who loved me above all. Which she’d not have had if she had gone back to Scotland knowing I was to be wed to Covington.”

“You’d have sacrificed yourself for her.”

Her answer was swift. “Always.”

Reid looked at her with a combination of curiosity and reverence, a look that made her want to take back her words.

“The bond between siblings . . . it is a gift, is it not?”

It wasn’t his words that surprised her, but Reid’s soft tone. It suited him.

“Very much,” she said, thinking of the many times her sister had loved and protected her. “You would have done the same,” she surmised, knowing it was true. This man would lay down his life for his sister and brothers.

“I would,” was all he said, but his lack of any further explanation did not matter. What did matter was that she suddenly saw him. When Allie told him of her desire to see Gillian happy, she saw Reid Kerr for the first time. It was a fleeting glimpse. A brief flash of vulnerability—there and then gone. His mask was already firmly in place.

But that vulnerability had been there.

She’d seen it, and now she knew there was more to him than he allowed others to see.

7

Reid had taken advantage of the bath that had been offered to each visitor. The water had grown cold quickly, and though he was accustomed to chilly water from bathing at home in the frigid stream that ran from north to south at Brockburg, he was anxious to make his way to the hall.