Page 125 of Outrageous

It seemed she was not destined to get far, however, as Mel appeared to be hovering near the grand staircase, with Lord Ramsay’s twin sons standing on either side of her like matching bookends. Matching gorgeous bookends. Good God! Could they be only seventeen?

Her sister, perhaps a year older than the young men, was looking exceedingly pretty and flushed.

Well, this was interesting.

“Oh, Dru said you were talking to Papa,” Mel said.

“Hallo, Eva,” the twin not wearing spectacles—Lucien—said, his confident smirk telling her that he was already aware of his effect on the opposite sex.

“Lucien.” She turned to his twin, an almost mirror image but for his glasses and less-than-impeccable clothing. “Richard, good to see you both.”

“Eva,” Richard said with a slight nod.

“We couldn’t miss seeing you get leg-shackled, could we, Rich?”

Lucien’s silent brother merely regarded Eva thoughtfully through his ridiculously thick lenses.

Eva knew Lucien had been infatuated with her two summers earlier, because he’d followed her around like a faithful puppy, eventually asking her if she’d wait until he was older to marry him.

Richard had not suffered a similar infatuation. Indeed, Eva had always found Richard’s aloof, level gaze a bit off-putting and far too mature for his years. As much as Lucien liked to believe he was a polished Corinthian, he still smacked of callow youth.

And Richard? Well, Eva wasn’t sure what he smacked of. Although he was slenderer and less eye-catching—for lack of a better word—than his more gregarious brother, he possessed a quiet appeal that was all his own.

“Did you need me for something?” Eva asked her sister, ignoring Lucien’s amused smirk and Richard’s cool regard.

Mel visibly wrenched her eyes from Lucien’s tall, blond, godlike figure. “Er, need something?”

Eva was stunned; how could her sister lurch from one infatuation with a pretty face to another in a span of hours? Was that all it took for Mel to fall in love?

Besides, for her money, Richard, with his dark-horse ways, was the far more attractive brother.

Eva blinked—why was she even thinking about any of this? She snapped her fingers in front of Mel’s face to wake her from her trance.

Mel scowled. “What?”

“I’m going down to the stables and then heading over to the picnic.” She turned and headed down the stairs.

“We’ll go with you,” Lucien declared.

Eva stopped abruptly and Lucien and Mel, who were right behind her, almost piled on top of her.

Richard, she couldn’t help noticing, hadn’t followed. Instead, he was leaning against the wall, watching them all with a superior smirk.

Mel was gazing at Lucien, and Lucien was gazing at Eva.

It was preposterous! Her sister had already begun to form an attachment to a person of the male sex who could not stop looking at Eva. Was it some conscious choice that put Mel in that position?

Eva didn’t have the time or energy to think about it. “I’d rather meet you both at the lake.”

Lucien went from looking like an arrogant pink of the ton to a kicked puppy in a heartbeat, Mel looked confused, but Richard looked even more sardonic.

Eva rolled her eyes and all but sprinted toward the stables, leaving the three to get on with whatever it was they were up to.

The truth was that nothing critical awaited her, but she simply needed to be somewhere quiet to think. James had taken Clancy back to the squire’s, and Eva felt as if a weight were lifted from her now that the expensive stud was back with his owner.

The stables were blessedly quiet and Eva slumped into the old chair she had liberated from the piles of moldy furniture that were stored in the east wing of the castle.

She tipped her head back and closed her eyes, waiting for the familiar sounds and smells of the stables to soothe the chaos in her head. She was weak and exhausted just now, but she’d made the correct decision.