Dageus mumbled something that sounded almost like, if he drops his towel I’ll kill him, but Chloe decided she was imagining things.

The man skidded to a halt at the top and cast a sharp glance directly at Chloe. “Doona let him leave, lass,” he roared at her.

“Wow,” was all she could manage.

Beside her, she felt Dageus stiffen. For a moment, it seemed the hall grew markedly cooler.

“The lasses have oft said I am more handsome,” he said icily. “And a better lover.”

Chloe blinked up at him.

“So doona be ogling him. He’s married, lass.”

“I wasn’t ogling,” she protested, knowing full well she’d been ogling. “And if I was, it’s only because you didn’t warn me that you were twins.”

He gave her a dark look.

“Besides, he only had a towel on,” she justified.

“I doona care if he had naught but his skin on. ’Tisn’t polite to ogle another woman’s husband.”

Chloe caught her breath. His expression was furious and he looked . . . jealous. About her? For looking at his brother? She peered at him, hardly daring to credit it.

Abruptly, his gaze was gone again, fixed at the top of the stairs, and hers followed. She glanced from Drustan to Dageus and back again.

And she wondered how Dageus might have worried for even a moment that Drustan wouldn’t welcome him home. The expression on his brother’s face took her breath away. Love blazed in his eyes and, though she couldn’t tell from this distance, it looked as if they glistened with tears.

“Drustan,” Dageus said with a cool nod.

Drustan’s eyes dimmed and his mouth tightened.

“Drustan?” Drustan snapped. “That’s it? A mere Drustan? No ‘Good morrow, brother, ’tis sorry I am that I’ve been such an ass and no’ come home’?” His voice was rising with each word and he began stalking down the stairs.

God, they even moved the same way, Chloe marveled, like great sinuous cats, all sleek strength and smoothly sculpted muscles. Though Drustan had pulled on “trews,” he’d not bothered with a shirt and his hair was wet, dripping down his chest. The muscles in his glistening torso rippled with every movement. He must have been in the shower, she realized.

“. . . is that how you’ll greet me?” Drustan was still talking, but she’d missed part of his verbal barrage, apparently temporarily deafened by visual overload. “Get over here and greet me properly,” he thundered.

Chloe tore her gaze away from Drustan and looked at Dageus. And stared. Though he looked as remote and impassive as ever, his eyes positively burned with emotion. He was as still as one of the many standing stones they’d passed, seeming every bit as ancient and obdurate. If one didn’t notice the hands fisted at his sides. And those eyes.