by Julia London
He’d made himself look at the young buck that was Bain. “We’ll discuss Argyll when I return,” he’d said, and swept past the lot of them, out onto the portico, then jogging down the steps to the drive, where one of the grooms had his mount waiting for him.
He’d reached the ruins in no time at all, riding as if he were being chased by English soldiers, and once there, he’d begun to fret. What if she didn’t come? What if her regard for him had changed with the light of the sun and the influence of her uncle, who had clearly suspected what had happened between them? What if she was sent home to the Highlands? Was he to resume his singular life? Pretend nothing had happened? Forget that he’d had the most astounding escapade of his life? Ignore the tumult of his thoughts, the near desperation to experience the intimacy again?
But then he’d heard the scrape of a boot and his name, softly said, and he’d turned, and there she was, her smile as luminous as ever, her eyes full of affection, and he’d sailed away with the fantasy of her. He’d caught her up, kissed her until she laughingly begged him for mercy.
He’d taken a blanket from a saddlebag, had laid it in the middle of the ruin beneath the yew tree and had brought out the food.
Catriona exclaimed with delight. “You’ve made a picnic!”
“I have tried,” he sheepishly admitted. “There’s no wine, unfortunately—I was afraid to ask Aubin for it.”
She laughed. They sat side by side, munching on cheese, nuts and figs. “How are you?” he asked. “Are you well?”
“I am verra well. And you?”
“As well as I’ve ever been,” he said. He touched her hand. “Have you had any second thoughts, Catriona?”
She looked at him with surprise. “No! Why, have you?”
“None, never,” he said quickly, grabbing up her hand. “I’ve had only inappropriate thoughts,” he said, and kissed her temple.
She laughed. “How is Eula?”
“Much improved,” he said. “The lass wants out of her bed, she does, but the doctor has cautioned against it. She’s read the book you brought her and complains there is nothing to occupy her and wishes very much to talk to you.”
“May I call, then?” Catriona asked. “Perhaps with Miss Wilke-Smythe?”
Hamlin thought of the young Englishwoman, and the close attention she paid to him.
“You donna care for Chasity?”
“I would rather you come alone, aye? I want to be with you, Catriona.”
She smiled ruefully. “We both know that’s impossible. If I call on Miss Guinne alone, it will only spark more speculation than there has already been given that I was stranded in your house overnight.”
“Aye, of course, you are right.” He squeezed her hand affectionately. He would well imagine Nichol Bain’s apoplexy if she were to come alone.
“But how will I see you, then?” she asked. “Am I wrong to want it? Do I ask too much?”
“No, no,” he said, and with a sigh, he cupped her face. “I’ll think of something, I will. Be patient with me, lass. It’s no’ particularly easy for a man in my position to...” He hesitated. What did he intend to say? That it wasn’t easy for him to take a lover? Was that what she was to him—a lover? It felt more than that. It felt large and unformed, but important, and he didn’t really want to know the truth at present. He wanted only to experience it. He wanted only to be with her, delight in her presence. Make her smile, or laugh. Kiss her. Touch her...
“To be seen with a woman like me?” she asked, finishing his thought.
“I didna mean that,” he said, shaking his head, but that wasn’t entirely true. He could hear Bain’s warnings if he was to suddenly and openly keep company with Miss Mackenzie of Balhaire. “I meant that it’s no’ easy for me to be away from you,” he amended, and kissed her.
But Catriona pushed him backward and stared at him seriously. And then she came to her feet and took a few steps away from him.
Hamlin leapt to his feet and followed her. “What have I said?”
“Nothing. You’ve said nothing. But there is no need for you to, is there? I know the truth, Hamlin. I am no’ naïve.”
“What truth?”
“I do no’ regret a moment with you, aye? No’ one. But I know I am a disadvantage to your cause, and you are a disadvantage to my reputation. We are... We are the worst possible people for one another. We are.”
What she said so bluntly was unfortunately true. She turned toward him, waiting for his response. Perhaps waiting for him to deny it. Or to offer her more than he could.
“Will you say nothing now?” she demanded.
“What would you have me say?” he asked her plaintively. “Would you have me deny it? Pretend that all is well?”
Her shoulders slumped. “No. But I hoped—”
“Catriona, heed me.” He took a step toward her. “This,” he said, gesturing between them, “is precarious at the moment. My chance for the seat in the House of Lords is precarious. I must be above reproach, do you see?”
“What of the rumors of your wife?” she challenged him.
“Especially given the rumors,” he said evenly. His conscience was shouting at him from the bottom of a deep well that he had to end this with Catriona, for all the reasons he just said, but the warning was drowned in his selfishness. He wanted her to remain in this affair they’d started for his own gratification. It was a deplorable reason.
“What is it?” she asked, peering at him closely.
Hamlin glanced up. “This is detrimental to you,” he said, biting out the words. “I know it is, and yet I canna bring myself to say the words that, by any measure of moral decency, I ought to say.”
“What words?”
“That we should end this here and now,” he said. “That I have brought you low and that you deserve far better, Catriona. And yet, I canna say those words to you, no’ earnestly, for my esteem for you runs wide and deep and appears to be much stronger than my conscience, aye?”
She stared at him as if trying to understand him. She kept him in agony as she silently studied him, and he assumed that she would take his warning, would put an end to their short affair. He would have the memory of the best night of his life, and he would have to console himself with that.
But Catriona didn’t say that. She sighed with exasperation, put her hands to her hips. “I’m well acquainted with the necessity of appearances, that I am,” she said, and sounded as if she were a returning soldier from the front of the war on appearances. “But have you no’ guessed that I donna care what is said of me, Hamlin?”
His heart gave a tiny little leap of joy that quickly disappeared into a swell of guilt. “But you must care—”
“Why? I donna care. I told you, I’m three and thirty. There is verra little anyone can say of me now, is there? My family will no’ turn me out. Highland society will no’ turn their backs. My prospects for marriage were dashed long ago and buried when I took up Zelda’s cause. What more can be said of me? You are the one who must be concerned.”
He tried to make sense of what she said, to find his moral footing in it.
“What are we to do now?” she whispered. “I want to see you, Hamlin, I do. I want to be with you. Is there no way for us, then? I donna care if we must hide.”
In that moment, Hamlin didn’t care about his seat in the House of Lords, or his isolation from society, or anything but her. He took her face in his hands. “We’ll find a way, aye? We’ll meet here for a time. The weather is good, the ruins remote—I rarely see anyone ride so far into the hills as this.”
“Here?” she said, looking around her.
Hamlin put his arms around her shoulders and pulled her into his embrace. He kissed her neck and her ear as he moved his hand up over her ribs, to her breast. “Here,” he said.
“Aye, I am beginning to see the appeal of here,�
�� she murmured beneath his lips.
Their concerns about what was happening between them, and where, and how it might continue, was forgotten for the remainder of the afternoon.
* * *
THEY MET AT the ruins four times that week alone—enough that the residents of Dungotty were beginning to question Catriona’s riding, she told him one afternoon. They were lying on a blanket under the boughs of the yew tree that had grown in the middle of the ruins. He had his back propped against the tree and was stroking her hair, which he’d freed to hang loose over her shoulders.
Clouds were sliding in from the west, turning the light around them to gray. Rain was coming, which meant the ruins would be unavailable to them.
“Chasity is quite cross with me,” Catriona said as she idly played with the hem of his shirt. “She’s no’ a thing to occupy her but the countess, and they’ve quarreled about the silliest things. Vasily is wild with curiosity about where I ride, and threatens to follow me.”
Hamlin looked at her with alarm.
“Donna worry,” she said airily. “The poor man canna catch me on horseback. He is adept at preening on the back of a horse as he saunters along. But no’ riding.” She laughed at her own jest.
“I donna like that they question you,” he said with all seriousness. He didn’t like any suspicion swirling around her.
“They’re bored. They’ve nothing to occupy them most days. In fact, Mrs. Templeton is returning to England on the morrow.”
“Oh?” Hamlin asked idly, and caressed her bare shoulder.
“She said her daughter had sent word she was needed. But in truth, I think her hope of snaring my uncle as her next husband has been unsuccessful. She is admitting defeat. Nevertheless, we’re to all dine together this evening to wish her well.”
Hamlin smiled and kissed the top of her head.
“What of you?” she asked, and twisted about in his arms to see his face. “What has Stuart to say of your many absences?”
“Stuart is a consummate professional,” he said. “It is my secretary that is displeased. He has all but accused me of ignoring my duties.”
Catriona gasped. “He didna!”
Hamlin laughed. “Aye, he’s right, Catriona,” he said, and brushed away a strand of hair that draped over her eye. “But I’ll no’ give these afternoons away, no’ for him or anyone else. Next to Eula, they are the one bright spot of my existence.”
She laughed. “Next to Eula, mine, too.”
They spent their hours in the summer sun learning each other, physically, emotionally, spiritually. Hamlin so enjoyed Catriona—she challenged him, she made him laugh. She was truly a bright light, a woman with the gift of lively conversation and ideas. Of course, he loved kissing her, making love to her, even in the crude circumstances of the ruins. But it wasn’t the physical aspect that drew him to her. It was simply her.
She was, he believed, the companion of his heart.
She asked about his plans for the House of Lords and listened raptly. She engaged him in discourse about government and theology, music and art, travel and solitude. They played silly little games that made them both laugh like children.
Who would have thought that a man of his stature, with the privileges he’d experienced in his life, with his title and wealth and holdings, would spend the most glorious week of his nearly forty years with a Highland woman in the middle of old ruins?
And yet, he wouldn’t have changed a moment of it. Not a single moment.
Hamlin didn’t know it, but he would come to understand far too late that he’d allowed himself to exist in the realm of fantasy up on that hill in the middle of that ruin.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
A MESSAGE CAME from Blackthorn on Saturday that Miss Eula Guinne was much improved and desired to thank Miss Mackenzie for her book in person. If Miss Mackenzie were so inclined, it would be Miss Guinne’s pleasure to receive her and her friends Monday afternoon for tea.
“What friends?” Chasity asked eagerly. “Does the letter name them?”
“No,” Catriona said. “I suppose you, aye?”
“Yes!” Chasity said with glee.
“And what of me?” Countess Orlov asked. “Am I not also your friend?”
“Aye, you are,” Catriona said, although she did not sense any genuine affection from the countess as she did from Chasity.
“Mamma, you must be included, as well,” Chasity suggested.
Diah, Catriona did not want the entire Dungotty household to attend. She glanced at Chasity’s mother, who was busy at her needlework. “Mrs. Wilke-Smythe, would you care to join us?”
“Well,” she said, and put down her sewing, “I suppose I ought to if Chasity desires to go. Her father would not care for her to go alone.”
“She’d no’ be alone,” Catriona pointed out.
“I mean, in the company of a proper chaperone,” Mrs. Wilke-Smythe clarified with an air of condescension Catriona did not care for.
“I am a countess!” Lady Orlov said haughtily. “I am a perfectly suitable chaperone! Do you think that only your countrymen are capable of guarding your precious virtues?”
“I hardly think she meant offense, madam,” said Uncle Knox from the corner of the room, where he was reading.
“I most certainly did not,” Mrs. Wilke-Smythe sniffed.
“And yet, you sound as if you do mean to give offense,” Uncle Knox added, and smiled at her over the top of his spectacles.
“Ha!” cried the countess triumphantly.
“If I may, I suggest that as Chasity and Catriona are the youngest, and the most suitable for Miss Guinne’s company, that they, and they alone, accept the invitation,” Uncle Knox said. He threw up his hand before Chasity’s mother could object. “I will send one of my men along to ensure that your daughter is properly protected and is not compromised so that you might have to seek satisfaction from the duke by way of marriage.” He raised his book again. “I happen to quite like the man, if you must know. I saw him in Crieff two days past, and he inquired after us all and said he should like to have us all to dine.”
Catriona bit back a smile. Hamlin had told her about encountering Uncle Knox in the village and their conversation. What Uncle Knox hadn’t said was that he was the one to have suggested the supper. “I scarcely knew what to say,” Hamlin had said laughingly. “He extended an invitation to dine at Dungotty, but before I could utter a word, he’d gone completely round the bend and said that while it would be his great honor to have me in his home once more, there were so many restless guests at Dungotty that perhaps they might all be more comfortable at Blackthorn Hall’s superior accommodations, and he’d wait to hear from me as to a suitable date.”
Catriona had laughed with delight. “I think my uncle has grown weary of his houseguests,” she’d said.
“Shall I pen the response?” she asked her uncle now.
“Thank you, darling, but I will respond for us all,” he said, and pinned her with a look.
Uncle Knox had not said more to her about Hamlin since that afternoon in his study. But he watched her like a hawk, always knew when she rode out. She was also aware that another letter had come from her mother, and had seen one addressed to her in the tray that held the mail for Rumpel to take to the post. She could well imagine the content of those letters and cringed at the thought of returning to Balhaire.
Funny, since she’d begun her illicit affair, she didn’t like to think of Balhaire. She’d scarcely thought of the abbey at all, as her thoughts were taken up with more tenderhearted matters. But that didn’t mean she harbored any illusions. Catriona would return home, probably sooner rather than later. She worried about the abbey, worried that her charges had all they needed. Vivienne had written her again, telling her that Rhona MacFarlane had reported a trio of men had come to the abbey to have a look around. Catriona didn�
��t know who they were or why they’d come, but it pointed up to her that she was needed at home. She was needed to carry on Zelda’s work.
When she thought of Balhaire, and the abbey, and all that she must, tentacles of guilt caught hold. Her heart was rent in two—half of it lodged here, with a man who made her burst with happiness, who had given her the splendorous gift of intimacy. She felt things for him that she had never experienced. Was it enchantment, the sort Uncle Knox had described to her? Or was it love?
What if it was love? Was it the same love she had for Balhaire, for the work she and Zelda had done? If this was love, a new sort of love, did it outweigh everything else she loved?
And what about the other half of her heart, the half that was presently neglected but still very much part of her? The half that was rooted in the Highlands and with the people she loved best? Sometimes, at night, Catriona lay sleepless in her bed, her mind creeping into her restlessness and telling her it was time to go home, her heart refusing to listen. But when the sun came up, all she could think of was seeing Hamlin again, of feeling his arms around her, his lips against her skin. He was the pull of the moon on the sea of her longing, and it was impossible to resist.
She was torn between the woman she’d been until now, and the woman she was suddenly becoming. She couldn’t say which was truer to her heart.
She couldn’t say. For the first time in years, she could not, with confidence, say who she was.
* * *
ON MONDAY AFTERNOON, Chasity and Catriona arrived at Blackthorn Hall for tea and were greeted at the door by Stuart. He showed them to a sunlit room just off the gardens. The French doors had been opened to the spectacular greenery and roses blooming there, the fountain a soothing noise. Eula, with a bit of pink in her cheeks, looked the picture of health. She had a wee cough now and again but seemed returned to near perfect physical constitution. She curtsied. “Thank you for coming,” she said, as if she’d rehearsed it.
“Aye, but thank you for the invitation,” Catriona said. “May I introduce my friend Miss Chasity Wilke-Smythe.”
