Beatrice opened her hazel eyes. In the full light of the morning sun, Jeames was able to see that the light brown irises seemed to be shot with veins of gold and amber.
She smiled at him.
“Yes,” she said. “I’m famished. Let’s eat.”
They sat down on the green grass at the side of a little pool, which was fed by a rather pretty stream that tumbled down the side of a rocky hill. Jeames hobbled the horses and the creatures seemed quite content to amble about in the lush grass.
Far in the distant, streaked silver and gray clouds lay strewn across the eastern horizon. Above their heads however, the sky was free of even a shred or wisp of cloud. The dome of the sky stretched pale and clear above them, and a fresh breeze blew through the luscious grass.
Looking into the pool, Jeames exclaimed, “Would ye look at that!”
“What?” Beatrice asked, coming to stand close beside him.
Jeames pointed. In the depths of the pool could just be made out several dark, waving shapes.
“What are they?” Beatrice asked.
“Brown trout,” Jeames said. “They look tae be a decent size. Perfect fer ticklin’.”
“Tickling?” the equestrienne asked, incredulity coloring her words.
“Aye.”
“What do you mean tickling?” Beatrice asked.
Jeames frowned down at the woman next to him.
This is the hardest thing, standin’ here and pretendin’ that I’m nae goin’ tae miss her terribly when she’s gone, that I can ever remember doin’.
He did not let any trace of the looming, awful sadness show itself on his face, though it hung over his head like an axe.
“Ye ken what I mean, surely?” he asked, nudging Beatrice with his elbow. “Ye’ve never tickled fer fish?”
Beatrice shook her head. Her face was an attractive mix of confusion and disbelief.
“I think we must mean different things when we say tickling,” she said. “You can’t mean what I mean.”
Jeames rolled his eyes. “I mean tickling as in this.”
He reached around her waist and tickled her sides.
Beatrice gave a loud shriek of laughter and did a sort of little hopping dance on the spot, as if she was standing barefooted on hot coals.
Jeames snorted and put his hands up. “Um, I’m sorry, but what in the blazes was that?”
“I’m horribly ticklish!” Beatrice scolded him, though her face was creased with a smile.
“Aha! Now, I ken yer weakness!” Jeames grinned, and he held his hands out as if would tickle her again.
“No! I knew you were a heartless beast, really!” Beatrice cried, playing the role of princess in distress with all the skill of the consummate circus star.
Jeames leapt forward with a theatrical growl and Beatrice gave a cry of melodramatic despair and darted around the side of the pool. Jeames sprang after her. The two of them engaged in a short game of cat-and-mouse, before Jeames reached out and caught Beatrice in his arms.
With the absolute pitilessness that his evil alter ego required, he set to tickling Beatrice under the ribs. The lithe equestrienne burst out laughing, writhing uncontrollably in his grip and her erratic squirming threw both of them off balance.
“Whoa!” Jeames cried, as they tumbled to the ground.
Not wanting to be responsible for yet another potential injury, Jeames twisted as the pair fell and landed heavily on his back, so that he was able to cushion Beatrice’s fall with his body.
The two of them found themselves tangled together in the long, fragrant grass. Beatrice was breathless was laughter, whilst Jeames was winded somewhat from landing straight onto his back.
For several perfect moments, Jeames and Beatrice lay together, Beatrice sprawled across Jeames’s chest.
And I wouldnae mind bein’ caught in this moment fer a year or more. It’s a tough thing, tae be reminded how fine things between us might have turned out, had our lives been just a wee bit different.
Even after they had both regained their breath, they lay together. Beatrice’s head, pillowed on his chest, rose and fell with Jeames’s breathing.
“It’s so easy, isn’t it?” Beatrice murmered. Her voice was so quiet, muffled slightly as she spoke into his plaid, that Jeames almost felt it through his body more than heard it.
“What is?” he asked. Absently, cautiously, his hand reached up and stroked her hair.
“To imagine that this could be real,” Beatrice said.
Jeames could not see her face, but he thought he detected longing in her voice.
Or is that just me own longin’?
“Well,” Jeames said, trying to bolster his words with far more hope and enthusiasm than he felt. “Let’s pretend, at least fer today, that it is true. Let’s enjoy breakin’ our fast here in the Highlands. Together fer now.”
Beatrice turned her head so that she faced him, though her chin still rested on his chest.
“Worry not about tomorrow?” she said.
Jeames smiled. “That’s right. Now, let’s eat afore these fresh bannocks are stone cold.”
They had not strayed far from MacKenzie Castle, despite the mad gallop over the tors and through the vales. They arrived back at Jeames’s family home shortly before luncheon and left the horses with a couple of stable boys, just down the road from the castle itself.
Jeames was just about to suggest that they head down to a swimming hole that he was wont to frequent, seeing as they day had decided to stay fair, when a there was a polite cough at his elbow.
“Aye, Ables?” he said, turning with a smile.
Ables did not smile back. Jeames had rarely seen Ables smile. He wasn’t entirely certain that the man could.
“Mr. Ballantine is waitin’ fer ye and the young lady in the hall, Master Jeames,” he said.
The smile congealed on Jeames’s face. “He is, is he?” he said carefully.
“Aye, Master Jeames. And, what’s more, he has seen ye ride in from across the fields. He is askin’ after the young lady, more than yer good self, sir.”
Jeames nodded, his jovial and lightened mood curdling in an instance.
“Very well,” he said. “Ye may tell Mr. Ballantine that I shall send Miss Turner through in short order.”
Ables bowed his head and disappeared.
“What did dear old Ables want?” Beatrice asked. Her face was flushed with the ride. Her eyes sparkled. In that moment, she seemed to be the very embodiment of the Highland spirit, English though she was.
My heart is glad to see her so.
Jeames did his best to appear as if the news did not irk him.
“It’s Mr. Ballantine,” he said to her. “He is waitin’ inside fer ye.”
There could be no misinterpreting it; Beatrice’s face fell at the news and the joyous glow faded from her eyes. Her whole countenance, just for a moment, took on a hunted expression.
“Oh,” she said, in a hollow and accepting voice. “I see.”
And, head down, she started for the castle.
19
Beatrice walked away from Jeames. She was aware that, taken by surprise as she had been, taken off her guard after such a lovely excursion, her feelings at the announcement of Ballantine waiting for her had been written clearly across her face.
She could hear Ables hurrying along behind her, puffing as he tried to match her pace. Beatrice slowed, allowing the old kilted footman to catch up and pass her. She was not comfortable around the servants as a rule.
Probably because I am aware that they and I – if not for this strange quirk of Fate – would be of the same social standing. We are of the same social standing.
She was aware though, that Ables’ position was his life, and so she allowed him to open doors for her and bring her food during the everyday.
However, the main reason that Beatrice slowed her pace was that she needed some time to compose herself.
It is not Ballantine being here that upsets me so, but what his being here means.
It will be nice to see him. I have missed him. But this place has, in this short time that I’ve been here, become dear to me.
She followed Ables now, and the old footman led her up the wide, crunching gravel path that ran up to the oaken double-door that fronted the main keep. The elderly servant pushed the door open and stood aside so that she could enter the grand central hall ahead of him.
Beatrice had braced herself to see the familiar tall figure of the ringmaster as soon as she stepped out of the bright day and into the shadowy, cool interior of the hall, but William was nowhere to be seen.
“Where is Mr. Ballantine, Ables?” she asked.
The old footman extended a hand, indicating a passageway that led off to the side.
“I took the liberty of showin’ Mr. Ballantine into the gardens tae wait fer ye, Miss Turner,” he said. “Just in case ye needed some time to compose yerself or anythin’ o’ that nature.”
Beatrice looked sharply at Ables.
Had that been a gesture of kindness on his behalf? Of consideration?
The elderly servant, however, did not meet her eye nor show in any other way what was passing through his head. Instead, he stood, back poker straight, and stared resolutely at the wall ahead of him. He was a picture of professional efficiency. Something about him, about his dependable intractability to any sort of change around him, struck a chord in Beatrice. She envied Jeames for having a man like Ables, who, whilst being an employee, was also as good as family–a sort of grandfather who had known and looked after Jeames ever since he had been born.
“Do you think that you could tell Mr. Ballantine that I will be with him in just a couple of minutes, please, Ables?” she asked.
Ables bowed his head and walked slowly away. Beatrice listened to his shuffling footsteps disappear down the passage, then walked over to a stiff-backed armchair in one corner and sat down on the edge of it.
The question of why he is here is not an issue. You know quite well why he is here. The real question is what am I going to say to him? How am I to sway him?
Beatrice rubbed her temples with her fingers and closed her eyes. She took a deep steadying breath.
How do you plan on dissuading him from the course of action that he is going to propose to you?
She was brought back to the present by the slow scuffle of footsteps that heralded Ables’s return.
Beatrice could not quite muster the energy to get up from the chair that she was sitting in, but she did manage to at least raise her head from her hands.
“He’s happy to wait, Ables?” she asked.
“Yes, miss. The gentleman said that he’d be happy tae wait there all day if that was necessary…” Ables replied.
Beatrice nodded, hitched an unconvincing smile onto her face and sighed inwardly. “Excellent.”
“Can I get ye anythin’, miss?” Ables asked.
Beatrice considered this. “Well, Ables,” she said. “If there was ever a time for me to try a good dram or two of this Scotch whisky that I hear so much of, now could well be the time.”
This time, she could have almost been certain that a flicker of a smile touched the corners of the old footman’s lips.
A short while later, Beatrice was making her way down the passageway that Ables had told her led to the section of gardens in which he had deposited William to wait. She had been fortified with not one, but two cups, of Scotch mixed with a little honey that Ables had fetched straight from the apiary in one of the kitchen gardens.
“Honey?” she had asked the reticent footman when he returned bearing the small tray. “Is that how a proper Highlander drinks it? Is that how you drink it, Ables?”
“Only when I have a cold, miss,” Ables had said. “I thought the honey might make it a wee bit more palatable fer one who’s nae familiar with it.”
Beatrice could feel the whisky glowing away in her stomach now like a hot coal. It was a comforting feeling, a sort of instilled courage. She exhaled and felt the honey-sweetened vapor blow out past her lips.
Beatrice pushed open the door and walked out into the fragrance of a well-tended garden blooming in the afternoon sunshine.
Walking softly, she walked around a riot of purple meadow cranesbill flowers that had burst out of a bed and into the path and turned a corner to see the tall figure of William Ballantine sitting on a wooden bench and staring pensively into a bright red bush of sheep’s sorrel.
She stopped and looked at the well-known shape of the man who had raised her as if she was his own.
Well, perhaps not exactly as if I was his own. But he has never treated me unkindly. For a man that runs an endeavor with as many moving parts as Ballantine’s Circus, he has always been generous and courteous.
Beatrice smiled as she watched the big man lean forward and run one of his long-fingered hands through the vivid red of the sheep’s sorrel. Jeames had told her that that particularly hardy plant could be used to combat nettle stings.
Perhaps, though, in the grand scheme of things, it would have been better if he had not been so generous. Perhaps it was his generosity, and his desire to give his performers–his family–the very best that he could for them.
As if sensing that he was being watched, William suddenly looked up. His large, bullish head twisted about and his eyes fell on Beatrice. His face, which could all so easily play host to a thunderous frown, split in a smile of genuine pleasure.
“Beatrice!” he boomed in his theatrical voice. “Beatrice, my dear! There you are! So glad I am to see you!”
Even though her stomach had been roiling with apprehension up until she had seen him, Beatrice found that the combination of whisky and William’s familiar face acted as a tonic for her frazzled nerves.
“Hello, William,” she said, smiling in return.
William got to his feet, brushed off his jacket and buttoned it. Then he looked at Beatrice’s flushed face closely. His amiable grin diminished just a touch at what he saw there.
“My girl,” he said. “There is something about you that has changed. Something that I can’t quite put my finger on…”
Then he clapped his hands and laughed. “But listen to me, I digress!”
He held out his arm to her. “Come, show me around this enchanting little bit of Scottish paradise, and let us talk.”
They strolled about the gardens at the side of the MacKenzie Castle, that overlooked the hills and cliffs and vast expanse of sky of the Highlands. They were the same gardens that Jeames had brought her to for their breakfast meal on one of the first mornings that she had been at the castle. Somehow, it felt like months–years–ago now.
William seemed to be in no rush to start the conversation, now that he and Beatrice were alone. They walked slowly about the gardens, acclimatizing to each other’s company once again.
How bizarre. We’ve seen each other every single day for fifteen years, so this absence and subsequent coming together again feels somehow stranger and more poignant. Stranger even than the other day when he first told me about his plans…
“So, William,” she said, breaking the silence. “How have you been since last I saw you? How is everyone else at Ballantine’s? I should have asked you this when you came to see me last time–was the horse that I fell from hurt?”
It was like uncorking a fountain, once she started to talk the questions simply gushed out of her.
William looked up from the pink foxglove flower that he had just buried his nose in and laughed.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa, my dear! Steady on there. Don’t you worry. Everyone is just fine. Absolutely fine and dandy. The horse was a sight better than you after that little incident and is no doubt munching hay contentedly in its pen as we speak.”
“And you?” Beatrice blurted again.
“Fine, my dear, fine,” William said, making a soothing gesture with both of his huge, long-fingered hands. “A more pertinent question is, I think, how are you?”
“Fine,” Beatrice said, before she had really considered
if she was fine or not. “Mending. But, all in all, I am good. Better than good, I think.”
She looked away from William, reluctant to let the ringmaster see her thoughts in her eyes. As she well knew, William was highly adept at reading emotions in faces. He could read a crowd at a glance. Could tell what sort of act to introduce and when during a performance.
Reading her face, and what was passing in her head, would afford him little difficulty.
And those are thoughts and feelings that even I haven’t examined too closely as of yet.
Awakening His Highland Soul (Steamy Scottish Historical Romance) Page 18
