by Jill Barnett
The only time her father came to the school was when they were bad. Being good never got Kirsty what she wanted. Being good wouldn’t bring her mama back or make her father want to be with her.
“Pack up yer things, lassie. See, like Graham here is. If ye dinna hurry up he’s going tae be done first.”
Kirsty spun around and packed her things and the green dress. She packed really fast, shoving anything handy into the valise.
She beat Graham. Which really hadn’t been hard. Whenever he had turned his back, she unpacked some of his clothes and put them back inside the drawers. He was so smart he never noticed.
A little while later, when she was perched on a hard wooden wagon seat heading off to the opposite end of the island with Fergus and Graham, she looked back at her home. She could barely see it because of all the fog. It was just a huge shadow that looked dark and empty and cold.
But she watched it anyway, watched it melt away like a daydream. She played that game where you had to keep your eyes on something or else it might disappear for real. She looked long and hard until she couldn’t even see the high pointed roof anymore.
Finally she turned back around and stared at the horses’ tails. She chewed on her lip. When she thought she might cry she pinched herself. A big hollow feeling settled in her stomach and she sat there, feeling sick inside because she had no idea what it was she had done to make her father send them away again.
Chapter 28
He gazed and gazed and gazed and gazed
Amazed, amazed, amazed, amazed.
—Robert Browning
Calum opened the door as quietly as he could. Amy’s eyes were still closed. It looked as if she hadn’t moved an inch. He wondered if a shallow wound like that could be more serious on a woman, especially a small vulnerable woman like Amy.
George looked up from her bedside vigil.
“She’s still asleep?” he asked.
She nodded.
He walked across the room to the bed and stood there for an awkward moment. His gaze went from Amy to this black-haired woman named George. Such an odd name for a woman. George. Who would name a girl George?
He had to admit she had good looks. She was the kind of woman who would turn most men’s heads. But looks didn’t catch his attention. Manner did.
She had frightened him at first. She was someone he wanted to stay as far away from as possible. But it seemed she was only shrewish with Eachann. She had been civil to him, which was a surprise.
He couldn’t fault her for the way she’d been acting. She wasn’t here by her own doing. Eachann deserved more than a few punches.
But aside from the circumstances, George had won his favor when she insisted on sitting at Amy’s side for the last few hours.
Calum shoved his hands in his pockets and just stood there, feeling dumb and big and clumsy. He didn’t know what to say to her.
She looked up at him with a question in her eyes, then she laughed. “I promise I won’t bite.”
Even he had to chuckle. He waited until they both stopped laughing and the silence was heavy again. “How did you get a name like George?”
“You don’t like my name?”
He swore to himself. Now he’d stepped in it. He could feel himself flush.
She gave a small laugh. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that. The name George is your brother’s idea of fun. My name is Georgina, Georgina Bayard.”
“Bayard?” He thought about that.”
“Like the clocks?”
“One and the same.”
He shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m sorry Eachann did this.”
“So am I.” She stared at the window. “I’m more sorry than you can possibly know.” There was a bleak and distant look on her face.
“He hasn’t been himself since his wife died.”
She didn’t say anything for a long time, appeared to be chewing over what he’d said. She looked at him again. “When did she die?”
“About three years ago. She loved to sail. We still don’t know what exactly happened. Eachann was the one who found the boat on some rocks. She washed ashore two days later.”
She shook her head and looked away. “How horrible.”
“She was alone that day. In a way I suppose there was some luck involved. Sometimes she took the children with her.”
“Children? There’s more than one?”
“Aye. You met Kirsty.”
“Yes.” She looked at Amy. “We met.”
“Her brother Graham is a year older.”
She didn’t say anything.
Calum tried to find the right words to explain to this woman that his brother wasn’t always so rash in his actions. “Eachann doesn’t always think about the consequences of what he chooses to do. He’s not a bad man. Just a lost one.”
She was stoically silent.
He would see she looked worn out. He wondered if she had slept at all. He knew she hadn’t eaten. “I’ll stay with Amy. Go down to the kitchen. David will give you something to eat.”
“You don’t think I’ll try to run away?”
His look was clear and direct. “No.”
Georgina gave a small nod, then asked, “Who’s David?”
“A cousin. He does a little bit of everything, including all the cooking.”
“How many people live on the island?”
“Kirsty and Graham. Some cousins—Fergus, David and Will, Eachann and myself.”
“That’s all?”
“That’s all.”
“No women?”
“Not since Sibeal died. Other than Kirsty.”
Georgina stood up stiffly. She sucked in a breath and rubbed her lower back. “I think I’ve been sitting in one spot too long.”
“Go on, now. Get yourself some food. The kitchen is downstairs on the back side of the house.”
She looked at Amy again. “She hasn’t moved.”
Calum nodded, his attention already on Amy. Somewhere in the back of his mind he heard the bedroom door close. He was careful when he sat down. He leaned back against the footboard of the bed and rested an ankle on his knee.
Amy just lay there completely unaware of what she was doing to him. His insides were twisted into tense knots. She unsettled him, confused him, made him aware of feelings he didn’t know he had.
He had the most profound sense of impending doom, as if his life would never be the same again. It was like he was living a nightmare or a dream or someone else’s life.
There was nothing he could do about it, because the confusion came from her. He couldn’t wake up from this or walk away from it.
He looked down at her pale face. She had ivory skin and he remembered there was a slight pink flush on her cheekbones when she wasn’t ill. Her hair was thick and curly. Georgina must have brushed it because it was spread out on her pillow like sunshine.
He took in her features: the small heart-shaped face, a narrow nose that turned up a little at the end, a strong chin. She had thin brows and he could see the small blue veins in her eyelids. Her cheekbones were high and her face was full and fresh, more youthful than most.
He reached out and just touched her cheek. It was warm, not as cold as it looked. He ran his fingertips over it, aware that she was soft and real. She was no dream.
Time went by. He had no idea how much time and he didn’t care. He just waited there, wanting to be with her, needing to watch her sleep because he was afraid if he didn’t that she might not wake up at all.
It was a fool’s thought, romantic drivel like poetry and melodramatic plays he’d seen and thought were stupid. He never thought they were very realistic because he had never experienced romance.
But now he couldn’t seem to control what was inside his head. It was almost as if part of her was flowing into him, taking over his head, his thoughts.
He had thought himself immune to women. None of them touched him, deep inside. None struck a fire in him. No woman interested him enough
to make him want to learn about her, to understand how she thought.
He didn’t see her in the same way he saw other women. He didn’t see her the way he saw the female immigrants he helped. She was different. When he looked at Amy, he didn’t only see her with his eyes. He saw her with his heart.
Something that scared the hell out of him.
His pulse pounded like the distant surf when she touched him. He picked up her hand. His pulse pounded like the distant surf when he touched her, too. His heart was beating like waves in his ears. Why was this woman able to make him forget he didn’t particularly like women? What was it about her?
He examined her hand, almost as if by doing so he thought he could find the answer. But there was no answer there.
He turned over her hand and ran a finger along her palm, following the line of life that wound its way across it. He opened his own hand and looked at his palm. He placed it beside hers.
His hand was big and blunt; hers was small and elegant. Her nails were shaped like half-moons; his were square, like the sails on a ship. Calluses from hard work had bubbled on his hands. Her palm was soft and pale and looked new compared to his. His skin was so much darker than hers, as different as their moods.
He put her hand down and straightened the covers, even though they didn’t need straightening. There was a peace about her, which he found ironic.
When he looked at her, when he was with her, or when he thought of her, peace was not what he felt. He experienced a storm of feelings, strong and full and consuming.
It was something he didn’t want to put a name to even though he thought he knew what it was. Something he had thought he was beyond feeling.
But he wasn’t. When he looked at Amy, what he felt was as old as time. What Calum felt was intense. It wasn’t love. No, not love. It was passion.
Chapter 29
Always act like a winner,
even if you’re losing.
—Anonymous
Georgina found the kitchen with little trouble. She might be stuck on an island where none of her escape plans worked, but her nose still worked. She followed it until she stood before a set of large paneled doors.
She pushed them open, descended the two steps down into a large room with a wide window along one wall. The wall to her right was all rock and had another one of those huge fireplaces.
She turned at the bottom of the steps and froze.
Eachann MacLachlan was sitting at a massive pine table in the center of the room. His big feet were propped on the corner of the table and his chair was pushed back and teetering on two legs. He had something that looked like a towel pressed against his face, so all she could see was his stubborn jaw.
“Hi, George.”
The man had an uncanny ability to know where she was at every moment. It was unsettling. He had never even looked at her.
“There went my appetite,” she muttered. She took a deep breath and crossed the room to stand at the opposite end of the table. She gripped the back of a pine chair.
“Sit down and eat,” he told her. He still hadn’t looked at her.
There were two places set at the table, his and the seat next to him. She released the chair and crossed over to the spare place, gathered up the plate and utensils, then turned to go back to the end seat.
His chair legs slammed to the floor at the same moment he grabbed her arm. “Sit here.” His voice was muffled; it came from behind the towel.
She looked down at him. He took away the towel and she stared down at his swollen face.
She almost flinched. Almost, not quite.
He looked like the very devil. One eyelid was turning bright purple and swollen shut. There was a jagged and brownish-red cut on his lower lip—a lip that was twice its normal size. He had a round ugly bruise at the base of his chin that seemed to grow as she stood there. She could almost see the outline of his brother’s knuckles.
“Sit down.”
She sat.
“David!” he called out. A door behind him opened and a man came inside carrying a heavy tin pail. He was tall, like Eachann and his brother, but rail thin and bony as a herring. He had bright red-orange hair that came to his shoulders; it was the same color as a new penny.
As he moved closer to Eachann, she could see that his face was a wash of freckles. He had a long and pointed chin with a knob on the end that was about the size of an egg, and when he looked at her and grinned, all she saw was teeth.
He set the pail down with a thump. “These rocks came from the spring. They’re colder than the other ones.”
Eachann opened the wet towel and dumped some smooth stones on the table. He bent over the pail, pulled out more rocks, and wrapped them in the towel. He glanced up at David who was staring at her. “Thanks. This is George.”
“Georgina Bayard,” she corrected in the lightest tone she could come up with, considering she felt an intense desire to add to Eachann’s bruises.
David looked at her. “Like the clocks.”
She nodded.
“Clocks?” Eachann set the towel back on his swollen eye and then looked from David to her.
“Aye,” David said.
She looked at the oaf. “You’d have to be able to read to understand.”
David laughed and gave Georgina a quick wink before he turned around and went over to a range that was set into the far wall.
“Well, I guess you told me.” Eachann stared at her from his good eye.
He stared at her on purpose, just to annoy her, so she made a point of ignoring him.
David set a bowl of steaming rolls on the table, a crock of butter, then added a plate of eggs, bacon and sausage and a slab of ham, potatoes, apple sauce, fresh blueberries, and a large pitcher of milk.
She realized she was still clutching the plate to her chest. She set it down.
It clanked loudly.
She did her best to continue to ignore Eachann while she ate. She was on her second helping of ham when he reached out and stabbed a sausage.
“Too bad you lost your appetite.”
She just gave him a cool stare and cut the ham with a vicious stroke of her knife. She jabbed it into the meat, then looked up and gave him a sweet smile.
He bit off a chunk of sausage and chewed while he grinned at her.
The silence was awkward. The only sounds in the room were made by David, who stood at a worktable, a flour-dusted apron tied around his waist while he punched a huge glob of white dough. The man just didn’t look like a cook.
But the food was wonderful.
“So, David.” Eachann broke the silence. “What do you think of George?”
David looked up and grinned. “She’s a bonny one.”
“You think so?” He made a big deal about eyeing her as if he were trying to see her in a new light. He stabbed another sausage and ate it. “She’s a desperate woman, though.”
“Desperate to get away from you,” she muttered.
“Desperate to get married.”
She looked right through him and took a bite of eggs, pretending she wasn’t listening to him talk about her as if she weren’t there.
“She wants to marry John Cadaver.”
She choked on her eggs.
He patted her back solicitously and handed her a cup of milk.
David was looking from Eachann to her with an odd expression.
“Cabot,” she said through gritted teeth. “His name is John Cabot.”
“That’s right. I keep forgetting the fellow’s name.”
“I’d like to forget yours.”
He saluted her with his fork.
David punched the dough a few more times, then covered it with a damp towel. He looked at her, then at Eachann, and shook his head a few times before he left the room through another door. She could hear his shoes clumping down some wooden stairs.
She ignored the MacOaf and looked out the window. The fog hugged the hillside. She wondered if the stuff would ever lift. It was like a curt
ain that closed them off from the world. Her world. The world she had to get back to.
“Worried you’re not going to get home, George?”
The man could read her mind.
“I’ll get home.”
He laughed. “That’s what I like about you. You’re more stubborn than I am.”
“Huh! A barn-soured mule isn’t as stubborn as you are. I can hardly believe you are real.”
“Come upstairs with me for about an hour and I’ll show you how real I am.”
“I really hate you.”
He laughed.
“I can’t believe you are a father.”
He stopped laughing.
“You go around ruining people’s lives. Why can’t you just raise your children and leave innocent people alone?”
He was angry now. She could see it and she was glad.
“I don’t know anything about children.” His tone was gruff.
“You don’t know or you don’t care to know?”
“I don’t have to know. That’s why I snatched you.”
Her fork froze in midair. “What did you just say?”
“I said that was why I snatched you. I needed someone to look after my children.”
“You kidnapped me to watch your children?” she said, trying to absorb it. She recalled snatches of their conversation in her garden. His comments about handling children. He had been interviewing her for the job!
She stood very slowly and planted her hands on the table. “You ruined my life because you couldn’t just hire a nursemaid?”
He didn’t say a word.
“My God . . . You are an idiot. That is the most selfish, stupid, arrogant, and completely asinine thing I have ever heard!”
“Not really,” he said in a lazy tone that annoyed her. It implied she was too stupid to understand his reasoning. “You claimed you wanted a husband. I needed a mother for my children. Seems simple enough.”
