by Julia London
Hugh chuckled, grabbed her hand and lifted it to his mouth, kissing her knuckles fondly. “That, mo ghraidh, is me point precisely,” he said, and let go her hand. “Go home, then. Ye’ll be happier there, I assure ye. Ye’ll be eaten up here,” he said, and with a wink, he clasped his hands behind his back and walked away to join his companions.
Would that Mared had taken his advice and left at that moment, too, for she would have been spared the humiliation that occurred a scant quarter of an hour later, when the father of the happy bride gained the attention of the room by tapping a spoon to his champagne glass. “Ladies and gentlemen, if ye would be so kind,” he called loudly.
The room quieted. Mared stepped back, leaned against the wall, apart from the rest of the crowd. More from habit than need, really, but she’d spent a lifetime standing apart.
“On this occasion, I’ve another happy announcement to make,” he said, and a murmur instantly ran through the crowd. “I am pleased to say that another fine young couple has made known their plans to wed.”
Now the crowd tittered with delight and pushed forward to see which couple. “May I present to you the future Mr. and Mrs. David Anderson!” he exclaimed, and Mr. Anderson, the very man who’d whispered such decadent and witty remarks in her ear, and the young woman to whom he’d been speaking, stepped forward to receive hearty good wishes from the crowd.
The floor seemed to dip at Mared’s feet. What of all the flirting? The many calls to her apartments? She was shocked, completely shocked, to learn what Hugh had said was true. And she realized with a sickening feeling, glancing around at the people in the hall, that she was the woman who had come down from the Highlands to reclaim her happiness, only to be made the fool.
It was all so suddenly clear to her now! Ellie’s warning, Liam’s concern, Mrs. MacGillicutty’s remarks. And it was likewise crystal clear to her now that in all the years she had thought her happiness had been robbed from her by some silly curse, it had been hers to have and to hold. With Payton. But no, she’d let fear and stubborn clan pride drain that from her. She’d allowed the dream of being someone other than herself to cloud her judgment. She’d destroyed the one chance at true happiness she might have had with her embrace of her so-called freedom.
All because she thought she had not yet lived.
But she had lived! She’d lived freely and she’d had the love of a man who had adored her. And she had tossed it away to seek something that had been in her heart all along, exactly where Donalda had said. Oh, what a bloody, silly, fool she was!
She wanted out of that stuffy room, away from Edinburgh. She wanted Payton. But first, she had something to say to Mr. Anderson. She lifted her chin and marched across the room to him. He could not help but acknowledge her.
“Congratulations, Mr. Anderson,” she said with a smile.
“Ah…thank you, Miss Lockhart. May I introduce my fiancée, Miss Linley.”
Mared turned a blindingly bright smile to her. “Miss Linley! May I offer my heartfelt condolences!”
“Wh-what?” the poor lass stammered, looking helplessly to Mr. Anderson, who was turning a rather unbecoming shade of red.
“Oh, I am certain ye shall have all that yer heart desires—a fine house. Children. His father’s fortune. But ye seem like a very nice lass, and I hate to see ye married to a liar and a blackguard all yer days,” she said pleasantly.
Miss Linley was too stunned to speak, but she gasped.
“Miss Lockhart!” Mr. Anderson protested.
“Mr. Anderson!” Mared replied pleasantly. “Ye seem rather surprised that someone might call ye on it! I assure ye I donna do it for myself, but on behalf of Miss Bristol and Miss Williams, who have likewise suffered yer perfidy.”
“Miss Bristol?” Miss Linley said weakly, looking at Mr. Anderson.
“And donna forget Miss Williams,” Mared said brightly. “He had quite a full plate at Charlotte Square, aye?”
Miss Linley again looked at Mr. Anderson, who now looked as if he wanted to crawl in a hole. “Very well, then! Good day,” Mared said and twirled about, intending to make a quick exit.
But she was stopped at the door by Miss Sarah Douglas. She folded her arms across her middle and looked Mared up and down. Mared expected a tongue lashing and was prepared to do battle, but Miss Douglas suddenly smiled. “Well done, Miss Lockhart.”
Mared blinked. “Praise? From ye, Miss Douglas?”
Miss Douglas shrugged and looked over Mared’s shoulder. “He’s a despicable man and I am rather fond of Miss Linley. So thank ye for having the courage to say what no one else would.”
Impossibly pleased, Mared beamed at her. “Ye are quite welcome.” She stepped around Miss Douglas and walked on. But then she suddenly paused, turned around, and walked back to Miss Douglas. “And by the by, Miss Douglas, I love Payton. I may no’ be what ye imagined for him, but I love him.”
Now it was Miss Douglas’s turn to blink. Mared smiled. “Good day, Miss Douglas,” she chirped and sailed through the doors of the hall and out into the bright sunlight and bitter cold. Mared reached up and swept the bonnet off her head. She never cared for the damnable things anyway. She blinked up at the sun. Funny, but it always seemed colder here than at home. She longed for her boots, for the rocky sheep trails that crisscrossed Ben Cluaran through heather so thick you could lie on it. She longed for the smell of spring, the fields of thistle, and the streams that gurgled down into the lochs. She longed for the mists that would come down from the top of the hills and swallow her whole, so that she walked in a dreamy fog with nothing but years of walking the same trails and her dogs to guide her.
She missed the Highlands. She missed her family.
And she missed Payton desperately.
She was going home, where she belonged.
Mrs. MacGillicutty was not the least bit surprised that Mared wanted to go home and happily set about helping her pack her things into two new trunks. She laughed as Mared related what had happened to her. How she had thought Mr. Anderson’s attention sincere, and how terribly naïve she’d been to believe it could be true affection, given that the talk never progressed beyond banter. How she had been loved very deeply by a man and had tossed him aside like so much rubbish.
“If he loved ye as much as that, lass, he will love ye still,” Mrs. MacGillicutty assured her.
“No,” Mared said morosely. “He said he didna love me any longer.”
“Men say such things when they are angry and wounded,” Mrs. MacGillicutty said. “But they rarely mean what they say. A man’s pride is quite fragile, like fine crystal, but it is easily rebuilt, what with a bit of kowtowing. So go home, lass. Ye will find that his heart is still calling to ye.”
Mared caught a breath in her throat and whirled around to the woman. “What did ye say?” she whispered.
“That ye will find his heart still calls to yers,” she said with a smile.
Tears suddenly welled in her eyes, and Mared quickly turned away.
She hadn’t felt his heart call to her in weeks.
Twenty-eight
T he snow began falling when the public coach reached Callander. A merchant agreed to take Mared a few more miles to Aberfoyle, but the journey was excruciatingly slow, given the snowfall.
It was dusk when they reached Aberfoyle, and Mared had no choice but to take refuge at the public inn. She was given a room that overlooked a meadow, and beyond it, Ben Cluaran stood majestically in the distance. She stood at the window and stared at the mountain in the waning light of day, longing for Payton, traveling the hill in her mind’s eye, cresting it, and seeing Eilean Ros below her.
How ironic, she thought as the sun finally slipped behind Ben Cluaran, that she’d spent so many years despising him for the sake of his name, and now, she couldn’t possibly care if his name was Douglas or Lockhart or Diabhal. Just as long as he forgave her, that was all that mattered. Just as long as he looked at her with those warm gray eyes, the glitter in them the evidence
of his adoration for her.
The very next morning, she washed and dressed and had her luggage carried to the confectioner’s shop, where she knew she might stow it until she could send someone back for it.
“Ah, Miss Lockhart!” the confectioner called as she walked in the door. “I had thought ye were in Edinburra!”
“Aye, I’ve been away for a time, but I’ve come home now,” she said. “Might I keep my luggage here until I can send my brother for it?”
“Of course, lass. Come here, come here, then…on the occasion of yer homecoming, I’ve a new sweetmeat ye must try.”
“Oh, I shouldna—”
“Ye best come now, lass, for Laird Douglas takes them all. He has a sweet tooth, he does, and he bought them all up yesterday to give to Miss Crowley.”
That remark dealt her a blow. “Did he?” Mared asked weakly and glanced down at her gloves and blindly fumbled to remove them.
“Aye,” he said with a chuckle. “Constantly together, the two of them. I wager they’ll marry at Christmas.”
Another blow, and a much stronger one. “Marry, ye say?” she asked as she pretended to look at the hard candies.
“Aye.” He looked over his shoulder at her as he lifted the lid from the glass case. “I suppose ye’ve no’ heard then, having come from Edinburra. Aye, there is an announcement to be made this Sunday, after services. Laird Douglas and Miss Crowley are to be wed.”
So that was it, then. It was over. She’d had her chance—no, she’d had dozens of them—and had squandered them all.
“Are ye all right, Miss Lockhart?”
She jerked her head up. “Just anxious to be home, I think.”
“’Tis too cold to walk. I’ll have me son drive ye up, then, aye?”
“Aye, please, Mr. Wallace, that is awfully kind.”
He smiled, put several sweetmeats in a plain wrapper, and handed them to her. “Enjoy these on yer way home. Consider it a welcome-home gift.”
“Thank ye,” she said and tucked them in her reticule. Small consolation in light of what she’d lost, but Mared smiled.
The Lockharts were, predictably, quite happy and surprised to see Mared, and showered her with hugs and kisses and dozens upon dozens of questions.
She weathered the inquisition well enough without giving anything terribly personal away. She smiled, she laughed, she talked with great animation about Edinburgh and all the parties, and all the while her heart was breaking, crumbling into tiny pieces, scattering with the wind that suddenly seemed to be blowing through her. She felt so empty.
She begged off supper that night, citing a headache from her traveling, and retired early. In truth, she was exhausted. She tossed and turned in her bed, and when she grew weary of that, she got up and paced before the hearth, her mind racing and spinning and her heart twisting and twisting until she felt absolutely ill.
She had lost him, that much was obvious. Yet she was compelled to see him, to confess that she’d wronged him, that she was terribly sorry for it, that she’d been a frighteningly naïve lass with cotton in her head. And that her heart, which had tilted to him long ago, had tilted and tilted until it had fallen over and shattered completely without him there to catch it.
But how could she tell him? It would not do to march up to his front door and announce to him and his staff that she was a bloody idiot. And besides, she hardly had the nerve to face him after all that had gone on between them. Or on the eve of his betrothal to Beitris.
The next day dawned bright and full of sun, and the snow quickly melted from the roads and sheep trails. Mared tried to settle into her life at Talla Dileas again. She romped with her dogs, played with Duncan, plaited Natalie’s hair and told her of Edinburgh, then helped her mother inventory the repairs that needed to be made to Talla Dileas. Everyone, it seemed, was more relaxed now that they were free of the worry over money. Everyone seemed to be happily and patiently waiting for Anna’s baby to come, and for Christmas, which was little more than a fortnight away.
As she helped inventory the list of repairs that afternoon, her mother remarked that she could now afford to hire the help they needed to maintain Talla Dileas. “I am in need of a good housekeeper. Perhaps I should inquire after Mrs. Rawlins.”
Mrs. Rawlins…that was Payton’s housekeeper; Mared remembered the name quite clearly. “Who?” she asked.
“Mrs. Rawlins. She was hired as Douglas’s housekeeper, but apparently it was no’ a very successful engagement.”
“No? Why is that, then?”
“Oh, I donna know, really. Other than he’s been a wee bit of a bear of late. I hear he’s been rather demanding. I suppose building a distillery and arranging a wedding are rather trying.”
Mared’s heart did a funny little lurch. “He’s always been demanding,” she muttered, but all she could think was that Payton was without a housekeeper. There was no one there to turn down his bed and launder his clothes and open his drapes in the morning.
For the first time in two days, she smiled from within.
In the midst of a dream of oak barrels and enormous vats, Payton was moved to consciousness by the scent of lilac. It startled him out of sleep, really, for he’d not smelled that heavenly scent in what seemed an eternity now.
He opened his eyes, rolled onto his back, and glanced around the room. It was dark; the drapes were drawn and he could see nothing but the red embers at his hearth. He rubbed his eyes, heard the rustle of cloth, and quickly dropped his hands, pushed himself up, and looked around the room.
The sound of drapes being pulled garnered his attention, and as he looked to the windows, he felt his body go cold with shock.
She pushed the drapes aside and shook her head. “A rather dreary day by the look of it.”
Mared. She was in his room, opening his drapes and wearing the black gown and white apron of a housekeeper. Still shaking off the fog of a deep sleep, he tried to make sense of it. Was he dreaming? How could he be? Yet what else might explain it? It was so startlingly real that as she moved to the next set of drapes, he caught the scent of lilacs again.
“Snow again, I’d wager.” She clucked her tongue. “I donna suppose ye can build a distillery in weather such as this, aye?”
It was no dream—she was real. She’d walked out of his dreams and she was here, before him, in the flesh. “What are ye doing here?” he asked roughly, anger and wounded pride filling him instantly.
She turned around and flashed that brilliant, green-eyed smile that had, for so many years, accompanied him to sleep. “I’ve brought ye a treat, milord,” she said sweetly. “Sweetmeats. I know how much ye like them.”
He didn’t want her bloody sweetmeats, he didn’t want anything but for her to be gone from him. He’d spent the last month purging her from his heart and mind, and he’d not allow her back in. Not ever, and notwithstanding what Sarah had written him about the brave Miss Lockhart. He didn’t care if she claimed to love him—he didn’t love her anymore.
When he didn’t respond, Mared walked to the small dining table, unwrapped several delicacies and put them on a plate.
“How did ye get in here?” he demanded.
“Mrs. Mackerell,” she said and turned toward him, the plate in hand. “She gave me the plate as well.”
“I donna want yer damn treats.” He threw aside the bedcovers and stood, hardly caring that he was completely naked. He grabbed up his dressing gown and put it on. “I donna know what ye want or what game ye play, Mared, but I will kindly ask ye to leave.”
“I’ll leave them here,” she said and put them on the bedside table. She turned away, and Payton thought she would leave…but she walked to the hearth, put aside the fire screen, and got down on her knees to stoke the fire.
“God blind me!” he exploded. “Go, Mared! I donna want ye here, I donna want to lay eyes on ye!” he said angrily and walked into the privy, slamming the door behind him.
But when he returned a moment later, she was still there, calmly cl
eaning the riding boots he’d left to dry at the hearth. “Dammit, donna touch them!” he roared and grabbed her by the arm, jerking her up to her feet and shoving her away from his boots. “What the hell are ye doing?”
Looking chagrined, she fidgeted with the ill-fitting housekeeper’s gown, and Payton realized how wrong he’d been to ever put her in it. “What I am doing,” she said softly, “is apologizing.”
“By shining my boots?”
“I asked that a hot bath be brought up. That, too.”
That stopped him; he gaped at her.
She nodded.
Payton groaned heavenward. “What are ye doing to me, lass? Do ye mean to torture me unto death? Ye have rejected and dismissed every overture I’ve ever made, ye’ve told me quite plainly that ye were going on with yer life, away from the lochs, away from me. It is done, Mared. And now ye appear out of nowhere to draw me a bath?”
She nodded again. “I donna know what else to do,” she admitted quietly. “I donna know how to make ye understand other than to open yer drapes and turn down yer bed…and to give ye sweetmeats and stoke yer fire and draw yer bath, and anything else I might do to humble myself before ye and beg forgiveness for the horrible, wretched mistake I’ve made.”
She said it so sincerely that Payton felt a small fissure develop in his impenetrable resolve. Love, he was discovering, was a stubborn bedfellow, unwilling to leave him just because he’d demanded it. The hell if he didn’t still love her, and while part of him wanted to rejoice in her return, another part of him was still hurting. That part didn’t trust her and wanted to turn her out before she could hurt him anymore.
There was a knock on the door that Mared quickly answered. Charlie entered, wishing Payton a cheery good day and carrying two pails of hot water. He was followed by Alan and the new footman, Angus, who eyed Mared curiously. She directed them to the adjoining bath. They poured their buckets, but Mared was not satisfied. She sent them for more.
