My Heart's in the Highlands

by Angeline Fortin

  Dishes were revealed one by one. A small tureen of mushroom soup, a leg of spring lamb, veal in a white wine sauce, haddock and oysters from the firth, estate-grown vegetables, and a sour cherry trifle. “My goodness, it all looks wonderful and I declare I’m simply famished,” Hero announced, allowing Ian to dish her up a bit of each one.

  Well, that was all Hero.

  Really? I declare?

  Stomach grumbling, Mikah let it go for the moment and dug into the delicious food, enjoying the light conversation as Ian related anecdotes from his youth and university days while Hero shared some information about her own. Again, Mikah was awash with memories. These were her stories. She couldn’t shake that feeling. It wasn’t just as if she were on the outside looking in, a bystander in the life she was living. These memories were as real to her as anything she could recall from her own childhood days. The antics of Hero’s sisters brought a poignant ache to her chest. The loss of a family member caused real grief and sorrow.

  She wasn’t just playing a part in this dream. She was living it.

  Mikah could feel the panic building up in her chest once more. She couldn’t be two different people. It was impossible! My God, perhaps she truly had gone insane! That blow to the head had damaged her irreparably!

  She dropped her fork with a clatter, staring down at her plate.

  She wondered if this was what it felt like when schizophrenia set in. This portent of doom. Maybe she was like the woman in the Seven Faces of Eve. In that book, many different personalities had existed in the same body, but Mikah had always thought that schizophrenics weren’t aware of the other personalities inside them.

  Geez, they were going to lock her up for sure.

  “My lady?” Ian asked with evident concern, reaching out to her. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes.”

  No!

  Yes …

  “Maybe …”

  “Yes, maybe?” he asked gently and despite the humor of the words, Mikah could tell he was genuinely worried for her. “Perhaps we should get some air?”

  Mikah nodded numbly and stood when he pulled out her chair, clinging to his arm as he escorted her from the dining area, through the main hall, and up the stairs to the first floor. Though a pair of doors was left open to welcome them into the Long Drawing Room at the head of the stairs, Ian instead guided her around the landing to the Round Drawing Room and across the circular salon to one of the five sets of glass French doors that covered the curved wall. Beyond the doors was a rounded balcony that hung out over the 150-foot cliff below. It was one of her favorite places at Cuilean. The moon shone on the calm waters of the firth, and Mikah inhaled deeply, feeling an inner peace. As always, the stiff breeze blowing in from the loch buffeted her, blowing away her worries.

  As always? The thought ratcheted up Mikah’s blood pressure for a moment before she let the serenity of the view wash over her. No need to panic, she thought. It would surely be all right in the end. She just needed to, as they said in England, “keep calm and carry on.”

  That shouldn’t be too difficult, but she couldn’t have Ian thinking she was crazy either. “I’m so sorry to have interrupted your meal,” Hero offered, resting her hands on the rail and leaning forward against it, letting the cool evening wind from the firth caress her fevered cheeks and soothe away the last threads of concern. “Perhaps my injuries were simply greater than I had thought.”

  “Think nothing of it,” he assured her, though his brow was still creased with worry. “I was just finishing up. There’s no loss to one’s waistline by missing dessert.”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about that.”

  Mikah gave a mental snort. She glanced at him from the corner of her eye as he leaned back against the rail with his arms crossed over his chest. Ian was a fairly large man in comparison to her five foot six, perhaps an inch or two over six feet. He was athletically built, muscular without being too bulky. Like a baseball player. She would bet that he looked pretty good in a pair of running shorts and little else or in a Brewers uniform playing left field like Ryan Braun. She would bet he never struck out and usually scored a home run.

  Smiling inwardly at her baseball analogy, Mikah felt much better. Slow and easy. It would work out in the end.

  “Better?” Ian asked softly, as if he sensed her calm.

  “Much. Thank you,” she said and leaned against the balustrade once more. “This is one of my favorite places in the castle.”

  “Mine, as well,” he said sincerely before falling silent. Mikah could feel his eyes on her, assessing her. She wondered what he thought when he looked at her so seriously. Was he looking merely at the surface or for something deeper? Or was his study more abstract and his mind on something else entirely?

  “You know, I had been wondering about something but hadn’t thought to ask anyone as yet, and you might be just the person to help,” he offered in a light, conversational tone, answering her unspoken query.

  Like Mikah, Hero didn’t know whether she should be disappointed or not. Clearly though, Ian was trying to distract her from her worries, and Hero felt a wave of growing affection and gratitude warm her. “What is that?”

  “This castle is incredibly old, right?” he asked. “I found a book in my study about the history of the castle. It’s several centuries old, but these interiors just don’t emulate what one would consider medieval.”

  “You’re right, of course,” Hero agreed, grasping his diversion thankfully. “One of the old earls about eighty years ago hired Robert Adam to redesign the castle. Are you familiar with him?”

  “The famous Scottish architect? I am.”

  “He redid the entire floor plan of the interior. Added rooms and took some away. The original castle was U-shaped. Adam capped the end with this tower as well as the two rooms flanking. The center staircase was added to fill the former courtyard space. There used to be just a narrow front and rear staircase, but he added that entire hall just for the grand impression it lent. It took more than fifteen years to complete. With these rounded additions, he turned the exterior into a romanticized homage to medieval architecture with all the turrets, but the interior is, thankfully, pleasantly Georgian.”

  “It seems that every wall, ceiling, doorframe, and mantelpiece is covered in plasterwork, friezes, and tablets. They are all Adam?” he clarified with a nod of dawning comprehension. “I should have recognized his style. He did good work.”

  “He did,” she agreed. “It’s one of the main things I love about Cuilean. Why, it is my home …” Hero trailed off as if she had said too much.

  “No, it’s all right,” Ian assured her. “It feels like a true home to me as well, though I’ve been here only a month. It has an aura about it, does it not? Of perfection?” When she nodded, he continued, “So you like this balcony and the plasterwork. What are your other favorite things about Cuilean?”

  “The gardens,” Hero said instantly. “I could walk in them for hours at a time, and through the park also. And the embattlements. The history that one feels when standing upon the ramparts is very moving.”

  “Are you interested in history?”

  “Yes, I am. Particularly art history.” This was an interest shared by Mikah as well. It was what Mikah’s original degree in college had been in, before she had gone on to do her Master’s and then her Ph.D. She had aimed toward becoming a museum collections curator, as she was now in Milwaukee. Hero had studied with a tutor only but her love of art was deep.

  “Really?” he asked with brows raised. “Are you well versed in art?”

  Pretty well, Mikah and Hero thought in unison, but Hero just shrugged modestly.

  Ian watched the color return to Hero’s cheeks in a becoming blush and was glad that his conversation had been able to wash away whatever had troubled her. He worried for her, he realized. Head injuries were troublesome things that could lead to any number of problems. There wasn’t much Ian wouldn’t do to provide her comfort or solace. If
light conversation and friendship were the keys to allaying her fears, he would happily offer both.

  “Do you know anything of the pieces in the Long Drawing Room?” he asked. The room had once been called the Picture Room, a silly name, Ian had thought when Boyle had given him his initial tour of the castle. The Long Drawing Room was a long narrow space that was once a part of the Great Hall of the original castle. At the present time, the room held just a few chairs and small settees for viewing the oils, watercolors, and pastels that engulfed every inch of wall space with their heavily gilded frames. There were some family-oriented portraits, as well as some portraits of past monarchs, but the bulk were landscapes that, Ian assumed, had been collected over the course of generations.

  He knew absolutely nothing about any of them, but Hero had a spark in her eye that told him she did and liked the idea of being dared to show off her knowledge. He liked that she wasn’t merely some wilting lily. Women of intelligence were far more intriguing than those who pretended to know nothing … or worse, truly did.

  Eager to see more of her spirit, Ian challenged her to a test of her abilities and offered her his arm, leading her out into the hall and around the staircase to the room under discussion, which fronted the castle at the head of the stairs. Stopping just inside the room, Ian pointed to a large landscape of a loch hung at chest height to the right of the doors. It was perhaps two feet by three in width and seemed rather dark and dreary to him. “This one?”

  “An oil on canvas landscape by Alexander Nasmyth, who has been called by some the father of Scottish landscapes. Untitled and fairly recently done, probably within the last fifty years,” she said promptly.

  “Untitled, hmm?” Ian raised a mischievously skeptical brow. “Seems rather convenient to me.”

  Hero laughed merrily. “You doubt my skills, Lord Ayr? Choose another then.”

  Ian stepped back a pace and scanned the wall, picking out another that seemed nearly indefinable to him. Just an average farm scene edged in forests with a little farmhouse and wagon. “That one.”

  “Hmm,” Hero considered, drawing closer to the piece. “Constable for sure. The Hay Wain, I’m certain. Early 1820s.”

  “There.”

  “The Gleaning Field. Palmer, 1833.”

  “This one?”

  “Windmills, Montmartre. Georges Michel. French, eighteenth century.”

  He pointed again and again and began laughing gaily as she shot out the answers without hesitation. “Bernard Manskirch’s Smiling Village. It should be in a museum, you know?”

  “Perhaps I should just donate them all,” he said lightly before pacing a few steps down the wall. Ian shook his head at the pleasure he was taking in this odd moment. Watching her face light with confidence and deviltry as she displayed her knowledge was as gratifying to him as her more appreciative glances. Taking joy in such a small thing was new to him. Ian felt he could have stood there all night listening to the laughter lurking behind her scholarly tones. “How about this one?”

  It was a night scene of a wooded park done in blues with a couple waltzing in the moonlight. It was a very romanticized scene. “That’s one of mine,” she whispered softly then, drawing Ian’s eyes back to her.

  “You painted it?”

  “No,” she amended. Her expression held sadness and … longing? Ian wasn’t sure. She went on, “I brought it with me when I came here. It’s Mongin’s Vue de Marly. It was painted around the turn of the century. I loved it so much as a girl that Papa let me take it when I married Robert.”

  “It’s certainly of a different feel than the other landscapes.”

  “Robert thought it romantic twaddle,” she told him more briskly, stepping back from the painting. “His words, not mine. I always thought it was lovely, if a bit fantastical. I mean, who would actually waltz alone in a moonlit park? It’s such a silly thing.”

  “I would if I were dancing with you, Hero.” Ian surprised himself with the husky tone of his voice, if not with his words, and frowned with no small amount of disgust. Where those sappy words had come from, he had no idea. He had never considered himself a romantic, had never seriously courted a woman—or wanted to—in all his days. Though he had read the great poets, like most men he considered voicing a recitation in earnest to be an insult to his manhood.

  It just went to show that a man should never say never. In the right situation, with the right woman, poetry was no longer mere words but so much more. Inspiration was obviously the missing element of his long-held dismissal of “romantic twaddle,” as Hero had called it moments ago, and she was a most inspiring lady.

  Still, it was an affront to his principles to spout such nonsense to a woman he’d just met. Ian shook his head to clear the thickening webs of desire away but they clung to him tenaciously. Aye, and wouldn’t that be just the thing to prompt her to leave Cuilean? The unwanted attentions of a man Hero considered a cousin.

  But did she? Ian studied Hero through heavy lids as she rubbed her palms down her skirts. She looked uncertain, with her brilliant eyes wide, but not chagrined by his words.

  Heavy silence fell around them but it was not as weighty as the desire that was pulling at him. Hero was so lovely in the candlelight cast by the wall sconces. Her golden hair gleamed, her skin shone like ivory, her lips were moist and full. The shadows ebbed and peaked over the swell of her breasts with every breath she took. Ian wanted nothing more than to take her in his arms and to press those delicious curves against him, to feel those breasts well against his chest. He wanted to touch those lips. Make love to them—nay, worship them—with his own.

  What he wanted most was to know that the desire to do so was mutual.

  Hero’s pulse beat visibly along her long neck as she stared at him in surprise, making him believe that it was. If he ran a finger along that line, Ian wondered, would he find it fluttering as madly as his own? Whether her eyes were wide with excitement or the fear of a deer ready to bolt, Ian wasn’t certain. Clearing his throat uncomfortably, Ian took a pace back in an attempt to break the spell. “You mentioned you enjoy the ramparts as well. Would you care for a stroll before we retire for the evening?”

  A deep sigh escaped her. Disappointment? Gratitude? Ian wished he knew.

  “Thank you, Lord Ayr. I believe some fresh air would be lovely.”

  “I thought we agreed you would call me Ian,” he reminded her in a brogue still heavy with desire. Again he tried to cast it away, only to remain entrapped.

  Hero’s lips parted with a swift intake of breath before she released it shakily. “I’m sure that would be most inappropriate, Lord Ayr,” she countered softly as Ian led her down the length of the picture room.

  “Nonsense. We are family, are we not?” he asked lightly.

  Chapter Eight

  Hero didn’t answer immediately. Instead, she remained silent as Ian led her down to the main floor, through the library, and into the armory. From there a series of heavy doors separated the two parallel stone walls that surrounded the courtyard, a tall inner wall and a shorter outer wall that fronted the cliffs of the firth. The shallow passage between the two walls had been the first line of defense in ancient days, when attacks might be made on the castle from the sea.

  Facing the Firth of Clyde, the narrow outer wall of the ramparts stood no more than three feet in height and a foot in thickness. Periodically the wall was notched out into lower sections where the business end of a cannon might be aimed toward the firth to fight off invasion. Should that fail, the inner walls were ten feet in height and more than two feet thick.

  Ian motioned for Hero to precede him into the narrow walk of the embattlements and she walked ahead of him holding her hooped skirts up on one side, creating an angle to their bell shape that allowed her to fit down the narrow passage. She trailed her fingers along the top of the firth-side ramparts, lifting them over the gaps as she went.

  One … two … three.

  Ian counted the spaces as she skipped across them, w
atching her delicate fingers drift through the air before once again skimming the stone walls. The wind was even greater here than it had been on the upper balcony, but then Ian had noticed that the ramparts always seemed to be the windiest area of the castle. The breezes from the firth collided with the higher walls and, as if they knew not which way to go, would swirl about the ramparts, pushing and pulling against anyone who walked the walls.

  That wind was pulling at Hero now, and tendrils of her golden hair were escaping her once-neat coiffure and licking across her face and neck. The long streamers of her gown that had once lain tamely against the silk were dancing merrily about her skirts.

  At the sixth break in the wall, Hero stopped and turned, seating herself within the notch. After adjusting her skirts daintily, she propped an elbow against the higher portion of the wall and, brushing a piece of hair away from her face, considered him thoughtfully with her vivid azure eyes gleaming in the moonlight. “You see me as a sister then?”

  Ian stared blankly at her for a moment. He had been so taken by the picture she presented that his earlier words were the farthest thing from his mind. She was so lovely, so desirable. Angelic yet seductive. Brotherly affection was nearly the last thing he felt for her, but he’d be damned if he were going to admit it. This strange magnetism between them had already cost him a slap or two to his male pride. Leaning back against the inner wall, Ian crossed his arms over his chest. “You should be careful there. This wind has the force to push you over the edge, and it’s a long fall to the firth below.”