by Julia London
His mother was seated beside his father. She was still the most regal woman he knew, even more so now that her hair was more silver than blond. “Where have you been, darling?” she asked Cailean, her voice still very British even after all these years.
He leaned down to kiss her cheek. “At work, Màthair. An estate doesna build itself, aye?”
“What of the cargo?” his father asked.
There was no shame among the Mackenzies of Balhaire when it came to their “free trade.” Since the union of Scotland and England, the burden of taxation had been increasing to such an extent that many of their clan struggled. Arran Mackenzie’s goal had always been to keep their clan close to Balhaire by giving them means to earn a living and reason to stay in the glen. They believed that good wine, good tobacco and good tea, sold at reasonable prices without usurious taxes were reasons to stay, and they were determined to see that they had those things.
Cailean filled his father in on the cargo and the progress he’d made on his estate since he’d last seen them a fortnight ago. It was not finished...but it had come along well enough that Cailean had taken up residence in a room with his best stalking dog, Fabienne. It was a meaner living than he was accustomed to, but he didn’t mind it. He rather liked being alone, the only man for miles about. He liked surviving by his ability to hunt and fish.
“Cailean! Do you mean to ignore us?”
He glanced over his shoulder at his sister, Vivienne, as she waddled toward the vacant chair beside him. She was round with her fourth child, and sat heavily, sprawling her legs before her, her hand protectively on her belly. Vivienne was the second oldest sibling, eighteen months younger than Cailean. Then came Aulay, the sea captain who was away just now, and then his brother Rabbie. He took a seat beside Vivienne. The youngest of them all, Catriona, joined them as well, fidgeting with a string in her hands and propping herself on the arm of her father’s chair.
“So you’ve met her, aye?” Vivienne asked, catching his hand. “The lady of Auchenard?”
Cailean shrugged. It was no surprise to him that word about her had spread quickly through the glen. It had been a week since he’d last seen her in that curious morning meeting outside the walls of Auchenard.
Vivienne’s eyes fired with delight at his silence. “Did you find her bonny, then?”
“I—”
“She means to bag a husband!” Catriona eagerly interjected.
Cailean laughed at that.
“Aye, it’s true!” Vivienne insisted.
“Why in heaven would a woman of her means and connections seek a husband in the Highlands of Scotland? Where do you hear these barmy tales?”
“MacNally,” Rabbie said matter-of-factly. “She released him from service and he’s had quite a lot to say. He’s told anyone who will give him half an ear that the lady must marry in a year’s time or forfeit her fortune.”
“Aye, it’s true,” Catriona insisted as she shouldered in beside Cailean. “It was so said in her husband’s last testament. She must marry within three years of his death or lose her entire fortune. It’s quite large, aye? I’ve heard as much as fifty thousand a year.”
“Who has said this?” their father asked.
“Mr. MacNally and Auntie Griselda. She’s heard it all the way from London.”
One of Arran Mackenzie’s salt-and-pepper brows rose. “Zelda has said?”
“She said it was so large a fortune that any man in Scotland who had as much as half a head on his shoulders would be climbing the walls to have a look at her, then. Her husband has been gone more than two years now, and she’s less than a year left to settle on a match and marry. That’s why she’s come to Scotland. To settle on a match!” she announced, sounding triumphant, as if she’d solved a mystery.
“Diah, are there no’ men enough in England?” Rabbie scoffed.
“No’ the sort a lass would want to marry,” Vivienne said, and the Mackenzies laughed.
“There are men enough in England,” Cailean said. “It’s nonsense.”
“Unless...” his mother said thoughtfully.
“Unless?” Vivienne asked.
“It is possible that she seeks a Scot for a husband. She might think to install him at Auchenard for an annual stipend, then return to London and live as she pleases.”
Lady Mackenzie’s children and her husband stared at her.
“Mamma, how clever you are!” Catriona gasped. “That’s precisely what she means to do! And she’s bonny,” she added in a singsong voice. “You saw her, Rabbie. You could put her fortune to good use, aye?”
“And what would Seona have to say about that?” he responded, referring to the young woman to whom he’d been attracted of late. “The lady is a Sassenach, Cat. There is no fortune great enough to tempt me to tie my lot with the English.”
“Mind your tongue!” Vivienne scolded her younger brother. “Your mother is English!”
“My mother is no Sassenach. She merely happens to have come from England,” Rabbie said, inclining his head toward his mother.
Margot Mackenzie shook her head at her youngest son. “You’ve been too much in the company of Jacobites, Rabbie,” she warned him, to which Rabbie shrugged. “I should like all of my sons to marry and give me the grandchildren I deserve, but I’d rather none of them become entangled with a woman whose motives are not true.”
She didn’t look at Cailean, but he knew she was thinking of Poppy Beauly...a woman whose motives had not been true.
Poppy was the other Englishwoman Cailean had known who was as adept at flirtation as Lady Chatwick. She had destroyed any notion that he might have had about complicating his life with a wife and children.
Aye, his world had narrowed considerably since that wound was opened.
He’d only just reached his majority when he met her. He’d spent that unusually cool summer in England, at Norwood Park, his mother’s familial estate, under the less-than-watchful eye of his uncle Knox. The winsome, beautiful Poppy Beauly was the daughter of his mother’s very dear friend, and Cailean had been truly and utterly smitten.
Over the course of that summer, he’d wooed Poppy and professed his esteem to her more than once. For that, he’d received her warm encouragement. He’d been so green that he’d even dreamed of the house he would build for her, of the children they would bring into this world.
Poppy had given him every reason to believe she shared his feelings. “However, I am sure you understand that I must come out before I will be allowed to receive any offers,” she’d warned him. “I won’t come out until my eighteenth birthday.” Then she’d proceeded to assure him with a passionate kiss that had left Cailean feeling as if he might explode with need.
Cailean had waited. He’d spent another year aboard his father’s ship, and the following summer he’d returned to Norwood Park. Poppy had been happy to see him. She had made her debut, and while he knew she had other suitors, she still encouraged his pursuit of her, and quite unabashedly, too. He was her prince, she said. He was so kind, she said. She held him in such great esteem, she said.
At the end of that extraordinary summer, with Uncle Knox’s blessing, Cailean had offered for her hand.
Much to his surprise and humiliation, Poppy Beauly had been appalled by his offer. She’d snatched her hand back as if she feared contagion. “I beg your pardon, Mr. Mackenzie,” she’d said, reverting to addressing him formally. “I must beg your forgiveness if I’ve given you even the slightest reason to believe that I could possibly accept an offer.”
“You’ve given me every reason to believe that you would!” he’d exclaimed, horrified by his stupidity.
“No, no,” she’d said, wringing her hands. “I have enjoyed your company, but surely you knew I could never marry a Scot, sir.”
As if he were diseased. As if he were les
s than human.
The rejection, the realization that Poppy Beauly did not love him as he loved her had devastated the young man Cailean had been. He had loved her beyond reason, obviously, and had limped back to Scotland with his broken heart.
He’d taken a solitary path away from that wound, away from privileged young women with the power to slay him. His tastes ran to widows and lightskirts and, if he was entirely honest, he enjoyed his own damn company above most.
“Leave him be, Margot,” his father said, chuckling. “Cailean follows his own path.”
His mother knew this very well, and yet she never gave up hope. “He could just as easily follow his own path to the altar,” she said, her attention locked on her oldest child. “He’s not as young as he once was, is he?”
“Màthair!” Cailean said and chuckled at her relentless desire to see him wed. “I will thank you to mind your own affairs, aye?” He leaned back, glancing away from them, smiling smugly at their inability to affect him.
He did not mention that he’d seen Lady Chatwick in her bedclothes, had seen her bare shoulder, had seen the swell of her breasts. Or that she had the blondest hair he’d ever seen—the pale yellow of late summer, which, when he thought of it, was the only color of hair that could possibly complement pear-green eyes. He didn’t admit that he had noticed her small nose with a scattering of freckles across the bridge, or the wide, full lips that ended at a dimple in her cheek.
Cailean was not meant to marry and provide heirs, obviously. He was five and thirty, for God’s sake. He was happy to let the reins of Balhaire and the Mackenzie fortune pass to his brothers’ children someday. He would carry on as he had these last fifteen years, bringing in the occasional hold of illegal wine or tea or tobacco and building his house. He would not concern himself with an Englishwoman foolish enough to come here. No amount of cajoling from his mother would change it.
But his mother’s theory about his new neighbor stuck with Cailean, and when he happened upon Lady Chatwick a few days later, he couldn’t help but see her in a wee different light.
A very suspicious light.
He was walking up from the loch with four trout on his line. Fabienne had raced ahead, chasing after a scent she’d picked up. He watched her disappear through the break in the wall around Auchenard, and a few moments later, burst through again, racing across the meadow, her tail high, alert to something in the woods.
Just behind her, Lady Chatwick pushed through the opening, stumbling a bit as she squeezed through the wall, batting away vines of clematis, then catching her wide-brimmed straw hat before it toppled off her head. She put her hands on her hips and called after the dog. She hadn’t yet seen Cailean—and didn’t until he whistled for Fabienne.
Both dog and woman turned toward him. Fabienne obediently began to lope toward him. Lady Chatwick folded her arms across her body and shifted her weight to her hip with the attitude of an inconvenienced female.
Cailean continued walking through the meadow toward her, his plaid brushing the tops of the tall grass, his fishing pole propped on his shoulder. When he reached her, he jammed the end of his rod into the ground. The fish swung near his shoulder.
“What do you think you are doing?” she asked imperiously.
What had happened to the flirtatious little chit? The husband hunter? The color in her cheeks was high, the shine in her eyes even brighter in full sun. And there was a curious smear of blood on the back of her left hand. “What would you think, then?” he asked, gesturing grandly to the fish hanging from the pole.
“You have not been invited to fish my lake! Sir Nevis warned of poachers—”
“Poachers?” He snorted with disdain as he withdrew a handkerchief from the pocket of his waistcoat. “I donna need an invitation to fish the loch. It is no’ yours. It couldna possibly be. Your land lies beyond that wall and to the east.”
“What?” She turned to look behind her with such force that her thick braid swung around and over her shoulder. “No, you are mistaken. My uncle said my land extends from the point where the lake empties into the sea,” she said and pointed.
“Aye, your uncle is correct. But the loch meets the sea there.” He covered her outstretched hand with his and moved it around so that she was pointing in the opposite direction. Her hand felt delicate in his, like a child’s, and he felt a jolt of something quite warm and soft sluice through him.
Her brow creased with a frown. “Are you certain?”
“Diah, as if I could possibly be wrong. The loch belongs to no one. We may all fish there. You’re bleeding.”
“Pardon?” She looked back at him, startled.
“Your hand,” he said, and turned it palm up. “May I?” he asked, holding up his handkerchief.
She glanced at her hand, nestled in his. Her frown deepened. “Oh, that wretched garden! It is my greatest foe. You need not fear being invited to a garden party after all, my lord, for it would seem that with every weed or vine I cut, another lurks behind it.” She squinted at her palm, sighing, then glanced up at him through her long lashes. “My hands are quite appalling, aren’t they?”
“Aye, they are,” he agreed. They were surprisingly roughened and red. She looked like a crofter in her worn muslin gown and leather apron, with the tiny river of dirt that had settled in the curve of her neck into her shoulder. He watched a tiny bead of perspiration slip down her collarbone and disappear between her breasts.
He had an abrupt but strong urge to swipe that bit of perspiration from her chest with the pad of his thumb.
“I hadn’t realized how bad they are,” she said, gazing at her hand.
He looked at it, too—at the long, tapered fingers, the smooth stretch of almost translucent skin across her inner wrist. He had another puzzling urge—to lift her wrist to his nose and sniff for the scent of perfume.
He wiped away a bit of dirt from her palm. “Your eyes are very blue,” she said.
He looked up; she was observing him with a softness in her eye he didn’t like. “Aye,” he said warily and ignored the shiver her slow smile sent rifling through him.
Cailean turned her hand over to examine the back of it. “Have you no gloves, then?” he asked, staring at the many pricks and scratches.
“None that are suitable for that damnable thicket.”
He turned her hand over once more to examine her injured palm. She sported a callous and several pricks here, too, he noticed. “You’ve been hard at work, aye?” He traced his finger across her palm; she immediately tensed, shifting from one foot to the other.
“I think I’ve never worked as hard as this. I know what I should like the garden to be—a square of green and roses surrounding an old fountain...if my uncle can make it function once again. And I’d like benches for sitting and arbors for shade. But I have begun to believe none of it possible.”
Why would she want all that? Gardens required attention year-round. Surely she didn’t intend to stay so long, the little fool. “Is there no one to help you?”
She shook her head. “All hands are needed to finish the repairs to the lodge. Nevertheless, I am determined to return the garden to its former glory.”
He was beginning to wonder if she was truly daft. “There’s never been any glory to Auchenard,” he said flatly.
“Pardon?”
“Since I was a wee lad,” Cailean said, pausing when she sucked in a breath when he dabbed at the cut in her hand, “it has no’ been properly kept, aye? MacNally was no’ entirely responsible for its decline.”
She stared at him, clearly not understanding, eyes framed with lashes light in color but quite long. “Then who is?” she asked.
“The Sassenach who claimed it, that’s who. Your husband, his father before them—they didna care for Auchenard, much less a bloody garden.”
“Really?” She looked dis
appointed, as if she believed if she kept digging and cutting, kept rooting out the weeds that choked the life from all other vegetation, she’d discover some secret garden underneath the growth.
He returned his attention to her palm. “Did no one tell you, then? Auchenard has no’ been inhabited in many years.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” she said with a weary sigh. “Someone may have told me. In fact, I am certain someone did. But I didn’t listen.”
What a curious thing to say—why wouldn’t she have listened to wiser heads? Ah, of course—because that pretty head of hers was filled with cake. He dabbed at her palm again and she sucked in her breath, wincing.
“You’ve a bit of a thorn or wood embedded in your flesh,” he said. “Shall I remove it?”
She looked uncertainly at him. “I, ah...yes, if you would be so kind?”
He wasn’t that kind, but he pulled a dirk from his belt. She gasped loudly and tried to pull her hand free.
“Be still, lass.”
“I’d rather—”
He didn’t wait for her to refuse. He made a tiny nick. It startled her and she cried out, then bit down on her lip as he carefully worked out the bit of wood. “Oh,” she said, once he had removed the bit of thorn. “Oh.”
He watched her closely a moment to assure himself she wouldn’t faint. Her bottom lip was red from where she’d bitten it, and he was suddenly and annoyingly filled with another unwelcome urge—he wanted to bite that plump lip. Suck it in between his teeth and thread his fingers through her gold hair.
“Thank you,” she said.
He removed his gaze from her lush mouth and moved his hand to her wrist, holding it lightly but firmly as he began to wrap her hand with the handkerchief. “You should have it looked after, aye? There is a healing woman in Balhaire.”
“Where?”
“What, then, did you put yourself on a boat and a coach knowing nothing?” he asked.
