“Are you planning on living here year round?” Gordon asked.
“Are you?” Miriam asked.
What an annoying woman.
Gordon, thankfully, didn’t answer the question, only smiled. Miriam smiled back. How very amiable everyone was suddenly.
Her stomach was churning and it wasn’t hunger. Nothing had gone right, from the Americans’ arrival days early to Fergus’s silent and disapproving presence, to this moment.
“And you?” Miriam asked, turning to Fergus. “Are you planning on remaining in Invergaire as well?”
She sent a cautionary look to her brother, but Fergus was ignoring her. Instead, he was looking toward the nurse. “I don’t know, Miss Loftus. Once, I could have told you my plans. Things have changed since then.”
Without another word, he left them, walking with stiff and halting steps to the doorway. He never turned, or glanced back, and so didn’t see Elizabeth watching him leave.
“Can we continue?” Mr. Loftus asked, annoyed.
Shona turned to find Gordon watching her, his look unreadable.
He’d always had that gift of silence, his eyes steady, as if he absorbed everything to study it later. Part of his demeanor was, no doubt, a result of being the general’s only child. One did not speak unless the general commanded it. Part of it was due to Gordon’s own nature. He seemed to analyze a situation carefully, pull it apart, and put it back together.
Why did you come? Are you here to witness my humiliation? My hawking of Gairloch to the highest bidder?
Shona Imrie Donegal, the Countess of Morton, brought low. Would that please him?
She watched as Gordon offered his arm to Miriam once again, and the two of them preceded everyone out the door, as if Gordon were leading the expedition and not her.
G
ordon was torn between following Fergus—after all, his errand today had been for that purpose—or remaining where he was and watching Shona. As the drama unfolded, he found himself fascinated by her behavior. Even as a girl, she’d had a touch of arrogance about her. The Imrie pride, he’d called it. But now, she was almost brittle with it, her chin at an angle that dared the world to see anything but the Countess of Morton. A variety of expressions crossed her face: annoyance, sadness, and then a tightly controlled expression he’d come to expect from her.
But her hands were trembling.
She was not as composed as she wanted the others to think. Why? Did the idea of selling Gairloch not appeal to her as he’d thought? Or did she simply dislike his presence?
With his free hand, he reached out and gave Shona’s arm a brief, supportive squeeze. He heard her draw in a sharp breath. For a moment, she looked as if she might turn to him, but then she pulled away.
He smiled at the sight of the pulse thudding rapidly at the base of her throat.
In that instant, he decided he wasn’t leaving, even if it meant he had to be attentive to Miss Loftus. Clinging women annoyed him, and Miss Loftus clung like a barnacle. She hadn’t released his arm once since they’d left the Clan Hall, an action Shona noted more than once.
Good, another reason to stay right where he was.
“D
o you ever wear a kilt, Gordon?” Miriam was asking.
Shona frowned, caught Elizabeth’s glance, and smoothed her face of any expression. A moment later, the frown was back.
“My uniform is a kilt and a jacket, Miss Loftus,” he said. “So, yes, I’ve worn it quite often.”
“Please call me Miriam,” she said, looking up at him with a rapturous smile.
Shona had been wrong to liken Miriam to a cat. She was a pigeon, instead. A very pretty little gray and white pigeon with a very plump chest, beady little eyes, and an inquisitive look, its little head twisting back and forth on its sturdy little neck. Pigeons pranced, they didn’t quite walk. Miriam didn’t quite walk, either. Since she was so close to Gordon, she didn’t have that opportunity to sway quite as much, thereby causing her skirts to rise above her ankles. But she did lean a great deal. Now, she was pressed against him, her breasts against his arm.
He was glancing down at her as if every single word out of her mouth was something to be cherished and remembered.
She caught Elizabeth’s smile, and felt a flush race through her body.
She was Shona Imrie Donegal, Countess of Morton. She did not have to endure such behavior.
Yes, she did.
Suddenly, she was so sad that she couldn’t bear it. She wanted to find a refuge, some place at Gairloch that didn’t hold the remnants of memory. She wanted to slip out of her skin, somehow, and be someone other than who she was. The weight of the past was nearly bringing her to her knees.
But she had no choice but to lead Mr. Loftus and the others through a tour of the kitchen, larder, and pantry, the stillroom, the armory, the conservatory, and the pharmacopeia. He’d already discovered the study, so that was spared an inspection. But she did open the library with the key she’d placed in her pocket that morning. Gairloch’s library was the last of its treasures.
The first volume had been added when the castle was barely twenty years old. A studious son of the laird had wanted to study for the priesthood. When that had not been possible, he’d educated himself, intent on spreading knowledge throughout the clan. He’d procured a Bible richly adorned by monastic scribes and it sat in pride of place on a brass stand on a small table.
This room alone was worth the price she was asking for Gairloch.
The library now boasted over a thousand volumes. She knew the exact number—one thousand, one hundred sixty-three—because it had been her task to catalogue each and every one of the books. From the time she was thirteen until the summer before her parents died, she was expected to use any of her free time to complete the task. Fergus had been given the duty of inventorying all the stored armament, not only those items displayed in the Clan Hall, but the attic filled with weapons collected by the Imries over the centuries.
Some of the books were priceless and had been old when they’d been acquired by members of the clan. They’d been lovingly placed here because they represented knowledge, not because of any thoughts of their intrinsic worth. At the same time, no one had given any concern as to their protection. Because Gairloch sat on a bluff, there was little danger of flooding, but still, she worried about damage.
Mr. Barry’s plans had incorporated expanding the library upward so that it would take up two floors, instead of simply being housed on the first floor. Since there’d been no money to expand the room, four rows of bookcases were separated from each other by a passageway three feet wide between them, creating a shadowed labyrinth.
“Then, he had the audacity to insist that we sleep in the smallest rooms imaginable. Father almost purchased the inn right there and then.”
Evidently, Miriam was expounding on her journey again. Shona thought she’d heard every excruciating detail, every item that had amused, annoyed, or stood between Miriam and her comfort. Thankfully, she was not included in this conversation.
Poor Gordon, having to listen to all that whining.
She stifled her smile.
Mr. Loftus didn’t look impressed about the library. He wrinkled his nose at the smell, and she wanted to tell him that was the scent of knowledge, at least that’s what her father had always told her. No doubt it was a combination of leather and old paper, as well as bookworms.
“Gairloch is a huge, drafty old place, isn’t it?” Miriam asked.
Shona could feel herself tensing. Helen glanced at her, a message in her eyes. Helen, more than anyone else, knew the state of her finances.
She nodded, forced a smile to her face, but before she could speak, Gordon said, “It is quite large. But it has a wonderful history.”
Miriam looked up at him adoringly, as if she were a baby bird and he had just brought her a nice juicy worm.
“You should tell the story of Gairloch,” Miriam said. “I love the way you speak.”
The woman had the most annoying accent, one that flattened her voice, and made it almost nasally. Most of the time, she barely spoke above a breath. She shouldn’t be likened to a pigeon at all, or a baby bird, but an emaciated bird on the brink of dying, so frail it could barely flap her little wings.
Gordon, however, seemed to be fascinated with the sound of her voice, and with Miriam herself, because his attention had barely faltered during this whole, horrible tour.
“Your grandmother lived around here, didn’t she, Father?” Miriam asked, turning her attention momentarily to her father.
He nodded. “She was an Imrie,” he announced, fixing a stern look on Shona.
Oh dear God in heaven.
Miriam looked at her. “Are we cousins of a sort, Countess?”
“There are a great many people named Imrie in Scotland,” she said, as calmly as possible.
Please, do not let them be family.
“She taught me that a Highlander believed in family first, then clan, then everyone else.”
He was going to teach her about Highland traditions? Her smile thinned and she kept silent with some difficulty.
“I’ve heard that there is never a sight more stirring than a man in a kilt,” Miriam said in her little bird voice.
Shona prayed for patience, and perhaps a little Gairloch whiskey while she was at it.
“I should very much like to see you in a kilt, Gordon.”
Her face must have become flushed, because Mr. Loftus looked at her strangely, as did the giant. Helen elected to study the wainscoting while Elizabeth was examining the carpet.
Were they all pretending not to hear?
Very well, she’d do the same.
Let him dress in his kilt and show his fine legs to Miriam Loftus. Let him strut about like a rooster. She didn’t even care if Miriam slid her hands all the way up those lovely thighs to cup one perfectly rounded buttock. Let the woman salivate with lust. Let her eyes glaze over with desire. Let them couple on the dining table, the courtyard, on the banks of the loch, anywhere they wished.
It was none of her concern.
He might have been a fixture of her past, and an important figure in it, but she’d grown beyond him. She was no longer the girl she’d been.
“Are you up to the third floor, sir?” she asked Mr. Loftus. “We can access the attics from there.”
“We don’t have to see the whole of the place today,” he said. “We’re planning on being here a few weeks, Countess.”
A few weeks? A few weeks? Panic rendered her speechless. How was she to feed them all for a few weeks?
“We’ll save the third floor for another day. Maybe tomorrow,” he said. “And the attics. And the dungeon. I should like to see that.”
“We don’t have a dungeon,” she said, forgetting to smile. “Just an area where the whiskey is kept.”
He nodded. “For now, I’d like to rest awhile.”
“Of course,” she said as Elizabeth went to his side.
“Shall I come with you, Father?” Miriam said, momentarily diverted from salivating at Gordon.
He smiled fondly at her. “On no account. I’ll just rest before dinner.” He glanced at Shona. “A small repast to tide me over might not be amiss.”
Again?
“Some tea?” Helen suggested, once again coming to her rescue.
“A bit of whiskey, instead, I think,” Mr. Loftus said. “With some venison from dinner last night.”
Mr. Loftus left the room, escorted by Elizabeth and the giant. Helen followed soon after, heading toward the kitchen, leaving her alone with Miriam and Gordon.
At the moment, she didn’t like either one of them very much. When Miriam smiled up at Gordon and cooed something at him, she felt some internal control shatter.
“He looks quite lovely in his kilt,” she said, smiling at Miriam. “You could tell all your friends about a Highlander who posed for you.” She turned her smile on Gordon, increased the brightness of it, and said, “Maybe he’ll bend over and show you his arse. And a very fine arse it is.”
With that, she turned and left the room to the sound of Miriam’s gasp.
This time, her smile was real.
G
ordon found her in one of the southern parlors on the second floor. Shona was standing, facing a section of tartan that had been draped over a patched bit of wall. The hole had been caused by one of the previous laird’s fists, he’d been told, and the wall never painted, no doubt to forever enshrine the laird’s temper.
The Imrie pride went back several generations.
“Did you accomplish what you wanted?” he asked, leaning against the doorframe.
“By being rude?” she asked, not turning to look at him. “No,” she said.
“I would suggest that it was a little beyond rudeness. Do you really think I have a very fine arse?”
She clasped her hands together, bent her head to stare at them. “Consider your lecture delivered. I’ll go and apologize.”
They were in the same room, but she might as well have been in London. She was back to form, the arrogant Imrie.
He moved from the doorway, walking toward her. What did he want? To see if her hands still trembled? To smell her perfume?
“Do you know Elizabeth?” she asked, surprising him.
“No.”
He stopped behind her, close enough that he could reach out and touch her. Right there on the nape of her neck where she was sensitive. How many times had he placed a necklace of kisses on her skin? How many times had she shivered in delight?
“Did you please your husband in bed?”
Her shoulders tensed.
“Not even in Sebastopol?” she asked as if she hadn’t heard his question. Ah, but he was made of stronger stuff than that. He knew how to flank the enemy, use his artillery to confuse them.
He took one step closer, leaned down until he was only inches from her neck, and softly blew on her skin.
She flinched.
“I knew some of the nurses in the Sebastopol and India,” he said calmly, “but I never met her.” He wouldn’t tell her that Fergus had confided in him. If Fergus had wanted her to know, he would have told her.
Slowly, carefully, as if it were something she’d thought of doing before he began teasing her, she took a step forward. Too many more steps and she’d have her nose to the wall.