“What would you, a farmer’s son, know about society
dances?” she snapped, nettled.
Rupert only chuckled. “Mama showed us all, when we
were little. She had a coming out in Edinburgh as a girl, you
know.”
Eleanor nodded. She remembered hearing about Betty
MacDougall’s family connections. Her distant relation to the
Riddells had allowed Sandy to be tacksman.
“Please?” Rupert held out his hand. “You’re the only
lady present I am acquainted with.”
“What about Margaret?”
“My sister? I’d rather dance with you.”
“Even if I step on your toes?”
“I’m wearing boots. Still a farm boy at heart and
foot, you know. I can’t abide some of these dandified
fashions.”
Smiling a little, Eleanor allowed herself to be led
to the floor. Rupert took her into his arms, and she was surprised
to realize how solid and warm he felt. She fancied she could feel
his heart beating even though only their arms were touching.
“See? This isn’t so difficult.”
And actually, it wasn’t. Eleanor allowed Rupert to
lead her, and felt as if she were floating. Even in a gown borrowed
from Margaret, and slippers that were at least a size too large,
she felt almost like a princess.
“I shouldn’t dance with you again,” Rupert said
after a waltz, “or we’re have all the tongues wagging here. Shall
we get some air?”
He led her out to a terrace, the branches of a few
potted plants bearing candles and making Eleanor feel as if she’d
stumbled into a fairy tale. The faint strains of music came from
the windows, and Eleanor shivered suddenly.
“Shall I fetch your shawl?”
“No. I’m not cold. It’s just so...” she shook her
head. “So magical. I’ve never seen anything like it, been anywhere
like this.” She thought briefly of her stifled existence in
Glasgow, the life she’d once hoped to live with John a vague
memory.
“You didn’t have much of a girlhood, did you?”
Rupert asked softly.
“What do you mean?” Eleanor’s voice was sharp, and
Rupert smiled.
“Only that you missed the dances and parties most
girls dream about. Being married, and widowed, so young.”
“There are plenty of women in my position,” Eleanor
said with a shrug. “And in these dangerous times, back in Scotland
at least, there are few parties.”
“I know. Every letter we ever received from the old
country spoke of the clearances.” Rupert was silent for a moment.
“But I wasn’t talking about everyone, I was talking about you.”
Eleanor turned to face him. “You don’t need to pity
me.”
“I don’t.” Rupert put his hands on her shoulders,
pulling her gently towards him. “I promise you, I don’t.”
Eleanor gazed at him in soundless surprise as he
gently lowered his face to hers and kissed her.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Eleanor pulled away from Rupert, her eyes wide, one
hand touching her lips. “Why did you do that?” she asked in a low
voice.
Rupert smiled, bemused. “I don’t know.”
Hardly courtly words, Eleanor thought, flushing a
dull red. She turned away. “You shouldn’t have.”
“I’m sorry, Eleanor...”
“I know what you think,” she continued, unable to
meet his eyes. “You feel sorry for me, poor widow that I am, with
no home to call my own. I suppose you thought a stolen kiss in the
shadows would cheer me to no end!” She turned to face him, her
expression suddenly fierce. “Well, you’re wrong, Rupert MacDougall.
I have plans for my life, and they don’t include being made a fool
of by you.”
Rupert did not say anything for a moment as Eleanor
glared at him, feeling both indignant and slightly foolish. A trill
of feminine laughter drifted through the opened windows.
“I apologize for my conduct,” he said quietly, “if
it was indeed unwelcome to you.”
“If...!” Eleanor repeated, eyes blazing with
indignation.
“Please know that I hold you in the highest regard,”
Rupert continued, as if she had not spoken, “and do not think of
you as a poor widow, as you said, in need of my attentions.” He
paused, and there was the glimmer of something like mischief in his
eyes, despite his sombre expression. “However, Mrs. McCardell, I
think that you may think of yourself in such a fashion.”
Before Eleanor could gather her wits to form a
suitably scathing reply, Rupert had bowed and left her alone on the
terrace.
“You have terrible manners,” Eleanor muttered, even
though he couldn’t hear her. Leaving her alone was quite
ungentlemanly. And yet her own conduct had been like that of a
fishwife! She sighed, and the sigh quickly became a shiver of
remembrance. No man had ever kissed her, save John, and now Rupert.
She could hardly believe he’d taken such a liberty, or that she’d
allowed it. She would forget that kiss, she told herself. She
must.
On the other side of the ballroom, Caroline found
her uncle had disappeared again, and was looking around nervously
for some pleasant society. Indeed, she was presently in danger of
becoming a wallflower.
“Will the gossips talk too much if we dance
again?”
Caroline turned in surprise to see
Ian Campbell standing in front of her, looking abashed and
wonderfully uncertain.
“I doubt they will fail to notice.” What she didn’t
add was her sudden and complete indifference to the gossips, or
indeed all of Boston society at that moment.
“I believe the coast to be clear,” Ian said softly,
“in regards to your uncle.”
Caroline knew she should decline rather coolly and
turn away. But she was alone, and she loved the way Ian looked at
her with almost bewildered longing, and so she placed her gloved
hand in his.
“You keep me on your toes, Mr.
Campbell,” she told him after a moment on the ballroom’s dance
floor, for the intensity which pulsated between them scared her
just a little, and she sought to lighten the mood with some
harmless flirtation.
“Why are you frowning, Miss Reid?” Ian asked softly
and Caroline looked up at him, blushing.
“No reason, really,” she half-mumbled, not wanting
to mention her uncle or anything to do with Scotland again, for
surely such talk could only lead to bitterness.
Ian, however, needed no explanations. “I fear my
association with your uncle will spoil our own friendship,” he
said.
Caroline’s heart beat quickly.
“Have we a friendship?” she asked, meaning to sound teasing and a
bit coy, but it came out breathlessly anxious instead. Hopeful. She
blushed all the more, silently wishing that Ian Campbell did not
affect her as he did, reducing her to a twittering
schoolgirl.
“I would hope so, but I might be presumptuous,” Ian
replied with a little half smile. “Admittedly, our acquaintance is
short, but the truth is, Miss Reid, I can’t get you out of my
mind.”
He’d maneuvered her to a quiet corner of the
ballroom, and their steps were merely a semblance of a dance. “Does
such an admission shock you? I hope not.”
Caroline, at a loss for words, could only shake her
head.
“I find it most inconvenient,” Ian continued, humor
lurking in his eyes even though his expression was serious. “At
work, in surgery, in the street, even. I always seem to be seeing
your face, hearing your laugh.”
“How vexing,” Caroline said, choking back a laugh.
“I daresay.”
“Indeed.” Ian paused thoughtfully. “Especially so,
if my cause were hopeless. Do you suppose it is?”
Caroline swallowed. Her head felt as if it were
swimming, her thoughts floating in a sea of feeling. What was Ian
asking of her, and dare she reply? “No cause is truly hopeless,”
she finally answered, avoiding his gaze. “I would think a man such
as you would enjoy a... a challenge.”
“Ah.” Ian lifted her hand, bringing it close to his
lips. “Do you intend to present such a challenge?”
“I fear my circumstances do the task for me,”
Caroline replied, mesmerized by the sight of her own gloved hand,
lily-white and strangely limp, hovering near Ian’s mouth.
His eyes filled with silent laughter, as well as
something deeper, and more dangerous, he lowered his mouth to kiss
her fingertips, only to be stopped by a coldly furious voice.
“A charming scene, to be sure, but I fear I must
interrupt.”
Caroline turned to see her uncle staring them both
down, his hands clenched into fists at his side. She felt dizzy for
an entirely different, and far more unpleasant, reason. There was a
metallic taste in her mouth, and she realized it was fear.
“Uncle James...”
“Caroline, you have yet to dance with me,” he
continued, avoiding Ian’s gaze. “Permit me to take your hand.”
Slowly, purposefully, Ian brushed Caroline’s fingers
with his lips and then let go of her hand. “Save one more dance for
me, Miss Reid,” he said with a bow.
Caroline watched him walk across the crowded
ballroom before Riddell grabbed her wrist and pulled her roughly
into a dance. “That impudent pup! I suppose he thinks he can annoy
me by grasping for your affections?”
Caroline looked sharply at her
uncle. “I don’t think Mr. Campbell concerns himself with your
feelings on the matter.”
“Hah! If he doesn’t, he hasn’t learned much in these
last ten years.” Riddell regarded his niece shrewdly. “Don’t fool
yourself, my girl, into thinking that lad cares a tuppence for your
fine feelings. He’s using you to get at me, that’s all.”
Caroline lifted her chin, not trusting herself to
reply, and certainly not wanting to hear anymore of her uncle’s
thoughts on the matter.
“And what do you think you’re
about,” he continued furiously, “making a cake of yourself over the
Campbell lad, when I asked you to attend to Dearborn? He’s far more
likely to offer for you than that penniless doctor.”
“I assure you, I do not wish Dearborn to offer,”
Caroline replied through clenched teeth.
“Perhaps I should send you back to Lanymoor,” James
said musingly, although his eyes were narrowed and glittering with
suppressed rage.
“I imagine that one would be as preferable as the
other,” Caroline replied coldly.
So quickly Caroline could only blink, Riddell
changed tactics. “Of course such measures are not necessary,” he
said in placating tones. “All I ask, niece, is that you lavish some
of your pretty charms on a business acquaintance. He is widowed, he
finds you diverting. Is that so much to ask?”
Caroline pressed her lips together and shook her
head minutely. Put that way, it was certainly a small favor, and
yet...
She knew her uncle had plans for her that he was not
divulging. And at this moment, with her fingers still burning from
Ian’s light kiss, she was too afraid to ask.
“Mama, are you all right?”
Maggie stared anxiously at her
mother as Harriet pressed a hand to her middle and shook her head.
“I’m fine,
cridhe
,
just tired. This damp weather makes me feel a bit achey, that’s
all.”
Harriet swallowed her queasiness, and, as briskly as
she could, tied her apron round her middle.
She glanced around the room, Anna gurgling happily
in a fleece-lined basket by the fire, the breakfast dishes still on
scrubbed pine table.
Sandy and Betty were both still abed and George was
in the fields with Allan, supervising the last of the harvest,
although with the poor weather, Harriet wondered how much there
would be.
Worries pressed against her, giving her a head ache.
Wearily she pressed her hand to her eyes before smiling at
Maggie.
“We’ve lots to do, haven’t we?” Betty’s kitchen
garden, usually a sight to behold, was tangled with weeds, the
tomatoes lying ripe and rotting on the ground. Harriet was
determined to salvage what she could, even as she thought of her
own garden going to waste.
Allan had already brought their livestock to
Mingarry Farm, and he’d managed to salvage some of their crops and
garden, enough God willing to see them to winter.
Yet Harriet still ached to be in her own neat
kitchen, showing Maggie how to pick the firmest tomatoes, how to
bottle fruit and make jam.
It wasn’t the same here, even though Harriet knew
they were needed. It was the right place to be, and that was a
better lesson for Maggie to learn than any homemaking skill.
Harriet sighed. Still, it was a hard lesson.
The morning passed in a flurry of chores, and it was
nearing noonday when Harriet carried a tray of tea and toast into
the MacDougalls’ front bedroom. She suppressed a shiver at the
sight of her father-in-law, lying as pale and still as a corpse on
the bed, his eyes closed and his hands folded on his chest.
Betty stirred in her chair, gazing at Harriet with
flat, despairing eyes.
“You’re too kind, too good to me...” she trailed off
weakly, looking out the window, the bright glass panes once her
pride and joy.
“Nonsense.” Harriet set the tray on the table and
handed Betty a steaming mug. “You need your strength, Mother.
Really, you do.”
Bett plucked fretfully at the fringe of her shawl.
“I can’t eat.”
“Just a bite of toast, then. Perhaps some broth.”
Harriet spoke firmly, but her own spirits were sinking. Betty’s
skin was papery thin, her eyes faded and lost. Her hair lay flat
and white under her mob cap. She was, Harriet thought, a living
ghost.
Glancing at the bed, she wondered if she could even
say as much for Sandy. She sat down, pulling a chair next to
Betty’s.
“Come join us in the great room,” she urged. “The
fire’s warm in there, for such a damp day. And the children may
cheer you. Anna babbles constantly, it’s like a song.”
Betty only shook her head. “I must stay here, in
case he wakens...”
Harriet glanced at the bed once more. “You could
hear from the next room. Surely such a constant vigil isn’t
needed...”