Must Love Highlanders (10 page)

“Karen was not ill. She was sick of me, and my silly little academic self-importance. I was growing tired of it myself, tired of being the infallible expert on everything, and the one expected to debunk popular theories and pass judgment on all the new talent.”

The bedroom felt cozy rather than gloomy, though the rain was coming down in earnest. Dougie strolled into the room and hopped up on the bed, settling in along Louise’s other side.

Good kitty.

“The new talent never ends,” Louise said. She’d been new talent once, to the extent the small world of ceramic art had new talent. “And most new talent shouldn’t quit the day job no matter how good they are or what the work is selling for.”

“I should have stayed home,” Liam said, reaching across Louise to pet the cat. “I should have taught my classes and given my wife the children she wanted. When we married, we agreed children were not a priority, and Karen didn’t bring it up until I’d finished my doctorate and landed the teaching post. And then…”

The cat’s purr added a comforting touch to the gathering.

“Then?” Louise prompted.

“Then she brought up children again. We argued, we made up, we argued again. I wasn’t ready, she wasn’t getting any younger. We separated off and on for two years. She said the ambition she’d so admired in me had become selfishness and a thousand other faults, and of course, when that’s the reception a man gets, he finds reasons to present papers at conferences all over the globe.”

The rain gusted, a spatter of droplets rattling against the skylight. Louise fished around in the Magic Man Purse and found the bag of tablet.

“Have one,” she said, holding a cube up to Liam’s lips. He nibbled obediently. When she kissed him, the flavor lingered, though so did his regret.

“We were separated,” he said, softly. “The longest separation so far, and I had made up my mind that if it would make her happy, we’d try for a baby. I loved her, she was my wife, the rest of it—the gallery openings, the keynote speeches, the growing list of publications—they weren’t making me happy. They’d made her miserable, and that was no reflection on me or the vows I’d taken.”

This would have been easier to hear if Liam had cheated with any woman besides the squat little Venus of Willendorf, if he’d asked for a divorce, if he’d done anything but turn up decent when it really counted.

Louise drew the covers around his shoulders. “Tell me the rest of it.”

“We agreed to spend the weekend together at the same cottage where we’d honeymooned. The plan was to talk. I thought I’d come up with the surefire scheme to save the marriage and recover a bit of my self-respect. I’m not sure what Karen had in mind. She listened, she cried, she told me she loved me. Then as we walked around the loch, she collapsed. By the time I’d carried her back to the cottage, she was gone.”

“Heart attack? Stroke?” What other sudden death claimed an otherwise healthy young woman?

“Ectopic pregnancy, and before you ask, no. The child could not have been mine.”

Well, hell.
“This is the bad breakup you mentioned?” The worst breakup imaginable, for what woman conceives another man’s child when she’s intent on salvaging her marriage?

“Aye. I was so bewildered, and angry and guilty. There’s most of a year I can’t recall and probably wouldn’t want to. I turned mean and condescending, to my colleagues, to my students, to my family. Heavy drinking turned into stupid drinking.”

He fell silent for a moment, maybe sorting between bad memories, awful memories, and periods of no memory at all.

“If I’d been a dog,” he went on, “somebody would have shot me out of simple kindness, but I was the
brilliant young scholar
who hadn’t the sense to do his grieving in private. I had keynote speeches to give on important topics such as romantic elements in post-modern commercial art.”

Louise blinked, hard, because tears would not help. They wouldn’t help a wife who’d hit the end of her rope. They wouldn’t help Liam. They wouldn’t help anybody.

“I’m sorry, Liam. I’m so very, very sorry. For you, for her. No wonder you went into a tailspin.” Louise pushed him to his back and climbed over him, blanketing him with her body. “Does your family know?”

“Jeannie or Morag might suspect the baby wasn’t mine. My younger brothers were certainly concerned. They were all friends with Karen, of a sort. They’ve never said, and I haven’t asked.”

Liam was beyond tears, which was sad in itself, but also a relief. Louise would have lost it if he’d been able to cry.

“Who was the father?”

“What does that matter? I failed my wife, left her to loneliness and frustration, and the one thing she asked of me, I denied her. I suspect she was involved with one of the fellows from the art history department, a quiet man who listens well but doesn’t publish much.”

Louise sat up and brushed Liam’s hair away from his brow. His gaze held sadness, but also resignation, and that…that was wrong.

“Liam Cromarty, you are entitled to your grief, to your bad year, to your tailspins and bad days, and regrets. But you’ve punished yourself long enough, and you’ll listen to what I have to say now.”

“Listen to this email,” Dunstan Cromarty said to his wife as he joined her on the sofa near the wood stove. “It’s from Liam, and he may finally have finished going daft: ‘Chauffering your spinster lawyer friend about for the next two weeks as a favor to Jeannie. Miss Cameron likes tablet. Dougie likes her. What do we know about her, other than that she’s a Cameron? Love to Jane, Liam.’”

Jane pushed an indignant Wallace off her lap and curled up against her husband.

“If your cousin thinks Louise is a spinster, he’s a few drams short of a bottle, Dunstant. At least he e-mailed you.”

While Louise had yet to e-mail Jane. Wallace hopped back up and appropriated Dunstan’s lap. Atop the piano across the room, Blackstone was busy at his bath.

“I think Liam means the word spinster as a compliment,” Dunstan said, scratching the back of Wallace’s neck. “Liam is a spinster too.”

A mighty handsome one, though Liam was also shy, and married to his job. “How long ago did his wife die?” Jane asked.

“Nearly five years. Liam and Karen were having a rough patch, and he did not cope well. I almost moved home, but my practice was finally starting to take hold. Do you think Louise will come back to the practice of law? She’s damned good.”

Jane could
feel
Wallace purring, though he did so quietly. She purred when Dunstan petted her too.

“Louise was damned miserable, Dunstan. She’s not… Louise has no mean streak, no competitive edge. One of her art professors stole a glazing process she’d developed as an undergrad. She’d been working on it for years, since high school, and he was her adviser. I suspect he was also wooing her, and when he took credit for her work, she just slunk off to law school.”

“Don’t the senior academic types often take credit for the work their students do?” Dunstan gently unhooked Wallace’s front claws from his jeans. “This cat is determined to draw blood.”

Wallace had become more territorial since Blackstone had joined the household, though Blackstone was like his owner: very pretty, very self-contained, never imposing, never asking anything of anybody.

“Louise should have raised a stink,” Jane said. “Her pottery takes your breath away, and it’s simply pottery. This Hellenbore guy was some big deal at the art school, and Louise found out he’d done the same thing five years earlier with another female student’s use of mixed media.”

Dunstan wrapped an arm across Jane’s shoulders. “I don’t know what mixed media is, but Louise’s cross-examination has taken more than one judge’s breath away. You could call her, let her know the family’s been fretting over Liam for years.”

And make it obvious that Jane was fretting over Louise?

“What then, Dunstan? A half-dozen guys went gaga over Louise in law school, and I think most of the State’s Attorney’s Office of either gender would love to ask her out. She couldn’t be bothered with any of them. Once bitten, twice shy.”

“I rather like it when you nibble on me,” Dunstan murmured, shifting the cat to the floor. “And I adore nibbling on you.”

He demonstrated his adoration on Jane’s shoulder, while Jane tried to hold on to her train of thought.

“What if Louise takes a bite out of Liam?” she asked. “Loves him and leaves him? She could do that—no chance of things getting messy if you’re packing a round-trip ticket.”

Which Jane had insisted on—like an idiot. .

The cat hopped up again and marched across Jane to resume his place on Dunstan’s lap.

“Jane, my dearest love, I’m every bit as worried Liam will avail himself of Louise’s charms and then wave her on his way. Jeannie says for a year or so, he occasionally dallied, but never gave his heart away, and then he stopped even dallying. This e-mail is not from a man smitten by true love.”

“They’re adults,” Jane said, scratching the cat’s chin, which provoked more soft rumbling. “They’ll sort it out.”

Dunstan was quiet for a moment. He wasn’t a loud husband. He was a hardworking and calm husband—also cunning.

“What are you thinking, Dunstan Cromarty?”

“I’ll tell Liam if he hurts Louise, you’ll kill him.”

Well, that was honest. “And if Louise hurts him?”

“You’ll have to kill her, my dear. I’ll be too busy worrying about my cousin.”

Louise Cameron in a stern mood—when naked—was an imposing, alluring sight. Liam’s mind filled with images of Nike, goddess of victory, fierce and lovely, both.

“I’m listening, Louise.”

“Karen could have fought for you.”

Liam resisted the urge to get his mouth on Louise’s nipples, which were one shade darker than her lips. That color, a delicate, rococo blend of pink, cream, and—old gold, maybe?—would forever after be “
Louise”
to him.

And the daft woman wanted to lecture him. “Karen and I fought. I didn’t enjoy it.”

“She probably didn’t either, but I’m saying she could have fought
for
you.”

“Come here,” Liam said, urging Louise down to his chest. “I’m a visual thinker, you see, and my concentration isn’t up to the strain presented by your many charms.”

He’d made her laugh, which led him to hope she’d leave off nattering about Kar—

“She was your wife, Liam. Did she ever read the papers you wrote?”

Liam traced his way, bump by bump, down Louise’s spine. “She wasn’t an art historian.” As a young husband, he’d been baffled by what seemed to him an indifference to beauty. Karen hadn’t been indifferent to beauty. She’d been indifferent to Liam’s passion for it.

“Anybody should be able to grasp the substance of whatever you wrote for the galleries or general readership magazines.”

“I suppose.” Liam had written enough of those articles. Pointless, all of them.

“Did Karen ever join you for a conference?”

“What would she have done at a portraiture conference, or a conference on Dutch Renaissance masters?”

“Liam, if I took you to Amsterdam for a long weekend at a legal conference, you’d find a way to entertain yourself. Same with New York, San Francisco, Rome. Even an accountant has leave, and you had frequent-flier miles.”

Liam’s sense of well-being ebbed, leaving his old friends weariness and bewilderment in its place. Louise made the same arguments Liam had made—for the last two interminable years of his marriage.

Come with me, please. To the opening, to the conference, to the reception.

“She could have gone to counseling with you,” Louise went on. “She could have suggested a second honeymoon, audited one of your courses. She could have waited. She could have done foster care for older children. When people come to me for a divorce, they’ve often been struggling for ten years, in and out of counseling, changing jobs so they commute less or make more, trying a different neighborhood, or taking ballroom dance classes. They try
anything
, and they fight for their marriages. Karen whined for a couple years about a baby when she knew children weren’t a priority for you.”

Liam wanted to stuff his head under the pillow, except a small, exhausted, battle-weary part of him refused to hide from Louise’s logic.