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 less 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
