The next morning, under a bright blue sky filled with white, hurrying clouds, it seemed as if every able-bodied member of clan Penhallow had gathered in the courtyard to say farewell. Fiona couldn’t help but be touched, and although it took everything she had to remain cool and calm amidst such a large crowd—A chieftain’s daughter doesn’t cry in front of people, she kept reminding herself—there was something to be said for a public goodbye to her former husband.

Duff had already, with exquisite care, handed a white and trembling Isobel into the carriage.

Now he came to Fiona. “Well, lass,” he said, and paused, awkward. Then, as if language failed him, swiftly he hugged her, and stepped back, his gaze going to Isobel whose face was framed, as if in a portrait he would never forget, in the carriage window.

“Goodbye, Uncle,” Fiona said. Uncle-that-was, actually, but why bring it up now? Behind her, held by his leading rein by Begbie, Gealag snorted, and she could hear the cheerful jingle of his harness as he tossed his great head, as if he were impatient to be off and on their way.

Then Alasdair was there, tall, grave, regal, his dark-red hair glinting in the sun, his eyes pure amber and citrine. How odd it was, Fiona thought, that when she first met him, and for some time thereafter, she had not found him particularly attractive.

Now it occurred to her that she must have been blind.

You look but you do not see.

So she studied his face, allowed her gaze to sweep up and down the entire muscular length of him, memorizing every detail, for it would have to last her a long time. Forever: yes, a very long time indeed.

“Mar sin leat,” Alasdair said to her. “Slàn leibh.”

Goodbye. May you be well.

“You also.” She was glad her voice was so steady, for in reality she didn’t feel very sturdy. No, her legs felt a little shaky and she could have sworn the ground beneath her feet was tilting ever so slightly.

“May I?” asked Alasdair, as Begbie brought Gealag forward.

“I—yes.”

And for the last time Alasdair was intimately close to her, for the last time he was touching her, his big hands about her waist; with his immense strength he lifted her without apparent effort onto the saddle.

He stepped back.

“Thank you,” Fiona said quietly, and just as quietly he said:

“You’re welcome.”

She gathered Gealag’s reins in her gloved hands; gloved because today there was a distinct chill in the air. Summer was gone. Fiona looked at Alasdair for the very last time, looked down upon him where he stood in the courtyard, very still, very straight, his arms at his side. Into her mind came Juliet’s anguished words to her Romeo when they parted for—as it would turn out for them also—for ever.

Methinks I see thee now, thou art so low as one dead in the bottom of a tomb. Either my eyesight fails, or thou look’st pale.

And trust me, love, in my eye so do you, answers Romeo. Dry sorrow drinks our blood.

Fiona shuddered. She clicked her tongue to Gealag and at once he broke into a playful trot. Together they led the way out of the courtyard, followed by the large handsome coach in which Isobel rode, and the dozen armed men who would bring her safely home.

She did not look back.

When the cavalcade had disappeared from sight, Alasdair went out beyond the kitchen garden and chopped wood for Cook’s fires, did it until blisters, angry and painful, had sprung up on both hands, until Duff came, until Duff came and with the soft voice of one approaching a vicious and unpredictable beast, finally managed to coax him away from the towering pile of wood which might well last Cook into, and through, a long, harsh winter.

Isobel managed to retain her composure until the third day of their journey. She and Fiona had finished their evening meal, alone in a capacious private parlor of the inn where they were to pass the night, and they were sitting before a large comfortable fire that helped chase away a threatening dampness. Rain had swept down upon them late in the afternoon and now they could hear it drumming hard upon the roof, lashing furiously at the windows.

Isobel drew her shawl more closely about her and looked anxiously at Fiona. “Are you sure you’re not catching cold from riding in the rain?” she asked, for the third or fourth time. Maybe the fifth time.

“I’m sure,” answered Fiona, staring as if transfixed into the leaping flames of the fire.

“I’m afraid you were utterly soaked—positively dripping by the time we got here. How brave you are! No word of complaint has passed your lips even once. Oh, my dear Fiona, I must say I don’t care for this weather at all. I believe it’s made me feel—well, I must confess I feel just a trifle low.”

And with that Isobel burst into tears. She pulled from her reticule one of those absurd little handkerchiefs and, sobbing piteously, dabbed at her eyes.

Then and there Fiona vowed to make Isobel a large set of handkerchiefs, big absorbent handkerchiefs, lavishly embroidered and crafted from the finest linen money could buy. She stood, went to Isobel, gently patted her shoulder.

Isobel covered Fiona’s hand with her own. She cried for a long while, and Fiona simply stood, patiently, until she was done. Saying nothing. But being there.

Then Isobel said, shakily:

“Thank you, Fiona dear,” and took away her hand, to rub the back of it against her soft wet cheeks. “How silly of me to break down like that, when your troubles are so much greater than my own. Forgive me, please, won’t you?”

“There’s nothing to apologize for, Cousin, I assure you.” Fiona went back to her seat before the fire.

Isobel drew in a deep breath. “Oh, Fiona, I seem only to bring you bad luck in love. I should never have permitted Logan Munro’s advances—I see that now—and to think how that turned out for you. I do need to apologize! I should have done so years ago! What a foolish, sentimental old maid I was—and am! And now, it’s all my fault that your marriage is over. I am so deeply sorry!”

“You were not—are not—responsible for Logan’s actions,” Fiona said, slowly, her eyes once again fixed on the ever-shifting fire. “Or for mine. My God, how long ago that was. A lifetime ago.” All at once the old resentment, the old stubborn grudge, which for so many years had been lodged in her heart like a thorn, finally fell away, and was gone.

Not that Fiona felt like hopping up and dancing a reel, but still.

It felt better. Was better.

She continued:

“It’s not your fault, either, about discovering the other decree. It just—happened.”

“That’s how it seemed to me,” replied Isobel, nodding vigorously. “There was something which seemed to compel me to read that boring old Tome! As if—as if I was somehow being pulled along! And when I saw how unhappy you’d become in your marriage, I just read more and more. As if by doing it, I would somehow be helping you!”

“Helping me . . .” Fiona murmured. A memory opened up. The morning after her wedding; she had agreed to allow Isobel to stay on with her at Castle Tadgh. A visibly relieved and grateful Isobel had declared, I will make myself very useful to you—I promise!

And so here she was, halfway back to Wick Bay. Isobel wasn’t to blame, of course not. But there was no escaping the cold hard facts.

No husband, no baby.

No husband, no baby.

No husband, no husband . . .

It almost sounded like a child’s refrain.

She could almost hear little Sheila’s voice chanting it. Almost—

But instead she seemed to hear again Sheila saying dejectedly, Why must trouble come in threes? Why, lady?

It now occurred to Fiona, uneasily, that perhaps Sheila had not been tallying up her own misfortunes.

Maybe it had been an oblique reference to herself.

No baby. That was one.

No husband; love unrequited. That was two.

Or was that three, according to the vagaries of cosmic accounting?

If not, what then was the third?

Her mind revolved uselessly. A broken carriage wheel tomorrow, fleas in their beds, Father’s fury when she arrived on his doorstep? News that Alasdair had, within hours of her departure, married someone else? Why did there have to be a third? Weren’t things bad enough already?

“— and I do hope there will be ample room for both of us,” Isobel was saying, “although I cannot think the marsh air salubrious. My petticoats will doubtless become mildewed, and it seems all too likely I’ll succumb to an inflammation of the lung before the year is out. Which will at least make the hut less crowded,” she concluded, in the tone of one looking hard for a silver lining and finding it decidedly meager.

Fiona blinked. “What hut do you mean, Cousin?”

“Why, the one to which your father will exile us.”

“I was being sardonic. Mostly. And truly, Isobel, no blame could possibly be attached to you, even by Father.”

“Well, I am preparing myself mentally, Fiona dear. I don’t wish to live in a hut, but I will do it for your sake.”

Recognizing this for the heroic sacrifice it was, Fiona was able to summon up a wan smile. “Thank you, Cousin,” she answered, sincerely, and then both ladies were silent, absorbed in their own, less than sunny reflections.

Letters had come for Fiona; a small pile had accumulated in only the few days since she had gone.

“Shall I send them along to the mistress’s—to Miss Fiona’s home in Wick Bay, laird?” asked Lister.

“Yes,” answered Alasdair shortly, but added hard upon: “No.” Then: “Yes, of course, send them on.”

“Very well, laird.” Lister looked a little puzzled, but continued, gesturing to a different stack upon his desk, “These invitations, laird, how am I to reply to them?”

“Say yes. To all of them.”

Another day of travel, another inn. Another night. After tossing and turning for several hours atop a mattress filled with —evidently—lumps of coal, Fiona finally fell asleep toward dawn. She dreamed of Alasdair. He was standing perfectly still on the deck of a boat, his arms at his side. The boat rocked wildly among the roiling waves of a storm-tossed loch. She watched him, helpless, from the distant shore. It was unclear whether he would survive, or sink. And then, underneath her feet, the ground abruptly gave way and she woke up, for several panicky seconds having no idea where she was and groping, futilely, in the empty space next to her for Alasdair.

It was at a glittering ball hosted by one of his neighbors that Alasdair realized that several of the young ladies in attendance —as well as their mothers—were eyeing him with hopeful speculation.

He was, after all, a single man again.

So he danced with all the young ladies. He smiled, he said all the right things, he laughed in all the right places. But he could not forget that he had never, not once, danced with Fiona.

In truth, Fiona hadn’t a particularly clear sense of how she would be greeted upon her return to the Douglass keep, but nothing could have prepared her for what she found upon entering the Great Hall.

Her mother, clad in black; weeping.

Father, also in black, looking just a little bit stooped.

A coffin.

And—

Logan Munro, in black as well.

A terrible fear clutched at Fiona.

Why must trouble come in threes?

“What has happened?” she demanded, more loudly than she had intended. They all swung around in surprise.

“Fiona!” Mother gasped. “How did you know? How did you get here so quickly?” She hurried to Fiona, hugging her tightly.

Fiona hugged her back, but a little absently, her eyes—in them an urgent question—meeting Father’s over Mother’s shoulder.

“Nairna is dead,” he said, his face a graven mask.

A blast of irrational anger now roared through Fiona as she pulled away from Mother and turned on Logan Munro, her hands clenched into fists. “I just had a letter from her,” she said fiercely. “She was well. The wisewoman had put her to bed, that’s all. She was well.”

“The wisewoman was wrong,” replied Logan, his voice heavy and somber. “She was a fool, an incompetent. There was no child. It was a tumor growing within her. It must have been just after Nairna wrote you that it all became clear.” His voice shook. “By then she knew she was dying. And she asked that I bring her home.”

“You’re the fool!” snarled Fiona. “You’re the incompetent one!”

“Fiona!” Mother exclaimed, horrified, but Logan Munro only shook his head.

“You don’t need to tell me that I failed her, Fiona. I know it.”

“Empty words from an empty man!” Fiona advanced toward him, hardly knowing in her rage what she intended, when Father intervened, catching her arm in a firm grip.

“Calm yourself, daughter. Munro is a guest in my house. I’ll not have him dishonored by your vitriol.”

Fiona looked up at Father with wild, blind eyes. He leaned close, and said with a softness she would never have expected:

“In all likelihood, there was nothing that anyone could have done. My own mother was taken the same way.”

“Oh, Father, she was so happy—”

“I know.”

And when Fiona couldn’t think of anything else to do, wearily she leaned her head upon his shoulder, just for a few moments. And just for a few moments, Father—the hardest and most undemonstrative of men—put his arm around her, their shared grief bringing them together in a way that was completely new.

In a little while, Fiona was able to go to Mother and embrace her again, and Isobel, too.

She was able to make her way to the coffin and, with tears streaming down her face, say her farewells to Nairna. Goodbye, my dearie. I’ll love you always. I’ll never forget you.

She was able to say to Logan Munro, in a civil and reasonably steady voice, I’m so sorry for your loss.

And she was able to ask what needed to be done, what she could do to help, and to start on the herculean task of organizing a stunned and grieving household.

After, Fiona was never able to fully piece together the details of the days that followed: it was all a gray unreal blur, the clan gathering, her sisters Dallis and Rossalyn arriving with their husbands, the funeral, the sad interminable meals and the long sleepless nights.

More tears for Nairna.

A sudden hole in the fabric of the universe; a little, bright light winked out.

Solitary prayers in the chapel.

A quiet interval with Father, explaining her return, and its permanence, Father only nodding, saying nothing, accepting.

Mother collapsing, needing constant attendance and finding in Isobel an unexpected source of strength.

One day dissolved into another.

The mourners left.

Her sisters departed.

Mother slowly recovered.

But Logan Munro stayed on.

The fact of his presence barely pierced the shroud of misery in which Fiona was enveloped. He was simply there. At meals. In the evenings, in the cold draughty saloon that served as their drawing-room. She would come across him in a passageway, or see him half-lounging on a sofa in the solarium, talking with Mother and Isobel, or find him by the horse paddocks, not riding, but leaning against a railing and staring off into the distance.

Everywhere she turned, it seemed, there he was: a handsome figure of a man, very tall, very broad-shouldered, black-haired and black-eyed, dressed all in black. An object of sympathy, a devoted husband who had tragically lost his young wife. The softhearted maidservants couldn’t do enough for him, and would endlessly watch him with tender, eager eyes.

“Well, that was . . . interesting,” said Duff, as he and Alasdair rode away from an afternoon event described by their hostess —well-known in the neighborhood for boasting that she had twice been to a museum in Glasgow, and four times to a concert—as a Lyrical Poetical Musical Entertainment. It was remarkable, really, just how many of the local young ladies were keen to display their musical abilities and were fond of reciting the work of derivative, second-rate poets specializing in lurid descriptions of hellish landscapes, bad weather, love affairs gone wrong, and very long death-scenes.

“Interesting? If you say so,” Alasdair replied.

“Didn’t realize harps have become so popular.”

“Nor I.”

“Not particularly fond of them, personally.”

“Perhaps you should be, Uncle. As Lady Niocalsan made a point of observing within my earshot, a jeune demoiselle playing the harp is provided with an excellent opportunity to display her figure to best advantage.”

Duff laughed. “That,” he said, “is inarguable.”

They were riding along a wide trail flanked by trees whose leaves had passed their glory of red, orange, yellow; many had already fallen, littering the ground in a final display of brilliant but dimming color. In the far distance, the high craggy mountaintop of Ben Macdui was dusted with snow, and a chill, nippy and invigorating, was in the air.

“You’ve been quite sociable these days, lad,” said Duff, mildly.

“Just keeping busy, Uncle.”

“Aye. And you’re very much a favorite among the demoiselles, I notice.”

“You flatter me.”

“You know I don’t. And I couldn’t help but notice this afternoon that you seemed rather taken with young Miss Hameldon.”

“Did I?”

“Yes, but I also could see, at yesterday’s grouse shoot, that Miss Rattray was constantly by your side.”

“So?”

“So I’m wondering, lad, what’s on your mind.”

Alasdair looked over at his uncle. What could he say? Fiona has been gone for seventeen days and sixteen nights, in our bedchamber I can still smell the faint pleasing scent of her rose perfume, and the castle has never been so desolate. Oh, and inside I seem to still be composed of a single block of ice, and also I wonder how, precisely, I’m going to get through this life. Other than that, my mind is as beatifically empty as that of an Eastern mystic.

Aloud he said:

“I’m trying to move forward.”

“Ah.”

“The need for an heir and all that.”

“I see.”

“Weren’t you the one telling me that a wife is nothing but a brood mare?”

Duff didn’t respond at first. Their horses clopped along. Finally he replied, pensively, “I may have altered my beliefs about that.”

“And here I thought you were the one thing I could count on not to change.” Alasdair meant to sound wry, jocular, but somehow his voice was more serious than he wished.

“It’s slowly been dawning on me, lad, that life is about change.”

A memory of Fiona saying that very thing seared through Alasdair, painful and harsh. He said nothing, only listened as Duff continued:

“Never thought I’d shave off my beard. Or care what my stockings looked like. Never thought I’d begin to value courtesy over rudeness, kindness over selfishness. God’s blood, I never thought I’d spend countless hours making fishing rods for the children, and enjoying every minute of it.” He rubbed at his bare chin. “It’s unsettling, to say the least—old habits die hard—but there you are.”

In a kind of despair, hoping to turn the subject, Alasdair said lightly, “If we’re to talk of being a favorite among the ladies, I notice you’re causing a stir among a certain set yourself.”

“What, among the old tabbies? Well, I can’t help it. There’s no getting around the fact that I’m a good-looking fellow.”

Alasdair smiled. Success. A diversion.

But then Duff added somberly, “I’m trying to move on, too. I’ll admit, though, that I’m not making much headway. I might flirt a little, but the truth is that my heart’s not in it.” He sighed. “I won’t pry, lad. Not judging you, either. But if you want to talk—I’m here.”

Alasdair met Duff’s eyes, nodded his thanks. It was enough. It was all he could manage.

They had come to a place where the trail gave way to a vast rolling meadow in which the heather’s violet bloom had quietly faded away. Alasdair pulled his horse to a halt. He looked around the meadow as if he had never seen it before.

“Where to now?” asked Duff.

“We’ve been invited to Hewie’s. One of his mad dinner parties. You know—the usual.”

“Wine, women, song.”

“Aye.”

“It’s up to you, lad.”

Alasdair thought about what the evening would, predictably, entail. The pattern of Hewie’s parties had been long established. He could eat until he was ready to burst, get splendidly drunk, play billiards, dance reels. And, very likely, he could allow himself to be seduced by Hewie’s widowed sister-in-law, the attractive—and aggressive—Nora.

Old habits die hard.

“I believe,” he now answered Duff, “I’ll pass.”

“Then so shall I. Race you back home?”

Motion, speed, the chilly wind pressing hard on his face: a fast gallop in the gathering twilight. Yes. Alasdair nodded.

They both dug their heels into their mounts, and were off.

Reestablished at the Douglass keep, Fiona seemed to have been seamlessly absorbed back into her old routine, in a way that was deeply unnerving, as if her time at Castle Tadgh had been collapsed into nothingness. Nobody asked her about it, whether out of sensitivity, respect, or lack of interest. It had been her hope that as the long days passed, the image of Alasdair would begin to fade from her mind and her heart, but it did not. After a while, it occurred to Fiona that she now had a better and more vivid understanding of that old Greek myth about Eurydice, the girl who’d stepped on a poisonous snake and been sent for all eternity to live in the ghastly Underworld—a place of despondence and woe from which ordinary mortals could never escape.

It felt a little like she was living in a sort of underworld, too, invisible to everyone else but evident to her, every minute, every hour.

She did her best to tamp down a restless longing to be somewhere else.

Anywhere else, perhaps.

Alasdair stood in the Great Drawing-room, staring at the window-hangings. Even though no one came in here anymore—he and Duff now went to the library in the evenings—apparently somebody had, at some point, drawn open the heavy, tasseled lengths of dark green velvet to admit the sun.

He remembered Fiona saying scornfully:

Three hundred and eighty pounds for the fabric alone. And nineteen pounds for the tassels.

God’s blood, but that was a lot of money.

There was a tap on the open door, and Alasdair turned. In the doorway stood Mrs. Allen the housekeeper in her tidy spotless gown and ruffled cap.

“You sent for me, laird?”

“Aye. Come in.” He gestured toward the curtains. “Could you have those taken down, please, and cleaned?”

“Of course, laird.”

“And afterwards—I want to give them away. To someone who’ll find them useful. Any ideas?”

Mrs. Allen looked thoughtful. “You ordered more wagons to go to the Sutherlainns next week. The fabric is very thick, and will help keep a room warm. There must be a dozen or more lengths to divide up, laird.”

“Do it, then.”

“I’ll see to it at once.”

“Thank you, Mrs. Allen. By the way, what do you think of them?”

“Of the Sutherlainns, laird?”

“I was unclear. I mean those window-hangings. What’s your frank opinion?”

Mrs. Allen hesitated.

“Your frank opinion, please.”

“Well, laird, they’re a wee bit much for the room, aren’t they? And with all those tassels—I can’t help but think them rather busy, if you know what I mean?”

He looked at them again. And nodded. “Aye,” he said. “I do know what you mean.”

Change was coming.

Change was coming, and it was good.

It was Fiona’s seventy-second wedding. Seventy-third, she supposed, if she counted her own ephemeral one to Alasdair Penhallow.

But she wasn’t going to.

So: her seventy-second wedding.

She sat once more in the very last pew of the church in Wick Bay, where, far to the front, her fourth cousin, Boyd Iverach, was marrying his fourth cousin, Effie Bain. It was a small, local wedding, and the church was only half-full. Several rows ahead of her sat Father, Mother, Isobel, and Logan Munro. Next to Logan, pretty Helen MacNeillie (yet another cousin) had placed herself just a little too close for respectability, and Fiona, observing them from behind, noticed what a striking pair they made—he so tall and broad, and with his dark hair, Helen so plump and round, with curls of tawny gold.

She herself had come just a tiny bit late, having ridden out past the bogs to visit old Osla Tod, and had to quickly scramble into nicer clothing for the wedding. Now she looked down at the charming kid ankle-boots Mother had let her borrow. Aquamarine. So beautiful, that liminal shade between green and blue. Once in a while, the loch near Castle Tadgh had been that color, rendering it breathtakingly lovely.

The minister was going on and on in his sonorous voice about the duties and obligations of marriage, and surreptitiously Fiona loosened the silken cord of her reticule. She pulled from it a small pencil and a little piece of paper. As it happens, it was the very same piece on which, a few months back on that perfect summer’s day, she had added to her list during Rossalyn’s wedding.

Fiona turned over the paper.

It was blank.

Absolutely, totally blank.

Slowly, secretly, she began to write.

• Intelligent
• Kind
• Capable
• Hardworking
• Good sense of humor
• Strong

• Stubborn
• Too proud (?)
• Insecure
• A dull stick
• Greedy

She thought for a while.

In the Things I don’t like category, she crossed out Greedy.

She also crossed out A dull stick.

Then she looked up and to the front, where Boyd was kissing Effie, with a boisterous smack that resonated sweetly throughout the church.

She looked back down at her list.

Crossed out Things I don’t like about myself, and wrote instead Aspects to improve.

Yes.

That was better.

She’d work hard to improve on her stubborn, insecure, overly proud aspects.

She gave a decisive little nod.

And finally, in the Things I like category, underneath Strong, she added:

• Good enough.
• I am good enough.
• I am MORE than good enough.
• I am worthy.
• I am

She paused. What was the right word?

Then it came to her, and she wrote: lovable.

Capable of loving, and worthy of being loved.

Suddenly she noticed that the wedding was over. People were standing up, talking, laughing.

Fiona folded her paper, and put it and the pencil safely back into her reticule. With a firm step, she went to warmly congratulate Effie and Boyd.

Time marched on, relentlessly, inexorably, everywhere around the vast earth, yet for two particular people, in their separate parts of the world, long miles apart from each other, it had a distinctly peculiar quality. Was it going by quickly, or curiously slowly?

It must have been two months after she’d come back to Wick Bay, on a cool, cloudy morning, that Fiona stood at a workbench in the stillroom, using a stone pestle to grind the tough leaves of a house-leek into a pulp for a poultice. Isobel had a headache, and leeks were an excellent remedy. After she had delivered the poultice—Fiona glanced at the long list she’d set near the mortar—she’d go to the kitchen to talk with the cook, then stop by the stables, and after that sit with Mother for a while in the solarium, and do some sewing. Then—

“Hello.”

Fiona paused. There was Logan, very nearly filling up the width of the doorframe with his massive shoulders. She looked up at him. “Hello.” Then she went on mashing a particularly fibrous leaf.

“You’ve been avoiding me.”

Fiona considered this. “No.”

“No?”

“No. But it would be fair to say that I haven’t been seeking you out.”

“Are you still angry at me for Nairna’s death?”

Fiona considered this also. “No.”

“I’m glad.”

There was a silence. Fiona finally mangled the leaf into a satisfying pulp. Logan leaned against the doorframe.

“A long time ago,” he said softly, “we used to have conversations.”

“True.”

“Perhaps we could have one now?”

“What about?”

“Whatever you like.”

Fiona looked up at him again. Goodness, but he was as handsome as ever. He really did have the most classically perfect nose she had ever seen—like the bold prow of a ship. And how had he managed to have just one lock of his black hair lying across his forehead in that dashing way? Had he done it on purpose, or was it one of those lucky accidents in life?

“Very well,” she said. “I’ll begin. Why are you still here, Logan?”

“I have a reason for staying.”

“I see. Don’t you have an estate to run at home? Fields, a house, servants, and so on?”

“I don’t think you do see, in fact. And yes, I have an estate, but I also have a bailiff, who spares me the boredom of having to think about—or, worse, deal with—sheep and farmers and crops. And I have a mother and a sister to manage my house and my servants.”

“What on earth do you do with yourself all day?”

“A gentleman can always find ways to keep himself occupied.”

“If you say so.”

“Trust me.” He smiled, and there it was—the fetching little dimple in his left cheek.

She had always found that dimple incredibly charming. The very first time she’d met Logan, when she was eighteen, he had smiled at her—in just the way he was right now—and she had badly wanted to touch her tongue to that intriguing hollow. And immediately had turned as red as a strawberry, and made an inane, awkward remark about the weather, expecting him to turn on his heel and walk away in disgust at her maladroit manner.

But he hadn’t. He had agreed that the weather was fine. And stayed. And she’d been lost.

“So,” she now said, “what is your reason for staying on?”

“You.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You’re the reason I’m still here.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I want us to start over again.”

Fiona pushed away the mortar and pestle. Already the house-leek pulp was losing its potency; she’d have to grind some more as soon as this absurd exchange was over. Because it was absurd.

Wasn’t it?

“My, my,” she said in an even tone. “Moving rather quickly, aren’t you?”

He took a step toward her. “If life has taught me anything, Fiona, it’s that anything can happen at any time. The past is gone. Right here, right now, is a second chance for us. We cared for each other once.”

“Yes, but you jilted me for Nairna, as you’ll recall.”

He took another step closer.

“I liked you. I liked you very much.” His voice, his eyes, everything about Logan was eager earnestness. “But—I had debts, Fiona, large debts from foolish gambling while at university.”

“And Nairna had a much bigger dowry.”

“I’ll not deny there was, in part, a mercenary incentive. I was desperate, in danger of losing my estate. I don’t gamble anymore —at least not beyond my means. And I was a good husband to Nairna—you know I was.”

“Yes. You made her very happy.”

“So now let’s look to the future, Fiona, you and I.”

If he had touched her, she would have shoved past him and left the stillroom, poor Isobel’s remedy be damned. But he simply stood there, so very tall, so very big. And whether he knew it or not, he was saying all the right things to a woman with a broken heart. The past is gone. Start over again. Second chances. The future.

Fiona said:

“Just so we’re clear. Are you saying that you want to marry me?”

“Yes, my darling, that’s exactly what I’m saying.”

She let this sink in. Such marriages were far from uncommon among the pragmatic Douglass clan; no one would bat an eye. But more important, what would Nairna have said?

It was an easy question.

Fiona could almost hear her sweetest, kindest, most loving of sisters saying, Of course! Marry him with my blessing. Take good care of him, won’t you?

“Well,” Fiona said to Logan, “if you’re looking to make money from marrying me, you’d better think again, because you never know with Father and his vagaries.”

“It’s not about money. I have a very competent bailiff and my income is ample for my needs.”

“Have you spoken to Father?”

“No. You’re no green girl.”

“I need time to think about your proposal.”

“Of course. Take as much time as you need. May I kiss you?”

“No.”

“No?”

“No.”

He smiled, those black eyes of his flashing. “You disappoint me, but I can be patient. Good day, my sweet.”

“Where are you going?”

“Somewhere there’s a fire. This keep is atrociously cold.”

“Father’s gone off to look at some fishing boats, if you’re interested.”

“I’m not.”

“As you like. Good day.”

His smile was caressing. “Till we meet again.”

Then he was gone, and Fiona was alone again. She turned at once to the mortar and pestle. She threw out the old house-leek, and started on a new one.