Chapter 15

 

“Here you are. I’ve had a devil of a time finding you.”

At Hamish’s impatient exclamation, Elspeth looked up from where she huddled on the window seat in the library. Given this was the scene of her humiliation last night, she supposed it was a strange place to seek refuge after that excruciating encounter with Brody at breakfast. But from the moment she’d discovered what books were, she’d found comfort and pleasure—and, yes, sanctuary—in their company.

“That was the idea.” Despite her best efforts, her voice was scratchy with the tears she’d shed in the last couple of hours, since Brody had given her that chilly bow and stalked off in a huff. Refusing him was the right thing to do. She knew it in her bones. If only that made her feel better. “What do you want, Hamish?”

“I’ve come to apologize.” He had the grace to look a little shamefaced. “I flew off the handle last night.”

“You did. If you’d managed to keep your mouth shut, we could have avoided all the drama.” She bent her head and brushed shaking hands over her wet cheeks. “How is Mamma?”

“I don’t know. She hasn’t come downstairs yet.”

Given her mother’s love of an audience, that spoke volumes about the scale of her current sulk. “So she hasn’t forgiven me.”

Soon the reality of Elspeth’s banishment from the family would sink its claws into her heart. Right now, she was still struggling to cope with making such a mess of everything with Brody. The wider consequences of her ruin hadn’t yet impinged on her wretchedness.

“You know how important her political influence is to her.”

“More important than her daughter’s happiness,” Elspeth said, before she could help herself.

She waited for Hamish to accuse her of disloyalty and lose his temper again. Her brother’s emotions tended toward the volcanic, although given time, he’d always calm down enough to see reason. Look at his apology now for blundering in on her last night.

Hamish didn’t respond with his usual heat. Instead he studied her with the sharp perception that somehow muddled along beside his mercurial temper. He was intimidatingly clever—people in scientific circles spoke of him as the next Astronomer Royal. But he didn’t always choose to focus that titanic brain on petty earthly concerns, instead of on the vast universe over his head. “Perhaps she thought a match with Brody Girvan would promote her daughter’s happiness.”

Humiliation prompted another prickling blush. “I suppose everyone in the family has guessed that I was mad about him,” she said in a sour tone.

“Aye, we did. That’s why we’re flabbergasted that you turned down his proposal.”

She scrambled to her feet, shoving aside the Maria Edgeworth she hadn’t been reading. “He doesn’t want me.”

Hamish’s eyebrows rose, so he looked like a skeptical Viking. “Didn’t seem that way to me.”

“He didn’t mean anything more than a bit of nonsense at Christmastime. It would be cruel to make him pay for a small indiscretion with a lifetime of unhappiness. Until I changed my hair and my clothes, he didn’t know I existed.”

Hamish frowned, as he winnowed through what she’d said. “That’s not true.”

Elspeth’s laugh was unamused. “Don’t try and butter me up now, Hamish. You never have before.”

“I could swear…” He crossed to stand before the blazing fire. “He asked my permission to court you.”

Shock flooded her, and she subsided onto the window seat again as her dratted knees collapsed beneath her. Brody had told her that he was trying to woo her, but she hadn’t believed him. Had she got everything wrong? “C-court me?”

Hamish glanced up and spoke with certainty. “Yes, he’d decided that he wanted to marry you before all that brouhaha last night.”

She still had difficulty crediting that he’d considered her as a wife. Not to mention that courting wasn’t an activity she associated with rakish Brody Girvan. It seemed too staid for such a Lothario. “What did you tell him?”

“That he’s not good enough for you.” His expression hardened. “It’s not for me to tell tales out of school—”

Despite her confusion, a scornful laugh escaped Elspeth. “You tell tales out of school all the time. How else do you think I know what a roué Brody is?”

Her brother looked uncomfortable. “Diarmid might have—”

“Diarmid’s as silent as the grave when it comes to gossip, and you know it.”

“Aye, he is.” As usual when he lost the argument, Hamish shifted his ground. “It’s a good thing you know about Brody. I won’t have my sister marrying a libertine.”

“Did you refuse him permission to approach me?”

It was Hamish’s turn to express contemptuous amusement. “I told him I had bugger-all influence over you and that you’d make up your own mind. People who don’t know you mistake your quietness for malleability, whereas you’re as stubborn as a mule when you set your mind on something.” His dark gold brows drew together again, as he considered the situation. “So I don’t understand why you won’t marry Brody. You decided you wanted him years ago, and you’ve never wavered. The fellow proposes, against all the odds, and you take some imp into your mind and say no. I’ll never understand the female of the species. Give me a constellation any day.”

Elspeth still reeled to learn that Brody had asked Hamish for her hand. Were all those passionate kisses meant to be the prelude to a proposal, and not just a way to pass the time when he was bored? “Why didn’t you say something about this last night?”

Hamish’s rocklike jaw tensed. “I thought the bastard was trying to force the issue by compromising you.”

“We wouldn’t have gone so far,” she said, mortifyingly aware that she wasn’t sure about that at all.

Hamish didn’t look too convinced either. “Brody’s got a way with the ladies. You haven’t seen how he works when he’s got seduction in mind. He’s unstoppable.”

She didn’t want to think about that—although at least he’d never wanted to marry any of his previous inamoratas. While it seemed that he just might want to marry her. “I thought he was your friend.”

“He is, but damn it, you’re my sister. I don’t want you hurt.”

“Thank you.” With every minute, her grudge against her brother became harder to maintain. She could guess what that declaration of allegiance cost him. While Hamish wasn’t demonstrative, Elspeth knew he loved his family, including her. “Brody’s not a bad man. I think he’s just a bit wild. And his father’s death threw him out of step.”

Hamish regarded her with dawning wonder. “Damn me, you’re still in love with him.”

Her blush had faded. Now it flared anew. “I’ve outgrown my childish hero worship.”

“Yes, you have,” he said, but spoiled it by going on. “Now you’re really in love. Until death do you part. Forever and ever. Amen.”

The urge to deny her brother’s statement welled, but jammed unspoken behind her teeth. She turned away to hide her terrible secret, although now it was no secret to Hamish.

“Of course I am,” she mumbled, twining her trembling hands together in her lap.

What was the point of denying the truth? She’d always loved Brody. She had a sick feeling in her stomach that she always would. Her decision to forsake her penchant for him was nothing but pique and pride and hot air.

She could no more stop loving Brody than she could stop having brown eyes. He was part of her, whether he loved her back or not.

“God give me strength,” Hamish bit out in angry bafflement. “Then why in hell won’t you marry the cove?”

Since last night, Elspeth must have shed enough tears to fill the loch outside. Surely there were none left to cry. Nonetheless hot moisture pricked her eyes, and she raised unsteady hands to dash it away.

“Because he doesn’t love me,” she said in a choked voice.

“Are you sure?” Hamish left the hearth and stepped closer. “Last night, when you refused him, he looked like you’d shot his dog. And Fergus and his kin are very fond of their dogs.”

“Even if he does think he loves me…” Although she couldn’t imagine he did. She gulped down a sob. “It’s because I’m dressing better, and wearing my hair differently, and—”

“And speaking up, and lifting your head out of your book now and again, and showing that there’s a woman of spirit under your shyness.” He paused and subjected her to a thoughtful inspection. “In fact, you haven’t been shy at all this Christmas.”

“It’s not the real me.”

“Of course it is.” Hamish was annoyed again. She couldn’t blame him. Even in her own ears, she sounded addled. “If your new dresses made Brody notice you, all well and good. He was never going to fall in love with someone who spent her life scuttling around the edges of the room like a wee mouse.”

Elspeth bit back a groan. The mouse word again. She cast her brother a look of renewed dislike. “He only started paying attention after Marina put me in Sandra’s hands.”

“Does that matter, as long as he pays attention?”

“Yes, it does,” she insisted, even as she wondered if her pride was condemning her to a lifetime of loneliness.

“I’ll say it again. I’ll never understand women,” Hamish said, rolling his eyes in masculine disgust. “You’re saying that you’ve finally got what you always wanted, but you’re not going to take it, because you can’t accept that the man you love thinks you’re pretty?”

“That’s not fair, Hamish,” she said in a raw voice. “He wants to marry an imposter.”

“No, he doesn’t.” Hamish was still frowning, as if prodding his massive brain to shift away from cosmic issues to concentrate on merely human ones. “He asked my permission to court you before you turned into the Belle of Achnasheen. It was three days after he arrived, when everyone still thought you were a shy wee sparrow. He spoke to me just before you came downstairs and dazzled us. I’ll lay money that I’m right about the timing.”

Through her fog of misery, Elspeth wasn’t sure she’d heard him right. It seemed too good to be true—too good and too awful, because since then, she’d done her level best to wreck her chances with Brody Girvan. Saying no to his proposal last night and again this morning had come close to killing her. In fact, this morning it had been even worse because, while logic insisted that his deeper feelings weren’t involved, she couldn’t mistake his genuine chagrin at her refusal.

She turned to survey her brother, wondering if he ran mad. Or if she did. “Say that again,” she said slowly.

“Brody asked permission to court you on his third night here, just after Ugolino and Giulia turned up, and before you came downstairs in your new dress.” Hamish didn’t seem to realize that he changed her entire world with just a few words. In her turmoil, she didn’t even mind that he spoke to her as though he addressed someone of weak mind. “You could have knocked me over with a feather when he did. I’d never thought he was smart enough to notice what a hidden treasure you are.”

Her brother’s uncharacteristic compliment passed her by. “He asked you for my hand before he saw me in my new clothes?”

Hamish gave an irritable grunt. “Didn’t I just say so?”

“Yes, you did.”

“I can’t see that it matters much when he asked.”

After such misery, joy struck with painful force. “It does matter.”

“Women!” her brother bit out. “Now you’re crying again, when for a moment there you looked almost happy. What the devil’s set you off now?”

She sniffed, as she fumbled in her pocket for her handkerchief. “I’m happy.”

“Good,” Hamish said, eyeing her doubtfully and passing her a pristine square of white linen. She was in such a state that she’d failed to locate hers.

Elspeth blew her nose and forced her mind to work past the astonishing truth that Brody had meant it when he said he wanted to marry her. Her, Elspeth Douglas, not some painted doll Marina and Sandra had created between them.

“I need to see Brody. Do you know where he is?”

“I think he’s gone back to Invermackie,” Hamish said as if it didn’t matter.

Her heart, which had begun to dance with a mixture of excitement and hope, dipped into plodding despair again. She lurched to her feet. “He’s gone?”

“I think after what happened last night, he decided he was no longer welcome.”

“But it’s Christmas Eve.”

“I doubt he was feeling very festive.”

“Oh, no.” She had so much to make up for. “How long ago did you see him?”

Hamish shrugged, and she could tell that his tolerance for feminine ups and downs faded fast. “I don’t know. An hour maybe.”

“You didn’t try and hit him again?” she asked in horror.

“No, I bloody didn’t.” Hamish started to look seriously grumpy. “He had the grace to apologize for what happened last night.”

“He hadn’t done anything wrong.”

“He had, but he’d also done his best to fix it. Not that his chivalry did him an ounce of good. You refused him anyway.”

“I’m not refusing him now,” she said, clutching at her skirts. “If I run, I might catch him before he goes.”

“And what if you don’t?”

“If I don’t, I’m going to ride after him.” Determination rang in her voice. “All the way to Invermackie, if I have to.”

“What?” Hamish’s crankiness vanished in amazement—and displeasure. “Elspeth, what the hell has got into you? Come back here!”

But she’d rushed past him. Skirts flying, she dashed down the corridor toward the stables.