Page 35 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
“You read about it,” Rabbie said skeptically.
She glanced dismissively over her shoulder at him. “Lord Kent has an impressive library.” She quickened her step to catch up to Aulay. “I understand it’s remarkable in its design,” she said. “Quite an improvement over the sextant.”
“Aye, that it is,” Aulay said. “It can be used for celestial navigation in both day and night, then, and the accuracy of direction is vastly improved.”
She beamed with a smile, obviously proud of herself for knowing it.
Rabbie studied her with suspicion. He glanced at her charge, wondering if she’d read anything like it, but Miss Kent wasn’t listening at all. She and Catriona had their heads close together and were speaking in low tones.
They had reached the shore now, and the children began to scour the coastline for interesting finds, their parents trailing lazily behind. Miss Kent and Catriona wandered farther afield, still engrossed in their conversation about God knew what. Aulay, naturally, had wandered over to Rabbie’s boat to have a look. Since they were wee lads, Rabbie could not remember an instance in which Aulay was interested in anything other than boats and the sea.
The sea had never lured Rabbie, even then. He recalled a particularly bad voyage as a lad with his father at the helm. A fierce storm had given him a bout of seasickness so severe that Rabbie could hazily recall some question of his recovery. Part of his sickness, he suspected, had been his abject fear of being capsized. Since that voyage, there was something about the sea’s vastness and the ferocious strength of it that had intimidated him into keeping his feet firmly on terra firma for the most part.
What Rabbie had enjoyed as a lad and as a young man was soldiering and feats of strength. His father, and his father’s father before him, and his Uncle Jock, God rest his soul, had made a name by training Highland guards.
What had begun as an effort to protect what was theirs in a land where loyalties and alliances were constantly changing had grown into a formidable strength for the Mackenzies. Rabbie’s father and Uncle Jock had trained men who had gone on to serve in the crown’s forces. For the young men of their clan, the option was an appealing one, as their keep was paid and there was money to send home. Rabbie had liked the work of training, had relished challenging his body to stronger and stronger feats. He might have joined the soldiers in joining the king’s army, might have led a regiment into battle for the king, had the Jacobites not begun their rebellion.
It was not the rebellion itself that that had attracted him, but the questions the rebellion had raised. Was the true king of England and Scotland sitting on the throne? An argument could be made that the Stuarts had a more legitimate claim than the Hanoverians, from whom King George had descended. Was the taxation the crown imposed fair? Rabbie didn’t know the answer to that, but he knew that before the union of Scotland and England, his family had not resorted to piracy. It had become necessary when they couldn’t recoup the costs of bringing goods to Scotland after the taxes and excise had been levied, and their people couldn’t afford the goods because of the tax burden.
Nevertheless, the Mackenzies had remained neutral and had believed their neutrality would keep them out of the fray. Bloody hell if it had—their livelihood had been damaged and his own life threatened, all because they were Highlanders. Rabbie could not serve a king who had sent the murderous Lord Cumberland and his forces into the Highlands as he had.
Aye, everything had changed after that.Everything.
Rabbie sat on a rock. He kept his gaze on the children, and only happened to see Miss Holly when she wandered along the water’s edge, squatting down every few steps, picking up this or that and examining it before tossing it down again. Maybe she’d read about seashells, too. Maybe she had superior knowledge of the tides, thanks to Lord Kent’s impressive library. It was incredible that she had chosennavigationto wile away a few hours.
He stood from his rock, clasped his hands behind his back and moved lazily in her direction. “On the hunt for artifacts, are you?” he asked as he reached her.
She glanced up at him, squinting into the sun. “No. Just rocks.” She smiled pertly. She rose up and brushed her hands free of sand.
“How is it that a maid, bound to nothing more than laying out her mistress’s petticoats, should know about navigation, then?”
A brow lifted. “I told you. I read it. Is that so unusual?”
“Aye, I’d say it is. It doesna fit with that of a servant.”
“Neither does being ashrewor aharridan.” She gave him a meaningful look, then dipped down to pick up a shell. “It might astound you to know that there are women in this world who seek to improve their mind.”
She was right—everything about her was unusual. Who spoke in such a way? “Who is your father?” he asked curiously.
The question seemed to startle her, which Rabbie found even more curious.
“Why do you ask? Do you intend to complain of me?”
“I’ve no’ thought of it,” he said. “Perhaps I should.”
“I don’t care if you do,” she said, a little too forcefully.
“How is that you’ve come to attend Miss Kent? You’re too educated, aye? A lass does no’ possess that sort of education and confidence without an eye toward an advantageous match. So why, then, have you no’ married?”
Now her eyes narrowed in a manner that almost made him regret the question. “Why haven’tyou?”
A fair question, he supposed, but one that hit him squarely in the gut. “There are times when life doesna unfurl as one might have hoped.”
“Exactly,” she said, and dropped the shell. She looked away from him and rubbed her nape. Her cheeks were blooming, which he thought odd. She had not struck him as a person who was easily flustered. “I know that life for Avaline has not unfurled asshehoped.”
Avaline. He thought of her so little that he’d almost forgotten her name.
“Look at her now,” she said, nodding in the direction of his fiancée.
