Page 19 of The Last Debutante
“I’ll carve some for you,” she said quickly, and picked up the knife that she’d used to protect herself from him the day before.
He responded with a menacing look, but he shifted back, his hand sliding down the table and into his lap.
She sliced off a thick slab of ham, put it on a plate along with some of Mamie’s bread, and slid it across the table to him.
He ate as if he were starved. “More?” she asked when he’d devoured the food. He nodded curtly. Daria sliced off more of the ham and bread. He’d eaten almost all of it when Mamie scurried into their midst, coming to an abrupt halt when she saw him sitting there, eating ravenously. She was still clothed in the gown she’d worn yesterday, her graying hair half up on her head and half down. She looked exhausted and half-crazed. “Oh dear,” she said anxiously. “No, Daria, you shouldn’t give him so much food. I’ve made a broth—”
“Enough of your broth,” he said through a mouthful of ham.
Mamie pushed her hair back and looked wildly at Daria, then at him. “Please come back to your bed, sir. Allow yourself to heal properly—it’s been only three days.”
“I’ll no’ return to that bloody bed,” he said firmly, and dragged the back of his hand across his mouth.
“I only want to help you—”
“You’ve a peculiar way of helping.”
“Mamie,” Daria said, coming around to put her hand on her grandmother’s arm. “Sit, please. Clearly he prefers to recuperate on his own terms. And it would be in your best interests to find another occupation than nursemaid to a stranger, don’t you agree?”
“Aye, she’s right.”
Mamie cast him a glare that would have frozen the North Sea, which was met with an equally chilling look from him. The tension between them was palpable. Lord, there was so much unspoken in this room! Daria felt as if she were in the parlor at Rochfeld, the Horncastle estate, trying to sort out one of the infernal riddles Lord Horncastle was so fond of forcing onto everyone.
“I’ve come to the end of my patience with the two of you,” she snapped. “It is quite obvious to me that we’d all benefit if one of you would kindly own to what has happened here!”
“I don’t see how he can own to anything,” Mamie said pertly. “He can’t recall how he came to be here.” She stood abruptly before anyone might posit a different theory and went to the hearth to toss another log on the fire.
“You,sir, know more about what happened to you than you have admitted,” Daria said, pointing at him. “Andyou,Mamie, can’t seem to find anyone in all of Scotland to help you! Yet you have a ham and chopped wood—someonehas helped you.”
“All from Nairn,” Mamie said with a flick of her wrist.
“I find that impossible to believe. So please stop being untruthful about what happened here!”
The stranger snorted as if that amused him.
Daria’s anger soared just as high as if he had laughed outright at her. “Andyou,sir,” she said, turning on him. “You claim not to recall what happened to you, and yet you can recall what you were wearing at the time you were filled with lead. Furthermore, you were not the least bit surprised that someone was looking for you, which suggests to me that you knowwhyyou were shot. And I think you know your name!”
His smile faded and he looked at Mamie. “Aye,” he said with a shrug.
“Aye?”Daria echoed, surprised by his agreement.
“Aye,” he repeated and turned his hazel eyes to Daria. “But I’ve no’ even a wee idea why I was shot.” He arched a dark brow in Mamie’s direction.
Mamie clamped her mouth shut. She hung the kettle over the fire with such force that it swung and hit the stone wall at the back of the hearth.
Daria didn’t relish the idea of walking to Nairn, but she was determined to find the answers to what had happened here if it killed her. “Very well,” she said irritably. “I should like to borrow some boots, Mamie. I am to Nairn.”
The stranger’s brow arched high, and one corner of his mouth lifted as he took her in. “I canna have you walk to Nairn, lass. It’s too far for an English rose, aye? So I shall tell you the truth as I know it.”
Mamie turned so quickly that she almost collided with Daria. “Don’t listen to anything he says. He knows nothing. How could he? He has been wounded in the head—he will remember nothing useful, I assure you.”
Daria ignored her grandmother. She braced her hands against the table and leaned across, glaring at him. “Tellme.”
A slight shadow of a smile lit his eyes as he shifted forward with some effort. “I am Jamie Campbell, Laird of Dundavie.”
“As if that has any bearing on anything,” Mamie muttered.
“What does ‘laird’ mean?” Daria asked, sinking into a chair beside him.
