Page 21 of A Two-Faced Laird
Lard Findlay laughed. “Ah, but remember this is a business venture,” he reminded her, raising one eyebrow slyly. “I expect to be repaid.”
This was true, but it was a very loose arrangement, and they all knew that if the enterprise failed, Edina would never be hurled into debtors’ prison. However, so far, all was going well, and Laird Findlay could only see it going from strength to strength. This surprised him, but it did not change his thoughts about her prospects with Lewis. She was not the woman for his son.
Lewis had madeno secret of the fact that he was avoiding his family. He spent much of his time with the guards, and the rest in his chamber. Edina could not rid herself of the notion that he was hiding something again.
A few days after the council meeting, a hunting party returned in the early evening with the body of a large stag. The Laird’s policy was that only old or sickly animals were to be taken, and this was a venerable animal who had obviously seen many winters.
One of his antlers had cracked and broken off, no doubt in a fight with a younger, fitter stag. He had been dispatched with a single arrow to the heart, and his death would have been instant, Edina was glad to see. She hated the sight and smell of dead animals, but she was intensely curious about something. She went up to one of the men who were now milling around drinking ale before they took the carcass away for hanging, trying to avert her eyes from the stag.
“Who shot this animal?” she asked him.
Looking surprised, the hunter bowed. “Master Lewis, Mistress,” he answered. “He is the best shot out o’ all of us.”
“I see,” Edina mused, then she thanked the man and was about to walk away when something else occurred to her.
“Does Lewis have a favourite horse?”
“He rides three or four different ones,” the man replied. “But his hunter is the big black one called Duffy. He is the fastest an’ strongest o’ a’ the horses here.”
“Thank you,” Edina said, and walked away.
She smiled as she remembered the little Lewis, who had just grown out of ponies and had graduated to a medium-sized horse. He had been heartbroken at the time because he was utterly devoted to his little mare, Rosie, a strawberry roan Shetland pony. It had taken months for him to get used to the new grey stallion, Gilly, and he had never loved him to the same extent that he loved Rosie.
Of course, much had changed in the time she had been away, and Lewis had grown into a man since then, but she still remembered the strength of the loyalty he had shown to his pet dogs and other pets. He had no pet animals now.
She was also astonished that he had shot a deer. In his earlier letters to her, Lewis had always bemoaned the fact that Aidan, who, of course, had the biggest stallion in the entire stables, was only interested in bringing down stags. His brother loved the excitement of the chase, while he himself preferred to hunt rabbits, pheasants, and grouse. Now Lewis had shot a big stag, and that seemed completely out of character.
Edina was lost in thought, and failed to notice that Lewis was crossing her path until she bumped into him. He, in turn, had been looking at a sheet of paper with a list of names on it, so neither of them was looking at where they were going.
Edina let out a little squeal and her eyes widened in fright. She stumbled backwards, but Lewis’s hands came out to grasp her upper arms tightly before she fell over.
“I am sorry,” she said awkwardly.
She tried to move away from him, but he held on, and as she met his eyes, she saw the same expression as the one he had worn just before their kiss there.
Lewis’s gaze strayed inexorably to Edina’s lips, and he felt his body stiffening as he too remembered their encounter. Edina was not the only one who had gone over the experience again and again, and he wondered if had they been in a different, less public place, they would have repeated the experience even more passionately.
I could drown in those eyes,he thought, and almost did not realise that he was standing motionless in the middle of the courtyard where anyone could see him staring at Edina like a lovestruck youth. When he snapped back to reality a few moments later, he saw that Edina was smiling at him mischievously.
“Forgive me,” he said, shaking his head. “I was not looking where I was going.”
“I forgive you,” Edina replied, laughing softly. “I see you have been out hunting.”
“Yes.” Lewis frowned. “I was just about to go and bathe before my father ambushed me and gave me some work to do.”
“Ambushed you?” This time, Edina giggled in amusement. “You make him sound like a criminal!”
Lewis shrugged and gave her a half-smile. “Sometimes it feels like it,” he said ruefully.
He seemed to be in a better mood today, Edina thought, before she turned around to watch the hunters wheeling away the cart that contained the stag’s carcass.
“Your men tell me you shot that stag.”
He nodded. “Yes, I did,” he replied. “It was not difficult; he was very old and couldn’t run fast enough to escape.”
“I thought it was only Aidan who liked hunting big game,” Edina said, puzzled. “You preferred small game like rabbits and birds.”
For a moment, Edina thought she saw something like panic flickering in his brown eyes, but it was gone as quickly as it had come.
