Page 29 of Laird of Twilight
“What in thunder is wrong with a Lowland man? I am one.”
“Nothing, really. But I want to stay in the Highlands. I do not want to marry the tailor who only wants to have my grandfather’s business one day. If my disgrace will send away that suitor, I will be content.” She lifted her chin. It was a lovely chin, above a slim and elegant throat.
“Content to never marry, never be happy? No one would believe that.”
She looked down. “Of course I want to be happy. But I would rather live in the Highlands and be lonely than go to the Lowlands and lose—my life here. Yet Grandda says I must leave. I cannot explain why, but I will not do it. I suppose you think this is all play-acting. I suppose you scoff at me, and suspect me as false.”
“You do not know what I think of you, Miss MacArthur,” he murmured.
She glanced up. There was a pure clarity in her eyes, somehow, as if she did know exactly what he thought. “May I ask—”
“Aye?” Would entrapment be next? How much the fool was he?
She plucked at her damp sleeve. “May I borrow something for the night?”
“Of course. Let us try this chest.” Flustered, he went to a tall wardrobe and opened its doors. Inside were shelves of folded garments, and a few gowns hanging on hooks. “There might be something here.”
She limped to join him. James drew out a lightweight, translucent, lacy chemise. He felt his face burn red. “Er, perhaps you should look for yourself.”
Elspeth touched a folded white garment on a shelf, lifting its lace-trimmed sleeve and high-necked bodice. “A very fine nightrail. Whose things are these? Oh dear, did these belong to your grandmother?”
James regarded the white, billowy thing, which would no doubt swallow the girl. His grandmother had been a tall woman. “Possibly.”
“I should not borrow these.”
Elspeth wearing his grandmother’s nightrail—that would make the girl less appealing, James thought. Good. He thrust the softness toward her. “Take it. I insist.”
She held it up, unwittingly defining the globes of her breasts beneath his grandmother’s delicates. An excellent deterrent. “Should I?”
“Absolutely. Goodnight, Miss MacArthur.”
In shadow and firelight, her eyes were wide and silvery, innocent yet wanton. However wrong it was to be alone with her, some men would take advantage of it, and her. He would never—yet, despite his grandmother’s nightgown, he wanted her in that moment. He backed away hastily and went to the door in uneven strides. The dogs turned around him as he crossed the threshold.
“Goodnight,” he said again, then fled down the corridor as if the hounds of hell were after him. The terriers came with him, while the wolfhound stayed behind.
Fairy hounds knew their kind, James remembered. Osgar had chosen her.
His usual reserve should be enough to keep him aloof and controlled in any situation. Yet this fey and fetching creature asked blithely to be compromised, and he had nearly done just that, acting the fool—and instead hurried away in a panic.
Downstairs, he snatched up a lamp he had left on a side table and went to the study. With a loud, exasperated sigh, he sank into the leather chair. He had set down his work hours ago. Before his life had changed. An odd notion quickly dismissed.
Soon established at the desk again, he tried to keep his mind on his grandmother’s papers. Thoughts of a delectable girl in a quaint nightrail distracted him. Tapping his fingers on unread pages, he gazed through the window into darkness as the rain pattered forcefully against the glass.
He was not wary of women. He enjoyed them—their character and differences as much as their softness and allure—and he did not care a whit for society's opinions. But he would not satisfy his urges in blatantly ungentlemanly ways. He had kept a mistress a few years earlier, had dallied with women before and after that, and for two years he had been neatly avoiding, with good reason he thought, Miss Sinclair’s expectations. Nor would he fully compromise the Highland girl, no matter how willing she seemed.
He thought of the others. His Belgian mistress had been the widow of an esteemed geologist, a man he had corresponded with and planned to meet, but the man had died by the time James had a chance to visit the area, traveling with his regiment. The scholar’s young widow had allowed James to look over her husband’s scientific papers whenever he was on leave from the Black Watch—and soon she gave him access to her person as well. Young, hungry for passion, knowledge, adventure, and fearful that he would enter battle soon, James had let the dalliance continue. They had both been lonely, and they had met, loved, and parted without regret, friends more than lovers.
Only his first love, when he was not yet twenty and studying at the University of Edinburgh, had stirred deep feelings in him—and he never intended to feel that much hurt again. The red-haired daughter of a wealthy merchant, she was interested in botanical sketching and often wandered the hills above the town. James met her while he was collecting rock samples. Soon they met by arrangement, helping each other’s efforts. Then they began to play sweetly, privately, in the grass and met elsewhere when they could.
She took a chill that winter, and by the time James called at her house, she was seriously ill, with her family still unaware she had a beau. Turned away, he had not spoken up, thinking he would hear from her soon. The next time he saw her, she was in a coffin in a funeral carriage. He regretted not revealing himself to her family. A few of her drawings were tucked away in his Edinburgh townhome. He would always treasure them.
The wind whipped past the house then, with such strength that for a moment James heard a faint shrieking above. The storm, he thought. Or that pestering banshee again, he thought wryly.
Wondering if the groans and creaks of the old house would alarm the girl upstairs, he sighed, rowing fingers through his hair. No, she was a hearty Highland sort, used to such things. Setting aside an urge to go upstairs to see if all was well, he took up a stack of handwritten pages and resumed reading. The pages were covered in his grandmother’s small, careful handwritten script.
A local weaver, Mr. Donal MacArthur, is an abundant source of history and traditional tales for this account,his grandmother had written.He claims that in his youth he was abducted by the fairies. However, the gentleman refuses to elaborate on the details of his experience. He believes the fairies show their wrath to those who speak too intimately of them and reveal their secrets. It is this author’s fervent hope that the weaver will share his fascinating story of fairy abduction with the world someday. His granddaughter, he claims, is part of that story too.
James sat up, reading the passage again.
