Page 22 of Taming the Heiress
"Aye," he said. "When I was a child, I swam like a fish."
"Did you!" Mother Elga grinned, and shifted the baby on her hip.
Dougal turned toward both women. "Would you like me to carry the lad, or the little one?"
"We would not," Thora said hastily, exchanging glances with her mother-in-law.
"You shall not have our babies!" Mother Elga snapped.
Dougal was startled. Had he offended them? Was there some island taboo against men holding children? He did not think so. Perhaps they had misunderstood his English.
Thora set the boy down at the edge of the water. "Go with Margaret," she said sternly. "Go on, now."
Out in the mild waves, the other lady's head, capped in its straw hat, seemed to bob on the surface like a buoy. "I wonder if the baroness would give me a little of her time," Dougal said.
"You cannot disturb her," Thora said. "She is a very proper lady and she would not like to be approached."
Mother Elga stepped closer, studying his face, then poked at his arm with a stiff finger. Dougal eyed her uncertainly.
"Perhaps I can call on her later at Clachan Mor," he said.
"She does not like visitors. Leave the lady be, sir."
"Leave her be," Elga intoned. "Go back to your rock, water man." She continued to examine him oddly, walking around him and then staring down at his booted feet, wet in the foamy surf.
"Ah, er, thank you. Perhaps you would be so good as to obtain an invitation for me to call," Dougal suggested. "Tell the lady that I am not the ogre she believes me to be."
Elga asked a question in Gaelic, and Thora answered her. Elga grinned. "Kelpie," she said, pointing to him. "Not ogre."
He was beginning to think that the old woman was daft.
"We shall see, sir," Thora said.
"Thank you." He wondered if they would help or hinder him from meeting with Lady Strathlin.
Turning, he saw Margaret walking toward her blanket. Behind her, the woman in the water now surged toward the beach, emerging from the water like a small black whale.
He had never pictured her quite so... corpulent, he thought.
"Turn away your eyes, sir," Elga said. "She is not wanting a man to see her now."
"Of course," he said, turning.
"Oh, she's coming this way," Thora muttered.
Moving quickly, Thora snatched up a blanket from the sand and hastened to meet the woman in the black bathing costume, wrapping her in the covering. They walked together, pausing to talk to Margaret, who now sat in the sand watching Iain, who played near her among some rocks that formed a small tidal pool. Margaret looked up at Thora and the baroness in the bathing costume and blanket—then she shook her head, glancing in Dougal's direction.
"I had best go. Good day, Mother Elga," he said. "How nice to chat with you." He reached out to touch the baby's head, and the little girl stared up at him, open-mouthed. Then she laughed and cooed, showing four tiny teeth.
Elga backed away as if he meant to snatch the baby. The MacNeill women were overprotective of their children, he thought, puzzled.
"Good day to you, water man," the old woman barked, scowling at him as he nodded and turned to go.
He headed across the sand toward the machair. Glancing in Margaret's direction, he saw that she talked with the others, but she paused to catch his gaze for a moment.
The look she gave him was so plaintive, so full of longing and vulnerability that he felt the very pull of it deep within, somehow. Impulsively he changed direction to walk toward her.
Chapter 6
