Page 8 of A Virgin for the Icy Highlander
“Hunter,” he replied. “Hunter Barr, Laird of MacLogan.”
Hunter…
The name alone made her heart beat a little faster. Though, Grace wasn’t much of a runner, which meant there wouldn’t be much of a chase.
She sternly shoved away the thought, hoping she had a more serious expression on her face as she looked at the handsome, towering warrior of a man. It was impossible not to make comparisons between him and Lord Huston, and that crusty old Earl didnotcome out the victor in any category.
“I will… consider your proposal,” she said stiffly, hardly able to believe she was saying the words. “But I have a condition.”
He didn’t encourage her to go on, merely staring at her with those cold, beautiful eyes.
“We must get to know one another first,” she continued. “I will not marry acompletestranger.”
He glanced out the window. “A week,” he said, as if he’d received some sort of sign from the sunset and the gathering rainclouds. “Then, we marry.”
“A week? That is hardly—” she began to protest, until he walked toward her, making her forget what complaint she’d been about to make.
His arm curved around her upper back, making her forget how to walk or breathe, so it was fortunate that he took the lead. He guided her out of that stark, cold room and down the stairs, back toward the cheer and the music. Apparently, it had returned to the full force of its merriment in their absence.
“But how are we to plan our meetings to get to know one another?” she blurted when they were a few steps from the door that would take her back into the festivities. “I shall be at my school, and you will be—where, exactly? Here, or at your castle?”
He rested a hand on the door and pressed lightly against the small of her back with the other, eliciting a little shiver that raced up her spine. “Ye’ll be where I can easily find ye.” He peered down at her with those glinting blue eyes. “It’s nae just me ye have to get to ken, after all.”
“What… do you mean?” she murmured, fighting the dizziness that swept through her and overwhelmed her brain.
“Ye’ll be at me castle, near me daughter,” he replied.
She blinked at him. “And… my friends?”
“They’re more than welcome to accompany ye,” he answered as he shoved open the door and nudged her inside, where a sea of dancers and merrymakers swept her up, disorienting her.
When she looked back at the spot where Hunter had been, he was gone… leaving her to wonderwhenshe was supposed to go to his castle and how.
Would she be allowed to return to the school to fetch her sentimental belongings and explain things to Miss Sutton, or would he steal her away before then? At thecèilidh’send, would she be going home to Horndean, or to a castle that might become her home?
4
“Heproposed?” Lilian squeaked, her eyes bulging out of her head.
Meanwhile, Maddie’s eyes had gone blank behind her spectacles. “And you told him that it is utter madness, yes? You told him what he could do with his proposal, correct?” She paused, a nervous smile on her lips. “After all, you are coming to Cambridge with me.”
The three women were out in the alleyway, having escaped the noise and heat and chaos of thecèilidh, though Grace wasn’t sure which way to turn.
Did she hurry back to the school, hide herself away, and hope that Hunter would forget all about it? Or did she throw caution—and the promise of unsuitable gentlemen—to the wind and go to him, wherever his castle might be?
“I… said I’d consider it,” she replied, grimacing. “Truly, I don’t know that I shall receive a better offer when I leave Horndean—as lovely as your offer is, Maddie—and… I was staring at him, imagining that awful Earl standing there in his place, saying those horrid things to me again, and… It wasn’t a choice at all.”
As they wandered up the alleyway toward the safety of the street, the sunset performing its last fiery flourish before nightfall, Maddie cast a pensive sideways glance at Grace.
“With respect, Grace, it rather sounds like you’ve already accepted,” she said.
Grace shook her head effusively. “No, not at all. I am still very much pondering it, and I won’t make any decision until I know him a little more,” she insisted, trying not to think of his strong arm around her, or the heady, woodsmoke scent of him. “What I meant to say is that refusing outright wasn’t a choice at all, when my options are so much worse in London.”
Marianne would not have warned me if they weren’t dire.
“Does that mean you will be Lady of Clan MacLogan?” Lilian asked, holding tight to Grace’s arm as they reached the street and finally had the space to walk abreast. “Is that like a countess or a duchess and that sort of thing?”
It was Maddie who replied, for Grace had no idea. “It has meaning and value, but it isn’t quite the same,” she explained. “It denotes status and nobility, but it is not, in itself, an official title of nobility. I believe our fair hierarchy would place a lairdbelow a baron, but here in Scotland, a laird is treated with as much honor as a duke. A king, in some places. I would have to read on the matter some more.”
