by Rosie Harper
“I like my name very much, lassie.”
“Should I change my name, now that I’ve left England?”
He studied the lines of her face, now freed from the mask. She was as beautiful as he assumed that she would be, and given the fact that she was still riding with him, he supposed he was pleasing enough to her too. He hated to admit that it calmed him to know that, but he disliked lacking such depth. He watched the straight line of her nose, the beautiful shape of her eye, until she turned to him with a confused look on her face that reminded him that she had asked a question.
“I think you’re perfect just the way you are,” he replied, and he meant it.
She smiled in a self-conscious way and tipped her head to the side.
“May I still call you Theo?”
“Strange name for Tavish,” Tavish replied.
“I know, I just…really like the fact that I gave a name to someone.”
It took him a while, again, to realize that their horses had stopped for want of an order from either of them. The wind tossed a curl of hers here and there, and not for the first time he realized how insane this was, the two of them out in the countryside on the way back to his home. What would she do when she got there? Did she care?
“Of course you can,” he replied.
#
When they made camp as the sun drew low in the sky, Linnet realized she had no idea where she was. The fear had yet to kick in, and for a time she decided that that was because she was doing the right thing. Sure, it was scary, sure, she had no idea what she would be doing in a small Scottish village hundreds of miles from her home, but it didn’t bother her, she was here now, sitting in front of a fire with a man that had some mysterious hold on her.
He had stopped tying back his hair, and the darkness of it fell in waves down his back. She sat next to him and wanted to touch it, she wanted to touch him, ever since that moment in the drawing room. Theo, to his credit, had been nothing but a gentleman.
Linnet had experienced her fair share of gentlemen, and now she wanted something else.
A highlander, perhaps?
His face as he looked at her in the firelight was soft, as though he was admiring her. Perhaps he was, and the knowledge that it might be the case made her blush and look away. No, Linnet thought stubbornly. I must be brave.
Before she realized it, she was moving, she was at his side, she was touching his leg, his shoulder, his neck, his hair. She could feel the little escape of breath at her touch, and it made her want it more. Suddenly he wrapped his arms around her, pulling her into his lap. His lips were soft, so much softer than she thought a man’s would be, which was ridiculous given the fact that men were flesh and blood just like hers. She felt as though she were on fire, her joints felt both too tight and too loose, part of her was afraid, but another, bigger, louder part of her wanted him to continue.
Luckily for her, he did. He kissed down her neck, unlacing the simple bodice she had changed into in a feverish flurry after the party. He slipped his hand in and touched the pale, soft skin that no one else had. She gasped and he paused, stopping to look at her face with concern.
“It’s alright,” she told him. “I’ve just never done this before.”
He nodded, and kissed her again. Her fingers clumsily moved through the loose opening of his shirt, feeling the hardness of his chest, the warmth of him, his hand moved to the stays of her skirt and she let him.
Why must women wear so many clothes? Linnet thought bitterly. Is it to stop things like this from happening?
She both could understand and could not understand why such things had become scandalous in her own society. Here, under the stars, in the light of the fire, it seemed like something sacred. She helped him remove her clothing, until she was laid bare under those stars. Linnet closed her eyes at Theo’s attentions, half wishing that he would look away from her, but half hoping that he wouldn’t. He drank her in, watching the fire flicker off of every curve of her, off the tips of her breasts, and held out his arms.
“Come here, my love,” he said to her, and then she was in his arms, and he was kissing her again, and his hands were going places that Linnet was not even sure that they were allowed to go. She had not known that people even knew or wanted to put her hands there, but it felt so good that she knew it couldn’t be wrong.
Of course this was all ridiculous, she knew that it was. Here she was in full view of any traveler passing by, giving up her virtue to a spy for the Scottish. She should be scandalized, she should be begging to go to a convent for the rest of her life because she obviously could not be trusted to act in normal society.
But she wasn’t in normal society anymore, at least not the society she had known, and as Theo drew her closer, and when he entered her she realized that she didn’t care, not one single bit, about what was appropriate and what wasn’t.
Later, as they lay in each other’s arms, she told him about her mother.
“She died when I was just a little girl,” she told him as she pulled the tartan blanket he had packed for the journey tighter around herself. Now that they had finished and the fire had grown low, but still steady, the crisp night air was chilling the sweat on her bare skin. It wasn’t a bad feeling, of course, but it was chilly.
“Do you remember much about her?” Theo asked her in the darkness. Linnet smiled as she thought of her mother.
“Yes. She had golden hair, she liked to play the harp.”
“Lovely.”
“Her favorite flower was the tulip.”
“A beautiful flower.”
“I like them too.” Linnet rolled on her side and propped herself up on one elbow so she could look down at Theo better. “I’m not being truthful,” she admitted after a tremulous pause.
“Your mother did not like tulips?”
“No,” she said. “That I remembered those things on my own.”
He reached out and touched her shoulder, she looked so sad in the dying light cast by the embers of the fire. His fingers skittered over the smoothness of her skin, so pale, so untouched until now. She shivered again.
“The maids told me, well… the ones old enough to remember her did.”
Theo didn’t know what to say, so he said nothing. It seemed as though Linnet simply wanted to talk, and he knew that no matter what he would listen.
“I wanted to be like her so terribly, I knew that there was something in Papa… in my father, that was missing once she died, and I wanted to take her place so that he would never feel lonely. It wasn’t until I was old enough that I realized that to do that was to put me in a cage.”
Off his worried look she laughed lightly. “No, my love, not...not like that. He was never cruel, he just wanted specific things for me, such as to marry his business partner. It seemed more about what he wanted than what I wanted, and while I love my father, would that be fair for my own life?”
She looked at him as though he held all the answers, and maybe to her he did, but the idea of saying anything one way or another, especially when that way would lead to a woman abandoning what’s left of her family, made him nervous. Instead his hand moved to stroke her cheek, her eyes closed as she leaned into his touch, taking comfort in it, hoping that it was the only thing to anchor her in this strange, terrifying new world she was now living in.
“You have to do whatever you think is right,” Theo told her. “But you need to do it for you, and no one else.”
Her eyes were shining in the dark, and he worried if she was crying. Instead she buried her face into his arm and sighed.
“You’re right,” she told him.
When he woke up the next morning she was gone, with the hoofprints of her horse leading back to England.
He knew that he should just let her go, let her go back to her own life, but he thought about her face in the firelight again, mounted his horse, and took off behind her.
#
“WHAT?!” The Baronet Wakefield cried, causing Basile to flinch and t
ake a small step back for fear that his anger could potentially physically hurt him. “I’m gone for a single evening and you’re telling me that my only daughter has taken off with some foreigner!?”
Basile had grown accustomed to the Baronet’s outbursts due to their close business relationship, but the venom in the older man’s voice gave him shaky pause. He had never seen the Baronet this furious, this red faced, this ready to strangle Basile if he dared to go less than five feet closer to him. He should have understood; this was the Baronet’s daughter he was talking about.
“Mister Polk isn’t a foreigner exactly, Mister Wakefield, it’s only that we don’t know who he is, and doesn’t seem to be from where he claimed to be.”
“You let my daughter run away with some two bit con man? Why I should have you brought up on charges! On negligence! And that man should be hanged if we ever find him!”
Basile very much doubted that they would ever find the elusive Theodore Polk. Basile wanted to kick himself, letting her out of his sight for one minute, but he also was incredibly embarrassed to not have looked into the strange Mister Polk that much sooner. It seemed as though not a single person in their small town had bothered to look into the newcomer, and because of that he could be anyone. Why, he could be Scottish for all anyone knew, a terrible prospect indeed.
Instead he tried not to stutter as he faced down his furious business partner, fully aware that wasall his fault. How would one solve a problem such as Linnet’s obvious dissatisfaction with him? He knew about it, and although she desperately tried to be polite enough to not express her displeasure to him outright, he knew. He knew about it and he didn’t know what to do. He twisted his starched hat in his hands, afraid to look up. He knew he had to say something, so he might as well get the worst of it out of the way.
“I don’t know what happened, she disappeared from the ball-’
“The BALL!?” The Baronet sputtered. “You let her go to a ball!?”
It seemed as though he was speaking in entirely exclamation points and question marks, Basile took another step back just in case.
“I...I didn’t let her go, sir, more than she managed to show up on her own.”
If the Baronet could turn any redder, he would be a tomato. Basile was unsure of whether or not he should continue to talk, or else stand quietly and wait for the Baronet to pass out from sheer exhaustion of anger.
Luckily, the Baronet put him out of his misery by speaking first.
“What did she wear?” His voice had gone soft. “Linnet doesn’t have anything for a ball.”
Basile wasn’t sure he wanted to answer. “A blue damask dress.”
The Baronet’s face crumbled, and for a moment Basile thought that he might explode into some sort of anger, but instead he rubbed at his eyes as though to cover up tears.
“That was her mother’s dress.”
Basile knew that it was better to not say anything at this moment, but he prayed for it to pass quickly out of fear of watching the weakness of his employer, under the worry that it may be catching. He was only a boy himself when the late Lady Wakefield took ill and died, but he had small memories of her here or there, whenever his parents would bring him on a visit. He remembered her golden hair, a beautiful smile. He was too afraid to say it, but Linnet’s smile reminded him very much of her, or at least what he could remember of her. He wondered if that knowledge of her mother would have made Linnet like him more, and he also wondered whether or not that would be a fair way to gain her affections.
It was all too late, in any case.
“Did you try to go after her?”
Basile’s mouth twisted once again in embarrassment. “I’m not very sure where she went, sir.”
“Well, we need to find her,” the Baronet said stubbornly as he began to pace. “You two need to be wed within a fortnight to avoid a scandal now.”
Basile did not want to say it, but how could he marry her now? She had been missing overnight at this point with a complete stranger, of course she was ruined. If it were a matter of love, if she had truly loved Basile, he would be willing to do it, but why shackle a woman to him who did not want to be? For her father?
“I’m not sure that will be possible,” he said quietly. The Baronet stopped in his pacing and turned to look directly at his face. Basile got the feeling that this was the first time he had looked at Basile, truly looked at Basile, in what seemed like ages.
“What are you saying?”
“Why would Linnet want to marry me?” he asked, and he tried not to sound as angry and bitter as he felt. “She left immediately once someone came along that was even a mite more interesting than me.”
“What does that have to do with a marriage?” The Baronet asked.
“I don’t want to have to chase my wife for the rest of my life. Would you?”
The Baronet looked astonished. “You’re letting my daughter ruin herself.”
“I’m not letting her do anything,” Basile replied. Standing up to his business partner was making him equal parts nervous and exhilarated. In all of his memory he could not remember a time when he had actually done it.
“I...I....You’re just going to let her wander God knows where because you care about her feelings!?”
Basile felt his shoulders move in a shrug.
“It’s not up to me, is it?”
“Then who is it up to!?”
“Me.” A female voice called from the drawing room door. Both men turned to look and saw in astonishment that Linnet was standing in the doorway. She looked incredibly different, with windblown hair, her cheeks red from riding for so long. There was something different about her, something on a deeper level, an understanding, a confidence, Basile stared at her with an open mouth, completely shocked at the overnight transformation. She looked far from ruined.
“Linnet!” Her father cried.
“You know, Mister Trafalgar, if I had known that you were so open minded, I might have thought you were more interesting than I originally thought that I did.”
Basile laughed, and for some reason he actually felt wonderful. The idea of marrying this woman who would have been so unhappy had weighed down on his mind for almost as long as they had been betrothed, and while he was disappointed that he had not won the heart of that beautiful woman, he felt alright about it. He was a man with terrific prospects, he knew things would turn out just fine.
The Baronet, on the other hand, looked as though he was about to have a fit. Linnet held up a hand and walked over to him, keeping her voice soft as though afraid that he was secretly a bear, afraid that she would get hurt.
“Papa,” she said, calling him by a name that she had not used in many years. The familiarity of it stopped the Baronet in his tracks. “I just want to talk to you about a few things… I want to tell you about how I feel. I want you to still be a part of this decision even though it’s not what you want.”
The Baronet did not say something for quite some time, and Basile could almost feel the tension snap in the room, and it was as though Linnet was holding her breath for fear that her father would not listen, that he would snap and send her up to her room and keep her from whatever destiny she truly believed that she had to live. Basile knew that this was no longer his business, with the engagement in shambles and his place in this family tenuous at best, but he couldn’t bring himself to leave, not just yet. He felt as though he owed it to Linnet to make sure her father listened, even if he wasn’t fully sure he was even capable of making him.
It all turned out for naught, however, when after the longest silence in what felt like history was broken by the Baronet’s long, drawn out sigh.
“Alright,” he said. “Tell me what you want to say.
I should turn back, Theo thought wildly. I should turn back and forget all about that lass, she wasn’t for me, was she? She was for some other man with dark eyes and a job with her father.
To be perfectly honest, Theo was shocked that Linnet had made the choice sh
e had, why had she ridden as far as she had, why had she made love to him in the middle of the night, if she was simply going to go back to her old life. It was a life that had been one she clearly hadn’t wanted, and yet she had gone anyway. Was it out of some sort of obligation? Was she too afraid that they would find her? Theo would have protected her. He would have made sure they were never found.
He paused right outside of town, wondering if he should bother going in. He knew where she lived given their departure in the middle of the night only a few nights before, but why would he go in for more rejection? She had made her choice, hadn’t she?
He waited a long time, he thought about it for a long time…
Theo turned his horse and guided him down the path once more. Although he had come all the way back, he knew there was no point, he had to let her go, her choice had been made.
“Theo!” A voice, clear as a bell, sounded from down the road into town. He paused, desperately hoping it was who he thought it was, and as he turned once more he saw her. The flash of red hair, the apples in her cheeks, the flash of mischief in her cornflower blue eyes. His heart twisted with confusion and joy as she guided her strawberry roan mare to his side.
“I thought you left me for good.”
“And yet here you are,” she said with a smile on her face.” Waiting for me.”
“I never said I was a smart man.”
“Lucky for me,” she replied with a sweet grin.
“What happened?”
Linnet looked down the path that led into town, and let out a little sigh. “I told him what I thought, because it had occurred to me that all my life I never said a thing against what his plans were, so how could he know what I wanted?”
“So you spoke to him?”
“I did, and he’s sad, of course, but I think he understands. Well, he understands as best he can. I just had to promise to send letters, possibly visit. Basile will be with him, so I won’t have to worry.”
She seemed so brave as she looked back at the town that she had never left. Theo wanted to lean over and kiss her, but he knew that there would be so much time to do that now. She looked lighter, happier, since the very moment he looked across the ballroom and saw her. She leaned over the in the saddle and gave him a sloppy kiss on the cheek, before gripping her reins tightly.