by Karen Ranney
“Yet now you’re no longer a ship’s captain,” she reminded him.
“Instead of the sea surrounding me, I’ll have fields.”
“Will you be as free, however?”
“A man’s freedom is in his heart, Riona,” he said softly.
A moment passed, silent and serene, marred only by the furious beat of her heart.
“You looked very beautiful in your wedding dress,” he said unexpectedly.
A comment that had the power to halt her breath.
“Thank you.” She stiffened her shoulders and pasted a smile on her face.
“Don’t marry him.”
She looked up, startled at his words. His expression had altered. Gone was the surface affability. His eyes hadn’t left her, and now they seemed particularly intense. His mouth, that beautiful full mouth that doled out mind-numbing kisses, was thinned. His face was still, his features immobile. As if he had simply become frozen.
“You can’t marry him. You’re mine.”
He took a few steps toward her, bending his head to speak against her temple. If someone had seen them, James would have been viewed as solicitous. Two worshippers, one standing, one seated in a pew beside the aisle.
But his words were wicked, salacious. “I know how you feel when I enter you, all hot and wet and welcoming. I know how your breasts feel against my palms. Each night I relive how you shuddered against me in your release. How can you think of giving yourself to anyone else?”
“James…” Dear God, she couldn’t breathe.
“Come with me, Riona. Live with me on the abbey land. I’ll build our home, and we’ll be impervious to scandal or whispers. Let the biddies say what they will. We simply won’t care.”
“I can’t.” She lowered her head, closed her eyes. “Please do not ask it of me.”
Nothing had changed. Nothing but her love for him.
“Do not marry him, Riona. Don’t turn your back on happiness. Do not turn your back on me.”
She stood, slapped both hands against his chest, and shoved with all her might. He barely budged. “You don’t understand,” she said, her voice thick with tears. “It isn’t just me. It’s not just my happiness. It never has been.”
Her voice seemed to carry, echo strangely across the church as if she’d shouted the words. A repudiation, but not because of honor or decency but rather due to guilt.
How could she deny Maureen the happiness she deserved by taking her own? Her sister had done nothing, was innocent in all this.
“I can’t,” she softly repeated. Her heart was breaking, and still he regarded her with those beautiful blue eyes.
“I’m leaving, then,” he said. “Do not expect me to stay and see you wed. I’ve no stomach for it.”
“When?” Wasn’t it odd that she could still speak? Her heart had stopped as well as her breath, but her body didn’t seem to know. How strange to feel so distant from herself.
“Today,” he said. The word was too vague. She wanted to know in hours and minutes.
“You’ve bought the abbey land,” she countered.
“I need to return to Gilmuir to tell Alisdair of my decision.”
“But then you’ll be coming back.”
“Not until you’re in Edinburgh.”
“I’ll think of you here,” she said. Mild words that didn’t begin to hint at what she truly felt. She would do more than think of him. He would forever be in her heart and in her mind.
Even now she ached, as if her body suffered for his absence, preparing for the long months and years to come.
“We haven’t been the wisest people, have we, James?”
He didn’t answer. His face was suddenly a mask; no emotion shone in his eyes. He held himself so stiffly that she felt as if he’d disappeared and left only an effigy of himself behind.
“Would you change it?” he asked. “If you could go back and change my coming here, would you?”
“No,” she said honestly and perhaps unwisely. The word thawed him. He smiled softly, charmingly, devastatingly. “I will always cherish the memory of these days. As long as I live, they will always be with me. Even if I were given a chance to remove them from my mind, I never could, James.”
He turned on his heel and left her.
She watched him until he walked through the door of the sanctuary. Only then did she allow her tears to fall.
Chapter 30
I n the library, James packed up his quills and ink, wrote a short note to Ned about ideas he’d had for the north pasture. Leaving Tyemorn Manor was more complicated than arriving here. There were details to oversee and things to be finished.
James looked out through the library window.
From there the view of Tyemorn was spectacular, bathed as it was with the golden light of a setting sun. Below him the northern pastures, green and yellow squares of land, lay like nature’s quilt. A few birds flew overhead to give life to the panorama, or else it might have been a painting entitled An Idyllic Day at Tyemorn Manor.
The place had a sense of peace about it that James wished he could replicate in his mind. Sometimes, in the morning, he would saddle his horse and ride over the farms. More than once, he’d followed the trail back up to the abbey ruins and dismounted, surveying everything before him with a pride of ownership. Before coming to Ayleshire, he’d never understood what rooted a man to one place. Here he had knelt on the ground and buried his hands in the earth, helped to find a lost lamb, and cut trees in the forest. The bruises and cuts on his flesh were marks of what this land had done to him. Yet the growing crops were evidence of his influence on the land.
A life sailing the oceans left a man with weathered skin and watchful eyes. But as soon as a ship passed, the waves obliterated all trace of its passage, the sea unknowing and uncaring that men had once sailed there.
Susanna opened the door, peering inside with a smile. “Am I interrupting?”
“Only my dour thoughts,” he answered honestly.
She slanted a look at him as she entered. “About what, exactly?”
“The thefts, for one. We both know the workers of Tyemorn Manor are honest and diligent.”
Her cheeks appeared a little pink, but other than that Susanna didn’t look the least bit chagrined. He smiled at the innocence of her expression, and she smiled back in perfect accord.
“So you discovered my little ruse,” she said. She studied the floorboards intensely before looking back at him, as if gathering her courage. “But surely you don’t regret your visit?”
He shook his head.
“Riona says you’ve bought the abbey ruins.”
“Yes, and the pastures to the south of you.”
She looked stunned, as if she’d no idea of his wealth. The trade he’d engaged in had profited both him and his crew. For years, he’d invested his earnings, and with few needs his fortune had grown.
“The time here has shown me that I have an affinity for the land, Susanna,” he said in the silence. “I am looking forward to owning my own property.”
She hesitated, and he wondered what else Riona had told her. A moment later that question was answered.
“You’re leaving us, then, James?”
He nodded.
“So you’ll come back and look down upon us from your fine place on the hill.”
“Not for a few years,” he said. “It will take that long to build my home there.” He smiled, confiding in her a thought he’d had often in the past few days. “We’ve remained away from Scotland for thirty years, but now the MacRaes are doing their best to build it up again.”
“When you return to Ayleshire, I hope you will do me the honor of staying here as my guest until your own home is finished.”
“It would be better, Susanna,” he said soberly, “if I made other arrangements.”
He wouldn’t be gone long from Ayleshire, but when he returned, Riona would be married and in Edinburgh. Memories of her, however, would remain with him. Everywhere he’d look
, she would be there, as if she were a hundred women, all shadow and wraith, marking each place at Tyemorn and Ayleshire. He’d see her on the village road, smiling beneath an oak, straddling a furrow and laughing at something a companion had said. There again, tilting her head in an inquisitive look and offering advice on the line of the barn wall, or at night, when he could only see the outline of her form.
He was not a man given to yearning, and it made him impatient to feel this way. His forefathers had been reivers and plunderers and had taken pride in their thievery, seen as just and proper in a wilder and less civilized Scotland.
What would Riona say if he threw her over his saddle and raced with her across the fields and through the glens to a place where the mountains grew higher and starker? There would be no propriety in the place they’d live, no rules to break, only freedom.
He and Susanna shared a look, and he wondered if she suspected his thoughts.
“The only person who ever uses that desk is Ned,” she said finally, “and he constantly grumbles the entire time he works on the ledgers.”
“He’s a fine steward for you, Susanna,” he said, compelled to defend the older man.
“I know that well enough,” she said. “He is a good man, and I have a great deal of admiration for all that he accomplishes. However, he manages to make himself rather bothersome with his attitude. We engage in a game of pull and tug, James. I fuss at him, and he ignores me. Together we will see each other through well enough. We are both as stubborn as donkeys.”
“Fergus never mentioned that particular character trait of yours,” he said, amused.
“Perhaps Fergus didn’t know,” she said surprisingly. “For the longest time, I believed that perseverance was not a feminine trait. I now believe otherwise.”
“I have met few females without it,” he replied.
She said nothing, only placed both her hands on the arms of the chair, surveying him with an intense and almost regal look. “I will be very sorry to see you go. You have been a great help to me. I shall communicate as much to Fergus.”
“It isn’t necessary,” he said kindly. “Anything I did was done because I wished to do it, not because I felt obligated to do so.”
“I know that, which makes it doubly difficult to see you leave.”
“I appreciate your hospitality,” he said, looking around the library. “And the use of this room in addition to every one of your generosities.”
She surveyed the chamber, her gaze returning to rest on him. “Few people ever come in here. Riona told me once that she wanted to read all the volumes, but it’s Maureen who has more time for reading.”
He’d often seen her in the garden or in the parlor with a book. She did not, evidently, choose to occupy herself as Riona did. Susanna’s wealth made her indolence possible. Or perhaps, he amended silently, it was not so much indolence as it was aptitude. He couldn’t envision Maureen directing the flow of water in the sluice, or hopping from row to row over the seedlings.
“As for myself,” Susanna was saying now, “I find the place almost sad,” she said, surveying the bookcases lining the walls. “Sometimes I feel as if all the previous owners of the manor congregate here at night to marvel at the changes of the present day.” She glanced at him again. “Perhaps they don’t entirely approve of me, a seaman’s widow made rich by one of their own.”
“They would if they knew you,” he said, surprised at her whimsy. In a lot of ways, Riona was very much like her. A core of sentimentality overlaid by a surface of practicality.
“Did you know that this place was originally built by a war hero?”
“Is he the one who had the tower erected?”
“The better to be on guard for his enemies? Perhaps he was, I don’t know.” Standing, she smiled at him once again. “Perhaps I, too, should have a goal of reading all these books. I have not had the time before, but once my girls are married off I shall have plenty of opportunity.”
He stood also, coming around the desk. She surprised him by embracing him in a quick hug. “I do so wish you’d stay with us, James,” she said, a further surprise. “Are you so impatient to be about your own life?”
He only smiled, unable to tell her that he couldn’t stay and watch Riona wed another man.
Susanna nodded and went to the door, turning as she grabbed the latch. “I bless the day Fergus sent you to us. I hope you know that. You will always be a friend.” She hesitated, glanced at her hand, then back at him.
“I feel the same, Susanna.”
He sat again at her departure, staring out at the view again, trying to envision what his life would be like after Riona’s marriage. Tyemorn Manor wouldn’t be the same without her. Even Ayleshire would be stripped of some of its charm.
He picked up the account ledger where it rested in the center of the desk, next to his journal. Opening the aged leather binder at random, he studied the figures. A sum for etched goblets purchased in Inverness, another amount paid to the tanners for a hide dyed to match an old chair. Still another, larger expenditure for the annual clothing allowance for those employed at Tyemorn Manor. The estate was prosperous, Susanna was wealthy, and her daughters quite obviously heiresses.
Closing the ledger, he picked up his journal. Whereas another man might have chosen spirits, words were his form of escape. Between the leather covers of his journal he could express his thoughts as he could to no one else.
Perhaps it would be wiser not to write in it; the revelations might prove to be too difficult to read in the future. He might happen upon an entry that chronicled all his emotions and wonder at the man he’d been. Once, his journal had been used to impart those memories of places he had once seen and might never visit again. Lately, however, the passages had been a recitation of his regrets and a word painting of a woman he could never have.
He opened the journal at random, and read what he’d written earlier.
I cannot live comfortably with thoughts of what might have been. Mine is not the nature simply to accept. Even now I chafe at a future given to me by circumstance and not one of my own making.
There are times when I seek her out during the day, simply to see her and refresh my eyes with the sight of her. She will be smiling, and my own heart feels enlivened. On some occasions, I have seen her with a book, her hands curled protectively over the covers, the pages parted for her eyes. I am tempted to go to her in order to discuss the book’s contents or her thoughts on it. But wisdom tells me to limit the hours I spend with her.
I find myself increasingly envious of Alisdair and his Iseabal. Now I am doubly grateful about my decision not to live at Gilmuir, knowing what I will forever miss. How do I live with this hollowness, as if I were missing a limb, like Fergus?
I shall build a house with her in mind. Direct the planting of an herb garden that she might have enjoyed. In the middle of it, at its most fragrant point, I shall install a bench where she might have sat in the sunny light of a bright spring day. My chamber will be large, with a broad fireplace in ebony marble.
He slammed the book shut. He was damned if he was going to allow her to marry Harold McDougal. Even if he had to make Maureen miserable in the process. A not entirely honorable thought, but his honor had been in tatters ever since meeting Riona.
Kiss her. Kiss her again and again. Until the night obliterated the sun and once again morning came. Kiss her until Harold went away along with any man who might look at her with favor. Kiss her until he shocked them all and scandalized the proper world. To hell with their rules and regulations. To damnation with their dictates and their mores.
He wanted her, more than anything in his life. She was his future and his past, and quite possibly his present. Give him a woman who changed her life out of loyalty, one who walked the fields as though she ruled the earth itself, and whose thoughts wandered along paths that fascinated him. Give him Riona and he was supremely happy.
Yet in a matter of days she would walk away from him. She would say the sim
ple words that obligated her to another human being and become, for Harold McDougal’s lifetime, his wife and helpmate.
He wondered if Fergus knew what a great and ironic gesture he had performed in sending him to this place.
In that instant, James knew what he had to do.
Reaching the new barn, he sent one of the stable boys after Rory, waiting with barely leashed impatience until he arrived.
“Do you feel like traveling?”
“We’re leaving for Gilmuir, then?” Rory asked, disappointment coloring his voice.
James wished his own courtship was as uncomplicated as his cabin boy’s. “No,” he said. “For Inverness.”
“Inverness?” Rory asked, his crestfallen look changing to one of confusion.
It seemed to James, as he readied his mount, that he’d traveled throughout Scotland for one woman. Edinburgh and now Inverness. What was one more destination when his happiness was at stake?
“Are you certain you’re feeling well enough?” he asked when he saw Rory limping toward the door.
Rory smiled, reassuring him. “I’ll go and pack our things.”
James nodded. If their errand proved successful, they’d be traveling all night. If not, he’d stay in Inverness, do those errands for Iseabal and Alisdair, and return to Gilmuir.
“Why are we going, then?” Rory asked, turning at the door.
James glanced over his shoulder at him. “We’re going to kick some sense into an Englishman.”
Chapter 31
I nverness, located on the shores of the Moray Firth, sat at the head of the Great Glen, and the mouth of the River Ness. The most populated town in the Highlands, Inverness had a long history, beginning with its origins as a Pictish capital in the sixth century.
The rounded Ben Wyvis in the distance commanded an impressive view of the countryside. But the challenging cliffs of Glen Affric warned the traveler not to think himself too comfortable. This was, after all, the Highlands of Scotland.