by Karen Ranney
Franklin nodded.
And when had George become such an expert on horses?
She continued walking, determined to put as much distance between them as possible.
A few minutes later she heard him behind her, but she determinedly ignored him. A little harder to do when the horse he was riding began mouthing her bonnet. Charlotte swatted at the mare, but evidently, the decorations on her hat were enticing. Or maybe it was simply the smell, something that reminded Charlotte of wet hay.
“It’s some distance back to Balfurin,” he said. “Are you certain you wouldn’t like to ride?”
The rain had subsided to a drizzle as if he’d commanded it. She pretended he hadn’t spoken, and walked faster so the horse couldn’t nibble on her bonnet.
“Do you allow your pride to rule your life, Charlotte? I didn’t think you that foolish.”
She stopped and turned, wishing she didn’t have to crane her head back to look up at him. She didn’t like it, but what he said made sense; it would be foolish to walk all that way when he’d offered her some comfort. Besides, her feet hurt. The rocky road was painful in only her muddy stockings.
“Very well, I would like to ride back to Balfurin.”
She had expected him to relinquish the horse to her, not bend down and effortlessly pull her up to sit sideways in front of him. She wasn’t exceptionally good at riding anyway, but she could have managed. This was like riding sidesaddle without a pommel for her knee. Consequently, she was forced to allow him to extend his arms around her for some sort of support.
“Where did you get that back of yours?”
“I beg your pardon?” she asked.
“You’re very stiff.”
“I have excellent deportment,” she said.
“You have an iron bar up your back, Charlotte.”
She didn’t know quite what to say to such an insult. Silence was always the best recourse. She looked toward the direction of Balfurin, hoping that she wouldn’t have to endure George’s company and comments any longer than was absolutely necessary.
“Did you really come in search of me?” she asked a few minutes later.
He hesitated for a moment. “I did.”
“Why?”
He didn’t answer her and she didn’t press the issue. She didn’t know what to think, whether to be insulted or pleased that he’d been concerned for her. Or perhaps he’d only been curious. George had never been curious about her before.
“I went to see my solicitor. Not,” she said, emphasizing the word, “that it is any of your concern.”
“While I visited Old Nan,” he said.
She glanced at him, surprised. “Did you?” Honesty compelled her to add, “I haven’t seen her lately. She prefers to pretend I’m not a resident of Balfurin.”
“You’re English,” he said. “She comes from an era when the English weren’t welcome in Scotland.”
“We’re not welcomed now.”
“You haven’t been to Edinburgh lately, have you? There are more English there than Scot. It’s become fashionable to own land in Scotland.”
“Regardless, Nan has never accepted me and she’s too old to change.”
“Probably not,” he said, so easily that she glanced at him again. At her look, he smiled. “Did you expect me to lie to you? I won’t, you know. However unpalatable, I’ll always tell you the truth.”
She searched her memory for times when he’d lied to her. She couldn’t think of an occasion, but then they’d spent so little time together. Barely seven days of marriage after meeting him on exactly three occasions.
“You’ve done well with the school,” he said, startling her. “It must have been difficult converting Balfurin into something profitable.”
“It was.”
She turned and looked at him. They were so close she could see the gold flecks in his blue eyes. Strange, how she’d never before noticed them.
“Is it necessary that we converse all the way back to Balfurin?” she asked.
She looked away, uncomfortable with his proximity, his curiosity, and, strangely enough, the expression on his face. As if he were feeling some kindness for her.
She didn’t want his kindness or his regard. She wanted nothing from George MacKinnon.
“Do you know that I haven’t been alone with you since I came to Balfurin? Your school is an achievement, Charlotte, but four hundred giggling girls is not conducive to conversation.”
“We only have two hundred students currently enrolled.”
“Really?” he asked. “It seemed a great deal more.”
“You looked pleased to be seated among them. Practice for all your women, no doubt.”
“All my women?”
“Matthew says you employ a great many women. I gather they all think you’re some sort of pasha. Is one of them your concubine?”
He smiled slightly. “Matthew doesn’t like Scotland, and he actively dislikes Balfurin. He would do or say anything to precipitate my departure.”
“Pray, do not stay on my account.” She was growing tired of straining her eyes for a sight of Balfurin in the distance.
“I’ve never known a wife so eager to rid herself of a husband.”
“I’m only emulating you, George. Unlike you, however, I’m leaving no doubt of my intentions.”
“Surely I left a note.”
“You don’t know?” She turned to look at him. “I will not countenance a story of a lost memory, George. You cannot simply arrive at Balfurin one day with a tale of not knowing who you were for five years.”
He returned her look, his gaze more somber than she’d expected.
“I’m sorry, Charlotte. It shouldn’t have happened.”
She looked away, discomfited by his apology. She hadn’t expected it of him.
He looked into the distance. “Shall we say that I was an ass? An unmitigated ass?”
“We could say that,” she said, feeling slightly mollified. But only slightly.
“Again, I’m sorry, Charlotte. It should not have happened.”
“I’m not entirely certain I like you in this mood, George. I certainly don’t trust you in this mood. You’ve never attempted to curry favor with me before.”
“Nor am I now,” he said stiffly. “I’m simply apologizing for abysmal behavior.”
“Your abysmal behavior.”
He didn’t say anything in response.
For a few moments they rode together in silence, the rising wind making the only sound. She wondered if the storm had abated only to gain more strength. She frowned up at the sky, and then heard George laugh behind her.
“You can’t scold the storm into submission, Charlotte. It’ll either rain or it won’t. Nothing you do will have any effect on it.”
“I don’t want to be rained on again. This day has been disastrous enough without me getting ill on top of it.”
“Do you get ill often?” he asked.
“Never.”
“Then why do you worry about it?”
She glanced at him and then away. His smile was firmly fixed in place and too charming. “I’m not worried about it. I’m simply cautious.”
“You’ve had ample reason to be, I think.”
“You mustn’t do that, you know,” she said, frowning at him.
“Say nice things?” he asked.
“And don’t do that, either,” she said. “You really don’t know what I’m about to say, and it’s annoying that you would even try to figure it out.”
“Very well, I shall attempt to be obtuse. Isn’t that what you women think of men?”
“Another point you should learn,” she said. “I’m not like most women.”
“And you dislike being labeled by a group as well, or am I being too perceptive again?”
“You must have a great many women in your harem,” Charlotte said. “I’m sure you’ve learned a few things from them.”
He was smiling again, and this time she couldn’t help but
wonder how many of her students had departed Balfurin sighing dreamily and casting woebegone looks toward the Laird’s Chamber.
“I haven’t a harem, despite what Matthew says.”
“I sincerely doubt that,” Charlotte said. “I know what those countries are like. I’m sure you were given women as gifts.”
He laughed, the sound startling her so much that she almost fell off the horse.
“Welcome to the country, here’s my daughter? I can assure you, it wasn’t the case.”
“A great many cultures in that area of the world have no respect for women.”
“Unfortunately, I must concur,” he said. “But I wasn’t given women as gifts, even by the men who were grateful to me.”
“Why were they grateful?”
“I made them rich,” he said. “They became investors in my export company. I trade, simply put. What Penang doesn’t want, Europe does.”
“Something else you should learn about me, George, I’m very intelligent. I don’t need to be addressed as a child. I understand economics.”
“Then you understand supply and demand. I find what the demand is and I supply it. Wherever and whenever.”
“Do you traffic in opium?” she asked cautiously.
“Never.”
“Slaves?”
“What a fine character you must think me. But then, the Earl of Marne hasn’t been an example of virtue, has he?”
“You’re doing it again,” she said.
“Doing what?”
“Distancing yourself from your actions. Talking about yourself as if you weren’t there, as if everything you did was done by someone else.”
“Maybe I’m a totally different man from the man you used to know, Charlotte. Maybe in the last five years I’ve changed, so drastically as to be a different person.”
“Even physically?” she asked him.
He looked startled.
“You’re taller than I remember, and broader in the shoulders. And your eyes were not quite so blue. But then, perhaps I tried to minimize you in the last five years and make you less attractive in my eyes.”
“You think I’m attractive?”
She nodded, just once. It wouldn’t do to give the man a swelled head. Just consenting to talk to him was complement enough. He should consider himself fortunate. Any other woman would have barricaded herself in her chamber and refused to have anything to do with him.
But she wasn’t any other woman. She had a life separate from George, a very busy and fulfilling life, and he must be made aware of that. He could not—and would not—be allowed to alter her life by any measure.
As if he had heard her thoughts, he said, “I haven’t come to Scotland to make you miserable, Charlotte.”
He tightened his arms around her, and she responded by sitting up straighter.
“Balfurin isn’t much farther.”
She looked up to see that he was right. It would be only a matter of moments until they reached the outer courtyard. Then she would be free of him.
For how long?
“What are you going to do, George?”
He pretended to misunderstand. “I’m going to change into dry clothes,” he said. “Then I have letters to write, and business to transact with my factor in Edinburgh.”
“Factor?” she asked.
“An agent of sorts, who sells goods on my behalf.”
“How long will you be staying? You used to tell me that you despised Scotland.”
“While you seem to have taken to it like a native,” he said.
“I hate the winters.”
“Any thinking, rational person does. Although,” he countered, “I have been anticipating the cold and snow. Perhaps I’ve been living in paradise too long.”
“You could experience winter in England. It’s cold and wet there.”
“My tastes have changed in the last five years. I find that England is a good enough place, but it doesn’t have the spice of Scotland. There’s something about the country that speaks of freedom, of the very nature of man, both warlike and peaceful. I think we’re closer to who we truly are in Scotland, whereas in England we’ve become too civilized.”
She’d never thought George to be reflective, or introspective. This new person both annoyed her and interested her too much.
“So, you’re staying through the winter at least.”
“Charlotte, if I didn’t know otherwise, I would think that you are anxious for me to leave. Have you given any thought to the idea that if I leave, you’ll be in a predicament? Neither wife nor widow.”
“It’s the same if you remain,” she said, remarkably calm despite the fierce beating of her heart. “I’m neither wife nor widow.”
When she glanced back, she found him smiling that half smile of his. He wasn’t, thankfully, looking in her direction, but toward Balfurin.
He placed his hand against the small of her back. When she stiffened, he looked at her.
“I’ll not hurt you, Charlotte. Do you act the same around any man, or is it just me?”
When she didn’t answer, he moved his hand upward, flat against her stays as if daring her to protest.
“I have something to do here. When I have accomplished that task, I’ll leave. Not before.”
She turned to look at him. They were closer than they’d been in years, linked by a bond even the Scottish courts were slow to sever. Yet he was a stranger to her, a maddening man who had control over her in a way she despised and loathed.
Make him suffer. Lady Eleanor’s words. Make him writhe in agony, my dear. Women have always had the upper hand. The problem is that they haven’t known how to use it.
She smiled, gratified to see that he narrowed his eyes in response. Evidently, he was as suspicious of her sudden amiability as she was of his cordial nature.
“Then you must tell me, George,” she said pleasantly, “what I can do to make your stay here more comfortable. I wouldn’t like you to want for anything.”
“Your companionship? A smile from time to time?”
She didn’t answer him, grateful to note that they’d passed the outer courtyard now. A great many of the carriages had departed. She would go and be a headmistress again for another hour or two. In that time, she could dismiss George from her mind almost totally. She had other events and other duties that would wipe him clean.
Only tonight, when she was alone in her chamber, would she give him any thought at all.
Until then, he was as nothing to her.
He moved his hand up further, and she deliberately forced herself to relax. When she could, she slid from the horse, stumbling as one of the grooms reached out to help her.
Without a backward look, she strode away from him.
“Charlotte.”
She pretended she didn’t hear him, but when one of the iron-banded oak doors shut behind her, she was tempted to turn and kick it.
Chapter 10
D ixon sat astride the horse he’d commandeered, watching as Charlotte stomped into Balfurin. She bristled so much when she was required to accept his help. For a moment there, he’d thought she might refuse a ride back to Balfurin, if only to prove to him that she could manage quite well on her own.
Damn George.
He felt caught between honesty and a righteous duplicity. Matthew would tell him there was no honor in lies, but Matthew’s family had been killed when he was young. There was no one to whom he felt a familial loyalty, unless it was Dixon himself.
But it was getting difficult to continue pretending to be his ass of a cousin.
No man is entirely evil, but Dixon was hard pressed to find something good about George. The longer he knew Charlotte, the more asinine his cousin appeared. Unfortunately, he had no problem envisioning George being insensitive and cruel to his new wife. George had always put himself first. If his wishes and wants were in violation of another human being’s best interest, George simply didn’t care.
But even if George could have overloo
ked her wit and her intelligence, there was the matter of her appearance. Or had George become so jaded by the whores he’d frequented that he didn’t see the striking woman right in front of him?
Dixon wanted to see her hair down on her shoulders and wanted to comb his fingers through it. Was it really a shade of brown or did it shimmer with gold and red?
Her skin was creamy, yet at the same time it had a tint of gold, as if she didn’t avoid the sun like so many women of his acquaintance. There was something about her soft green eyes that invited a man to simply sit and stare in wonder at them.
And that mouth. He stopped himself before he could think thoughts that were not the least bit cousinly.
She was tall for a woman and so beautifully shaped that he hadn’t been able to keep his hands from her, all in the guise of making sure she didn’t fall from the horse. He could still feel the shape of her back beneath the stiff wool of her cloak. His excuse? He’d been celibate for more than a year, and prior to that, he’d been a husband.
A thought occurred to him and it was so distasteful that he waved the groom away when he would have grabbed the reins of the horse. He dismounted and began to walk the horse to the stables himself.
Was that why he was adamant about remaining at Balfurin? Not for George. Not for any family loyalty or any noble reason, but because he was lonely? He was coveting his cousin’s wife, which, even if George didn’t want her, was a sin. He was surprised that Matthew hadn’t continued to comment on his weakness, especially since the other man had set himself up as Dixon’s conscience and spiritual protector.
God knows he needed one.
At the first sign of thunder and lightning, Matthew had no doubt retreated to his room, spending the duration of the storm in meditation and prayer. They’d encountered a summer storm on the Indian Ocean, and Matthew had remained tucked into his bunk for an entire day. When he’d emerged, he’d been pale as death, his appearance so changed that Dixon hadn’t commented on his fear.
But instead of being in his room, Dixon found Matthew in the stable, talking to the coachman. Evidently, the two had conspired in the last few hours. Both men glanced at him and then looked away. Another deduction—he’d been the subject of conversation.