“I can’t.” Inhaling, she squared her shoulders. “I respectfully decline your offer.” Color flushed her face as she looked down at his hand on hers. That obstinate chin of hers inched higher. “Perhaps you should return to your lover and inform her of the news. I’m sure she will be quite relieved to know that you are unattached.”
He adjusted his hand on hers until their fingers were laced. Stepping closer, he observed the way her breathing quickened with interest. She was not unaffected despite her rejection of him. That was something. Something he could cling to. “Are you jealous, Clara?”
She scoffed. “Of course not.”
“You’ve no need tae be. I visited Catriona tae let her know that our association had come tae an end.”
Association. He made it sound so very unloverlike. As though his relationship with this other woman had been a business arrangement. Would that be what their marriage was like if she accepted his proposal? She gave herself a mental kick. No matter. She was not marrying him. Ever.
“You told her your association had come to an end? Because of me?” Her nostrils flared and she shook her head. “Oh, that was very rash of you indeed. I do hope she will take you back, my lord.”
He winced at her acerbic tone. “Clara—”
“No.” She slid her hand free and sidestepped him, moving for the door. “You shouldn’t have done that. I cannot marry you. I’ve thought about it and I cannot.”
Frustration welled up inside him . . . and a bit of helplessness that he could not fathom. He hardly knew her, but marrying her, having her, had become like breathing to him. Urgent and every bit necessary. “But what about the child?”
She whipped around, staring at him in reproach as though angered he would remind her of her condition. “You needn’t think on it.” Her voice was as sharp as a blade.“It’s no concern to you. I’m not your responsibility. I appreciate your kind offer, but I cannot accept.”
She was all rigid formality.
“Clara,” he began, “give it some more thought.”
She shook her head. “No.” Her hand clenched around the edge of the door. “It’s getting late. I should go.”
“You should stay,” he countered. “We can talk more—”
“No. We shouldn’t be alone in here. ’Tisn’t seemly.”
He snorted. “I don’t think you have tae worry about that.”
Fire lit her eyes, and he knew he had angered her with this reminder of her status. Or perhaps it was simply telling her how she should feel. “You shouldn’t remain here. It’s unnecessary. You doubtless have things awaiting your attention at home. Please attend to your life and leave me to mine.” A weighty pause followed, and then, her voice a whisper, she added, “Forget about me.”
She departed swiftly with a swish of skirts, leaving him standing alone in the room.
Forget about her?
It was too late for that.
As Clara readied herself for bed, she tried to will feelings of regret away. Rejecting his offer was the sensible decision. It was the only reasonable course of action to take.
When she’d heard that MacLarin had gone to visit his mistress, she had been unaccountably hurt . . . and worried. Had she misjudged the man? A man she had agreed to possibly marry?
She couldn’t go through with it. She couldn’t marry the man. It was mad. She’d only just met him. She couldn’t trust someone that completely or that quickly. She wouldn’t.
Marian helped her pull back the coverlet on her bed. “Well, I think you’re merely looking for an excuse because you’re frightened.”
“Of course I’m frightened.” She bit her lip to the point of pain, welcoming the punishment. “As I should be. Look where my recent choices have led me.”
Marian stared at her with the bed between them. “You mean here? Potentially married to a very handsome man who is much more interesting than the fops in Town. Not a terrible place to be, in my estimation. I would not mind that . . . marrying a handsome and interesting man.”
Clara looked with astonishment at her former governess. She had never heard anything resembling regret or longing for something more, something other than her current life, from her friend. Marian was always so practical. As the oldest of her siblings, Marian was accustomed to responsibility, to sacrifice. As soon as she was old enough, she had sought employment to alleviate the burden on her family. Clara also happened to know Marian sent home part of her wages.
“I thought you never wanted to marry?” she asked.
Marian shrugged. “Well, I can’t be your companion for the rest of my life, now can I? I was your governess. Your mother should have released me from service when you turned eighteen. You don’t really need me. Not anymore. I should be a governess to someone else and actually earn the money you pay me.”
Clara shook her head. “You earn every bit of your wages. I do need you. You cannot leave. You are family.”
Marian smiled. “You are too kind, but this cannot last forever. I serve no purpose here.”
“You keep me balanced. Why should you ever have to go? If you insist on being a governess, you can be a governess to Marcus’s children.”
“Hmm. Or yours?” Marian queried with a suggestive waggle of her eyebrows.
“No. I will not marry. Not to MacLarin or any man.” Clara strode to her vanity table and sank down on the bench and tried not to feel a stab of disappointment at the words. “Given my situation, there will be no more offers forthcoming.”
“But you have an offer right now. Men have mistresses, Clara. I think it was rather courteous of Laird MacLarin to call on this woman personally to end their affair. It does speak to a sense of honor.”
Clara set her brush down with a clack on the vanity table, wishing to stop talking about MacLarin and his viability as a husband. She grew weary of it all. “It’s late and I’m tired, Marian. Can we continue this discussion tomorrow?”
“Very well.” Marian opened her bedchamber but paused before stepping out in the hall. “It’s not too late.”
“It is. I’ve declined the offer.”
“People change their minds all the time.”
“Good night, Marian.” Clara pulled back the bedding.
“Good night,” Marian said, her voice reluctant. Clearly, she wanted to continue with this conversation.
Sleep evaded Clara. The fire in the hearth cast enough light to save the room from complete blackness. Perhaps she could have slept if not for the soft light tossing over the walls and casting flickering shadows.
She had overreacted in her encounter with MacLarin, letting her emotions get the best of her. He’d asked if she was jealous because she had been behaving, regrettably, as though she was.
She didn’t regret declining his proposal. She only wished she had not done it in quite so ardent a fashion.
She should have been all coolness. As haughty as Enid. A polite rebuff from her and no more. No more words had been needed.
All day she had been stewing and she let him feel her ire when she finally came face-to-face with him.
Soon after waking she had learned that MacLarin rode out at first light. The maid who arranged her hair for the day informed her the laird had a lady love in the area. Unaware that Clara had an understanding with him, the maid had spoken freely. He must be calling on her. Och! But the men flock tae those redheaded lassies. They do, indeed. I wish I was blessed wi’ such siren’s locks. One of the stable lads spotted the Laird heading in the direction of her cottage in the early morning light.
Clara tried not to show any reaction as her hair was tugged into a dark coronet, but she was fuming inside. The gall of that man! To propose to her and not one day later take to the bed of his lover.
She’d shared what she learned with Marian . . . who then carried forth her own investigation. By noon, Clara had the full story. The laird’s lover was widely known throughout the Fife to be barren. Naturally, she would appeal to a man afraid of fathering a child.
�
��He should marry her,” Clara muttered, flinging back her covers and climbing out of bed, quite done with trying to sleep. There was no chance of sleep any time soon. Her mind was overwrought with feverish thoughts.
She donned her dressing robe and departed her room. She had not eaten much at dinner, too preoccupied with the empty chair at the table. Her brother and Alyse had worked hard to fill the meal with lively conversation . . . never mentioning their absent dinner guest, which only made his absence ever more glaring.
Now her stomach made its unhappiness obvious.
With her robe belted snugly about her waist, she slipped on her boots. The kitchen was out of doors as was the case with many older buildings. Despite how much Marcus and Alyse had modernized the property, the kitchen still remained in its original location.
She made her way through the great hall, passing silently into the gallery and out the side door. She sucked in a sharp breath at the sudden cold. It was a short walk thankfully. The path was freshly paved with stone and covered with a roof so that the worst of the elements were obstructed. She was only briefly subjected to the frigid night before plunging into the warm kitchen.
The delicious scents of the day’s meals still lingered in the air, as did the smoldering logs in the great hearth. She moved quietly so as not to wake the serving girls sleeping on cots along the wall.
She located a fresh loaf of bread and tore off a hunk of it. She inhaled the wonderful yeasty aroma before taking a moaning bite. She moved on, finding an assortment of lovely golden brown meat pasties. Placing the plumpest one on a linen, she continued, investigating what was on hand to drink. She knew she shouldn’t, but she poured herself a glass of wine. A full belly of food and drink should do the trick and put her straight to sleep.
Clara rotated in a small circle, surveying the shadowed space, looking for a place to settle down to eat. A hammock hung in the corner, unoccupied. It was likely there for one of the kitchen staff, but she took advantage of the vacancy.
Sipping deeply of her wine so that it wouldn’t slosh over the rim, she hesitated, poised above the hammock. Satisfied that the cup was now half-full, she sank down into the cloth, releasing a soft yelp when her sudden weight immediately set it into motion.
Her yelp faded as she wiggled about until she was comfortable, her body molded into the hammock’s cocoon. Once settled, she ate her meat pie bite by savory bite, staring into the low-burning logs until her eyelids grew heavy. She finished the rest of her glass and let the empty vessel rest against her side. The hammock was so comfortable, she could imagine how people used them for beds. It seemed a great deal of effort to work herself free of its snug embrace. So much work that she decided to stay put just a little longer.
A little longer and she would return to her bed.
She wouldn’t have him.
Damnable gossip. Someone had carried tales of Catriona, and Clara completely misread the situation. She thought the worst. She thought he had left Kilmarkie for the day, left her, all because he wanted to dally with another woman. She thought that lowly of him—that he would propose to her in one breath and rush off to hop into bed with someone else in another.
It was laughable to consider. He was hardly driven by his baser needs.
He’d practiced abstinence for most of his life. Other than those few indiscretions during his adolescence—punishments, he now knew, that were intended for his mother, who would not cease her drunken rants of Hunt’s imminent doom—he had adopted a policy of no physical relations with women.
Until Catriona approached him with her very tempting and reasonable proposition.
Following that, he’d lived with a steady diet of sexual congress, but lately . . . He’d been seeing Catriona less and less. He’d assumed it was typical. The way it was with everyone after a time.
When he and Catriona began their affair, it was new and fairly exciting. That had not lasted long, however. Soon, it had become ordinary. A pleasant way to pass the time, but not something he required with any overwhelming urgency. In fact, he had never felt as though he needed to be with Catriona. Need had never entered into it. Their relationship had been about convenience. Indeed, his last few visits with her had felt more like a chore. An obligation to be fulfilled . . . and, truthfully, not so convenient anymore.
He’d just as soon chase down his missing bull than go out of his way to spend the night with Catriona. Clara, though, woke something in him.
Already he yearned for her. The moment he had come face-to-face with her at the inn, he felt as though he were emerging from a fog, or a great long sleep. He felt a hum in his skin. A coiling in his muscles. He didn’t know why. He didn’t care to examine it.
He only knew he wasn’t ready to walk away from her. Not yet.
She knew so little of him. Only what gossip had supplied.
She’d been hurt recently. She had been failed. Naturally, she would be on her guard. Skittish. It was only wise of her to reject him.
He needed to do the one thing he had never done before to any woman—woo her.
For no other reason did he find himself before her door in much the same manner as when she had invaded his room the night before. He rapped twice.
No answer.
With a furtive glance up and down the corridor, he knocked again, as loudly as he dared. The door suddenly parted with a creak. It had not been fully shut. The force of his knock pushed it inward.
He hesitated and then poked his head inside the chamber. There was enough light to see that she wasn’t in her bed. The covers were flipped back, revealing a wide expanse of bed but no Clara. A deeper survey of the room revealed it to be empty.
Where was she so late at night?
He knew it wasn’t his business. She wasn’t his business. He had no claim on her. She had made that abundantly clear today when she told him to go home.
The question of her whereabouts niggled, however, gnawing at him until he had to act.
He made his way downstairs. He checked the library. The room was dark. He inhaled the scent of leather that swirled about the space and peered through the gloom, making certain he was not overlooking her tucked away in some corner.
Failing to find her there, he stepped out into the hall, feeling strangely unsettled. Perhaps she was in her companion’s room. He wasn’t about to go knock on her door. Knocking on her door late at night could only be misinterpreted.
Accepting that he could do no more, he turned back for the stairs but stopped with one foot on the bottom step.
Everything in him tensed. His nostrils flared, taking in a new scent. Bitter and acrid, faintly stinging in his nose.
Smoke.
Chapter 10
Clara woke disorientated, certain it was a dream. The air was thick, opaque. And it was noisy. Her ears throbbed with a rumbling roar layered with intermittent pops.
She coughed, which only seemed to incite more violent hacking.
Smoke. Her heart jumped to her constricting throat.
Fire.
She tried to stand and discovered she was stuck. She flailed, bewildered, panicked, coughing up her starving lungs. Then she recalled she was in a hammock. She’d gone to the kitchen and she’d fallen asleep in a hammock.
She twisted her neck about wildly, identifying a red-gold light. There was a rippling wall of heat where the fireplace had been, obstructing the door that led to the outside pathway. It ate up the walls around her like a red-orange river. That half of the room was engulfed, barring her escape. Oh. God.
She continued to cough, gasping and choking through the haze. Her eyes teared so badly it was hard to see.
She was trapped.
Was this it? How she would end? Perish in flame?
Screaming penetrated over the roar of fire. She searched and spotted the once sleeping serving girls up from their beds, pounding with their fists at the large mullioned window. They rattled at the latch, which only pulled the glass down partially, a fraction, a mere crack through which nobody
could pass. A child’s body perhaps, but not either of the girls.
Not her.
They were trapped.
As they cried for help, Clara flung herself from the hammock, spinning to the floor and landing with a jar. The force brought her teeth clacking together. She bit her lip. The copper taste of blood rolled along her teeth and washed over her tongue.
She didn’t care. Smoke billowed thickly toward her. She had bigger problems. The heat reached her, singeing her face. Wiping at the back of her mouth, she scrambled to her feet and joined the girls at the window.
With the windows parted, the fire only seemed to worsen, spreading faster, a scalding beast growing at their backs.
She groped at the latch, screaming hoarsely for help.
She was going to die.
Not like this. Not like this.
She turned, searching for something to use to break the glass.
She spotted a heavy wood rolling pin on the work table and leapt forward to grab it. Returning to the window, she attacked the glass, cursing the grid system of muntins that prevented the glass from breaking as it would if it were one great panel of glass. The serving girls followed suit, grabbing weapons to break the glass. The sturdy iron muntins, however, remained mostly in place.
Coughing through the thick smoke, she broke several small panes of glass, hoping the iron dividers would soon weaken and give way. No such luck. A sob of frustration welled up in her chest.
This could not be happening. Please. No.
She had not come here to die. Scotland was supposed to be her salvation, not her demise. She was not ready for death. She had so much life yet in her.
Her tearing gaze searched through the stinging smoke. It would take something large and heavy to break the entire grid free. They were essentially caged within a burning prison.
She went back to work, whacking at the iron grid, her entire body growing heavy and sluggish, unbearably tired as she struggled to work through the darkening smoke. Her head throbbed. Her watering eyes burned. Her skin stung. Her lungs withered, starved for a taste of air. Sweet life-giving air.
This Scot of Mine EPB Page 9