Autumn in Scotland Page 14

  “In Scotland, that’s twelve months out of the year.”

  She smiled. “Yes, it is. There were five of us here, and every morning we congratulated ourselves for surviving another night without drowning or freezing to death. Nan and Jeffrey considered me beneath their contempt, so that left Thomas, who went off to sea, and Cook.”

  He turned and faced her, crossing his arms over his chest, and leaning back against the stove. His face was carefully bland, and she wondered if he practiced that expression so as to not reveal what he was thinking.

  “It took nearly a year for the bank to release my grandfather’s funds to me. I suspect my father had something to do with that. Until then, we subsisted on chickens, and what we could grow in the vegetable garden. There is a great deal of land at Balfurin, but not much of it will grow anything. It’s better suited for cattle, or sheep, but unfortunately there was no money to buy them. But of course you know that,” she said, feeling curiously embarrassed.

  She glanced down at her left hand. “Even my wedding ring was gone.”

  “Did you sell it?”

  She looked down at her hand again and then over at him. “Surely you remember that you took it with you when you left. I always assumed that you’d sold it.”

  He didn’t speak, and for a moment she wished she’d not been quite so honest. She sounded as if she were soliciting his sympathy. Perhaps she was. She knew quite well that he’d considered her an oddity, a bookish heiress with no discernable wit. Did she want him to view her differently now? As a courageous figure? A woman of tenacity and spirit?

  “What made you stay? Especially that first year? It would have been so much easier to simply leave, return to England.”

  She glanced at him and then away. Honesty could be a weapon, and she felt the sharp bite of its blade now. Did she tell him the truth—that too many times, she’d had that same thought? Life would have been much more pleasant in England. She wouldn’t have had to worry about her next meal or the roof or a hundred other irritations. One thing had always stopped her, however, the thought that she would forever be known as the bride whose husband had left her. Poor Charlotte MacKinnon, deserted after a week of marriage.

  She neither demanded anyone’s pity nor wanted it.

  “Once my grandfather’s money came,” she said, annoyed with herself for wanting anything from him, “life was a lot less difficult. We were able to shore up the roof and begin to make plans for the school.”

  “Why a school?” He turned back to the stove and began to use the curious implement to clean the wok again. This time, however, he was not quite so aggressive.

  “It had become my dream, you see. At first, I had simply not wanted to go back to England a failure. A bride who had somehow lost her husband. Then, over the winter, it occurred to me that I was best suited to teach. I needed something to occupy the rest of my life when it was all too evident that I was not to be a wife and mother.”

  He didn’t comment.

  “I was comfortable around books,” she confessed. “In fact, more comfortable in my library than I’ve ever been anywhere. I have an affinity for the written word. I like the way it looks upon the page. I wonder what a writer was thinking about. I especially enjoy the way one thought travels from an author’s mind to mine. I feel the same way when I teach. A Latin proverb states that by learning you will teach and by teaching you will learn.”

  She looked down at her hands. “I am doing it again, aren’t I? You used to hate it when I’d quote something I’d read. Some people would consider it a blessing to have such a memory as mine. I read something one time and can remember it for a very long time.”

  “I think you misunderstood. Perhaps I was only envious of your recall.”

  She laughed, the sound too brittle to be amusement. “You used to say I was a walking library, that there was no need to waste money on buying another book, that you could simply set me inside a bookseller’s stall and at the end of the day I could parrot anything on the shelf.”

  “I was a cruel bastard, wasn’t I?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Perhaps I was so filled with my own consequence that I couldn’t see the value of others,” he said. “Time alone sometimes cures that malady of youth. I trust you will accept my apology for my words. And my actions. Evidently, the missionaries are not the only ones who have a great deal to answer for.”

  She didn’t know what to say to that, so she asked another question. “Did Matthew ever forgive his foster father?”

  “It’s not a question I’ve ever asked,” he said, abandoning the wok and coming to sit at the table again. “Matthew is one of the truly good people in the world. He wouldn’t inflict pain consciously on another human soul, and I don’t doubt he’d forgive with the alacrity of the truly angelic. Sometimes I think he’s too kind for the world.”

  “So you’ve set yourself up as his protector, determined to shield him from the world’s cruelty. I wouldn’t have thought it of you, George,” she said gently, realizing it was true. The man she’d known five years earlier would not have had any compassion for another soul. He might have ridiculed Matthew’s sweetness and lack of guile, but he wouldn’t have sought to protect it.

  “Do not make me out to be a saint, Charlotte. You, of all people, know that I’m as far from that as one of Satan’s minions.” But he smiled at her as if to soften the words.

  Strangely, it was a moment of perfect accord. A truce, perhaps.

  “Why have you come back?” she asked him, knowing that she might have broken the mood by asking the question. But it had been festering ever since she’d seen him in the ballroom.

  “I was lonely,” he said, tracing a path along the grain of wood with his finger. “As much as I enjoy the Orient, and as much as I enjoy traveling, I needed to come home.”

  “What did you miss the most?” she asked, and then inwardly flinched. It sounded as if she wanted him to say something complimentary about her. There was little chance of that. George had made no secret of his dislike for marriage and his dislike of her as well.

  He halted in his actions but remained staring down at the table.

  “I missed knowing people who’d known me.” He glanced at her. “Perhaps that’s why I returned, to feel a sense of homecoming.” He smiled. “In the Orient, I’m an inch thick. People have only known me for a few years. There is no one there who knew me as a child, no one who knew my family. I crave a sense of history, a feeling of heritage. I think Matthew must feel the same way, being an orphan.”

  “There is no one at Balfurin who has known me longer than five years,” she contributed, feeling a curious sense of kinship. “Sometimes I feel the same, as if I don’t quite belong here.”

  “Perhaps it’s up to us to find our home, wherever it is in the world. Or create it from nothing.”

  “Nullus est instar domus,” she said.

  “There is no place like home,” he translated, smiling.

  She nodded.

  “So, you are well versed in Latin as well?”

  “On the contrary,” she said. “We have a linguistics mistress who teaches Latin and Greek. I, myself, only have a smattering of the language.”

  “I remember my Latin teacher at school,” he said, smiling reminiscently. “He was an old man who insisted on wearing a brown robe like a monk and smelling of sandalwood. He’d terrify all us boys by waving a stick around and snapping it against any object, threatening to use it on our backside or any available surface of our person if we failed to conjugate our verbs correctly. I recalled that I escaped that class with quite a few bruises, but at least I was more adept than my cousin. He was even a worse student than I.”

  “I didn’t realize you had a cousin,” she said. “You’ve never spoken of him before.”

  His face changed, and for a moment she wondered if she’d said something wrong.

  “I am very sorry,” she said, stretching her fingers out so that they almost touched his arm. “Is he dead?
”

  “Not dead,” he said, placing his hand on hers. “Missing, perhaps. I’ve lost track of him.”

  “Were you very close?”

  How very warm the palm of his hand was. She allowed her fingers to rest beneath his, feeling a strange comfort at his touch.

  “Not as close as we should be. We quarreled the last time I saw him.”

  “Why hasn’t anyone ever mentioned him?” she asked.

  “He’s been gone from Balfurin a great many years. He was filled with wanderlust, a yearning for something other than what was here.”

  She pulled back her hand. “In that, you and your cousin are alike. Why do you care so much for a man with whom you quarreled?”

  He smiled. “Matthew asked the same question of me. Because he’s family. The last of my family. For some reason, it’s begun to matter that I belong somewhere, to someone.”

  A feeling like tenderness swept over her, made her want to lean forward and put her hand against his cheek, perhaps even press a kiss there in comfort.

  The last person she should want to console was George MacKinnon.

  She stood, pushing back the bench. “It’s late, and if you’re sure that you don’t need my cooking skills, I’ll leave you.” She nudged the bench with her knee until it fit under the table.

  “Must you go?”

  She smiled and began to recite:

  “The sun descending in the west,

  The evening star does shine;

  The birds are silent in their nest.

  And I must seek for mine.”

  “William Blake,” he said, surprising her.

  She nodded.

  “I’ve enjoyed this time with you, Charlotte. Is that something a husband would say?”

  “You’ve never said it before,” she admitted. “In fact, you seemed to go out of your way to avoid me.” And the one time you did come to me, it was in the darkness as if you were ashamed I was your wife.

  “I’m surprised that you even deign to speak to me now. Your husband was an ass.”

  She smiled, oddly warmed by the look of disgust on his face.

  “I would never have thought that five years could make such a monumental change in a person, George. But I am willing to concede that it might be possible. You don’t seem the same man or even the same type of person as you were.”

  He looked as if he wished to say something else but in the end he remained silent, watching her from where he sat at the table. As she left, she was acutely conscious of his gaze, more so than she’d ever been. She wanted to ask him why he was regarding her in that solemn way of his. Why did he make her feel both happy and miserable at the same time? Why did his presence in a room make it seem smaller, more intimate?

  Why had he ever come back? And what was she to do now? Why did she feel as if he was a danger to her?

  She left the room quickly, knowing that there were no easy answers to her questions.

  Chapter 12

  O ver the next two days, Dixon occupied himself with tasks, some of which weren’t completely necessary but had the added benefit of taking up time. He approved the plans for a new ship being built in the Glasgow shipyards and another awaiting repair at the Falmouth docks. Some of his funds were transferred from an American institution to an English bank. Diversification was the key to his success even in the volatile trading market of Malay.

  Matthew was happiest when he was at his most frenetic, and by the end of the second day, when a mound of correspondence sat in readiness for the mail coach, he was smiling from ear to ear.

  Or perhaps Matthew’s budding contentment was only due to the list Dixon had sent to his factor, detailing all the supplies he wanted to take with him to Penang, proof that the two of them were eventually returning to the Orient.

  Dixon stood and stretched, finding the chair in the parlor uncomfortable and too soft. But he’d not wanted to invade Charlotte’s sanctum, and there were only so many places at Balfurin where he could demand privacy.

  This masquerade was troubling him, perhaps because he was adjusting to it so adeptly. Whenever Jeffrey opened the door for him, addressing him as my lord, Dixon didn’t have any reservations about accepting the title. When the maids curtseyed, he didn’t once want to correct them.

  The truth was that he’d always wanted to be the Earl of Marne. He’d always envied George, not only his title but the fact that he was Laird of Balfurin, one of a long line of distinguished men who’d protected the castle and the clan.

  Until he’d come home, Dixon had contented himself with establishing himself as an importer of goods, a trader, a man with an uncanny ability to take chances, and thereby increase his fortune many times over. In the Orient, a title hadn’t been necessary. A man’s courage had counted, as well as his word.

  Now, he was pretending to be the man he’d always wanted to be.

  Shame should have assaulted him every morning, but it didn’t. He woke and looked around him with the pride of ownership. Part of him wanted to find George, another more despicable part never wanted George to come home.

  What did that make him?

  “We should be leaving here,” Matthew said.

  He glanced over at the other man, wondering if Matthew had suddenly acquired the talent of reading minds.

  “Yes, we should.” His departure would solve all his difficulties, wouldn’t it? His attraction for Charlotte would fade away as would his lust for George’s life. He would become himself again, however difficult the role.

  “You have not found the treasure.”

  “I haven’t been looking,” Dixon admitted. It seemed a foolish exercise, especially since he didn’t truly believe in it, and found it difficult to accept that George might have. George was probably on the continent, enjoying himself in the company of a woman who agreed to support him while he, in turn, comforted her. An arrangement that George would have found entirely agreeable.

  “Then why do we stay, master?”

  A question Dixon didn’t want to answer.

  Matthew sent him an admonishing look but otherwise said nothing. Matthew’s silences, however, were always filled with meaning.

  “You’re right, of course,” Dixon said. “We should leave.” But he left the room before the other man could say anything, or worse, ask him the date of their departure.

  Until he reached the library, Dixon wasn’t conscious that it was his destination. Until he saw Charlotte, her head bent over some paper in concentration, he wasn’t entirely sure she’d been the one he needed to see.

  Curiosity, that’s all that brought him here to stand in the open doorway to the library. Curiosity, and perhaps something else, something he couldn’t as easily identify. She intrigued him, because she sought the unknown, because she wasn’t afraid of change, perhaps because she’d dared to do as other young women had not: defied their parents and their upbringing, and carved a life for herself in a strange land.

  How odd they were so similar. He’d done the same in leaving Scotland.

  He leaned against the door and watched her, lit as she was by the waning light of the sun. Although she was truly striking, Charlotte wasn’t conventionally pretty. Her nose was a little too sharp and her lips too wide. Her cheekbones were high and her eyes seemed tilted at the edges. However, it was an arresting face, an almost exotic one.

  She had beautiful shoulders, and a lovely form even hidden as it was now beneath her ubiquitous navy blue dress. Her hair, tucked up in a bun, revealed a long slim line of neck.

  He wanted to kiss her there.

  If he were truly her husband, he’d have financial control of Balfurin, even over the school she’d founded. Although women in Scotland had a great deal more freedom than in other parts of the empire, his word and wishes would be law.

  But if he were truly her husband, he’d never have left her.

  The perfect irony, wasn’t it?

  He’d had a wife he didn’t want, and now he was tempted by a wife who wasn’t his.

>   The honorable thing to do was to tell her who he was, and then leave. Two very simple tasks, but not so easy to execute.

  He didn’t want to leave her. Instead, he wanted to watch the curve of her lips as she fought against a smile. He wanted to tease her to laughter. But most of all, he wanted to ease the discomfort between them. A curious edginess existed whenever they spoke or met, as if they were each too aware of the other.

  Hunger, that’s what it was, at least on his part. He wanted her in a way he’d never before known.

  At that thought, she looked up. Her face changed, stilled, as if she had given herself a command to not reveal her thoughts or her emotions. Her face simply became a mask behind which the real Charlotte hid.

  “Am I interrupting you?” he asked.

  She inclined her head. “Is there anything I can do to assist you?” she asked in that headmistress voice of hers.

  He should warn her, perhaps, that it had an effect on him. He didn’t think of schoolrooms, chalk, and dusty books when he heard her speak. Instead, he thought of warm flesh, soft whispers, and the scent, strangely enough, of persimmons.

  “Nothing, thank you. Is there anything I can do for you?”

  “Other than leaving Balfurin?” she asked pleasantly, smiling.

  Now was the time to tell her that he was contemplating doing just that. He remained silent.

  “How hospitable you are,” he teased. “If you do not cease, I shall think you don’t want me here.”

  Her face changed then, became even more severe. “Perhaps if I give the order to have soiled linens put on your bed and serve you only spoiled food and brackish water, you’d reconsider your stay.”

  “Oh, but the Scots are notorious for their hospitality, and haven’t you embraced all the tenets of your new country?”

  “If anything,” she said, putting her quill down, “I’ve acquired the Scottish traits of tenacity and ferocity. Perhaps you should be on your guard.”