My Heart's in the Highlands (3 page)

Chapter Three

Back at the hotel,
Ian sat at Hero Conagham’s bedside while she slept.  So this was the former marchioness, or rather, since Ian wasn’t married, she remained the current Marchioness of Ayr.  His cousin’s widow. 

He couldn’t have been more surprised when he’d seen her lying there on the street.
  Far from her fifties, as the old marquis had been, the marchioness was perhaps closer to his age, in her late twenties, and was as fair and slim and lovely as any imagined Sleeping Beauty might have been when first glimpsed by her prince.  And, like any man in his position might have, Ian was seized by pure male appreciation.

Not only because she was so extraordinarily lovely that any man might stare.

No, Ian had another reason as well.  He had seen her face a thousand times already in a large oil painting that graced his bedchambers at his newly inherited castle, Dùn Cuilean.  Since his arrival there a month before, Ian had been fascinated by the portrait and the woman it portrayed.  With a wry smile, Ian admitted that he had spent most of his nights staring at the portrait over his fireplace, wondering who she was and what she had been thinking during the long hours of posing while the artist worked.

If he had been entirely truthful, he would also admit that he had lusted over the unknown woman who might have lived a hundred years past.

He had never thought to meet the woman who had inspired his desire and imagination so.  Whom he had felt so inexplicably attracted to.  He had never imagined her in flesh and blood.  Her pulse beat visibly in her slender neck, and his fingers itched to feel that life beating through her. 

“
This is the marchioness?” he couldn’t help but ask the woman’s maid, who lingered nearby.  He felt a fool for doing so and compounded his idiocy by adding, “My cousin’s wife?”

“
Yes, my lord.”  Her maid, Mandy, bobbed a curtsey and departed when Ian waved her off. 

Ian had met his cousin
, Robert, only a spare handful of times, the last more than a decade before.  He could not imagine that pretentious, unappealing gent ever winning the hand of a woman like this.  As alluring as her portrait was, it didn’t hold a candle to the marchioness in person.  She was incredibly beautiful.  Her hair was golden, her skin flawless and creamy from her high cheekbones to the curve of her jaw.  She had finely arched brows of dark brown.  Similarly dark, long lashes fanned out against her pale cheeks.  Her straight nose led down to full rosy lips that parted with a sigh even as his eyes took her in.  How breathtaking she was, he thought, even as his pulse increased in response to the visual buffet before him and an unwelcome arousal stirred.

As lovely as she was, this woman was a recent widow, and for the time being, his guest and responsibility.
  The old Conagham of Ayr, as the locals referred to their resident marquis, had been active and hale by all accounts despite his years.  Certainly not a man one would expect to drop dead of a heart attack in the middle of a dinner with Prince Albert in London as his cousin had.  Not well done of him at all.  Prince Albert, it seemed, was a pleasant man who hadn’t taken it personally.

With
no warning, Ian had become Marquis of Ayr, laird of the clan Conagham, a score of years earlier than anticipated.  After just one short month in residence at Dùn Cuilean, he still wasn’t entirely certain as to the extent of his responsibilities,  so when he’d received a letter from his cousin’s widow, begging him to allow her to come "home," he’d given in without argument. 

At the time, t
he greatest consideration Ian had given the matter was to think it curious that a society matron would willingly give up the season in London to reside in Cuilean’s isolated locale. Surely no marchioness of his imagination would choose to go there of her own accord, and he wondered what might have prompted her to do so.  Before seeing her, he’d thought she was probably just getting old.  Tired of the bustle of London and looking to summer somewhere cooler and quieter …

Now he didn’t know what to think.

Ian hadn’t imagined the marchioness like this at all.  Looking at her now, so wounded and still, Ian cursed himself for not arriving on time to pick her up from the train station.  The marchioness had left word that she’d taken a hotel room in Glasgow, but on his arrival there he’d found only the lady’s father and servants, who had directed him to the Exchange.  Ian had arrived just in time to see Lady Ayr’s maid and coachman racing across the road.

A chill had run up his spine when he had seen the lady lying in the street.
   If he’d been more prompt, the accident might never have happened at all.  Guilt weighed heavily upon him.

The marchioness drew in a deep breath at that moment.  Her chest rose and her breasts strained against the bodice of her gown.  She turned her head toward him, her eyelids fluttering, and Ian held his breath.  A moment later, he found himself drowning in eyes that were a mosaic of flecks of pure green near the center melding into azure blue at the edges of her irises.  Those mesmerizing eyes flared as she stared at him much as he was staring at her, and for a moment, Ian felt his heart stop.  Never had Ian felt more like a fool than he did gawking at the young lady before him, but he could not bring himself to look away.

“Am I dreaming?” she asked in low dulcet tones that caused a shiver of pleasure to cross his skin, leaving goose bumps in its path.

“
No.  I am Ian Conagham.  The Conagham of Ayr.  The marquis.  Lord Ayr, take your pick.  Your husband was my cousin,” he clarified, forcing the arousal aside.  Surely she would expect her husband’s heir to treat her with detached respect, not tethered lust. 

“
I’m not … I don’t feel right,” she went on, moistening her lips with the tip of her tongue in a gesture that clenched every muscle in Ian’s body.  “Like I’m dreaming or something.  Foggy.  Disoriented.  I can’t explain it.  Are you a dream now?  You’ve always been a dream before.” 

“
I apologize for not getting to the Exchange earlier so that this incident might have been avoided,” he told her with clear regret, not knowing how to interpret her words.  Was she saying that she had dreamed of him?  Or that everything now seemed a dream?  “You were hit by a wagon.”

“
That’s what I’ve heard.”

Her response was so dry that Ian stifled a chuckle of amusement.
  It must have shown on his face, though, because the corner of her mouth drew up just a bit as well.  “Do you remember who you are?  Where you are?”

Mikah truly didn’t know how to respond as she stared up at his beguiling face.  On one hand, she was awash with confusion, while on the other, with him in her sights, all felt right with the world.  As it should be.

As it was meant to be.

Ian, he had said.  Lord Ayr.  She finally had a name to put to the face she had known for so long.  He was a beautiful man.  So handsome she wanted to touch him and make certain he was real.  He had fairly dark skin, as if he were Spanish or Italian, but not olive toned so much as … swarthy.  The word was one she was certain she had never used before, yet was equally certain she had.  The dichotomy brought a furrow to her brow, but she pushed the nagging confusion away to study the handsome lord some more.

His face was angular
, with smoothly planed cheeks and a strong jaw and chin that held the shadow of a beard he could never entirely shave away.  There were crow’s feet at the corners of his eyes and lines around his mouth that indicated he laughed often; his thick brows arched low over dark eyes that seemed permanently narrowed as if against a bright light. His lips were full and held that same indication of humor in the corners.  He was lovely in a masculine way, with his dark hair broken by a light sprinkling of gray, premature most likely, as he appeared to be only in his early to mid-thirties. 

He was a
lmost Clooney-esque, Mikah thought, though the thought made no sense at all even as it did.  It was as if half of her understood the reference while the other half wallowed in confusion. 

She couldn’t understand why her thoughts were so
jumbled; yet perhaps the blow to her head explained it all.  “What did the doctor say?” Mikah whispered softly, as if she was suffering a hangover and loud words might make her head burst.

“
He thinks you’ll be fine,” Lord Ayr answered.  “He could find no other damage beyond the single injury to your head.  He worries about the memory loss.”  The marquis reached out and took her hand in his.  The intimate contact startled her and she looked down at her small pale hand in his large one,  his tanned skin sprinkled with dark hairs.  The feel of his rough fingers against her palm fascinated Mikah and she was embarrassed by her schoolgirl response to him.  It was like being thirteen all over again and coming face to face with your teen idol.  Giddy, jittery, silly … and horrifying in retrospect.  She could only hope he wasn’t aware that she was nearly awestruck by him.

“
Do you know who you are?” he prompted kindly when she remained silent. 

Grateful for the distraction, Mikah focused
on the problem at hand and analyzed his question much as she had everything in the few hours since the accident.  Did she know who she was?  That question had been perplexing her, causing this war within her fog-ridden brain until it had almost shut her down to shield her from the world around her. 

She knew the answer.

The problem was, there were two answers.

She was
Mikah Bauer, but the Mikah within her seemed to be constantly struggling against the
someone else
that she was as well.  It made no sense at all and Mikah couldn’t seem to focus in either direction.  Her brow wrinkled as she tried to push through the mist engulfing her mind and choose a direction, and her labors didn’t go unnoticed by the man at her side.

The marquis
squeezed her hand gently.  “I don’t mean to distress you, my lady.  Rest now.  We can talk later.”

He mo
ved to withdraw and rise but Mikah clutched his hand.  “No!  I would like you to stay, if you don’t mind.  Will you help me?”

Lord Ayr
sat back and flashed a half-smile that would have set her knees trembling if she had been standing.  Her prone position was good for something, it seemed.

 
“Of course,” he replied.

“
Tell me who I am.”

“
It’s possible you have amnesia,” he nodded as if in understanding.  “You did take a blow to the head.”

“
No, I don’t … I don’t think so anyway,” she argued almost incoherently. That wasn’t it at all.  She knew … perhaps too much.  “Tell me?”

“
You are Lady Hero Conagham, Marchioness of Ayr.”

“
Hero?” her brow wrinkled, but then Mikah knew the answer just like that.  “My mother loved Shakespeare.”

Mikah
couldn’t understand why she was saying this.  She was Mikah.  Why would she agree that she wasn’t and still feel the answer to be right?  Why would she know that tidbit either?  Her mother hated Shakespeare … and yet didn’t.  She shook her head once more against the confusion.

“I had thought you might have been named from Christopher Marlowe’s
Hero and Leander
,” Lord Ayr said with a smile.

“No, Mother thought this more amusing.”