Sarah Gabriel (18 page)

The words were out before she could take them back. Blushing fiercely, she rubbed Fiona’s huge snout, the pink nostrils moving gently with the cow’s
warm, slightly odiferous breath. Sophie wrinkled her nose, and saw Connor frowning down at her.

She need not wonder at his thoughts, after her remark.

“And you? Did you want to be dairy maid, or a fine lady…or a nun?” He lifted a brow, and seemed to take no offense.

“Actually, I wanted to be a gardener. My mother hired a garden designer who came to Duncrieff from France when I was a girl. He created beautiful terrace gardens, a maze, and rose gardens. I loved watching the gardeners tend to the beds and the rosebushes. I was given a corner of my own to plant seeds—pansies and nasturtiums, pinks and carnations, and I raised marigolds and columbine under glass until they were ready to be put in the soil, and so on. I loved it, and my wee flowers grew so well that the gardener set a fountain at the center and made it a set piece in the Duncrieff gardens. But my father did not want me to dig about in the soil as much as I pleased. Tending roses was ladylike enough, but the rest was not to be allowed.”

“Sounds as if you have a gift for it, though. I do appreciate your intention to clear the kitchen garden, but there’s not much point, lass.”

She shrugged, touched the crystal at her throat. “I like digging about in the dirt. I have a little knack for growing things, I suppose. But when my father was exiled, he sent all of us to schools on the Continent, and I went off to the convent school. After Father died, my mother remarried and Kate and Robert returned to Scotland to live at Duncrieff with relatives. I stayed in the English Convent to finish my education there.”

“Are you a bookish lass?” He smiled a little. “Latin and Greek, poetry and sums? History and philosophy?”

She laughed. “Not in the least, though I love poetry and stories. I worked in the gardens alongside one elderly sister who spent her life growing flowers. Despite what my father wanted, I ended up just where I wanted to be—in a paradise of flowers.”

He tipped his head. “Ah. You did mention that you brought some potted tulips back with you.” He paused. “I understand that your father died in France while he was in exile. I was sorry to hear it.”

“He was forced to leave Scotland because of his sympathies with the rebellion, and died before he could return. He refused to disarm, and did not collect arms from his tenants.”

“I know,” Connor murmured.

She looked at him in surprise. “Did you know him?”

“Not myself, but my father did. Like your father, mine also refused to disarm. But he went further, and hid weapons for the rebels during the ’fifteen.”

Sophie stopped, looked up at him. “Was your father exiled also?”

“He was executed three years ago,” he said. “For treason.” Tugging on Fiona’s lead, he walked ahead.

T
hough his back was to her, Connor felt her gaze like the touch of a hand. Her sympathy was there, too, as a gentleness around him. When he heard her footsteps, he did not turn.

“Connor MacPherson,” she said. “I am sorry.”

He nodded without looking at her. “Go back inside. It will rain again soon. See those clouds?” He pointed. Sunlight poured gold over the slopes, and distant clouds swept a veil of rain over the far mountains.

Sophie shaded her eyes with one hand. “That storm seems very far off,” she observed.

Connor stopped, and Fiona butted his shoulder. He ruffled the fringe over her brow, rubbed her ears. Her rosy tongue protruded, then licked Sophie’s hand.

Sophie jumped a little, but rubbed Fiona’s ear while she studied Connor thoughtfully. He noticed, really noticed this time, the pretty little crystal at her throat, set in silver on a silver chain, winking like a star between her slim, delicate collarbones. Fairy magic, he thought. He wished fairy magic was real and that the stone could restore what all of them had lost from this damnable rebellion. But such things were not possible.

“Kinnoull—Roderick called you Kinnoull!” she said suddenly. “My brother wrote it in his note, too, but scratched it out. You said you are sometimes called that, and your friends use it, too. Why? Was your family—Oh! The MacPhersons of Kinnoull!”

Connor turned. She would have to be told sooner or later. “My father was Lord Kinnoull. He owned the estate on the other side of Glen Carran. But the property was forfeit to the crown when my father was…sentenced for treason.”

“Truly, I am so sorry. I did not know.”

He shrugged. “You need not be sorry.”

“For your losses, I am. So you grew up near this glen? I never knew you. I met Lord Kinnoull, and Lady Kinnoull, when I was a girl. I remember they were a handsome couple, and kind to a shy wee lass. But I do not remember you. And I would have,” she added.

“We never met. I would not have forgotten you, either,” he said softly, gazing at her. In the late afternoon sun, she glowed as softly as candlelight.

She looked at him curiously. “I remember your parents quite clearly, now that I think about it. Your father was a tall man with a deep voice…he was strong and kind. He came to see my father one day,
and fetched my sister’s kitten out of a tree in the garden.”

Connor smiled a little. “Aye, he would have done something like that, setting all else aside to help someone.”

“And your mother—you look like her,” she said, tipping her head to one side. “She had dark hair and green eyes, too. And I see her in your eyes, your mouth.”

He glanced away, touched more than he could say that she remembered them, and fondly. He had almost no kin left after the ravages of one rebellion after another in the Highlands. For the past two years he had felt very alone. Now, in Sophie’s company, he felt that cloud begin to lift.

“She would have liked you,” he said quietly. “My mother passed away—of a broken heart, I suppose—when my father was executed. Her constitution was not strong by then, and she failed sharply. She died months after he did.”

“Oh, Connor,” she breathed.

He shrugged, the quickest way to show her that he appreciated her thoughts but had recovered as well as he could. “I was my father’s heir, but I lost the rights when the lands were proscripted.”

She frowned. “Sir Henry Campbell owns Kinnoull House now.”

“Rents it,” he corrected. “The English king owns it. But he wasted no time in taking over the property.”

“So the furnishings, the spinet, the books—” She glanced toward the castle.

“The carpets, the plate, the dogs,” he continued. “The kitchen kettle. All of it came from Kinnoull House. I brought whatever I could out of there before
Sir Henry took the place over nearly two years ago. Castle Glendoon does not have space for all of it, and those steep slopes made transporting some pieces impossible. But what is here is mine.”

She watched him. “Fiona, too?”

“Ah, clever lass to work that out.” He glanced at Sophie with admiration. “Fiona was my father’s prize, a perfect one-year-old red Highland with an impeccable breeding line—from your father’s herd. My father hoped she would breed new generations of the best cattle in Perthshire.” He smiled bitterly. “I stole her from under Sir Henry’s very nose one night, while he sat in my house, drinking his fill of the wine stores.”

She nodded, frowning. As Connor led Fiona toward the byre at the back of the bailey, he was glad when Sophie walked alongside, despite mud, puddles, drizzle, and their combined effect on her bedraggled gown and shoes.

She did not seem to mind. She had an amazing tolerance for poor conditions, and for shocking news, which she listened to without serious complaint or dithering. He glanced at her in admiration.

“Did Sir Henry take Kinnoull from your father?” she asked.

“Only as the local magistrate carrying out the crown’s orders. Though it would not surprise me if he had a hand in it. The proscription was an act of the crown.”

“Did your father lose his title as Lord Kinnoull, too?”

“The title is fixed in the blood, and has been in our family for two hundred years. My father was a viscount, and so I am Lord Kinnoull, regardless of my
estate. And that makes you, my lass, Lady Kinnoull.” He inclined his head, then glanced at her over Fiona’s bony back, where a pair of flies buzzed.

She tipped her head. “Lord Kinnoull.” She had the carriage of a queen, he thought, and the dignity of an angel. And she stood in the mud with him and his cow and did not seem to mind.

“We are lord and lady over nothing much, you and I.”

“Over something, Kinnoull.” She waved her hand. “Castle Glendoon has a proud history. If the stones are broken here and there, they can be repaired, and the yard and the outbuildings can be renewed, too. The gardens can be cleared and replanted, and the castle rooms are filled with treasures that you love. You have loyal tenants, healthy livestock, a fine title and heritage. You have…a wife.”

“Do I?” he murmured.

“Though we shall see which one you decide upon…and which one will have you.”

He looked at her steadily. He knew which of them he wanted, and his heartbeat quickened with the realization.

“Despite all, you have a home here, Kinnoull,” she insisted.

He huffed. “You have a pretty way of putting a shine to gloomy matters, madam. Be careful not to polish away the truth.”

“What is the truth, then?”

“I have no home,” he said soberly. “You need not chirp on about what a marvelous place this is for my benefit.”

She hastened to keep up with him. “I am only trying to be cheerful, given such gloominess on your
part. And if Highland thieves had not snatched me away, I would be of a more pleasant temperament. Glendoon truly is a marvelous place, I like ruins. They are picturesque and grand, filled with history. And ghosts,” she added quickly.

He wanted to laugh suddenly. He so rarely wanted to throw back his head and truly laugh that it felt strange, and he suppressed it. Looking up at the sky, he saw an odd blend of sunlight and drizzle.

“Sunshine and storm, Lady Kinnoull,” he murmured. “Turnabout with the winds, my lass, hey? Now go inside. It will downpour at any moment. You will ruin your dress.”

“It’s ruined already. And the rain might stain the fabric darker. This amber color is too bright for me. I am…the same color as your cow,” she said in dismay.

He did laugh then. And he wanted to kiss her. The urge pulsed through him with such power that he almost moved. He wanted to push the cow aside and take Sophie the nun, with her whimsical and wanton ways, into his arms.

He wanted to stand with her in the mud and the rain and the sunshine, and cover her with kisses. He imagined stripping the satin gown from her shoulders and draping her in pearls and silk and deep kisses, and doing all he wanted to do to her.

He only smiled slightly. “The color suits you, just as it does Fiona. Though you two lassies are only truly alike in your fiery garments…and your determination to claim your freedom.”

“I was not trying to escape through the gate, though I ought to do that. I still might.”

He smiled again. “Fire and sunlight and fancy
satin. And now you are a viscountess. Your father would have wanted that for you.”

She returned his gaze. “He wanted the same for Kate.”

“Aye, well,” he said. “There is that.”

He saw the storminess enter her eyes, which went from blue to gray, like a dark cloud sweeping through. “I think I will go inside now, Kinnoull. It is beginning to rain in earnest.”

She turned, lifting her gown as she ran.

Connor watched her cross the yard and enter the kitchen door. When she disappeared into the shadows, he felt as if a lantern light had gone out.

Connor left Glendoon later in the day with scarcely a word to her, and Sophie shared a quiet supper with Mary and Roderick and his twin, Padraig. Although she gently questioned them all, hoping to learn more about Connor and his intriguing past, the Murrays seemed unwilling to speak in much detail about how he had come to stay at Glendoon, although they did not hold back their praise for Connor in other areas.

“He’s a good laird,” Mary said. “So concerned with the welfare of his tenants—only us just now on Glendoon lands, but the tenants on the properties of Kinnoull still view him as their rightful laird, and they bring their rents to him every year regardless.”

“But do they not pay that to Sir Henry?” Sophie asked.

Mary nodded. “Aye, to him, too. They collect double rents, y’see, and that is why the laird doesna want them to do it, for it is a hardship for them. But they revere him, and he does not realize how much.” She smiled and glanced at her son.

“Kinnoull has a strong sense of principle,” Roderick said. “Even in this time of so much injustice, he upholds freedom, and so he must support rebellion to keep that right. He has no qualms about acting on his beliefs. And he honors his word, once given.”

Sophie nodded. “I know,” she said quietly. “What my brother asked of him was a great deal, but he has done it.”

“And without complaint,” Padraig said. “He keeps most of his thoughts to himself, does Kinnoull. But he will not do what he does not feel is right.” He looked evenly at Sophie.

The MacPhersons, she then learned, came from a long mixed line of noblemen and rogues. Sophie suspected which line had birthed Connor. According to the Murrays, he did not hesitate to borrow cattle or sheep from pastures if need arose, or to protect livestock in other pastures from caterans. He had a Highlander’s fierce devotion to the Stuart cause, and took risks to defend it. Like many Scotsmen, he held the conviction that James Stuart had the only true claim to the throne of Scotland, and his son Charles after him. If a chubby German prince sat on the English throne now, Mary and Roderick explained, that should not affect Scotland and its people—yet it had, deeply and irrevocably. Connor MacPherson was one of those who had the courage to protest. His family had shared those loyalties, but had suffered greatly for them.

How Connor himself had suffered, Sophie could not fully discover. “He keeps most things to himself,” Mary said. “He will not discuss them—may never talk about them in his lifetime. And we respect that.”

Padraig walked his mother home after supper, and Roderick promised to watch the castle through the night. Sophie retired, deeply tired.

Sleeping a little, she awoke to find herself still alone. Connor had not returned. She lay in the darkness, sensing the hours creep past, while she dozed and woke again, and wondered if he was safe, worried if he was injured. Had he run afoul of the men who were looking for her?

Rolling to her side, curling under the blankets, she realized that she felt lonely in the big bed without him there. She missed his strength, his wit, his unexpected kindnesses, even his gruffness. Surprised with herself, she had to admit that she anxiously awaited his return.

Ridiculous, she told herself, punching the pillow. Foolishness and fancies. She would be better off without him.

Later, drifting to sleep, she realized that she had not heard the beautiful ghostly music. She almost missed that, too.

Almost, for she did not relish the idea of being alone in the old tower with a ghost who played tunes poignant enough to break the heart.