Chapter 18 #2
“Mayhap, but she is not Jamie’s physician. I have no idea what motive she would have for continuing her visits, as if we would want her near him.”
He dropped his hand from the door knob. “Maybe you should ask her, Julia.”
An hour later, Ruark reined in Loki at the top of a barren rise broken only by a stretch of twisted rocks.
Cattle grazed in the distance. He’d ridden past the manicured parkland through the orchard above the northern field oft used as grazing pasture in summer.
The hillside had been cleared of trees generations ago when reivers still roamed the countryside and warred on their unprotected neighbors.
Thistle and tansy, with its strong-smelling foliage and flat-topped yellow flower heads, grew in abundance among the rocks.
Loki stomped in impatience, snorting his displeasure as Ruark tightened his grip on the reins.
He’d been to the surgery only to find Rose gone and had come this way after one of the groundskeepers saw her walking toward the fruit grove, carrying a large empty basket on her arm.
The ground was still soft in places after last night’s rain and a small print marked someone’s recent passage.
He followed the tracks down a path to the open field.
Summer days might be long in Scotland, but warm weather could oft be short-lived.
Today the sun shone high in a flawless blue sky and a warm breeze caressed his face, bringing with it the faint scent of pine from the distant wood grove that led to the falls.
He spotted her walking out of the woods, Jason beside her.
The two were engaged in conversation as Jason helped her negotiate a creek. Ruark nudged Loki forward.
Rose’s laughter died while Jason greeted Ruark’s arrival with a wide grin. “We have been to the falls. I was just telling her about the art of tickling trout.”
Ruark shifted his gaze from the delicate hand resting on Jason’s forearm to Rose’s flushed face framed by her unbound hair.
She wore a dark blue apron over a brownish homespun dress that could have been a burlap sack for all he cared or noticed, when she was more beautiful to him than sunlight at dawn.
Ruark smiled, his tact considerable when he found himself perversely stirred and annoyed at the same time, first by her unsmiling response to his arrival and then by her proximity to Jason.
“I will see her safely returned,” he told Jason. The lad nodded, but before he’d taken three steps, Ruark called to him. “Thank you for seeing her safely about.”
Jason seemed to recognize the inherent message in his words: She is never to leave Stonehaven’s walls without an escort.
To Ruark’s surprise, Rose laughed. He’d never heard a gladder sound than her laughter.
“Truly, Ruark,” she scoffed after Jason started jogging toward the house.
“I did not go far. Besides, this has been a most productive morning and I have taken full advantage of the bounty your lands offer. I found exactly what I sought.”
Indeed, she looked as if she’d been crawling on her knees in the dirt. The hem of her skirt showed evidence of mud from the stream.
She offered up the basket for his approval. Inside it laid assorted plants and roots. She tapped a pile of field fungi. “Bolg losgain. Frog’s pouch,” she said proudly. “Used to stem bleeding, counter boils and abscesses.”
She caressed a muddy root ball like a mam admiring her wee babe. “Mallow root. ’Tis for stomach ailments. And this?” she held up a handful of . . . something—“is for fever. This will help Jamie.”
Lowering the basket, she held the handle with both hands and squinted in the sun as she peered up at him. “What are you doing all the way out here this fine day? Are not lairds supposed to be occupied with their lands and serfs and not worried over their brides’ whereabouts?”
He leaned his elbow on his knee. “I came to tell you I have business to attend to in Hawick and the shipping offices in Carlisle.”
He didn’t tell her he would be leaving her for a few weeks, and she didn’t ask why he was going. He wouldn’t have told her anyway. She would have tried to stop him.
“I see.” She turned on her heel and walked through a patch of meadowlark, leaving him to follow on Loki. “I bid you have a good trip then. When you return, you must show me this ‘trout tickling’ business of which Jason spoke.”
He reined Loki in front of her and blocked her path. “I will return you to the surgery.”
“I prefer to walk, my lord.”
Was she challenging him? Daring him to force her to do this as well?
He breathed out a sigh and swung down from the horse.
One battle lost was a small concession. He took the basket from her, and he was surprised she let him.
He carried it as they walked side by side like a young courting couple.
Despite himself he grinned at the image.
“What is so amusing?” she asked, obviously watching him from the corner of her eye.
“I was trying to decide how long ’twould take you to acquit me of my sins and decide you will ride the horse.” He grinned down at her. “Boots are tortuous when walking, leannanan.”
She was unmoved. “Have you been to see your brother, yet?”
Looking across the pasture, his eyes squinted in the dazzling sunlight. The only sound was the soft thud of the horse’s steps beside him. “As you say, I have been occupied. I plan to spend time with him upon my return. I need to ask you not to see him, either, until I return.”
She stopped and faced him. The breeze stirred her hair and she tucked a red-gold strand behind her ear. “I see. Julia spoke to you.”
He saw the hurt in her green eyes. His voice gentled. “She is feeling protective, as any mother would. There are some who do not know you as I do.”
“They are suspicious of me? Do they think I would murder the boy? Why in heaven would anyone think me capable of—?”
He stopped her with a finger that went to her lips. “No one thinks you capable of murder.”
“Not even you?”
He chuckled. “Aye, admittedly you have attempted to bash my head in.” He placed his fingers under her chin and tilted her face. She was putting on a good show of indifference. “But not even I think you capable of harming a child. Swear to me, Rose. Do not go near that boy for now.”
“I will stay away then, if that is what you want, Ruark.”
“Only until my return.”
They walked in silence until they reached the cart path. The left branched into the fruit orchard, the right back to the main house.
“What business do you have to attend to in Hawick?” she asked when they reached the top.
“My solicitor is there.” He slanted her a glance. “Now that I am a married man there are certain legal matters which I must settle.”
The surgery was not far now and she stopped. “You mean you have business to finish with my father. Swear to me you will not provoke him.”
He laughed, unsettled by the ease in which she could read him. “I live life just to provoke the bastard.”
But his mood was a nebulous thing and he looked away from her to the grove unable to reconcile the need to gather her into his arms and protect her and his want to kill her father.
His gaze found hers. “I have business with Hereford’s solicitor and with Roxburghe Shipping in Carlisle. I will be gone a few weeks.”
“You will stay safe?”
Just looking at her, he experienced a fleeting sense of vertigo he got whenever he was taking her—possessing her. “Always, love.”
She reached for the basket only to see the ring and pause. Her expression changed. “You have got what you want. Your brother is home. Have you attempted to remove it yet?”
Apparently, she, too, had assumed that his brother’s return was what he most wanted. As had he. “Many times,” he said.
“ ’Tis a shame,” she said sadly. “I had so believed it to be authentic.”
“Why do you think it is not?”
She looked around her, then toward the house spread across the horizon like a huge stone labyrinth amid the jeweled landscape. A number of chimney pots smoked over the gray roof tiles and mingled with the morning mist.
“You have everything. What else could you possibly want?”
He had always been a man possessed of a sense of his own purpose and the wisdom it took to achieve a goal. He had returned to Scotland to save his brother, a noble-enough task, and now he didn’t know quite what to do.
Yet while he had never believed in the ring’s magical properties, he had found himself of late pondering the elusive questions of what he truly wanted most in this life.
A question he had never contemplated and one he could not answer.
He only knew that until recently, he had never cared about his future.
Indeed, if he believed in such whimsy as magic and wishing rings, he might put such power to his use and figure out a way, how not to want her.
Ruark left Rose standing on the narrow path that would take her up the hill and through the fruit orchard to the back of the surgery. Holding her basket filled with the wonderful offerings she had gathered from the woods and fields, she watched him mount Loki and ride away.
With the presence of two groundskeepers and a few others who had looked up from their tasks at Ruark’s approach, his farewell to her had been brief and fraught with formality.
He hadn’t kissed her. After the sight of him had grown small and faint in the distance, Rose stared around her at a world that was as unfamiliar to her as the part of her trying to escape the walls of her heart.
She found she wanted very badly to be accepted at Stonehaven.
Whether she resented that desire or nay, she had become Stonehaven’s mistress.
Despite herself, she felt relieved that her husband would be gone for the next few weeks.