Chapter Six
“But my lady,” Mrs. Berry protested, “Thora says the man thinks I am Lady Strathlin!”
“Let it be for now, Berry, please,” Meg entreated, while Thora hurried away to join Elga and the baby. “I will tell him the truth soon.”
“But I canna talk to a man when I am in my swimming costume!”
“You need not speak with him. Go back into the water if you want.” Meg glanced toward Dougal Stewart, crossing the sand toward them. “He will think you value your privacy.”
Mrs. Berry nodded, looking relieved. Lifting her sodden bathing skirt, worn over knickerbockers and high laced slippers, she walked down to the water and stepped in again.
Meg smiled, relieved too. Let the man think the baroness was elusive. But soon she might have to reveal all to Mr. Stewart—if he revealed all to her. Nodding to herself, she waited for him.
But could she speak to him this time without feeling that deep wanting, that ache of loneliness—or without remembering betrayal?
Again she noticed how much the father resembled the son.
Sean was blond like her, but his features and eye color, and his charming smile was like Stewart’s.
Someday Sean would have his father’s build—wide shoulders, long, muscled legs, confident stride.
The man had a natural physical beauty, and his son had inherited that.
She sighed. The man deserved to know his son. She must tell him the truth, and yet she feared what he might do once he knew.
Sean called out, holding up another shell for her to see. She picked up her leather-covered book and went toward him, bare heels sinking in damp sand.
“Lovely, Seanie,” she said, as he dropped a conch shell into a bucket.
She crouched beside him to study several tiny, nearly transparent fish in a little pool where the seawater spilled in among rocks.
Sean stepped into the shallow pool, and Meg did too, laughing with him as the little fish tickled past their ankles.
“You must draw these wee fishies in your book!” Sean said.
“I will.” She set the leather volume on a dry rock shelf.
“Hello, Mr. Stooar!” Sean called. Meg turned, heart slamming.
“Good day, sir,” she said stiffly.
“Miss MacNeill, good day.” He wore shirtsleeves and a dark brocade vest with dark trousers. He must have been working earlier, for he did not look as if he had come to visit.
“Look at my shells!” Sean set his wooden bucket on a rock as Dougal Stewart leaned forward.
Sean lifted a slimy snail and plopped it into the man’s palm.
Stewart admired it and put it back gently.
When Sean handed him a tiny crab, he laughed with the boy as it leaped to freedom and scuttled away down the beach.
“Go on, wee man, hurry back to your home and kin,” Stewart said.
“Go home, all of you, back to your kinfolk!” Inspired, Sean tipped the bucket to set the rest of the tiny captured crabs free.
Dougal crouched beside the boy to watch them scurry away. “They will have tales to tell when they get home,” he said, while Sean nodded wisely.
Meg watched, silent, touched more deeply than she wanted to admit. Stewart rinsed his hand in the little pool, water splashing over her bare feet where she stood ankle deep. Feeling his gaze on her toes, she stepped out quickly, dropping the hem of her skirt.
She could cover her feet now, but the man had seen all of her years ago; she wondered how much he remembered of the night she could not forget.
Blushing, she caught his gray-green glance and saw awareness there.
Ducking her face under the shade of her wide straw bonnet, she stepped away to sit on a rock, covering her limbs and feet with her gray skirt and petticoat.
“Did you come out here just to rescue crabs and snails, sir?”
“Not at first. But at least the wee crabs of Caransay will think kindly of me now.”
She gave him a sour look from under the rim of her bonnet.
“I went for a stroll and saw you here by chance.” He bent to pick up a small shell, which he offered to Sean, still splashing about in the little pool.
“Solving puzzles in your head again?” She tried to seem cool and detached, but seeing Dougal Stewart with Sean had made her catch her breath.
“There are a few puzzles I need to solve,” Stewart replied quietly. He dropped another pretty shell into Sean’s hand, then wiped a clump of sand from the boy’s fingers.
That gesture melted her heart, but she could not surrender. She scowled instead.
“I see Lady Strathlin has arrived on Caransay,” he said.
“Mmm.” She tried to sound noncommittal, shading her eyes as she watched the waves.
“Now that the lady is here, perhaps I will be welcome to call on her.” He looked toward Berry, paddling paddled contentedly in the gentle waves, her swimming costume ballooning around her. “I seem to have found her at a most inconvenient time.”
Sean giggled. “You found Lady Strathlin! Here she is!”
“Sean,” she said more sternly than she meant, “the hole you dug over there for your shells is filling with water as the tide comes in. You had better go save them.”
Sean started off, then turned. “May I wade in the water, Mama?”
“Do not go in higher than your knees.” She wished he had not called her that.
“Mama?” Stewart asked as the boy ran off.
She felt her cheeks burn. She had an honest nature, but life and society had forced her to keep secrets, and Dougal Stewart was putting that to the test. She hated that she must hide parts of her life, disliked feeling hollow and vulnerable when all she wanted was to tell Stewart the truth and clear the air.
But she could not trust him yet. She could not risk losing Sean.
“Anyone on Caransay will tell you that I lost my husband years back,” she said.
His gaze was steady and curious and keen. The wind ruffled his rich brown-and-gilt hair. His smile was rueful. “I am sorry to hear that. Was he—ill? If I may ask.”
“There was a storm. A great storm.”
He hesitated at that, but then nodded, and as the moment passed, she breathed out in relief. “I am sorry. But it is good to have kin here, grandparents and parents too, I presume?”
“My parents are gone. My mother was from the mainland. She came to live here for love of my father. But she died of illness when I was eleven, just after my father died—out there.” She nodded toward the sea. “I wonder if she died of a broken heart.” Why had she shared so much?
“I am sorry,” he murmured. “It is hard to lose parents at a young age, so close together.”
She nodded, watching the waves. “A storm took him.”
“Out on the reef?” he asked. “It happens a great deal here.”
“Too much, aye. I thought Mother would take me back to the mainland to live with her father. He was—very well off, and was always displeased that his daughter had gone on a summer holiday to the Isles, fell in love with a fisherman, and stayed.” She shrugged.
“I understand,” he said.
“Do you mean falling in love out here?” Why had she said that? She blushed furiously. Had he fallen in love out here—or had he pretended it for one night. She scowled.
“I mean losing someone on the reef. I lost my parents on the Caran reef too,” he said. “Shipwreck.”
“Oh!” She set a hand to her chest. “I had no idea. I am so sorry.”
“A long time ago. What of Sean?” he asked.
“Sean?” she repeated, surprised. Alarmed. She had said too much, tried to cover it up, yet had opened herself to questions.
“Is he like his father?”
“Somewhat,” she said, as a stiff breeze fluttered her hat brim and loosened spirals of her hair. She reached up just as Stewart grasped her hat brim. Their fingers brushed, lingered. He lowered his hand.
“Your hat was about to blow away. Golden as sunshine, your hair,” he added.
Her knees went weak, and a yearning spun through her. She moved back. “That was rather too familiar, sir,” she said primly.
“We were once,” he murmured. “I thought—well. Forgive me.”
She was not ready to forgive him and did not know if she ever would. Yet she liked the man, which she had not expected, should they ever meet again. Silent, she watched their son splash along the shore.
“Well, I must go,” Stewart said then. “Please tell Lady Strathlin that I shall call on her soon.”
“I will,” Meg said.
He smiled, his eyes crinkling. “Tell her I look forward to meeting her.”
She narrowed her eyes. Would he guess? How long before he worked it out, with his habit of walking about to think things through?
“And tell the lady she is welcome to come out to Sgeir Caran to see the work we are doing. Perhaps if she saw the site, she would understand the need for the project. And if you would care to visit the rock, as well, I would be more than glad of it.”
She caught her breath at the very thought of standing on that rock with him again. “I will think about it.”
“Fine. Good day, then.” He smiled down at her, and that mischievous, gentle curve dissolved something deep inside her.
Another barrier of resentment tested, weakened.
He had a certain magic, this man, a natural ease of humor and intelligence that intrigued her.
And his slightest touch, smallest smile cast a spell.
She bent to gather Sean’s bucket and shells. Her notebook lay on the rock and she reached for it, but it slipped and fell at the engineer’s feet. The pages fluttered open, revealing pages covered with sketches and notes.
He stooped to pick it up. “Yours?”
“Aye. Just a journal of the flora and fauna on the island.”
“May I see?” He flipped through some of the pages, pausing to admire a study of a shell, a starfish, a bird.
“Fascinating,” he commented. “You are a scientist and an artist, Miss MacNeill. These are very good. You like birds, I see.” He glanced up at her, then back to the page. “And careful notations in English and Gaelic, too. Remarkable work.”
“I have been keeping journals for years, making drawings and then looking up the names of shells, plants, birds, and such.”
“You must have a fine library…where you live. The Isle of Mull, is it?”