Chapter 3
Chapter Three
Next day
Juliet scratched pencil against the blank white surface—and yet again it refused to march across paper and leave words in its wake in the usual fashion.
She let the pencil fall and cast her gaze about her surroundings. Beside her perch on a boulder of granite slipped a gentle stream as a forest of pines swayed in the light breeze. This should’ve been the perfect, idyllic spot upon which to receive inspiration. It was all here, and yet…
Somehow it wasn’t.
She’d happened upon this particular curve of the stream on the far boundary of the Dalhousie lands in her escape from Delilah’s exacting play direction.
Juliet had taken a hasty tea before everyone else, grabbed her ready canvas bag filled with pencils and journals, and fled the house with no one the wiser.
Best to stay clear of Delilah’s path when she had a performance in her sights.
Juliet pulled out her copy of As You Like It.
Before bed last night, Delilah had given firm instructions to waste no time in memorizing her lines.
Juliet found it suspect that Delilah coincidentally happened to have brought twenty-one copies of the play all the way to Scotland—the exact number of speaking roles.
She gave a bemused shake of her head. In truth, she liked that quality about her cousin—her doggedness in pursuing her passions, even when that pursuit landed her in a hot bit of trouble. Like the trouble at Eton College that had landed them in Italy for several months, waiting out a scandal.
Not that Juliet had minded. Italy was lovely.
The breeze whispered through pine needles, and Juliet inhaled deeply of its crisp, earthy scent, a wisp of salt hidden within. No air in the world compared to the air of the Scottish Highlands—not even Italian air.
Much of what Delilah had said about their reasons for coming to Scotland was true. Juliet was here for research purposes. But there was more. She was here to get a feel for Scáthach herself. The way this land felt beneath her feet. The way this breeze felt in her hair.
She loosened her own hair from its single braid and allowed the breeze to take it.
She removed her boots and slipped stockings down her legs, feeling slippery moss between her toes where rock met stream, cold Highland water rushing against her ankles.
These elements shaped a person as surely as wind and rain shaped the face of a cliff.
Nature and humankind were elementally linked, and ever would it be so.
And here in this Scottish wind and river and land would she find the elements that composed and forged Scáthach.
A frisson of anticipation skittered through her. Herein lay the elements that brought writing to life, and they were the only elements that made writing worth the effort of committing one’s words, thoughts, and passions to paper.
A sudden rustling noise crashed through the not-too-distant brush.
Juliet whipped around to find a great gray-and-white shaggy beast of the four-legged variety bounding straight for her.
An inelegant “Ugh!” startled from her as she scuttled off the boulder in time for the dog to charge onto it and launch itself into the stream, where it began stomping and splashing in the water with the ease of familiarity.
“Clootie!” shouted a deep, booming voice.
Juliet knew that voice.
Through the woods emerged Clootie’s owner—none other than Kilmuir.
A great, shaggy owner for a great, shaggy dog.
For Kilmuir was certainly shaggier than he’d been when last she’d seen him in London the previous year.
And she couldn’t help thinking the slightly longer hair that now curled at the ends and the dense golden beard cut close to his jaw and chin suited him perfectly.
Traitorous thought.
She caught the moment he noticed her. He gave his customary lopsided smile and wave of greeting. She returned the wave and offered a semblance of a smile. Like for like… No more, no less.
A furry head nudged her hand, and she glanced down to find Clootie staring up at her with a gift in her mouth. A river stone worn smooth. Juliet couldn’t help but be charmed by the oversized collie. Then Clootie began shaking out her fur, thoroughly drenching Juliet in the lengthy process.
“You’ll have to forgive Clootie her lack of manners,” said Kilmuir, stepping within speaking range. “She’s still a pup.”
Juliet felt her eyebrows lift toward the forest canopy. “She must weigh four stone.”
“Yeah, still a pup.”
Juliet laughed. She found it impossible to be irritated by either pup or master. On this matter, at least. “Clootie?” she asked. The name hovered just beyond the reach of recognition. “What’s a clootie?”
“A dumpling,” he said simply.
“You named your dog after a dumpling?”
“Not just any dumpling,” he said, his lopsided smile threatening, “but my favorite dumpling.”
Irritatingly, Juliet found herself…charmed. “Do you venture to this part of the land often?” she asked. If the answer was yes, then she would find another contemplating spot. She wasn’t sure how long her defenses could hold against being charmed by this man and his shaggy dog on a regular basis.
“Every morning, first thing.” He jutted his chin toward Clootie. “This one needs a morning adventure or she gets up to mischief.”
Juliet watched the collie chase a squirrel. “And she isn’t getting up to mischief now?”
“Nay, she’s just being a dog.”
A short length of silence stretched out. “Is this not Dalhousie land?” she asked, searching for something of no particular importance to say.
“The stream is the border between our lands.”
Ah.
And there was their paltry supply of small talk exhausted. Kilmuir shifted on his feet and looked suddenly uncomfortable. In fact, he looked like a man with something on his mind.
“In Italy,” he began and let the words drift on the wind.
Juliet felt a flush begin in the center of her chest, heating her up by slow degrees. She didn’t want to talk about Italy. Especially not with this man. Yet she found herself asking, “What about Italy?”
“In the olive grove,” he began again. “Did I do something to cause you offense?”
Juliet pasted a false smile onto her mouth. “Of course not. You’ve always been most courteous.”
His head remained slightly cocked to the side. He wasn’t satisfied with that answer.
And why should he be? She was almost as terrible an actress as he was an actor, and she had no talent for false smiles.
She reached for her boots and hastily pulled them onto her feet. The stockings could wait until she arrived back at Dalhousie Manor. She grabbed her canvas bag, deciding now would be a good time to make her exit.
She gave Kilmuir a polite nod of farewell—her manners hadn’t entirely deserted her—and pivoted on her heel.
Clootie galloped to her side, demanding her own proper farewell as she placed her head beneath Juliet’s hand.
She stroked silky gray-and-white ears and muttered, “That’s a good girl. Now you return to your master.”
“Miss Windermere?” she heard at her back.
She’d ventured deep enough into the woods that she felt she could reasonably ignore Kilmuir. But curiosity, as usual, got the better of her, and she turned. “Yes?”
Kilmuir was holding a journal open in his hands, giving its contents a once-over. He glanced up, his eyebrows knitted together in mild bafflement. “Did you leave this?”
A thin ribbon of anxiety fluttered through her. Kilmuir was reading her words. “I did.”
“Whose is it?”
“Mine.”
A little frown turned down the corners of his mouth. “Yours?”
“It belongs to me.”
“But—”
His eyes swiped across another page as if seeking some sort of confirmation. Juliet felt as if she were about to jump out of her skin.
His gaze lifted. “Who wrote it?”
A tick of time beat past as Juliet weighed the truth against a harmless lie. She was no good with lies, so the truth it would have to be. “Me.”
His finger traced the paper as he read more. “A poet wrote this.”
She watched the truth dawn across his too-handsome face.
“Miss Windermere,” he began, stunned, “you’re a poet.”
Even as Juliet felt herself blush to the roots of her hair, a wave of gratification swept through her.
Unlike practitioners of other arts, writers created in the isolation of their own minds, committing words to paper that might never be read—never even be acknowledged.
But Kilmuir was reading her words with an expression of awe.
Taking them in…acknowledging them…enjoying them.
Until this very moment, she’d thought it was enough to merely commit her words to paper.
That therein lay the satisfaction. But now another view opened to her.
That words on paper were merely their potential.
To reach the fullness of their expression, another person had to experience them, and only then could the piece be complete.
And that it was Kilmuir reading and appreciating and enjoying her words felt better than good or gratifying.
It felt strangely—possibly irritatingly—right.
“You’re more than a poet,” said Rory, scanning line after line of perfect iambic pentameter. “You’re a good poet.”
He read more.
“An excellent poet.”
Miss Windermere shifted on her feet. He was discomfiting her. But he couldn’t tear his eyes away.
“You’re the sort of poet anyone would want to be.”
A wry laugh caught his ear. A laugh that indicated she didn’t believe him. “I’m fairly certain not everyone wants to be a poet.”
Rory’s gaze narrowed on the woman before him. She was quite unlike the Miss Juliet Windermere he’d known for years, who viewed the world around her from a calm and deliberate remove.
This Miss Windermere looked a bundle of nerves.
He tapped forefinger to page. “I would give up quite a lot to be able to write words in the configurations you do. I’d give up my future earldom.”
Her eyes twinkled with a suppressed smile. “But not your current viscountcy?”