Chapter 10
“You look very peaceful.”
Riona didn’t turn, knowing who it was by his voice. How could anyone not recognize James? In the three days he’d been here, she’d heard him speak often.
“I am planning things in my mind,” she said, feeling guilty for the laxity of the past hour. “It is the only reason I was sitting here with my eyes closed.”
She opened her eyes, glancing up at him with a smile.
“Why close your eyes when the falls are so beautiful?” he asked, sitting down on the bench beside her.
“The better to hear the water. It sounds like the voice of God.” He looked over at her, his smile broadening. “I never know what you will say, Riona.”
“I should, perhaps, be more circumspect with my words. But it is too late to fool you now. You have seen me at my worst.” Today she wore her most mended dress, with her hair askew. Yet she felt perfectly at peace. There was little to be gained in pretending to be someone else.
He studied her intently, but didn’t say anything. A lapse in his manners that she readily forgave.
“Try it,” she dared him, closing her eyes again.
She didn’t peek to see if he was obeying her, but a moment later she asked, “Do you hear the sound?”
“A deep rumbling? Is that your voice?”
“Or the sound of the earth,” she said. “Perhaps all we have to do to understand it is keep quiet long enough.”
Riona opened her eyes to find him studying her. She felt her cheeks warm. “Do you think I’m foolish?”
“No,” he said softly. She had the impression he wanted to say more, but he remained silent.
“I haven’t seen you often in the last few days,” she said. “Has your task kept you that busy?”
“That and Old Ned,” he said. “But I’ve seen you everywhere on the farm. You seem to have a hand in all sorts of duties.”
Keeping her hands busy kept her mind occupied. In less than three weeks she was going to be Mrs. Harold McDougal, and there was nothing anyone could do to stop it.
Her nightly prayers had begun to reflect that fact. She didn’t seek an escape from her marriage as much as the strength to be a good wife. When James’s face appeared a little too often in the midst of her reflections, she’d prayed about that, too.
“You are welcome to play truant with me,” she said. “I shall not tell Ned that you’re here. Or Mother, for that matter.” That was as close as she would come to querying him about his reason for being here.
“They both know where I am,” he said, smiling at her as if genuinely amused by her remark. Of course, a man like James wasn’t the sort to be given orders. Instead, he gave them.
“Ned seems to like you very much, which is a very great compliment.”
“Doesn’t he like many people?”
She turned and looked at him. “I suspect he is much more amenable than he would like to appear, but he doesn’t mention his feelings. The fact that he singled you out for comment is high praise indeed.”
A telling fact, that he didn’t seek to know what Ned had said.
Had she ever been that supremely confident?
Perhaps if she were as beautiful as James was handsome.
Or imbued with that aura of authority seeming to surround him.
She couldn’t help but wonder if it was because he’d been a sea captain and accustomed to being in command.
Such questions were permissible between them, but the interest they indicated was perhaps wiser to hide.
She didn’t ask him why he’d sought her out, because she didn’t truly want to know. There might have been an errand that sent him to her, a message to deliver, a dozen people might need her.
Or he might have simply wished to spend time with her.
More dangerous thoughts.
In her pocket was a letter from Harold. She should think of that, perhaps, more than James.
She’d felt nearly ill when opening it. Her first prayer had been that he’d changed his mind and found another heiress to wed.
The second was that he’d been irretrievably delayed and the wedding must be postponed.
Unfortunately, neither was the truth. Harold’s letter was simply informing her that he’d found suitable lodgings.
The house has a small garden to the rear, where you might like to plant flowers. The aspect is pleasant, overlooking a main thoroughfare, although the traffic is not such that it will disturb sleep. I trust you will approve of my decision when you see it as my bride.
His bride. She should be thinking of the role to come rather than the man sitting beside her. James fascinated her; being Harold’s bride filled her with dread.
“How is Fergus?” she asked, instead of thinking of Harold and her wedding. “My mother tells me he is marrying his Leah after all these years.”
“You know the story?” He sounded surprised.
“I know enough to wish him well,” she said, grabbing her arms beneath her shawl.
How odd that the sound of his voice should have such an effect on her skin, rubbing against it as if the syllables and crisply enunciated words had the power of touch.
She felt attuned to him in a way that both disturbed and saddened her.
A mystery why he, above all the men she’d ever met, would have this effect on her.
A riddle she wouldn’t have time to solve.
“He loved her before the war,” she recounted from memories of the tale Fergus had once told her.
“But he was thought dead and never returned to her. I think his pride kept him away.” She smiled fondly, thinking of her friend.
“I take it Leah cares not about the loss of his leg but rather for the man?”
“Yes.” James smiled.
“How wonderful that fate worked for them and that she was free to marry.”
He didn’t answer her, yet the silence wasn’t an easy one.
“Do you not think so?” she asked, curious as to why there was this sudden tension between them.
“Fate has less to do with it than her husband’s greed,” he said. “Magnus Drummond chose to march on Gilmuir. A matter of some territorial dispute. He believed our land to be his. He was killed in the battle.”
For a moment she studied him, wondering why his expression had grown so fixed. He stared at the waterfall, but she had the impression that he didn’t see it. Instead, she wondered if that battle was intent in his mind. There was more to the tale, she suspected, that he hadn’t told her.
“Tell me how it happened.”
He glanced at her. “It is not a story for this beautiful day.”
She wouldn’t let him escape so quickly. He couldn’t hint at something and not fill in the gaps. Especially since his voice had changed so oddly and his expression was so altered. Somehow she’d created a wall between them by her questions.
“Tomorrow might prove to be as lovely,” she urged. “But I’m not so certain this opportunity will come again. Tell me what happened. Please.”
“I killed him.”
She held herself in check so as not to ask a question or make a remark. Instead, she waited for him to continue.
“The battle was not going well for the Drummonds, and their hired soldiers had been beaten back. Magnus raised his pistol, and I saw that the target was his wife, Leah. No one else was close enough or knew what he had planned. I shot him through the heart.”
“Did you mean to kill him?”
He made a noise that sounded like a mirthless laugh. His eyes warmed the longer he looked at her. “You’re the only person who has ever asked me that question, Riona. No, I didn’t. But intent matters little when a man is dead at your hand.”
“But you still castigate yourself for it,” she guessed.
“What kind of man would I be if I didn’t question my own actions?”
“You shouldn’t blame yourself, James. Think of Leah, instead. You saved her life.”
She wanted to comfort him, and wasn’t that a foolishness? But the impulse to place her palm on the curve of his cheek, press her lips against his forehead, was strong. All forbidden gestures.
“You sound like my sister-in-law. Iseabal said much the same.” He hesitated, then spoke again. “Drummond was her father, so perhaps I should heed her words.”
Riona had nothing to say in the face of such goodness.
Heaven was witness to her own weaknesses.
One of them being another errant and wicked thought.
If she had to be ruined, then why could it not have been with this man?
Let him have lured her to the garden, and she might willingly have gone and gloried in her disaster.
Fate, however, or her own foolishness, had given her Harold McDougal, and she must make the best of it.
She stood, wishing that she could find the words to speed him back to his castle. He was a dangerous distraction, a perfectly charming man with a wicked smile and devilish eyes, and a face that no doubt fueled many a woman’s dream.
“I have work to do,” she said, almost rudely. As she walked away, she decided that it would be best if she pretended he’d never come to Tyemorn Manor at all.
Now, if only she could.