Chapter 12 #2
Wouldn’t he want that? Suddenly, he wasn’t so sure he didn’t want a compromising situation. It would accelerate everything. And, yes, take things out of his hands.
All this, of course, assuming she refused Boyd. And that she had any interest in him, Alasdair. As a husband. As a man.
He looked around the room. It was snug with a low, white plastered ceiling crossed by beams. Crisp, pink curtains on small windows.
He had never seen pink curtains before. Many piles of books scattered about.
A sewing basket with a piece of white frippery poking out of it.
And he could smell something savory roasting. A meat pie, maybe.
He would like to sit in this room with pink curtains. With her. Forever.
But it was not to be.
“I must take my leave,” he said and stood. “Would it suit ye to depart tomorrow?”
“Yes,” she said and stood as well. “I will close the school for now. Until Harry is out of danger.”
They faced each other. Three feet apart. He looked at her. She looked down at his right and then his left hand.
And then she raised her head and stepped forward onto tiptoes, putting her arms around his neck and pulling Alasdair’s head down to hers.
He had a moment—of fear or excitement?—when he thought Arabella would kiss him.
But she did not. She pressed her pink cheek to his.
He could feel his poorly shaved jaw scratching her soft skin.
Her breath skimmed by his ear. She whispered something. He could not make it out.
Was it possible she said at last?
She released him, and he avoided her eyes, murmured his farewell, and left the cottage quickly.
Boyd was waiting for him in the public house with three large tumblers of whisky sitting in front of him. One was almost empty.
“Cousin,” Boyd said. “Sit. One of these is for ye.”
Alasdair sat. He held up his glass to clink against Boyd’s, but Boyd did not hold his glass out. He just studied Alasdair.
Alasdair took a sip. The whisky was harsh, not the smooth, smuggled elixir he had drunk over the years with the earl at Sommerleigh.
“Ye told me ye ken her sister. Ye didnae tell me ye ken her.” Boyd’s voice was thick with whisky already.
“Our acquaintance was years ago and very brief.”
Boyd stared into his glass. “Her feelings are strong for ye, I can see.” His tone was bitter.
“I . . .”
Boyd drained his glass and wiped his mouth. “She’s told me, ye see. About ye. And her. What ye did.” The bitterness was edging into something stronger, something dangerous. Something violent. Boyd seized his second glass and took a gulp.
Alasdair strove to keep his own voice calm. “Pardon?”
“Ye should be begging her pardon. I dinnae ken how these things are rectified down in England, but up here ye might remember that scoundrels like ye answer for yer actions.”
Alasdair was lost. What was Boyd on about?
Boyd pushed back his chair and stood. The chair clattered to the floor. Voices stilled in the room.
“I willnae kill ye, cousin. I am a man of God. But I will beat ye until ye bleed.”
Alasdair pushed his own chair back from the table but stayed seated and raised both his empty hands.
“I dinnae believe I have done anything intentionally injurious.”
Boyd spat and wiped his mouth. “Injurious? To be married and to ruin . . . To take . . .”
Finally, Alasdair understood.
He stood up quickly, his chair now also falling onto the floor. Boyd was seconds away from coming over the table at him.
“’Twas nae me, cousin. I am unmarried. I didnae take anything.”
Boyd became very still.
Alasdair went on, “We shouldnae discuss this here. Let us go outside. Let us go down to the shore, where the sand will soak up the blood from my beating. But I will tell ye now that I am nae the villain ye think I am.”
They went down to the shore. The sea was gray and frothy. Boyd had calmed, and his fists were deep in the pockets of his coat. Alasdair kept his chin down, buried into the collar of his own coat. The brown knitted scarf he had been wearing was gone, lost on the street or in the public house.
“What has she told ye?” Alasdair asked.
“I willnae break her confidence.”
Alasdair said carefully, “I will tell ye my end of it.”
Boyd looked out at the horizon.
“Before today, I have ne’er touched Miss Lovelock except to take her gloved hand and bow over it. When I met her for the first and only time in St. Paul’s Cathedral. In the presence of her mother. And the bishop. I havenae done anything untoward.”
“Ye have met her only once before?”
“Aye.”
“Ye didnae despoil her?”
“Nae. As I said, before today—”
“And today? What have ye done today?”
In truth, Alasdair thought, he still had done nothing.
She had touched his chest, grabbed his coat, put her finger on his lips, pulled his head down, put her cheek to his.
He had stayed in his mind, in his imagination, and received.
He was either a coward or a genteel man.
Given both the detail and the intensity of his thoughts about Arabella and her body over the years, he knew the scales came down on the side of coward.
“What are ye here for?” Boyd pressed.
“I’m here to take her to her sister.”
Boyd’s lip curled. He snorted and kept his gaze fixed on the line where the sky met the ocean.
“She’ll nae be back,” Boyd said. “When folk leave here, they dinnae come back. Like ye.”
“I cannae say, cousin.” But it was his dearest wish that Boyd was right in his prediction.
That evening in his bedchamber at the public house, Alasdair took from his bag the medical periodicals he had studied on his trip north from Edinburgh. And then he replaced them in the bag, knowing he couldn’t possibly read tonight. He was far too occupied by other thoughts. Thoughts of Arabella.
What a miracle she was. She was entirely unchanged.
Oh, yes, there was the inch of height and the inch of bosom she had acquired in the intervening years.
But, in essence, she was the same. Bright.
Full of feeling. Thriving. She had not been spoiled or ruined.
What idiocy it was that people should use those terms when talking about a woman who was no longer a virgin.
As if that were the only thing a woman had to offer the world.
As if all of her other gifts and qualities were naught.
He threw himself on his bed, thinking of how close she had been to him just before he had left her cottage. And the strong emotion and equally strong arousal he had felt, provoked by the soft skin of her face touching his.
He should find a way to sharpen his razor. In case, just in case, there was the slightest chance she might ever put her cheek to his again, he did not want to scratch her. He must have a smooth jaw for her.
And then he realized he was about to spend seven or more days in a carriage with Arabella Lovelock.
He must think of something to say to her.
He sat up.
Perhaps he should make some notes.