Chapter 13
Thirteen
Wearing Alasdair’s scarf around her neck, Arabella folded clothes and put them in her trunk.
It was too bad she didn’t have any really pretty dresses anymore.
Just practical things. But Alasdair almost certainly did not care about dresses.
And she would be in her coat in the carriage anyway, she told herself.
Maggie arrived back to the cottage and put her head in the door of Arabella’s bedchamber.
“Miss Lovelock, what are ye doing?”
“Maggie.” She could feel her face growing hot with the excitement of telling someone. “Maggie, what do you think? We are to leave Dunburn tomorrow to travel to England. To see my sister. You will come with me, won’t you?”
“Come with ye? I’ve nae been to England.”
“We won’t stay long. A month or two. My sister’s confinement approaches, and she asked for me.”
“I didnae ken ye had a sister, Miss Lovelock.”
“Yes, two. You will come, won’t you?”
“’Tis warmer there?”
“In February? A little, perhaps. And I am sure the winds are not so fierce at Sommerleigh as they are here.”
“How will we go?”
“By hired carriage. We will go with the man who brought me the letter from my sister. Dr. Andrews.” She touched the scarf at her neck and felt her face become a trifle hotter.
“The lovely man who is staying at the public house? Mr. Cormack’s second cousin? The one whom Mr. Cormack threatened to beat?”
Arabella could not find her breath. “What?” She started for the door of the bedchamber.
Maggie stopped her. “Dinnae be troubled, Miss Lovelock. They left the public house before there was a fight, and when they came back after half an hour, Mr. Cormack had sobered and they both seemed unhurt and ate a pie together.”
Arabella stared. “You seem to know all about it.”
Maggie shrugged as she turned to leave the room. “Ye ken villages, Miss Lovelock. There are nae secrets here.”
Except Arabella had kept her secrets here. With great success. And she had become a different person, entirely.
Oh, what did Alasdair think of her now?
She buried her nose in his scarf. It smelled of him. She would not give the scarf back, not for anything.
The next morning, a carriage stood outside Arabella’s cottage, and the coachman Paterson and Alasdair wrestled her and Maggie’s trunks onto the top of the carriage.
Ewen MacEwen, he of the freckled face, approached. He looked almost fat, stuffed into his coat, like a bird who had fluffed the feathers of its breast.
“I hear ye are going south,” he said to Arabella, who was standing outside the carriage, watching her trunk being tied in place.
“Yes, I will be away for a month or two.” She reached into her reticule. “I will still pay you to go to Inverness and get my letters, if you like, Ewen, and a book.”
“Nae,” he said. “But I would like to go to England with ye.”
“We are leaving within the hour.”
“I am ready.”
“But your stepmother, your sisters?”
He shrugged. “I have already said goodbye.”
“And your clothes?”
“I am wearing all of them, all at once.” That explained his stuffed appearance.
“And your books?”
“I ken them by heart, miss.”
Arabella sighed. “All right, Ewen.”
Ewen swung up onto the driver’s seat. “I will ride on the outside. I want to see everything.”
Boyd Cormack suddenly appeared, having walked up from the village. He helped Alasdair and Paterson finish lashing the trunks in place.
“Thank ye, cousin.” Alasdair shook Boyd’s hand and went into the cottage, saying he would try to hurry Mrs. Gunn along. Paterson went to the front of the carriage to investigate the boy who wanted to share his seat.
“Mr. Cormack,” Arabella started. But Boyd shook his head.
“Miss Lovelock, ye dinnae need to say anything. I ken ye willnae be my wife. But I hope we will still be related, in some way.”
Arabella felt herself color.
“He didnae speak much when he was a boy. Almost a mute. So be patient with him if he is slow to speak his mind now.”
“I—I—” Arabella stammered. “I will endeavor to be. Patient.”
“Goodbye, Miss Lovelock.”
Then he did something she had never seen anyone in the village do. Boyd Cormack took her hand and bowed over it. And he was gone down the road, his pale-red hair glinting in the morning sun.
Maggie came out of the cottage, fussing, with Alasdair at her heels. As Maggie locked the door and walked around the cottages twice to check the windows, Alasdair came up to Arabella. His eyes went to her neck wrapped with his brown scarf.
“You left your scarf in the cottage yesterday,” she said.
“Aye.”
“I have another for you.” She went into the reticule she meant to take into the carriage with her and brought out a piece of bright-green woolen tartan with fine red-and-black stripes. “I hemmed it last night.”
“I’m sorry to have put ye to any trouble.”
“Nonsense. I am the reason you have no scarf. Lean down, Dr. Andrews.”
He did, and she wrapped it around his neck and crossed it over and tucked it into his coat.
“It’s the Ross hunting tartan,” she said.
He straightened up and looked at her with no sign of recognition.
“The Andrews wear the Ross tartan,” she explained. “I bought a length in Inverness to make a dress.” She realized then she was giving away perhaps too much of her secret life, so she finished in a rush, “But I thought it would also make a scarf for you. There is still plenty left.”
She looked into his eyes. She had been right. Her memory from almost four years ago had not been faulty. The green of the tartan was the same as the green of his eyes.