Chapter Seven
Catriona said nothing as the group carefully walked the long drover’s track, which was still treacherous with ice.
She avoided glancing at Evan Mackenzie—Lord Kildonan!
—and instead followed her father. Thomas MacConn had some difficulty negotiating steep slopes now, but he refused Catriona’s help on the rough terrain.
That rejection, and his clear disapproval of her situation, hurt more than she would admit.
Reaching her home, she wondered if Evan would come into the big stone manse, a handsome house, though not nearly as grand as Kildonan.
Her brother took her arm to guide her into the house, where she met hugs and exclamations from her Aunt Judith and their family friend Mrs. MacAuley, who ran the inn down the glen.
Swept along on a tide of anxious cries, surrounded by the swishing black skirts of the two widows, Catriona looked back as the women led her away, chattering about a hot bath and a hot meal.
She glimpsed Evan standing with Fitzgibbon, and saw her father turn his back on them as he entered the house without an invitation. That moment cut her to the quick—Highland hospitality was nearly sacred.
“I have a horse and gig here,” Arthur said. “I will take you back to Kildonan Castle. Your sister will be anxious to see you.”
“Aye,” Evan said, and walked away with his friend.
There was even more she did not know about him, she thought. Likely he had been at Kildonan Castle before the climb, yet never mentioned that or his title. The Earl of Kildonan owned Glen Shee, had the keeping of its tenants, yet rarely visited.
She felt drained. His quiet strength had helped her more than she had realized, and now it was withdrawn. He was not the man she thought, the man she had begun to love. In that moment, she knew, keenly, how true that was, and it felt like another unexpected blow.
Now that she was home, the aura of tension in the manse made her pull inward protectively. Home again, she would return to dull compliance. She would explain what had happened, bear her father’s disapproval, and life would go on.
What she wanted now was to rest and be left alone to think, to understand how she felt and how she could go on.
Her father and her aunt would be shocked that she had spent a night alone with a man, regardless of the circumstances.
But the greatest hurt was Evan’s betrayal—or so it seemed to her.
The Earl of Kildonan was not one she could keep safely in her dreams when she felt lonely.
The son of the hated Earl of Kildonan, a man many thought to be no better than his father. And she had allowed him, no, encouraged him wantonly, to love her. He had refused past a certain point, to his credit. Yet they had shared much together… If only he’d been truthful.
Trust me, he had said. She did not know if she could forgive him.
*
“I know a couple of days have gone by, Miss MacConn,” Mr. Grant said. “But you were exposed to severe cold when you fell in icy water. I want to be sure no lung ailment has developed. May I listen to your heart and lungs?”
She nodded, and Grant leaned forward to thump gently on her upper chest. Seated beside her on the horsehair sofa in the drawing room, he tapped his fingers up and down her back, then rested his head against her upper back to listen to the thump of her heart.
He had a stethoscope, a wooden tube with a single earpiece, but he often preferred older methods.
His head against her back felt odd, though, and she wished he would finish.
Sitting straight, breathing slowly, she felt that her stays were too tight, adjusted by her aunt. She smoothed her wide skirt of blue-and-gray plaid silk and waited for Kenneth Grant to complete his examination.
Her aunt waited too, standing by the doors of the drawing room to chaperone the doctor’s examination.
Hands folded primly, brow folded in a frown, Judith Rennie made her disapproval of the situation clear.
The widow of a Perthshire laird, she was strong-minded with an iron will.
And she had surmised that Catriona’s experience with the handsome Earl of Kildonan was not only a dangerous adventure but a shocking escapade.
Catriona was not surprised by her aunt’s conclusion. Judith was much like her brother, the reverend. Tired still, Catriona lacked the energy to correct her aunt. She had been foolish indeed, though not quite as wanton as her aunt thought. Sighing, she glanced at Kenneth Grant as he leaned back.
“All seems well. Lungs are clear. You’re in excellent health. You just need rest.”
“I do,” she agreed. They often spoke English in the manse, though Gaelic was common in the household among the servants now and in Catriona’s childhood, too.
Thomas MacConn conducted church services in Gaelic for the benefit of his Highland parish, but at home he demanded English in the dining and drawing rooms.
Grant glanced up. “Mrs. Rennie, your niece had taken no harm from her ordeal, but she needs to rest for a few days. No long walks in the glen until you have your strength back, Miss. No going about with your brother,” he cautioned.
“But Catriona and Morag MacLeod have work to do,” Aunt Judith said. “They collect the knitting assignments, you know. A worthy charitable act that they do regularly.”
“A few days will make no difference,” he answered.
“She is in good health, and I hear Lord Kildonan is in good health too. Not so much the emergency, was it, Catriona?” Her aunt looked haughty.
“The situation was serious, Mrs. Rennie,” Grant said. “Lord Kildonan has a bruised head from his fall while climbing. He is fortunate to have a strong physique. He needs some rest, too. He said Miss MacConn saved his life. You can be proud of your niece, madam.”
“Exemplary behavior is expected of a minister’s daughter, though exemplary is a word that always applies to Catriona,” Judith replied with a sniff.
“We endured some terrible conditions,” Catriona pointed out. “I should think you would be glad we survived, Aunt.”
“Of course, we are thankful. I do not think your father could have borne the news of another tragedy, after losing his son to that mountain,” her aunt replied.
“And we are also quite distressed by the matter. Your father has kept his opinions to himself, knowing that you needed to recuperate. You slept through an entire day, and he has waited. But his patience is at an end. He wants to talk to you.”
Catriona sighed. Grant glanced at her, his expression grim and humorless. She had never been at ease with the doctor’s overly serious manner and wished he had a little more humor. He was only in his forties, she guessed, but acted much older.
“The reverend would like to see Catriona in his study, if you are finished here. Come along, my dear.” Aunt Judith opened the door. “The earl is here meeting with your father.”
“He is here?” Her heart bounded. No one had mentioned he had arrived. “Go on. I will be along in a moment.”
With a sniff, Judith Rennie walked out of the drawing room, leaving the door open.
Grant took her hand. “Let me check your pulse again, my dear. You have suffered an extraordinary ordeal.”
Her aunt was the better part of the ordeal just now, she wanted to say, but sat in silence while he held her wrist. He nodded and set her hand down, and she smiled.
“Thank you, Mr. Grant. And thank you for helping to find us.”
“Glad to help you, my dear.” His brown eyes narrowed. He was a tall man with a lean face and a thick shock of dark hair, and would be handsome, she had often thought, if he was not so overly somber, frowning much of the time.
As laird of Kilmallie at the far end of the length of Glen Shee, and as a busy doctor, he did not come often to Glenachan.
He had expanded his inherited estate with sheep runs and by all accounts was amassing a fortune in wool imports now.
Yet he was very busy as the only doctor across two or three glens.
“I’m always delighted to be of service to you, dear Catriona.
” He sometimes used her first name, for they had known each other for years, and he was her family’s physician.
She had known him in childhood, but he had gone away for years to live with kin elsewhere, later returning as a physician.
He smiled, quick and flat. Grant may lack a sense of humor, but she appreciated his earnest nature.
“Not everyone is delighted with me just now,” she confessed.
“I know. Reverend MacConn is understandably upset. He feared that you had met with an accident. The other day I gave him a dose to calm his nerves, and he asked me to speak with you to determine if you were—harmed in some less obvious way.”
“Kildonan behaved like a gentleman, if that is what you imply,” she said stiffly. That was true enough; that she had not behaved like a lady was her secret with Kildonan—and she had to trust him. She wanted to trust him, but now everything seemed uncertain.
Grant frowned. “The reverend fears that you were compromised. The bed was shared. That was obvious.”
“We had to share to keep warm. It was terribly cold. Perhaps my father and my aunt overlook the fact that we could have suffered in such cold, and I had fallen into the icy stream as well. You, as a doctor, surely understand that and can reassure them that we had no choice but to help each other stay warm. It does not mean I was compromised.”
“I see. Well, surely this will all blow over, like that storm.”
She nodded. If her family knew, the storm would become a tempest. “I must see my father, if we are done here, Mr. Grant.” She stood, and so did he.
“A moment, Catriona.” He gave a thin smile and went to the door to close it.
“Shutting the door is not necessary,” she said. “I am in enough of a kettle just now.” She meant it as a jest, but he did not laugh.
“What you did was not very proper,” he admonished. “If only I had known.”