Chapter 5 #2
“I know what you mean.” Gordain stuck his hands under his armpits. “Callum and Mathilda’s bairn will have the best of everything. Two devoted parents, three uncles fiercely guarding the wee lad or lass. A world away from the shitestorm that was our early years.”
I didn’t know much about Gordain’s childhood, only that he’d lost his mother at a very young age, then his father when he’d been a teenager. “What was it like for you? Was your dad like Lachlan?”
Ally stumbled back into the room, manhandling the pitted oak door, a plate balanced under his chin and coffee spilling from his mug.
“Our da? A vicious fucker. Nothing like Lachlan. In fact, if it wasn’t for Lachlan, G probably wouldn’t have survived to be the great ugly man he is today. Isn’t that right, bro?”
With that bombshell dropped, he fell into a chair and took a bite from his sandwich, his gaze bright.
To my surprise, Gordain barely blinked. “Aye. That’s a fact.”
A buzzing came from across the room. Gordain stood and crossed to collect his phone from the sideboard. He frowned at the screen then excused himself, answering the call as he entered the great hall. “Lieutenant McRae.”
“That’ll be the base.” Ally tipped his head at the door. “What are your plans for the day?”
“Your brother is giving me a driving lesson.” Or I hoped he still was. We’d agreed it on the run back from Braithar. “You?”
Ally waggled his eyebrows. “I’m driving into Inverness to pick up a lass.”
Well! “I didn’t know you had a girlfriend.”
“Jealous?” He took another bite of his sandwich.
I batted my lashes. “Devastated. How could you throw me over for another woman?”
“As if. Your head’s been turned from the moment you stepped foot inside this castle.”
My mouth dropped open. “What?”
“And he’s a goner, too. Otherwise he’d be heading out each night on the prowl like he always used to. I was joking about that barmaid.”
He winked at me, and I just stared.
Gordain joined us again, his expression bleak. “Change of plan with that driving lesson, Ella.”
“Huh?” My cheeks must be flaming red. In the corner of my vision, Ally laughed at me.
“What’s going on?” his older brother asked.
“Just getting Ella in a fluster. Look at her face. Chill, lass. Your secret’s safe with me.”
I gamely ignored him, addressing his brother instead. “No driving then?”
He blinked at us then held out his hand, helping me up from my chair. “We can still go, so long as you don’t mind a diversion to the base. I need to drop by.”
“Sounds good to me.” I swayed, unsteady on my feet. Not by standing too fast, but by the fact that Ally was right. My head was totally turned by Gordain.
Hardly surprising for a girl who’d been locked in a gilded cage. He’d helped set me free, and all I wanted to do was find my wings.
“Then let’s go.”
The drive out took us through open Scottish countryside. Gordain brooded over something, quiet in the passenger seat, so I took to regaling him with stories about school.
“Etiquette lessons are really a thing?” he asked eventually.
“Yep. I remember one class where we sat at formal dining tables and ate an eight-course meal. We were judged on our conversation and on the correct use of cutlery.” I dropped my voice to sound like the teacher of that particular lesson. “No, Elinor. That is a knife, not a saw.”
“How old were you?”
“Maybe twelve or thirteen.”
“I can’t believe a place like that exists anymore.”
“St Briavels is another world. Overall, the education they pedalled was excellent. I’m grateful for that, I guess, but the focus was on looking and sounding the part, with an assumption that you’d be in a public-facing role as a tasteful decoration.
Maybe a princess or a wife to an important politician.
” I snorted a laugh at Gordain’s stunned expression.
“Ceremonial duties were the ambition for my classmates, but many of them came from families where women had little control over their own lives. The college’s restrictions were harsh, which is why I was always in trouble.
Richard knew exactly what he was doing when he put me into that place. ”
“Which was?”
I shrugged a shoulder. “He could forget about me there.”
Silence held in the car. I watched the road. The flat ground leading to rolling hills. Forests and glens. Gorgeous.
“I hate the thought of you stuck there.”
“I hated being there.” I gripped the steering wheel. “Ten years. If it wasn’t for Taylor and for the Hinchcliffes, our housekeepers at Belvedere where I used to go for the holidays, I wouldn’t have a clue what love or friendship was.”
I’d said too much. Cut too close to the bone. I felt it just as surely as I felt Gordain’s discomfort. I fidgeted in my seat, my concentration frazzled by the unhappy memories. A sudden burst of claustrophobia had me nauseated.
I wanted to stomp my foot down and flee. Escape the trap and live wild.
Gordain shot me a concerned glance, but my chest was too tight to speak.
“Slow down. Take the next left,” he murmured.
I followed orders, steering the car through the outskirts of a small town.
Ahead, the gates for a military base appeared, high fences with razor wire lining the formidable entrance.
We rolled in, and I stopped the car. Guards took our IDs and queried my purpose in visiting, then the roadblock lifted, enabling me to drive on.
“Park up here and get out of the car.” Gordain pointed to a space beside an office block.
I followed orders, feeling wretched and not knowing how to shake it off.
I’d had this kind of desperation come over me before, though this was back when I had no chance of doing anything about it. I was free now. Why hadn’t it gone?
Out of the car, the sea breeze lifted my hair. Gordain slammed his door and came around to my side.
Without saying a word, he swept me into a hug, hard and fast.
For a moment I froze, then I hugged him back. Strangling him with my arms. Burning up energy in a tight hold against his form.
We relaxed into one another. Not letting go.
“Didn’t realise I needed this,” I mumbled into his shoulder.
“From what you just described, you wouldn’t know to ask.” He released me, his expression unreadable as he stepped back. Then he glanced over to a row of low buildings. “I needed it, too.”
I was a self-centred idiot. He had a host of worries, and I was stuck in the past, dwelling over things I couldn’t change. I needed to be right here in the present. “I’ll be waiting with another hug when you’re done.”
Gordain gave me a pretence of a smile then walked away, his muscles rigid.
On the drive up, he’d told me it would only be a brief visit, just so he could collect a letter, so I waited by the car and watched him go. The door to the office slammed closed behind him, and I heaved in a breath of salty sea air.
I sensed a pair of eyes on me.
A woman got out of an expensive car, parked across the road from mine. She looked at the door Gordain had taken then brought her attention back to me.
“Good morning.” I raised a hand.
“Huh.” She drew in her nicely shaped eyebrows. “Who are you?”
“I’m Ella Fitzroy. And you are?” I smiled my trained super-gracious smile.
“Surprised,” she said by way of an answer. Then she indicated with her head to the door. “Is Gordain okay?”
A strange feeling sank my stomach. She knew Gordain, and well enough, too, by her question. I ran a subtle gaze over her, assessing her with an eye my college style tutor would be proud of.
The stranger’s jeans weren’t high street. Designer, a classic brand, as were her boots. Her car was expensive but not flashy, and her tasteful handbag would’ve set her back a grand, easy. Her long nails, and her toned but not muscular arms, told me she wasn’t a serving officer in her own right.
I hated that I knew this shit. How to take people apart with a swift assessment of what they displayed to the world. But it let me place her as likely a friend or relative of military top brass.
Had she dated Gordain? Was she dating Gordain?
Yeah, that feeling? Jealousy, no doubt.
I kept up my polite demeanour. “He hasn’t been okay, but he’ll be fine.”
No matter what was going on, Gordain would find a way through it. He was the most competent man I’d ever met.
The woman’s shoulders sank. “I was worried.” She shook her head, not talking to me. “And now I see why he said no. No wonder.”
She was talking in riddles, but I liked the sound of him saying no. “If you tell me your name, I’ll pass a message on.”
“I’m Autumn. But no need to pass anything on. Ella, wasn’t it?”
I nodded and she popped open her car door again.
“Thank you, Ella. You’ve set my mind at rest.”
“I’m glad to help,” I replied, but the woman only bobbed her head.
She drove away, leaving me to guess what had gone on between her and the man I was waiting for.