Chapter Eighteen #2
Lucy looked sharply at her maid’s reflection in the mirror, but Sheena’s face was averted and she was busying herself picking up the spare pins and tidying the top of the dressing table.
Lucy wondered suddenly if the maid deliberately set out to hurt her.
These little barbs, planting doubt and sowing unhappiness, were becoming more frequent.
Yet it seemed an absurd idea; Sheena had cared for her since she was a child.
She had been a servant at Forres forever and was utterly loyal.
“What will you do today, madam?” the maid said.
“I don’t know,” Lucy said. Suddenly she felt lonely. “I have no idea.”
The Auld Haa was too small a house to require much in the way of running, and what was needed Mrs. Stewart did anyway.
Lucy was hardly going to make the poor woman’s situation more miserable by taking over her duties.
Nor was she going to sit at home waiting for visitors, or going out to pay house calls.
Society on the island was very limited; the wives of the two lighthouse keepers had called the previous day, one, Mrs. Hall, very genteel and reserved, the other, Mrs. Campion, very opinionated with a loud laugh, both united in disparaging the islanders as barbarians.
Mrs. Campion had coyly suggested hosting a dinner for Robert and Lucy and inviting the schoolmaster and the parson.
These, she implied, were the only islanders of sufficient social standing to be worthy of an invitation.
The merchants who owned the booths down by the harbor were very poor and beneath her notice.
Besides, they were foreigners, Norwegians, whom she considered beyond the pale.
Lucy found her snobbery unbearable. She had not invited the ladies back.
She could take up her writing, of course, but suddenly the Lady’s Guide to Finding the Perfect Gentleman seemed both uninspiring and downright irrelevant.
Perhaps, though, she could make some inquiries into the history of the Golden Isle.
She felt a faint stirring of interest. She had heard some stories from Mrs. Stewart, who was indeed as talkative as Sheena said, tales of gold from an Armada shipwreck as well as stories of the Vikings who had been the ancestors of the islanders.
Their warning beacon still stood on the hill behind the Auld Haa, and the south harbor still held the cuts where their longboats had rested.
“Will you go out with Lord Methven today?” Sheena persisted.
“I doubt it,” Lucy said shortly, and thought she saw a faint smile on her maid’s lips before she turned away to fold the nightclothes into the drawers.
“May I come with you today?” she asked Robert spontaneously as they sat in the breakfast parlor with the scent of fresh coffee in the air and the bright sunshine breaking through the mist to pattern the wainscot. “It is a beautiful day and I should like to see more of the island.”
Robert put down his cup with a sharp clatter. “I shall be working on rebuilding the beacons today,” he said. He got up and went out, leaving Lucy feeling hurt at the rebuff.
She had had enough. She saddled up one of the sturdy little ponies from the paddock and went out riding.
There were no sidesaddles and she was obliged to ride astride, which meant she had to borrow some breeches from Mrs. Stewart’s nephew.
She soon discovered the pony was a feisty little creature with a mind of its own, bigger than a Shetland pony but twice as bad tempered.
They had a short sharp battle over which of them was in control and then the pony settled down as docile as Lucy could have asked.
In the following few days she rode all over the island, exploring from the heather-strewn cliffs of the north to the softer green fields of the south.
The crofters waved as she passed by; on the second day one of them offered her a drink of milk to refresh her on such a hot afternoon.
On the third day she was invited into one of the croft houses and offered griddled oatcakes as well as milk.
After four days the island women decided it was time to try and teach her to spin.
She was hopeless at it and just listened to their chatter as they spun, learning about life on the island.
At first the women had been reticent in front of her, looking at her sideways, wary and unsure what to make of her.
Lucy understood their reticence and perhaps they began to understand that she was lonely because after they had all laughed over her woeful efforts at knitting, they sat down to tea and all differences of background were forgotten.
“I hear you have been out riding,” Robert said over dinner one night. He had come in late and walked straight into the paneled dining room in his mud-splashed boots, his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbow.
“That’s right,” Lucy said. “Would you care to join me one day?”
“I have too much work to do.”
Something snapped within Lucy. She pushed away her bowl of vegetable broth and stood up.
“You are behaving like a spoiled child,” she said. His rejection stung; inside she felt shriveled with dismay that she was trying to reach him and he kept pushing her away.
He fixed her with his hard, direct blue gaze. It was intimidating, but she was determined not to allow it to silence her.
“I know you do not like it here,” she said precisely. “I understand that it is painful for you because of Gregor’s death and your quarrel with your grandfather—”
Something so vivid and elemental flashed in his eyes then that she stopped instinctively.
There had been grief there; she had felt it like the burn of a flame.
Yet Robert did not speak and with a sinking heart she saw him lock down his emotions even harder, the frown pulling down his brow, his jaw tightening like a steel trap.
“I know you do not want to talk about it.” She plowed doggedly on. She had started this—again, and against her better judgment—and this time she would have her say.
“No, I do not want to talk about it.” The quietness in his tone was terrifying, as was the controlled stillness that hung about him like a cloak.
“But I am only trying to help you.”
“I do not require your help.” Each word was bitten off.
“And I do not wish to be married to so miserable and dour a husband.” She flung down the napkin that she was still holding. It landed with a slap, trailing in the broth. She stalked to the door, hoping that he would call her back, apologize, say something, anything. But he said nothing.
“Don’t come to my bed tonight,” Lucy said, over her shoulder. “I am your wife, not your mistress, and I won’t be ignored during the daytime and only found use for at night.”
Up in her bedroom, she curled up on the window seat and looked out over the fields to the sea. Tonight the moon was full and bright and it bathed the island in a golden light, rippling over the water and gilding the land. For once the island looked peaceful and lived up to its name.
The candle flame was burning down and she was cold.
She had not heard Robert come upstairs. She was not sure what she would do if he did come to her.
She felt bruised and disappointed that he rejected every attempt she made to reach him.
He had shown her such tenderness; it was the hardest lesson to learn that his gentleness with her did not mean that he wanted to share an emotional as well as a physical closeness.
She heard a sound below, the scrape of leather on stone, the creak of the gate. The moon cast the long shadow of a man across the wall. She could see from the way he moved that it was Robert.
She was curious. By now she had heard so many stories about Golden Isle, the legends, the shipwrecks, the free trading.
On a night like this it was easy to believe in ghosts and myths.
She slid from the seat, grabbing her little half boots, sliding her feet into them.
Her cloak was warm and it was, fortunately, not a cold night.
The stair creaked as she tiptoed down, but no one came.
Mrs. Stewart and the other servants had rooms in the west wing.
She opened the door and felt the cool breeze nip at her skin.
She could just see Robert’s figure heading away across the field toward the cliffs. She followed.