Moreover, who knew how soon the Gillespies would be returning to their village in Yorkshire? The reverend and his wife had a habit of traipsing around Britain, visiting wealthier friends in the hopes of drumming up more donations for their return trip to the South Pacific.
Knowing this, Eilidh could very well return to their small village before the Gillespies did . . . before the awkward questions of their split from one another could be raised.
She could simply collect her belongings, marry Simon, and move forward with her new life with him, leaving the past . . . passed.
She missed Simon.
He was kind, learned, and a true gentleman with soulful blue eyes that earnestly studied her as she spoke and a soft voice that soothed the rough edges of her heart.
He was precisely the sort of man her parents would have wished her to marry.
Eilidh considered Simon to be a gift from God. Here was a man who knew she was a fallen woman, who knew the horror of her behavior aboardThe Minerva.And yet, he still accepted her. He loved her without judgment, without condescension.
She would never forsake such a precious treasure.
They had met the previous autumn. Simon and his mother had let a house near to the Gillespies, as Simon was to take up the position of curate to the local vicar. Reverend Gillespie, despite his bonafides, did not have a congregation of his own.
Initially, Simon had expressed interest in joining the reverend on his next voyage to the South Pacific. But Simon’s mother, Mrs. Fitzpatrick, had quickly quashed her son’s hopes, though not before Simon and Eilidh had developed a friendship. The Gillespies, Eilidh was quite sure, had never realized the depth of her relationship with Simon.
Two days before she left for Kilmeny Castle, Simon had proposed to her.
“I am not the wealthiest or most charismatic of men,” he said, “but I have a genuine regard for you. No matter your past, I wish to be your future. I will cherish you all your days, Miss Fyffe.”
As usual, his forthright honesty had touched her.
But . . . something made Eilidh hesitate to accept his offer of marriage immediately. She thought she loved him, inasmuch as shecouldlove.
That was the problem with the frozen white numbness of her mind—it made feeling anything difficult. Or, perhaps, she simply was not given to romantic notions.
But as she had never been in love, it was hard to say.
Did marriage require grandiose feelings?
Eilidh thought not.
Marriage required trust, affection, and respect. And those three things, she and Simon had in abundance.
The farther she journeyed from Simon, the more she ached to return to the peace of him. She liked the person she was around him—calm, collected, reserved. Life with Simon would be one of quiet simplicity: a wee cottage behind the village church, parishioners to visit and the poor to help, a fire in the hearth and Simon writing a sermon on a snowy winter’s eve.
She planned to accept Simon’s offer of marriage when next she saw him. It felt like something she should tell him in person, not in a letter.
Simon was a safe harbor after a terrible storm.
He would never force her to remember things that she wished to remain buried. He would not challenge or upset her.
He accepted that she wished her emotions to remain encased in frozen white, safely floating above the unpleasant memories that lurked in the deep.
He was delightfully English that way—strong sentiments were to be avoided, at best, and then ignored, at worst.
By comparison, Master MacTavish was a cyclone of unwanted turmoil. He invoked a whirlwind of stinging emotions and confused thoughts that spun too quickly for her to pinpoint only one: frustration, anger, desire—
Ugh.
She threw herself backward onto the counterpane, staring up at the plastered ceiling.
Why was she even thinking upon the man? She still did not like him. Case in point . . . merely conjuring his name had set her pulse thumping.
Had she actually yelled at him? Screaming like some shrill fishwife?
