“I cannot imagine I could ever be too kind when it comes tae praising your writing, Miss Brodure,” Ethan said, his smile so bright-edged it felt positively lethal.
Gracious.
He should be careful where he pointed that thing. It was liable to take out an unsuspecting debutante. Case in point, Viola caught two young ladies earnestly fanning themselves out of the corner of her eye.
“Thank you,” she managed to say, voice entirely too breathless.
Why was it so difficult to maintain eye contact with the man?
She dropped her eyes to her hands and took in another slow lungful of air.
The specter of asthma and anxiety had reared its ugly head today, exacerbating her shyness to debilitating levels.
She felt helpless when her body betrayed her like this. When she could scarcely speak for stammering. When every breath brought her that much closer to an asthmatic fit.
And now, she faced the weight of Ethan Penn-Leith’s attention.
Viola waited for excitement to flood her. To feel a rush of exhilaration and giddiness. For her agonizing self-consciousness to flee, just as it had on the lane with Malcolm Penn-Leith.
After all, she had been anticipatingfinallymeeting Ethan Penn-Leith for over a year now.
But at the moment, her hammering heart and sweating hands drowned out all finer emotions.
Granted, in all her imaginings—and there had been embarrassingly far too many—she had never considered that she would exchange her first words with Ethan in front of an entirevillage.
Without asking permission, her wayward eyes lifted and moved to the left of Ethan, unerringly finding Malcolm Penn-Leith’s dark gaze.
He contemplated her with a quiet intensity, one hand leaning on his walking stick, a bastion of calm in the teeming churchyard.
In the days since their first meeting, Viola wondered if she had exaggerated her sense of initial attraction to Mr. Malcolm Penn-Leith. Surely her feeling of bewildering electric calm had sprung from the exhaustion at finally—after five days of jarring roads and lumpy inn beds—arriving in Scotland.
But, no . . . she had not.
Staring at him now, she acknowledged that he was every whit as compelling.
And similar to that moment along the foggy road earlier in the week, some pressure eased in Viola’s chest. A thought that, perhaps with Malcolm’s stalwart presence at her side, she could manage her shy tongue and begin a friendship with Ethan.
If only her hands would stop shaking.
Is Miss Brodure shy?
The question would not leave Malcolm be.
He pondered it as Ethan and Miss Brodure finished their conversation, as Malcolm and his party entered the church to sit in their respective pews, as Dr. Brodure delivered his sermon.
Miss Brodure sat close to the lectern, her body angled toward the congregation, enabling him to study her profile during the long, often tedious discourse. She repeatedly ducked her head, as if the press of so many eyes upon her was a physical burden.
Again, after that first meeting,shywas the last word Malcolm would have used to characterize her.
Joyful. Effervescent. Enchanting. Intelligent.
Thosewere the words he would choose. Not shy. Not bashful. Not retiring.
Granted, pondering the discrepancy between the woman he saw now and the woman he met on the road was, truly, none of his affair.
His entire goal was to promote the lady to his brother and encourage a courtship between them. Surely, as Ethan and Miss Brodure deepened their acquaintance, any stirrings of attraction Malcolm felt would dissipate. The last thing he wished was to wade farther into the waters of . . . of . . .
Mmmm, what exactly were these waters he was treading? Affection? Romance?
