Lady Hadley laughed. “Yes, well then, Miss Brodure must promise to remain here until we return.” Her ladyship pinned Viola with a hopeful look. “Am I cruel to extract such a vow?”
“Not at all, my l-lady.” Viola bobbed her head, heat growing like tendrils up to her earlobes and entangling her words. “I believe my father intends to r-remain here until the end of summer. We would be m-most honored.”
“It is settled then.” Lady Hadley nearly beamed with kindness. “We shall dine in midsummer when we return.”
Lord Hadley nodded his agreement and reached for his wife’s hand, wrapping it possessively around his elbow as they turned to greet another couple. Would that Viola could find someone who, after twenty years of marriage or more, regarded her as fondly as Lord Hadley looked upon his wife.
Would Ethan Penn-Leith be that man?
As if sensing her thoughts, Ethan emerged from behind a pair of burly laborers to the left of the church door and threaded his way through parishioners and tombstones to where Viola stood against the stone fence.
Yes, he was still every whit as handsome as he had been two hours previously. And yes, her nerves still vibrated with a disquieting agitation in his presence.
“Miss Brodure, what a pleasure it has been tae find such a fair English rose amidst the bonnie hills of Scotland.” Ethan bowed, low and elegant, that same lethal smile upon his lips.
Viola longed to ask if he found her arrival unwelcome, if his lack of reply to her letters was deliberate or simply a hiccup in his busy life.
But her hammering heart stemmed the questions.
All she could manage was a curtsy and a stammered, “The p-pleasure has been all mine, Mr. Penn-Leith.”
Viola swore half the kirkyard—Lord and Lady Hadley included—turned toward herself and Ethan in that moment, eyes eager, bodies leaning as if watching a Punch and Judy Show.
Did the entire parish anticipate Viola and Ethan making a match of it, then? And did Viola find that thought exciting? Or terrifying?
Her lungs seemed to have their own suffocating answer.
Change. You want change, she reminded herself.A life no longer adjacent.
She had journeyed a great distance to meet Ethan Penn-Leith.
What did others’ hopes matter in this instance?
She had not come this far to only come this far.
And so she smiled at Ethan, took a step away from the stone fence, and ordered her anxious tongue to unknot.
“I have greatly enjoyed my first few days in Scotland.” Her words came out without a stammer. Thank goodness for small miracles. “Your descriptions of your homeland do the landscape justice . . . if just barely.”
“Och, I cannot accept such high praise, Miss Brodure.” Ethan returned a positively incandescent smile. “My modest attempts tae capture Scotland’s magnificence often frustrate me with their inadequacy.”
“You are far too humble, sir.”
Ethan’s frank admiration was everything Viola could have hoped for when she left Wiltshire for Scotland.
Again, she waited patiently for a rush of excitement or enchantment orsomethingto follow—
“Ah, Malcolm, excellent tae see ye!” Lord Hadley’s voice interrupted her thoughts.
Viola turned to see Malcolm Penn-Leith striding toward them, shoulders back, walking stick swinging, red-and-blue kilt swishing with each step.
Gracious.
Just the sight of him set heat prickling along Viola’s skin—thegoodkind of heated skin prickles. Why her body responded this way to him was just as inexplicable as the onset of nerves or asthma.
Malcolm Penn-Leith was unmarried, that much she had managed to ascertain when Dr. and Mrs. Ruxton had called. Though Mrs. Ruxton had hinted that Malcolm was perhaps a widower. Their conversation had flowed so organically—and Mrs. Ruxton so thoroughly enjoyed talking—Viola had been unable to steer it elegantly back to Malcolm.
It seemed nearly impossible that he did not have an adoring wife and big brood of children counting the minutes until he returned home. The man appeared a ready-madepaterfamilias—a scion of responsibility.
