And yet . . .
No deeper emotions surfaced from the depths of Viola’s heart.
Ethan did not bore her, to be sure. And she had liked his notion that pictures could accumulate into ideas.
But she felt none of the giddy fervor of a lady being wooed.
Mmmm.
She searched for the right metaphor to describe it.
Once, many years ago when she had been wrestling with a particularly thorny plot problem, she had taken a hackney cab to Westminster Abbey. There, she had spent the afternoon sitting on a bench in the Poet’s Corner. Surrounding oneself with the graves of dead literary greats—Chaucer, Spenser, Dryden—seemed a rather morbid way to seek inspiration, and yet, the experience had been transcendent. The moist air of the abbey soothed her lungs. The cathedral’s quiet hush allowed the energy of the place to penetrate her soul. It had been a silent conversation of sorts, a rejuvenation, filling her mind with ideas and renewed zeal for her project.
Viola had supposed that spending an afternoon with Ethan Penn-Leith might be a similar experience. That they would feed off one another’s creativity, practically finishing each other’s sentences in the race to connect their thoughts. That with Ethan, she would feel alive andliving.
But that wasn’t quite how the afternoon went.
To be sure, Ethan Penn-Leith was interesting and handsome and beautifully mannered—the exact gentleman Viola would have scripted for a suitor.
And yet, as she listened to Ethan talk ofhisinterests andhiswriting andhiswork, Viola felt as if she were standing on a street corner, watching another’s world stroll by.
How could Ethan Penn-Leithhimselfmake her feel adjacent to living?
Was that not the pinnacle of all ironies?
After Ethan and Leah finally took their leave, Viola was left with one lingering thought—
Would she have felt the same lack of connection had Malcolm Penn-Leith accompanied his brother and sister and spent an hour conversing with her about his coos?
“This year’s calvesare among our best yet,” Sir Rafe Gordon said, handing Malcolm a finger of whisky.
Malcolm nodded at his host and business partner. “Aye. We’ve done well. We cannae keep up with the demand for them.”
Sir Rafe snorted. “I received a letter from a Frenchcomtejust yesterday offering me an absurd sum of money for three heifers.”
“We cannae be selling on our breeding stock.”
“Och, that’s precisely what I told our Frencharisto.”
Malcolm smiled.
Sir Rafe raised his glass. “To our continued good enterprise.”
“To your willingness tae take a chance on a Highland farmer.” Malcolm lifted his own glass in return.
Sir Rafe grinned at that. “Ye did come highly recommended. And Hadley has never led me astray.”
Hadley being another man to whom Malcolm felt indebted.
After Aileen’s death, Malcolm had poured his energy into improving his cattle, but he had needed more capital in order to scale up his breeding operation. Hadley had recommended him to Sir Rafe Gordon, a fellow Scot, as a partner.
Together, Malcolm and Sir Rafe had built his wee cow herd into something of an empire.
Best of all, Malcolm now counted Sir Rafe as a close friend.
The man appeared younger than his fifty-odd years. Tall and lean, his dark eyes always brimmed with mirth, as if Sir Rafe were accustomed to laughing at life’s foibles. Given what little Malcolm had seen of Sir Rafe’s relationship with his bonnie wife—Lady Sophie Gordon—he didn’t doubt that the man was content.
“Do ye have many dealings with your late father’s family?” Malcolm asked, changing the subject.
