Shaking his head, he crossed to her in three large steps.
“I should worry about you if you were aboard ship, Wife. I have no idea as to the vessel’s state.” He pulled her against his body and kissed her lips with possessive thoroughness. “However, I know you will be safe and watched over here. Let me ascertain the shipshape soundness of theSS Statesmanbefore dragging you onto it again. I will give you a thorough recounting of everything the second I know.”
She ran her fingers through his hair. “Promise ye will return tae me as soon as possible? Or summon me if it is safe?”
“I promise.” He kissed her again . . . and then he was gone.
Three hours laterand Tristan still hadn’t returned from the ship.
Isolde sat in the private dining room, having dined and watched the sun set. The fire burned low in the grate, a simmering coal of heat.
Much like her irritation.
Oh, Isolde tried to swallow it back, to tell herself that the damage to his ship must be concerning to keep him from her side for so long or prevent him from sending for her or communicatingsomething—
But was that truly the case? Or had he merely become immersed in discussions with Captain Woodbury and forgotten about his promise to her?
She knew Tristan wanted to change, but the demands of his title and his own rigid sense of duty might prove Herculean to alter.
Her husband might be engrossed in his ship, but the local laird, Sir John MacDougall of Dunnolie and his son, Mr. Alexander MacDougall, found her easily enough.
Word spread quickly in Highland communities.
“Ye be Scottish, Your Grace!” was the first sentence out of Sir John’s mouth after introducing himself. He turned to his son. “Can ye believe it, Alex? A proper Scottish lass as an English duchess! No wonder she fought the sea and won.”
Isolde smiled, her first true smile in hours.
Sir John exemplified the sort of Scottish nobleman she adored—brash of opinion, open of manner, and brimming with bonhomie. About her father’s age, Sir John arrived in a kilt and bonnet, his graying red hair disheveled from the omnipresent wind. Mr. Alexander MacDougall was a copy of his father, only thirty years younger.
Isolde rang the bell and ordered a light supper and some whisky brought to the private dining room for the men.
“Och, the captain of the steamship said ye had drowned.” Sir John cupped his hands around a tumbler of whisky. “And now I find ye be Lord Hadley’s daughter. A much-admired Scotsman, Lord Hadley. Had we known ye were one of our own, we would have searched harder. A stuffy English duchess . . . well, that lot willnae survive the Baltic waters of the Rough Bounds. But a Scottish lass . . . I would have held out hope.”
“Aye,” Mr. MacDougall chimed in, sitting casually back in his chair. “The fancy steamship was damaged in the storm. Limped into harbor here in Oban about five days ago. We saw it from the house, didnae we, Da?”
“We did. Dunollie, my castle and estate, sits along the coast just north of town,” Sir John clarified.
“The word spread like wildfire—an English duke and his duchess drowned in the storm. The captain couldnae do anything tae save them, he said. Watched them go down hisself.” The younger man mimed holding a spy-glass.
“Then they discovered the rowboat, smashed tae bits near Kilmory. Lost things often wash up there,” Sir John said as an aside to Isolde.
“And Wee Iain Swinburn found a battered tophat made in London that the duke’s valet said belonged to His Grace,” Mr. MacDougall added. “And then another lad found a fine silk bonnet and the torn bit of a horsehair petticoat.”
“And yet no one thought tae check the island that had been our original destination?” Isolde asked with a frown.
“We should have,” Sir John agreed far too cheerily. “But the captain of yon steamship was so adamant that ye had drowned. And Robbie McCann passed Canna on his way tae Skye the day after the storm. Said he saw Mr. and Mrs. Thorburn walking the beach, himself in a kilt and all, waving a greeting without a care in the world. We figured if ye had washed ashore there, Mr. Thorburn would have sailed to find a doctor for ye. No use risking our own lives tae search for bodies that may never be found.”
It all made a sort of awful sense.
“Regardless, I immediately sent word down tae Glasgow of the tragedy, asking a message be telegraphed tae the duke’s residence in London, Gilbert House or some such,” Sir John continued.
“When was that?” Isolde asked.
“About four days past now, I ken.”
Four days.
But with Allie gone to Scotland to reunite with Ethan, who had been at Gilbert House to receive the message? The butler, perhaps? If so, Tristan’s servants would likely have informed her own family.
