Arabella’s breath was trapped in her chest.
A loud snore broke the silence, and she jerked back in surprise. Silence followed before both of them burst out laughing. Arabella clapped a hand over her mouth to keep from waking Grandmother.
“Is she faking, do ye think?” Gavin whispered.
Arabella nearly giggled. “It always starts out that way,” she said, thinking of how many times in the past weeks Grandmother had fallen asleep for twenty minutes at a time, conveniently giving Gavin and Arabella a bit of privacy. She wasn’t particularly subtle. “But usually within a few minutes, there is nothing fake about it.”
“I can hear ye,” Grandmother called. “And Gavin, if ye missed your chance tae kiss her, ’tis through no fault of my own.”
Gavin tipped back his head and laughed. “True enough, Nan. True enough.”
THAT NIGHT, BACK at home, Arabella remembered to ask Molly about the missing letter. “Do you know what happened to the letter I wrote my parents? I left it in this drawer, but it isn’t there anymore.”
Molly was plaiting Arabella’s hair, smoothing her thick tresses into a long braid down her back. She looked up. “Yes, Miss Hughes. I found it when I was putting away the letter your mother sent you and gave it to one of the footmen to add to the post.”
Arabella’s fingers froze around the hairpin she’d been toying with. “You sent it?” Her voice was a strangled whisper.
Molly frowned, tying off the braid with a rag. “Did you not wish me to?”
“I—” Arabella wasn’t even sure what to say. A cold, sick feeling slithered through her stomach. “How long ago did you send it?”
She pursed her lips. “Three weeks ago, I think? Maybe a little less.”
Arabella began calculating in her head. Three weeks. Three weeks meant they’d received the letter and could already be on their way. Depending on how quickly they’d left, three weeks meant they could be here any day.
Molly began picking up the hairpins littering the top of the dressing table. “Did I do something wrong?”
Arabella shook her head. “It doesn’t matter now.” But itdid matter. All at once it became hard to breathe. She stood abruptly, nearly knocking over the chair.
“Miss Hughes—”
Arabella didn’t hear any more. She was racing down the corridor, down the stairs. Needing air. Needing the wide-open spaces of the mountains and the ever-present gusts of wind and the vast feeling of peace that the Highlands opened up in her.
She burst out the front door, heaving in deep breaths as if she were gasping for air. In the month and a half since she’d arrived in Scotland, she’d already forgotten what it felt like to be in the presence of her mother and father. It was a vise-clamped-around-her-lungs feeling.
She stood, bent over, still breathing hard, guilt bearing down on her, hovering like the mist that clung to the Highlands each morning.
After almost two months of freedom, going back to her cage in England felt impossible. Not just because of how she’d changed, not just because of all she’d experienced.
But because of her feelings for Gavin McKenzie.
It was becoming difficult to remember what her life had been like before him. She had laughed less, certainly. And she’d been so wary, so restrained. Frozen in place for fear of making a single misstep.
But with Gavin, she felt free. Completely unfettered by expectation or demand. Even tonight, in that stolen moment by the piano, that almost kiss, her heart had been soaring, winging skyward on a wind of longing.
But with threat of her parents’ arrival looming, she could see herself more clearly.
She was a trained hawk, her parents falconers. And though these past months she’d been flying free, soaring through the sky at exhilarating heights, that freedom wasmerely an illusion. With a simple raise of the arm, she was being called back.
And as much as she wanted to remain untethered, and despite the strength of her feelings for Gavin, obedience was intuitive. She’d been tamed, after all. Carefully disciplined for the past twenty years.
Deep down, Arabella feared that when her parents came for her, she, like the well-trained hawk she was, wouldn’t have the strength to resist their commands.
GAVIN STOOD IN the front entry, waiting for Arabella. Today, he was taking her to one of his favorite places: the old abbey ruins about five miles north of there. They’d arranged to go several other times, but bad weather had always managed to sabotage their plans. And today, though there was a strong wind blowing in off the ocean, the skies were clear.
Nan came in to greet him as he waited.
He bent to kiss her on the cheek. “Ye are sure ye don’t wish tae join us?”
