Yet, despite these questions, she spoke not a word to him.
Malton Hill. That is your goal,she reminded herself.Stay in Gray’s good graces, retain your dowry and the lady you have fought to become.
For his part, Tavish mirrored her actions. He didn’t speak to her directly and rarely even looked her way. Heaven knew what Gray had threatened.
But Tavish was clearly just as aware of her as Isla was of him.
The morning after their kiss-that-was-scarcely-a-kiss, the company congregated in the breakfast room. Gray had yet to make an appearance, thank goodness, improving Isla’s mood. Miss Crowley insisted Tavish sit between her and Isla, placing Tavish on Isla’s left side.
Across the table, Miss Forsyth kept up a steady barrage of impertinent questions regarding Gray.
“Do you think he intends to marry soon?”
“I cannot say.” Isla stirred her tea.
“Have you noticed him favoring a specific young lady?”
“My brother is the soul of discretion, Miss Forsyth. He would never raise expectations.”
The girl was relentless. The longer her interrogation went on, the more frustration built in Isla’s chest. She didn’t want to discuss her brother, but neither did she wish to give Miss Forsyth a stern set-down. Such was not Isla’s way.
“But if His Gracewereto show partiality toward a young lady, what would he do or say?” Miss Forsyth asked.
Before Isla could respond, she felt a warm weight pressing into her thigh under the table—Tavish’s leg resting against her own, steady and supporting.
I’m here, it said.I see ye.
It was a shocking breach of etiquette but one unseen underneath the tablecloth.
Isla sipped her tea, steadying her breathing and willing her blush away. She dared a peek at Tavish from beneath her lashes.
His lips were slightly pinched, as if suppressing a grin. As if he found this situation rather absurd.
Abruptly, she found herself fighting a smile of her own. Miss Forsyth’s increasingly brazen questions about Graywereridiculous, now that Isla considered them in that light.
“A gentleman will always keep his feelings close, Miss Forsyth,” Tavish said, drawing the girl’s attention. “It is to Lady Isla’s credit that she does not break her brother’s confidence. Miss Crowley has suggested boating on the lake today. What say ye?”
The conversation shifted after that, but Tavish kept his leg pressed to hers. Isla was sure he meant it as a silent bolstering, but the touch abraded her already frayed nerves.
The next day, Isla lost one of her gloves while on a walk. It was a favorite glove, and she and the ladies spent the better part of an hour retracing their steps in search of it, but to no avail. They told their woes to the gentlemen over lunch, who made suitable noises of sympathy. Tavish didn’t say a word.
But lo, when Isla went to retire that night, there was her glove—muddy and a bit worse for wear—waiting on her dressing table.
She found a note inside, written in their code.
Because I ken how much ye detest cold hands.
The dear man.
How was she to manage the pang beneath her breastbone? With each kindness, each act of caring, a bit more of her succumbed to him. She may not know the man Tavish had become, but the soul of him, as he said, was the same.
But how she longed to know the man, too. To relearn the crags and valleys of his heart. To bask in the warmth of his deep baritone and simply listen. She would see him smiling with Miss Crowley or offering to assist Lady Milmouth or sharing a memory with Captain Ross . . . and that pang would intensify. A craving to claim Tavish as her own once more.
It was the purest madness.
On the final day of the house party, Isla could scarcely think.
She felt as if she walked the cliff’s edge of Cairnfell itself. A thin line where one wrong step could send her tumbling into catastrophe.
