Tavish swallowed the vitriol down. He wanted his father’s cooperation, not a fight.
“My goal is to keep the fact of my marriage and divorce quiet.”
“Out of the newspapers, you mean,” Mariah added.
“Precisely. If all is done with discretion, then there will be no scandal, particularly if I had some assistance with the matter.” Tavish glanced meaningfully at their father.
Lord Northcairn made a sound of disgust. “I’ll have none of this.” He drew his hand in a sharp line. “The fact that ye married a Kinsey at all is beyond the pale. Ye can both rot in your disgrace! Ye and yourwifewill be out of my house and my sight by morning!”
He stomped from the room, shutting the door with aboomthat rattled the window panes.
Silence echoed in the aftermath.
Crossing to a sideboard, Tavish poured himself another finger of whisky. He could feel his siblings staring at his back.
“Da’ will come around eventually,” Callum said. “Give him a few months to grow accustomed to this news.”
Tavish gritted his teeth. He didn’t have a few months. There were problems to solve now.
“So it was Grayburn who purchased your commission.” Mariah said the words as a fact, not a question. “Not a distant, generous uncle.”
Tavish nodded. A single slice of his head.
“Grayburn knew? About your marriage?” she asked.
“Nae. He merely knew there was a connection between Isla and myself. He learned of our marriage three days ago and cast Isla out.”
“What will ye do?” Callum asked.
“Divorce her, if Grayburn will agree to take her back under his wing. It’s what Isla wishes.” Tavish turned back to his siblings. “I have little beyond the funds from my commission to offer her. It’s not enough to support a lady. Not at the moment.”
Callum winced. “Ye ken I will be eternally sorry about your inheritance, Tavish. Someday, somehow, I will find a way to make it up to ye.”
Tavish clenched his jaw at the apology offered far too late. “I’m sorry, too.”
“Ye don’t want to divorce her,” Mariah intuited.
Tavish laughed. “It doesn’t matter what I want, Mariah. Isla doesn’t want me. It will take some weeks, perhaps even months, to sort out, particularly with Grayburn being recalcitrant and Da’ refusing to help. I hadhoped that we might stay here in the interim, but . . .” He sent a telling look at the door their father had just slammed.
Tavish drained his tumbler in one long gulp. Perhaps if he got drunk enough, he could forget his difficulties for a few hours. Though he doubted there was enough whisky in all of Scotland to make him forget the bleak despair in Isla’s eyes at the thought of being well and truly stuck with him for a husband.
“Ye have nowhere to go,” Mariah said. Again, not a question.
“Nae.”
His sister rose to her feet, hands smoothing her gown. “I believe I have an idea. A wee way that Callum and I can help.”
26
Here we are,” Lady Mariah said, leading the way up the ancient spiral staircase of Cairnfell Castle.
Isla followed, the heat of Tavish’s large body at her back.
After crying for the better part of two days, a melancholic numbness had set in, as if the tidal wave of her grief had annihilated every other emotion with its weight.
Her inner landscape resembled the aftermath of a flood—mud and tree limbs pushed against rocks, houses knocked from their foundations. Labels fluttered from each destroyed thing: Love, Belonging, Family, Hope.
And yet . . . Tavish remained—stalwart and true.
