This would be her first birthday without her father.
And, like his family, her older brother was in London for the Season.
If all their kin were currently in residence, Tavish wouldn’t have dared to arrange a meeting with her. Callum smacked the back of his head if he caught Tavish so much as looking in Lady Isla’s direction.
But Tavish had to try. His sense of fairness forced him to return the compassion she had shown him last year. To bring some happiness to what was surely a difficult birthday for her.
Knowing she would likely visit her parents’ grave today, he had left a straightforward note there:
A wise person once told me that the first birthday is the hardest. If you wish a compassionate ear, meet at the base of Cairnfell Castle this afternoon.
He had not signed it.
If she didn’t realize the note was from him, then the connection he had sensed last year clearly had been one-sided.
Better to know now. As it was, she already occupied too many of his thoughts.
Was she as vibrant as he recollected? The girl last year had nearly sparkled with an untamed energy. Her bubbling laughter haunted his dreams.
Tavish waited for an hour.
Then two.
Just when he thought she might not show, a dark figure emerged from the surrounding forest, walking toward him, a determined lift to her chin.
The mourning black of her gown did dreadful things to her complexion, dimming the roses in her cheeks and lending her skin a sallow color.
Their eyes met, and his heart thumped . . . perhaps its first true beat in a year.
With a start, he realized that Isla was taller than he had supposed. Not looming for a female, but taller than average. Enough that he wouldn’t have to bend too far for a kiss.
Not that he was going to kiss her.
He shouldn’t. He wouldn’t.
But he was a seventeen-year-old male, so kissing and all its attendant activities were rarely far from his thoughts.
She stopped six feet before him.
He doffed his hat and gave a lavish bow—the one his mother had drilled into his manners.
“Lady Isla,” he intoned.
“Mr. Balfour.” She curtsied, elegant and smooth.
“Thank ye for coming.” He grinned, his most winsome expression. Or so Mariah told him.
Lady Isla had been crying, he noted. Her red-rimmed eyes could mean nothing else.
His smile faltered.
“Have you come to cheer up my day?” she asked. He detested the wee warble at the end of her sentence.
There was less of Scotland in her vowels this year. That English governess of hers was erasing all traces of their country.
“Aye, lass. I consider it my sacred responsibility. The proper duty of a birthday twin, as it were. I shan’t consider your birthday properly celebrated until I hear ye laugh.”
She smiled, but not a true one. More of an impoverished cousin to a smile.
