“Yes,” Fletch said, that same wonder in his voice. “It scarcely seems real.” He clapped a hand to Tavish’s shoulder. “I know that you don’t approve of Grayburn as a rule, but even you must own that his sister is as lovely and refined a lady as has ever lived.”
“Aye,” Tavish managed over a throat gone sandpaper dry.
“I shall count on you both to assist me,” Fletch continued. “Keep the other ladies diverted, so I can spend more time with Lady Isla. I hope to settle our betrothal soon, possibly even by the end of this week.”
Only later, as he lay staring at the canopy above his bed, did Tavish realizethathad been the point—the precise juncture in time where he should have confessed that Isla was the lady he had married.
However, in the moment standing with Fletch and Ross, Tavish was too stunned to utter another syllable. The wordbetrothalrolled around his brain like a billiard ball, knocking all other thoughts aside.
And in that wake, two facts blinded him to any other reality.
One, Isla had known when they spoke atop Cairnfell. She knew she was being courted by another gentleman with the intent of marriage.
And two, she hadn’t said a damn word of it to Tavish. Regardless of what had happened and would happen between them, pursuing a secondmarriagebeforesecuring a divorce definitely resided in the column entitledDetails I Must Tell Tavish.
He wanted to rage. To scramble up the sides of Cairnfell and bellow his fury.
Instead, he shuttered his expression and grimly followed Fletch and Ross into the drawing room.
11
Seven Years Earlier
June 30, 1810
Pettercairn, Scotland
Isla buried her face in Tavish’s chest, hands clasped around his waist. She adored the perfect way her frame nestled into his, as if his body had been made for the simple purpose of supporting hers.
“I never get to hold ye long enough.” His chin rested on the top of her head. “I want ye with me every minute of the day, not these wee stolen hours.”
Haarhad settled over the landscape—great sheets of fog rolling in off the North Sea and blanketing the coast in an ethereal mist.
Today, Isla and Tavish were standing in a copse of dense brush halfwayup Cairnfell. It was discreet and difficult to find unless you knew where to look, particularly in thehaar. No one should discover them here.
And yet, Isla worried.
She worried that Gray would learn of these meetings and would send her away. Or that Lord Northcairn would uncover them and forbid Tavish from seeing her. Or that a comet would fall from the sky in a great pillar of fire and obliterate them all.
Her worries were not precisely bound by logic.
“I miss you, too.” Lifting to tiptoe, Isla pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “The worst is watching you walk away, not knowing if or when I’ll be in your arms again.”
Tavish tightened said arms. “I always fear each time will be our last together.”
Isla pulled back, looking up into his beloved face. The warmth in his gray eyes, the tumble of his red hair across his forehead. She pressed a finger to his impossibly full lips, marveling at their give. He kissed her fingertip.
Would it ever grow old, she wondered? Touching him like this? Tavish touching her in return?
She rather thought it wouldn’t.
“I love you,” she whispered.
He kissed her forehead. “And I love ye, lass.”
He had said the words to her for the first time three weeks past, and she had immediately echoed them.
Now, it had nearly become a benediction.
