“Be that as it may, Isla, a lady only learns to swim”—he ticked off his fingers—“if her father, a brother, or her husband teach her. Learning any other way is reprehensible. Our father certainly didn’t teach you. Neither did Matthias nor I. You have no husband. So again, I ask, who taught you how to swim? Was itthat man?”
You have no husband.
Hah!
“Captain Balfour? He has a name, Gray.” Isla looked away to the fire. “I refuse to speak with you when you are seething over the Balfours. No good will come of it.”
Silence.
Isla so rarely disobeyed him—fear made her tread carefully around Gray’s temper—that her recalcitrance stunned her brother into silence.
Lifting her chin, she looked at him. Really looked at him. The scowling brows under his lion-mane hair. The stern slash of his mouth.
The horror of his temper the evening he had found her with Tavish would never abate. The aftermath of that fury had been horrific. What lay in store for her now?
Words crowded Isla’s throat—quarreling, fractious things she could scarcely contain.
Will you toss me out for insubordination, Gray? What will you do once you learn I am married tothat man?
Why do you hold the circumstances of my birth like a knife to my throat?
Tavish had rattled something loose within her. A need, perhaps, toshrug off the last vestiges of the compliant, passive self she had so loathed as a young woman.
Or maybe her courage had a simpler origin: Tavish had returned, and Isla finally felt like someone would stand beside her in a crisis. A person who would reach out a hand and say, “Grab hold. I have ye,” just as Tavish had earlier.
And how tragic that Isla didn’t believe her brother would help her but intrinsically trusted her soon-to-be former husband.
Rather telling, that.
“Isla,” Gray finally said on a deep breath. “Please answer me.”
“So what if Captain Balfour was the one to teach me, Gray?” Isla threw up her hands. “He is my past. And the past will occasionally intrude on the present, particularly when the knowledge I learnedthenmight save my lifenow. Also, may I remind you, Captain Balfour is the gentleman who jumped into the lake to save me. Not you. Not Colonel Archer. Captain Balfour was my savior. And he was the only gentleman present whoknewI could swim.”
“Do not attempt to turn this argument back on me.”
“I’m merely stating facts.”
“When and how did he teach you, Isla?”
“Enough. I’m not speaking with you like this.” Isla pushed to standing.
Gray tracked her movements. “You will do me the courtesy of answering my questions, Isla.”
“Why, Gray? Are you going to summon a doctor next? Demand proof I am still a virgin?”
“If I must.” He looked away, muttering something that sounded likedamnable Balfours. “At the very least, I wish to know if I need to bloody that man for his impertinence toward you.”
You can try.
Fortunately, Isla stopped that sentence in time.
“Enough! I never engaged in such intimate activities withthat man, as you call him.” Not for lack of wanting to engage in intimate activities, she declined to add. And not for lack of planning to engage in them. “When will you stop punishing me for a brief lapse in judgment seven years ago?”
Gray pivoted, head shaking. “The more I learn of your dalliance with Balfour, the less ‘brief’ I think it was. How deep was your involvement there?”
“I’ve already said all I intend to say, Gray. I am yet a maid. You needn’t worry that you are selling damaged goods to Colonel Archer.” Gray at least had the decency to wince at her choice of words. “I have no intention of revisiting the mistakes of my youth. My goals and dreams for the future are focused on Malton Hill, as well you know. Can you please do me the honor of believing me?”
Her brother stared at her, plumbing her gaze as if he would ferret out all her secrets.
