Lady Isla blinked, a slow up and down of her long eyelashes, as if she believed him a ghost and needed to verify his tangible being.
How odd. Not even a word said, and he could read her thoughts.
“Lady Isla.” He lifted his hat in greeting.
“Mr. B-Balfour,” she stammered. She did not, he noticed, dip her head or bob a shallow curtsy in greeting. Nor did she call himTavish,as had once been her wont.
Either he had spooked the manners right out of her, or she rightly viewed him as beneath her notice. He felt every inch of his shabby greatcoat and scuffed boots.
“CaptainBalfour,” he couldn’t help but correct. “I may have traded in my uniform, but the military remains.”
“Captain,” she whispered. “With the Gordon Highlanders?”
“The 92nd Regiment?” Tavish frowned. “Nae, I only enlisted with them initially. I was transferred to the Rifle Corps, the 95th, shortly thereafter.”
“You are . . .were. . . a rifleman?”
“Aye.”
A damn fine shot, too.
He didn’t add that bit.
Her eyes darted to the faint scar across his upper right cheekbone. If the saber tip of Napoleon’schasseurhad slashed even an inch higher, Tavish would have lost his eye.
“H-how . . . or r-ratherwhyare you here?” she stammered.
Her accent was melodic and achingly English, courtesy of years of governesses and elocution lessons. Once, there had been faint traces of Scotland. Now, their homeland had been scrubbed out of her. Just as memories of him had surely been scrubbed clean.
He managed a weak smile. “There are . . .mattershere to be settled, as well ye know.”
Her chin lifted two inches, acknowledging the hit.
“I see.”
“Never fear, I shan’t be home long. Just . . . long enough.”
“Oh.”
That’s all she said.Oh.Lips pursing into a perfect circle. As if they were discussing the weather and not the enormity of everything that lay between them.
“Isla—” Tavish stopped himself and cleared his throat. “That is,LadyIsla, if ye could spare a minute, perhaps we might discuss—”
A shadow flickered in the trees behind her.
Her elder brother, the Duke of Grayburn, strode from the tree line—walking stick swinging, clothing immaculately pressed and styled.
Time had changed the man not at all.
Grayburn still had the mien of an insufferable arse.
Why were two Kinseys on Balfour land?
Head down, the duke watched the ground, placing his feet with care. Tavish noted the deep sole of the man’s right boot—nearly two inches thicker than the neighboring left one. Grayburn might be a duke, but he had to pay Hoby, his boot maker in London, a wee fortune to balance out the length discrepancy between his two legs—a defect that had plagued His Grace since birth.
Sometimes, Tavish was petty enough to take comfort in the man’s deformity.
Today was one of those days.
