“It’s different when you’re a widow. You’ve been married. No one would think anything of you marrying again.”
“No, they won’t, because I never will.”
Roslynn frowned at the interruption. “But thetonwill take one look at me on the marriage block next to all those young debutantes and laugh their heads off.”
Frances smiled. “Honestly, Ros—”
“It’s true. Hell’s teeth, I’d laugh myself to see a twenty-five-year-old spinster making a fool of herself.” Roslynn snorted.
“Now stop it. I tell you—Iswearto you, your age won’t matter.”
Roslynn couldn’t believe it, much as she wanted to. She hid it well, but she was very close to tears. This was the very reason she was so terrified of putting herself forward in search of a husband. She was going to make a fool of herself, and that was something she couldn’t bear.
“They’ll think something’s terribly wrong with me because I didn’t marry before now, Fran. You know they’re bound to. It’s human nature.”
“They’ll understand perfectly when they hear you’ve spent the past six years nursing your grandfather, and they’ll commend you for it. Now, not another word about your age. That is the least of your worries. And you have quite managed to avoid answering my question, haven’t you?”
Roslynn chuckled at the stern look on her friend’s face, a warm, husky sound that was uniquely her own.She and Nettie had arrived at the town house on South Audley Street late last night, so late that there had been no time for the two old friends to talk until this morning. And it was an old friendship, one that had survived twelve years with only one visit in the last ten, and that was when Frances had brought her son, Timmy, to the Highlands for a holiday four years ago.
Roslynn had other women friends in Scotland, but none as close as Frances, and none to whom she felt free to confide all her secrets. They had met when they were thirteen, when Gramp had carted her off to school in England to “ladify” her, since he swore she was turning into a wee hoyden with no sense a-tall of her station—which was certainly true, for all that, but not very fair as far as she was concerned at the time.
Roslynn had lasted two years at school before she was kicked out and carted back to Cameron Hall for “incorrigible behavior.” Gramp didn’t scold. Fact was he had missed her too much and was glad to have her back. But he enticed one of the fine teachers away from the school to continue Roslynn’s education, and there wasn’t any mischief terrible enough to make Miss Beechham quit; Gramp was paying her too much.
But during those two years in England, Frances and Roslynn had been inseparable. And if she hadn’t had her own coming out when she turned eighteen, she had shared Frances’ through their letters. Through Frances, she knew what it was like to fall in love. Through Frances, she also knew what it was like to have a husband you didn’t love. And although she never had any children of her own, there wasn’t a single thing she didn’t know about them, at least abouta son, because Frances had shared every phase of Timmy’s development with her.
Roslynn had shared everything too in her letters over the years, though her life in the Highlands had been singularly lacking in excitement. But she hadn’t wanted to worry Frances these last months with Gramp’s fears, so she hadn’t told her about Geordie. And how to tell her now? How to make her understand that this was not just an old man’s senility to scoff at, but a very real and dangerous situation?
Roslynn decided to start at the beginning. “Frances, do you remember my telling you that my mother drowned in Loch Etive when I was seven?”
“Yes, a year after your father died, wasn’t it?” Frances said gently, patting her hand.
Roslynn nodded, trying not to remember how desolate she had been from both deaths. “Gramp always blamed his grandnephew, Geordie, for my mother’s death. Geordie was a mean child, you see, always hurting animals and causing accidents that he could laugh over. He was only eleven at the time, but he’d already caused one of our grooms to break a leg, our cook to be severely burned, and one horse to be put down, and no telling what he’d done at his own home that we never heard about. His father was my mother’s cousin, and when he came to visit, he always brought Geordie. And the day my mother drowned, they’d been visiting a week already.”
“But how could he have caused your mother to drown?”
“There was never any proof, Frances. The boat she took out was assumed to have overturned, and she was too constricted in her heavy clothing, it being winter, to be able to swim to shore.”
“What was she doing out on the loch in winter?”
“She had grown up on the loch. It was second nature to her to be in the water. She loved it, swam every day in the summer, and did all her visiting that could be done up and down the shore, both sides of the loch. If she could row herself, she’d have nothing to do with a carriage or a horse, no matter the weather. And she had her own little rowboat that was easy for her to handle. We both did, though I was never allowed to take mine out alone. But anyway, as good a swimmer as she was, she didn’t make it out that day.”
“There was no one to help?”
“No one saw it happen. She’d planned to cross the loch that day, so likely the boat went down too far in the middle. It was several days later when one of the crofters happened to mention to Gramp that he’d seen Geordie down by where the boats were kept, earlier in the week. If Geordie weren’t such a little devil for causing accidents, Gramp would never have thought anything of it. But the fact was, Geordie had taken my mother’s death near as bad as I did, which was most surprising since he had never really liked my mother or me.”
“So your grandfather thought Geordie had tampered with her boat?”
Roslynn nodded. “Something that would have caused a slow leak. It would have been just the sort of thing Geordie would have laughed over, to have someone get a dousing and lose a good boat. If he did do it, I don’t think it was any more than a nasty prank, one gone awry. I don’t think he meant tokillanyone, just get them wet and mad. He couldn’t have known that my mother wouldn’t have been rowing near shore. It wasn’t often she crossed the loch.”
“But still”
“Yes, still.” Roslynn sighed. “But Gramp could never prove it, and so what could he do? The boat was never found to show it’d been tampered with. Gramp never trusted Geordie after that, never let him come to the Hall but that he put one of the servants to following him. Hehatedhim, Frances, deep down, yet without telling his father what he suspected, he couldn’t deny him his home. But he swore Geordie would never get anything out of him, and he was emphatic about that. When Geordie’s father died, he left him only a small inheritance. Gramp knew Geordie resented him having so much, while Geordie’s side of the family had so little, but that came with Gramp being the oldest son and inheriting the Cameron wealth. And Gramp knew for certain Geordie wanted the money when he asked me to marry him.”
“You do yourself a disservice there, Ros. You don’t have only money to recommend you.”
Roslynn waved that aside. “The fact was that Geordie had never liked me, Frances, even as we got older, and the feeling was more than mutual. He resented me, you see, being Gramp’s closest relative. It wasn’t until his father died and he learned how little was left him that he did a turnabout and became Mister Charming to me.”
“But you turned him down.” Frances pointed out the obvious.
