“This is insane!”
“No! Cameron, you do not understand!” The man’s voice trembled, his countenance had gone white with emotion. “It’s the darkness, you see. She cannot stand the darkness.”
Kinsdale was losing his mind.
Roc Cameron wasn’t prone to rudeness, but he threw up his hands, turned around, and started walking down the slope of the estate toward the water. Kinsdale! The man was too much. Roc could not agree to the insanity.
Nearing the bottom of the slope, he turned away, not wanting to see the workers on the docks. He stared down at his ship, the gunned sloop theLady Elena, named for his mother. It would be time to sail again soon. Very soon.
Inhaling sharply, he turned away and strode back toward the eastern side of the house. The outbuildings were there. Neat cottages for the servants, the smokehouse, the kitchen, the stables, the blacksmith’s shop, the cooper’s workhouse, the laundry. Far below them, enveloped by trees, lay the graveyard.
He walked there and paused. His mother and father and an infant child lay closest to the new fence. A hundred years of Camerons lay beyond them.
He walked back to the slate headstones that his father had ordered re-etched just before his death. They belonged to his great-grandparents, Jassy and James. He touched the cool stone and thought of the pair. They had endured. They had come here and created a dynasty, and they had endured. They had braved the Indians and remained despite the annihilating attack of 1622. Their heirs had populated a large part of Virginia. And the Carolinas and New York and the eastern states, he thought with some amusement.
Then his smile faded slightly and he turned around again, leaving the cemetery behind him. He strode back toward the house. Spotswood and Kinsdale were no longer on the porch. He heard their voices coming from the formal dining room. Peter would have seen to it that his guests were fed, he knew.
He hesitated then strode up the wide, sweeping stairway that seemed to climb to lofty heights from the expanse of the hall.
At the top of the stairway was the portrait gallery.
Camerons were always painted. The practice had begun with Jamie and Jassy, and continued to Roc’s mother and father. He passed by his parents’ pictures briefly. They were wonderful portraits. She was beautiful and dark and shyly smiling; he was proud and dignified, and the strange silver color of his eyes had been well captured by the artist. Still, Roc did not pause long. He walked down past his grandparents and great-grandparents. Then he paused, before Jassy Cameron.
She had been a fighter, so he had heard, and the sizzle of fire was captured in her gaze, while laughter was captured upon her lips. She had been a beautiful woman, stunning, and with fine and delicately chiseled features. Her eyes had been painted so that they seemed to fall upon him. Even as a child, he had often come to the portrait, fascinated by it.
He glanced at Jamie. Lord Cameron. Dignified, proud, young. Roc owed them something. Camerons peopled the New World and the Old, and yet he was the heir to their legacy.
Jassy Cameron’s glance seemed to remind him so.
“All right, milady,” he said softly to the picture, “I have long been a man, and I do realize that three decades is considered a sufficient age. And perhaps my life is haphazard and reckless. But, you see, I’d had in mind to choose the mother of my children myself. This girl could be cross-eyed or quite insane, you know. She could bring in some horrible disease.…”
His words trailed away. His eyes fell over the length of the portrait hall. To every Cameron pictured here, honor had been sacred. He cast his hands upon his hips and walked back to his parents’ pictures. “I am against this, sir. Totally. You taught me to be my own man in all things, but you have left me with this vow! For the record, sir, I am totally against the marriage. But”—he paused—“as you wish it, Father. I will do my very best for her.” He started to walk away, then he turned back, wagging a finger at the portrait. “Sir, I do hope that she is not cross-eyed or hunchbacked!”
He burst into the dining room. Spotswood and Kinsdale were just picking up tender bits of venison. Startled, they looked at Roc.
“Let’s have done with this thing, then,” he told Kinsdale.
Kinsdale leaped to his feet. “Peter, Peter! You must run quickly to the rectory and bring back Reverend Martin. And his daughter, Mary. She may stand for Skye.”
Roc nodded. “Do it, Peter, please. Sir—” he addressed the governor. “You will stand witness to the legality of this rite?”
“If Lord Kinsdale’s papers are in order, and it is your wish.”
“It is my wish,” he said.
The governor sighed, staring at the table. “And it was such a delectable dish!”
In a matter of minutes, the flustered Reverend Martin arrived with his blushing young daughter.
Words were said, and papers were signed and witnessed, and then the deed was done.
Kinsdale was no longer interested in dinner. Indeed, he no longer had a wish to remain. “I intend that everyone shall know that you have wed her, and the Cameron name will keep her safe.”
“Lord Kinsdale—”
Roc tried to stop the man, but Kinsdale was in a hurry, asking Peter to call his coachman and valet so that he might start back, despite the fall of darkness.
“Theo! Listen to me. There are no guarantees upon the open sea! Can’t you see, man—”
