“Was that jealousy, Tam?”
* * *
As everyone laughed at Erskine’s question, Laura tried to join in, but she was struggling. She knew Erskine’s words should not have bothered her, but she couldn’t help feeling crushed by them.
A highland lass. He wants a highland lass.
She knew there were many obstacles indeed between her and Erskine. He didn’t know who she really was, he thought she was a boy, and her betrothed was trying to find her. Yet, her logic did not seem to be winning the argument against her body.
Every time she looked at Erskine now, she felt a heat inside her. His smile could create sparks in her stomach that would sparkle and shoot much lower, down to a part of her body that she did not think proper for her to think about so openly.
The bawdy humor of the Scots’ didn’t always help. It made her imagine things, such things between her and Erskine that could never happen. Clearly, now such things were even more impossible than she had thought before.
He wants a highland lass.
She looked down at her body, suddenly feeling very disappointed that she had been born in London.
“How about ye, Billie?” Erskine’s voice disturbed her thoughts, prompting her to look up from the tankard.
“Hmm?” she said, confused. She had drunk so much ale that she was starting to feel dizzy. She had never had so much before, but everyone had been drinking, it had been an easy, fun evening, yet now she was beginning to see the problems that so much alcohol could cause.
She was sat cross-legged, resting her chin in her hand as she used to do when wearing fine dresses. She parted her legs and rested two elbows on the table, trying to adopt a more masculine stance.
“Aye, that’s a good point,” Camden said too. “What of ye, Billie? Did ye have a young lass in London?”
“Perhaps that is the real reason he wanted to go to Scotland, to run away from a lass who wished to marry him!” Aiden’s words caused them all to laugh again.
Laura looked down at the tankard and pushed it away from her across the table. She had had enough to drink for one night. Aiden’s jest had been a little too close for comfort. She was not running from a woman, no, but from a man who wished to marry her.
“Well, Billie?” Erskine pressed the point, urging Laura to look up again.
She could not answer, yet the liquor seemed to have loosened her tongue a little as she wanted to tell them something of the truth. She decided to opt for an enigmatic reply instead.
“There was an attachment suggested between me and another a little while ago,” she shifted on the bench, uncertain what to say, “but nothing came of it.”
“Just like that?” Erskine said, frowning, clearly not quite believing her. “How come?”
“We did not suit,” she shook her head. “We would have made an ill fit indeed.”
“An ill fit?” Tam repeated, clearly not liking the words. “What is it ye are lookin’ for in a lass?”
“Well, perhaps like you, Tam, I want to fall in love with someone who is both my friend as well as my lover.” Her jest worked well to change the topic of conversation.
“God damn ye, Camden, for havin’ to talk of Lennox,” Tam snapped quickly. Laura was happy to be drawn down a rabbit warren of conversation again, but this time she did not turn her head back to look at Erskine.
A friend and a lover.
Had it been another world, had she been born in the Highlands, she rather expected Erskine could have been both to her.
Chapter Nine
“Well, here is it, Billie. Inverness!” Erskine’s words were coupled with a swoop of his hand, and Laura looked up to see the small town before her with excitement.
As reluctant as she was to admit it, traveling through the Scottish countryside had been a tour of natural beauty. When they were not crossing hills and mountains, they had gone by lochs and waterfalls. No matter how many times Erskine teased her, imploring her to accept that Scotland’s beauty surpassed England’s, she would never quite admit it.
Now, Inverness was just as great a treat for her to behold. The town was placed on either side of a river, with a thin rickety bridge joining the two sides. Surrounded by green hills and moorland of heather, the town dipped in the center of a valley and was dappled with yellow stone buildings that reflected the low sun in the sky, appearing golden. There was a castle too, just outside the town on the side of the river, towering over the gardens around it, but it was the town itself that had Laura so mesmerized. She had often heard Miss Buchanan talk of it at length, and now, she finally got to see it for herself.
“It is beautiful,” she breathed, bobbing once in the saddle behind Erskine with excitement.
