“Hmmm, I still think there are things about you that I don’t know.” Miss Van Etten tapped her fingers lightly against his arm, as if to punctuate her words. Even with the oilskin jacket separating his flesh from hers, heat swirled into him. Although the waters remained still around them,hechurned.
“Ah, well, I’m sure we all have some secrets, no matter how inconsequential or mostly forgotten,” he managed, hoping he sounded clever instead of trapped.
“Oh no, not me. What you see is what you get,” Miss Van Etten said airily.
Sinclair didn’t believe her, and he doubted that even she thought that her statement was true. He’d begun to notice that she used blitheness to keep people at bay. It was as if she paradoxically used charm to pull people toward her while at the same time retreating herself.
As if confirming his suspicions, Miss Van Etten pushed onThe Briar’s throttle, and the speedboat’s nose pointed directly toward Frest.
“Humph.” He practically shouted out the sound to avoid it being drowned by the motor.
“I am an open book,” she returned gaily—too gaily. “I hide nothing.”
That was certainlynottrue, but before he could decide whether he wanted to press her further, Freya appeared on the bank. His half sister waved enthusiastically and then cupped her hands to shout something. Once again, Miss Van Etten turned off the engine ofThe Briar, and Freya’s words became comprehensible.
“Would you like to come to supper to celebrate officially becoming Lady of Muckle Skaill? Hannah is running over to Hamarray to invite your friend, Miss Morningstar, too,” Freya hollered. “I made a tablet, which is sort of a fudge!”
“It’s not quite official until the deed is registered, but I would be delighted to come!” Miss Van Etten hollered back. “Your cooking is always a treat!”
Freya clapped her hands together just as the twins appeared near the beach. Freya turned to her sisters and yelled, “She’s coming.”
The ten-year-olds immediately let out cheers and hurried back into the house, presumably to set the table and tell the others. Freya gave one last wave before she gathered up her skirts and tore up the hill toward home.
“It was kind of you to agree to come,” Sinclair said softly so there was no chance of his siblings overhearing. “I am sure you had plans of your own to mark the occasion.”
“Actually, I didn’t.” Miss Van Etten surprised him.
It would be easy to dismiss her response as a product of having so much wealth that the purchase of two islands was not a momentous occasion for her, but he thought he heard an odd, underlying note to her voice that sounded suspiciously like wistfulness.
“I suppose I might have had a bit of champagne with Myrtle, but this is much better,” Miss Van Etten said without a trace of charming blitheness. “It was very thoughtful of your siblings to think of me.”
“They have talked about nothing but you since your arrival,” Sinclair found himself admitting. “Hannah is still all agog over your racing career, and you have very much impressed Margaret—which is no easy task. The twins, of course, cannot stop talking about your clothes.”
“I never realized how wonderful children can be.” Miss Van Etten glanced toward the Flett croft, that hint of yearning in her topaz eyes now. “To be honest, I haven’t spent much time around young folks, which I am now beginning to think is my loss. They don’t have the airs of adults, and their welcome seems so sincere.”
Sinclair thought about the fakeness of the Earl of Mar’s world. In England, the monster was seen as a gentleman, as he followed the ridiculous social protocols of upper society. But all that mincing just hid his depravity, which he’d unleashed on Hamarray. The same toff who would not approach a woman without a proper introduction in a ballroom ordered his female servants—women he had the responsibility to protect—not only into his bedchamber but also into those of his cronies. Mar had been the doting father to his legitimate offspring, taking Reggie with him on holidays instead of banishing him to the care of a nanny or a governess on one of his other estates. Yet Mar had forced his illegitimate son to fight with his other young servants as his drunken cohorts placed bets on the outcomes.
Even Reggie—the cosseted heir—had been affected by his father’s gilt-covered dissoluteness. He could never quite reconcile the man who’d taught him to ride and shoot with the villain Mar had become when Reggie had been safely ensconced in a different wing of the house. Reggie had dealt with the conflict by doing his best to ignore Mar’s darkness. He’d created fantasies of grand adventures in his mind to distract himself from what he could not help but witness. His drive for heroism had been, in part, compensation for Mar’s misdeeds—a cosmic balance of sorts. Going to war had been Reggie’s chance to prove his goodness once and for all.
Although not all toffs practiced the kind of despicableness that Mar hid, there was a false glitter about many of their lives. For the first time, Sinclair wondered what it would be like for a young woman with Miss Van Etten’s spirit and intelligence to grow up in a society that especially prized demureness in girls. Would it have been hard to find her place in it? Had she, like Reggie, noticed its fakeness? Was blitheness her way of dealing with it like heroism had been Reggie’s?
“The children are truly excited for you,” Sinclair told her quietly. “Freya wouldn’t have baked the tablet otherwise. It is a treat that my mother used to make us only on very special occasions. It takes a great deal of sugar, so she wasn’t able to afford it for all our birthdays. The last batch she put in the oven was when she found out that little Alexander was on his way. And before that, she cooked it when Freya knit her first stocking by herself.”
“And Freya made the tablet for me!” Clearly astonished, Miss Van Etten swung toward him. The fact that she’d instantly recognized how much the dessert meant to his family touched Sinclair. Reggie—who’d grown up having his every demand immediately met—would have never fully realized the significance of the fudge. But Miss Van Etten—whose parents were even wealthier than Mar—understood.
“Aye, Freya did,” Sinclair said, “and I’m sure the bairns clamored to help her.”
To Sinclair’s shock, Miss Van Etten’s eyes misted. The sight knocked the wind straight out of him like a heavy strike to the chest. Emotions rushed to fill the sudden void—emotions he didn’t want to try to identify.
Miss Van Etten blinked and jerked her head toward the bow ofThe Briar. He thought her hand might have trembled just a bit as she reached for the throttle.
“Well then,” she said in a cheery, chipper tone, “we mustn’t delay in getting to shore.”
She shotThe Briarforward at breakneck speed, as if she could outrun her reaction to his words. But Sinclair was beginning to worry that it wasn’t possible foreitherof them to escape the emotions gathering around them like dangerous storm clouds.
“I wanted to give you this, Miss Van Etten.” Little Alexander had left his seat at the dinner table to hand Rose a chipped cup filled with water. In the center, a single delicate purple flower floated. Bending close to it, she noticed it had five heart-shaped leaves and a bright-yellow center.
“Oh, it is lovely, Alexander!” Rose said, afraid to even touch it with her finger—it looked so fragile. Instead, she lifted the porcelain toward her nose and sniffed. A faint but sweet perfume teased her senses.
