“I had best go. Good day, madam,” he told Elga. He reached out and touched touch the baby’s soft pale curls. The little girl laughed, showing four tiny teeth.
Elga backed away as if he meant to snatch the baby. “Good day to you, water-man!”
He nodded and turned to go. Glancing again toward Margaret, he saw her pause to catch his gaze again. This time the look she sent was plaintive, full of longing and vulnerability. He felt the deep pull of it within.
On impulse, he whirled to walk toward her.
Chapter Six
“But my lady,”Mrs. Berry protested, “Thora says the man thinks I am Lady Strathlin!”
“Let it be for now, Berry, please,” Meg entreated, while Thora hurried away to join Elga and the baby. “I will tell him the truth soon.”
“But I canna talk to a man when I am in my swimming costume!”
“You need not speak with him. Go back into the water if you want.” Meg glanced toward Dougal Stewart, crossing the sand toward them. “He will think you value your privacy.”
Mrs. Berry nodded, looking relieved. Lifting her sodden bathing skirt, worn over knickerbockers and high laced slippers, she walked down to the water and stepped in again.
Meg smiled, relieved too. Let the man think the baroness was elusive. But soon she might have to reveal all to Mr. Stewart—if he revealed all to her. Nodding to herself, she waited for him.
But could she speak to him this time without feeling that deep wanting, that ache of loneliness—or without remembering betrayal?
Again she noticed how much the father resembled the son. Sean was blond like her, but his features and eye color, and his charming smile was like Stewart’s. Someday Sean would have his father’s build—wide shoulders, long, muscled legs, confidentstride. The man had a natural physical beauty, and his son had inherited that.
She sighed. The man deserved to know his son. She must tell him the truth, and yet she feared what he might do once he knew.
Sean called out, holding up another shell for her to see. She picked up her leather-covered book and went toward him, bare heels sinking in damp sand.
“Lovely, Seanie,” she said, as he dropped a conch shell into a bucket. She crouched beside him to study several tiny, nearly transparent fish in a little pool where the seawater spilled in among rocks. Sean stepped into the shallow pool, and Meg did too, laughing with him as the little fish tickled past their ankles.
“You must draw these wee fishies in your book!” Sean said.
“I will.” She set the leather volume on a dry rock shelf.
“Hello, Mr. Stooar!” Sean called. Meg turned, heart slamming.
“Good day, sir,” she said stiffly.
“Miss MacNeill, good day.” He wore shirtsleeves and a dark brocade vest with dark trousers. He must have been working earlier, for he did not look as if he had come to visit.
“Look at my shells!” Sean set his wooden bucket on a rock as Dougal Stewart leaned forward. Sean lifted a slimy snail and plopped it into the man’s palm. Stewart admired it and put it back gently. When Sean handed him a tiny crab, he laughed with the boy as it leaped to freedom and scuttled away down the beach.
“Go on, wee man, hurry back to your home and kin,” Stewart said.
“Go home, all of you, back to your kinfolk!” Inspired, Sean tipped the bucket to set the rest of the tiny captured crabs free.
Dougal crouched beside the boy to watch them scurry away. “They will have tales to tell when they get home,” he said, while Sean nodded wisely.
Meg watched, silent, touched more deeply than she wanted to admit. Stewart rinsed his hand in the little pool, water splashing over her bare feet where she stood ankle deep. Feeling his gaze on her toes, she stepped out quickly, dropping the hem of her skirt.
She could cover her feet now, but the man had seen all of her years ago; she wondered how much he remembered of the night she could not forget. Blushing, she caught his gray-green glance and saw awareness there. Ducking her face under the shade of her wide straw bonnet, she stepped away to sit on a rock, covering her limbs and feet with her gray skirt and petticoat.
“Did you come out here just to rescue crabs and snails, sir?”
“Not at first. But at least the wee crabs of Caransay will think kindly of me now.”
She gave him a sour look from under the rim of her bonnet.
