He shrugged. “I have already said goodbye.”
“And your clothes?”
“I am wearing all of them, all at once.” That explained his stuffed appearance.
“And your books?”
“I know them by heart, miss.”
Arabella sighed. “All right, Ewen.”
Ewen swung up onto the driver’s seat. “I will ride on the outside. I want to see everything.”
Boyd Cormack suddenly appeared, having walked up from the village, like Ewen. He helped Alasdair and Paterson finish lashing the trunks in place.
“Thank ye, Boyd.” Alasdair shook his hand and went into the cottage, saying he would try to hurry Mrs. Gunn along. Paterson went to the front of the carriage to investigate the boy who wanted to share his seat.
“Mr. Cormack,” Arabella started. But Boyd shook his head.
“Miss Lovelock, ye dinnae need to say anything. I ken that ye willnae be my wife. I hope though that we will still be related, in some way.”
Arabella felt herself color.
“He dinnae speak much when I knew him as a boy. Almost a mute. So be patient with him if he is slow to speak his mind now.”
“I—I—” Arabella stammered. “I will endeavor to be. Patient.”
“Goodbye, Miss Lovelock.”
Then he did something that she had never seen anyone in the village do. Boyd Cormack took her hand and bowed over it. And he was gone down the road, his pale-red hair glinting in the morning sun.
Maggie came out of the cottage, fussing, with Alasdair at her heels. As Maggie locked the door and walked around the cottages twice to check the windows, Alasdair came up to Arabella. His eyes went to her neck wrapped with his brown scarf.
“You left your scarf in the cottage yesterday,” she said.
“Aye.”
“I have another for you.” She went into the reticule she meant to take into the carriage with her and brought out a piece of bright-green woolen tartan with fine red-and-black stripes. “I hemmed it last night.”
“I’m sorry to have put ye to any trouble.”
“Nonsense. I am the reason you have no scarf. Lean down, Dr. Andrews.”
He did and she wrapped it around his neck and crossed it over and tucked it into his coat.
“It is the Ross hunting tartan,” she said.
He straightened up and looked at her with no sign of recognition.
“The Andrews wear the Ross tartan,” she explained. “I bought a length in Inverness to make a dress.” She realized then she was giving away perhaps too much of her secret life, so she finished in a rush, “But I thought it would also make a scarf for you. There is still plenty left.”
She looked into his eyes. She had been right. Her memory from almost four years ago had not been faulty. The green of the tartan was the same as the green of his eyes.
Fourteen
Alasdair did not know what to make of his new scarf. He had no notion of the Andrews family wearing the Ross tartan. That had not been part of his childhood. His father had died when he was one. His aunt who had raised him from age four after his mother’s death had been his mother’s sister. He had never known any members of his father’s family.
Arabella had bought the tartan—it seemed—knowing that it was for his father’s clan. And she planned to make a dress. From it. For her to wear herself, he presumed.
