Page 34 of Victorian Bride

“I do not think he would see her naked and dancing the tarantella in front of him if you were in the room,” Lottie said. “And in fact I do not put much stock in the rumors. Kayden has never shown much interest in English women. I do not know what would make the Auteberrys think that he might look any differently on their daughter.”

“Everyone believes people will look differently on their daughter,” Eleanora said. “But I do not believe that you need be worried, Mya. Truly, Kayden is not going to look for another. He is quite smitten. You have no cause for alarm.”

“I am not alarmed,” Mya said defensively. “I am the one he has been walking with this last week, and the one to whom he brought flowers.” She wondered if she was trying to convince them, or herself.

Either way, it settled some of her concern to know that Kayden was not and never would be interested in Blanche Auteberry. Jealousy was hardly a rational emotion, after all. But there were some paths of logic that even it could follow.

She was the one Kayden had gone to his knees for, and the one he could not keep his hands from. If young Miss Auteberry had ever intended to be competition for his affections, she had lost the fight before it even began.

Unless of course, she was a distraction, and Kayden McGregor was looking for someone with a title or money to keep his Lordship intact.

No. Mya shook her head. Kayden only had eyes for her. And she, for him.

Chapter 15

Though Mya had not, to her knowledge, been up into the hills beyond the city, she could have sworn she knew them somehow. Knew the way the air of them would feel against her skin, and the view down to Inverness, curled against the shore where Beauly Firth met Moray.

The heather was all in bloom, and the earthy, sweet scent of it hung on the air, mingling with the hum of the bees in the blossoms. Mya closed her eyes and breathed in the fresh summer morning, luxuriating in the breeze that brushed her cheek and curled around her shoulders. Just ahead, Kayden’s mount carried a picnic basket full to the brim with luncheon supplies, courtesy of Lottie and Eleanora. Mya gave her horse a little nudge, and the mare trotted forward to walk side by side with Kayden’s gelding.

“Thank you,” Mya said, just loud enough to be heard.

Kayden turned to look at her. “For what?”

“For today. It is so lovely here.”

He smiled, the promise of something up ahead in his eyes. “You haven’t even seen the best of it yet. We will get there.”

“I am holding you to that,” Mya said.

For a time, they rode together in silence, simply enjoying the sunlight that made it down through the clouds, and the sounds of the world around them. It was a breezy day, the gusts of wind that whirled through the heather keeping the midges away.

“There is something I wish to tell you,” Kayden said finally.

Ahead of them, a crofter's hut was nestled in a hollow, smoke rising from the chimney. Lunch, perhaps, Mya thought. The scent of wood smoke drifted down to overwhelm the heather for a moment before the wind blew it away. Mya shivered, though it was not cold. The scent had been so shockingly familiar. For a moment she had felt the warmth of a fire against her skin, heard the murmur of a voice in her ear. But it was gone as quickly as it came.

“Mya?” Kayden prompted.

She shook her head, willing the odd feeling away, and smiled at him. “Yes?”

“I would like to tell you something, if you wish to listen.”

“Of course.” Mya watched him watch the landscape ahead, his expression thoughtful.

“The reason I do not talk about my family,” he said finally, “is that I don’t know them.”

Mya stared at him. She almost opened her mouth to ask why in the world he had been such an arse about it when she asked, then, when he knew that she didn’t know who her family was either. She was hardly going to judge him for being in the same circumstance.

But he was opening up to her, at last, and she didn’t want to ruin it. She didn’t ask.

“When you say you don’t know them…”

He sighed. “I mean that I have never, to my knowledge, met them. When I arrived here, I was taken in by a man who had room, and generosity enough to give aid to strangers without expecting anything in return. Much like what Lottie and Eleanora have done for you. But he was an older man, and as his health declined, I became more and more involved in looking out for him. Eventually I was the person doing most of the caretaking.”

His voice caught, briefly. Mya would not have heard it if she had not been listening so intently.

“So when he… passed on, he left his lands and money to me. He had no family any longer. No heirs. Without him, I would be nowhere and nothing.”

“And now you are a lord,” Mya finished.