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Only she did.
That night, she slept in her old room with her sisters.
She’d washed carefully, scrubbed and scrubbed her hands and face.
But in the morning, she saw that the sobs she’d muffled in the night had left the pillowcase with a great black stain.
3
James stepped out of the inn and saw nothing but smirks. Men, women, children—everyone going about their business in the village wore the same expression.
James caught someone’s eye, a mistake. The man called out.
“Unco hot yesterday, eh, milord?”
Smirks exploded into titters.
James cleared his throat. What to say, really?
“Rather,” he replied.
“Glad ye got new duds,” called someone else.
Two girls tilted their bright heads together, all giggles and blushes.
“They’re not,” observed a boy, with a cheeky smile, and one of the girls threw a small turnip from her basket. It hit him on the ear.
“Ow,” he remarked, good-naturedly, still smiling.
James hoped his own smile looked good-natured. He knew he deserved the chaffing. He’d made a spectacle of himself, arriving by air, then dashing about in cotton drawers while the MacKinnons’ sheep cote burned.
Under different circumstances, he might even linger in the lane and take his licks. But every moment he tarried, his father might be . . .
He didn’t want to think of what his father might be doing.
He only wanted to stop it.
He increased his pace, passing the tavern and the market, the kirk and the smithy. Children milling about outside the school shrieked with mirth when they saw him.
James pulled a face, and they squealed and huddled, suddenly shy. One little girl stood apart, hands on her hips. She pulled a face back at him.
The next generation’s Isobel MacKinnon.
Instead of continuing to the harbor, James took the path behind the school, heading up the hill. With every step, he wondered if Isobel was hiding somewhere in the heather, ready to leap out with a double-edged dirk and stab him in the heart.
What a cock up. He still had no idea how the hydrogen ignited. It was inflammable, of course. In fact, the scientific community used to refer to it as “inflammable air.” Most accidents, however, occurred at high altitude, when the gas expanded too rapidly.
The friction of the twisting ropes might have generated a spark.
That was the most reasonable answer.
A spark of lust couldn’t start a real conflagration.
He paused and looked behind him, down at the little cluster of buildings and the harbor. Fishermen crowded the pier, another of his grandfather’s constructions. The ferry was approaching from the mainland.
He turned and walked on. When he summited the hill, he climbed onto a boulder and gazed seaward over the green fields and pastures that sloped down to the pale shingle beaches and pebbled coves.
Boats dotted the beaches. He’d pay handsomely to borrow one. After today, his father was more than likely to stop his monthly allowance. But James was the rare young aristocrat without gambling debts and unpaid tradesmen’s bills. He’d lived frugally at Oxford, and then in Edinburgh. His bank account held funds sufficient to his needs. He could send money to compensate a fisherman for a boat, and a farmer for a sheep cote, ten times over. He’d be left with plenty for his purpose.
