Page 26 of A Rogue in Twilight (The Whisky Rogues #2)
“It is marvelous,” he said, joining her to study the painting in its ornate gilt frame.
“My grandmother loved it. A local artist, she said once.” The scene showed a meadow and a grove of trees whipping in the wind.
The sky was purple, pink, and deep blue, a gorgeous twilight scatted with stars.
Tucked in the landscape, tiny people danced about while others rode past. It seemed quaint to him and he had never given it much attention.
“I loved it too,” Elspeth said. “Grandda and I sometimes visited here for tea with Lady Struan, and I would study the wee dancers and white horses and the magical twilight sky.” She smiled up at him. “The local artist was my father.”
He peered close at the signature in a bottom corner. “Niall Mac—MacArthur. Your father, indeed!”
“He had a gift for such, though he was a weaver too. He painted this the year before I was born, Grandda told me, and Lady Struan bought it from him. It is a fairy painting. Do you see?”
“I thought it was just trees and such.” The twilight sky and billowing trees were rendered with a deft hand, he saw now. Looking closer, he saw the dancers wore gossamer veils with a glow of light around them, while cloaked figures rode on horseback between the trees.
“A skilled and imaginative artist. I am impressed. So my grandparents knew your family before you were born?”
“Aye, they would have. Long ago, the Struan estate was owned by my great-great-grandfather, who sold it to your kin. That was before the Jacobites rebelled, but many Highlanders were failing due to English laws and invasions of property.”
“I knew it was acquired a century ago, but did not know it originally belonged to the MacArthurs. Is Niall MacArthur living at Kilcrennan too? You never mentioned.”
“He—is gone. I never knew him or my mother. Grandda raised me from infancy.”
“Oh, I see. I am sorry.” He felt touched deeply by that.
“I know what that is like. My parents died when I was eight,” he said.
“My siblings and I were separated into the care of relatives. My aunt, Lady Rankin—you met her last August—raised Fiona and I in Edinburgh. We are twins, and stayed together. Patrick and William went to other kin.”
Her gaze was warm with understanding. She rested a hand on his arm briefly. “So we are both orphans.”
“I would hope we have happier things in common.”
“A love of fairy lore?” She laughed. He loved the silvery sound of it. “So you are a twin! I liked your sister very much. I am glad you had each other during those years.”
“She liked you as well.” The day they had met Elspeth at the ladies’ assembly, Fiona had agreed with Sir Walter Scott that James must see her again.
Fate had apparently arranged it. He frowned, bemused by the notion.
“Thank you for telling me that. I think you do not share much about yourself.”
“There is safety in secrets,” he agreed.
“Sharing something so personal takes trust. So thank you.” Her clear, steady gaze met his. The sense that she understood him, perhaps as kindly and sympathetically as his twin, washed over him.
“Trust is important, aye.” Though he did not come easily to that, he realized he trusted Elspeth, though he did not know her entirely and suspected she had secrets too.
“Do you remember your parents?” she asked.
“I have good memories of them.” He still felt a sharp sense of loss there, and did not willingly open that door.
“My father was a scholar, a good man, calm and fair. My mother—kind. Lovely,” he added, unable to say more.
Each time he thought of her, he remembered her beautiful voice and imagined roses and lavender, her favorite flowers.
“Lavender,” Elspeth said. She inhaled, eyes closed. “I can smell it somewhere.” Startled, he shook his head. “There are no flowers in here.”
“You are fortunate to have siblings,” she went on. “I have none, and I know very little about my parents. Grandfather does not talk about them much, but he says—well, you would laugh. He says they are with the fairies.” She looked away.
“I would not laugh at that. Your Grandda is an interesting character.”
“Very. Sometimes I dream about my parents and hope they were like the beautiful couple in my dreams. Grandda says aye, but he likes me to be happy.”
“Of course.” He studied the painting again, and a new detail caught his eye. “Did your mother model for your father? One of the girls looks like you.”
“Truly?” She rose on tiptoe, wobbling on her injured foot. James steadied her arm. “Oh, I see! That one—and another here, and there too. They look alike.”
“They resemble you. And there is something about the shape of her face.” As she glanced up at him, he touched her cheek, her chin. “Aye, much the same.”
Touching her felt like heaven. He lifted her chin with a finger. She smelled wonderful, cool rain and warm woman. Lavender too, somehow. It was comforting—and exhilarating.
She smiled. “I wonder if my father painted her. Grandda never said. I do not know what she looked like, nor do I know her kin. Their marriage was brief. She died with my birth. And he left. Died. I do not know much about it.”
“If that is her, she was a beauty, and you favor her.”
“This is like a gift, something of my parents to keep. Thank you!” She rose and kissed his cheek.
He sucked in a breath and set both hands at her waist, then pulled her toward him for a new kiss that she returned willingly. Heat pulsed through him, a desire for more, for this comfort and ease and excitement.
She sighed and slid her hand along his collar, touched his jaw—and leaned away. “I must go,” she whispered, looking up. He could lose himself in those eyes, silvery and magical somehow.
“You need not rush.” He brushed back her hair, kissed her brow.
“But I must,” she murmured. Caught in his arms, she did not break his hold, resting her head for moment on his chest. “If the roads allow, I should go home. Grandda and our housekeeper will be worried if I do not return soon. I apologize for being so much trouble. Please do not feel obligated. You know—about marriage.”
“I would feel better about this if we did marry. To be honest, it might be convenient for both of us, and much to our liking.”
“Liking?” She sounded disappointed.
He should have phrased it differently, should have said what his mind had begun to whisper. Love. It was a revelation, but still forming.
She moved away from the fireplace and her father’s painting. “You have work to do and must have other plans. I am in the way here.”
“You are not.” He suddenly remembered. “I am expecting guests in a few days. My aunt is coming up with some others to tour the Highlands. They will stop here.”
“Will your sister come up as well?”
“She is, and our younger brother too. Miss Sinclair also. You may remember her.”
“Oh. The one who set her cap for you.” She glanced at him.
“I give her no encouragement.”
“But she is lovely, and a wealthy heiress, I heard it said, and so a part of Edinburgh society. She would be an ideal wife for a viscount.”
“So would you.” He tipped his head. “It seems we are both eager to avoid other engagements. What if I asked you again to marry me?”
She tilted her head, eyes twinkling. “You are persistent.”
“I am,” he said firmly. “I do not regret having an obligation to ask.”
She stepped back. “But I am keeping you from your work. Is there a gig or cart that will do on the roads?”
Rebuffed again, though not sure why, he was unwilling to give up. “Very well. We will leave it for now. There is an old gig in the stable. I will fit it up with one of the horses.”
He had felt they were on the edge of real agreement, felt his life about to change for the better. But things had whirled again without warning. She was a fickle thing—or else there was something that frightened her.
“Tell me. Is there some reason you are so reluctant to marry?”
“Why would you think that? It is just not—necessary.” She moved along, fingers tracing over the spines of books. “Are you doing some research for your grandmother’s book about fairy lore? Is it something you must do here, or in Edinburgh?”
Deflected again. “It is a condition of her will that I finish the book. Some research and annotations are needed. I have found books here that will be helpful.”
She pulled a book, opened it, slid it back. “But you do not believe in fairies.”
“Not particularly, but it makes no difference to the work. Her book is a thorough compilation of stories and personal accounts. I will add more, and then if it is published, readers can decide for themselves what they believe.”
“The author as well. One must believe wholeheartedly in what one does.”
That simple truth gave him pause. “But many write about a subject they are knowledgeable about, even if they do not necessarily agree.”
“Just as one may make a marriage without love, if there is an obligation?” She examined another book.
He inclined his head. “Is that the trouble, Miss MacArthur?”
“Marriage needs love.”
“Not everyone would agree with that, though it is a pretty notion.”
“A pretty notion.” She flipped the pages of a book. “Are you sure you want my assistance with your book? We might have to mutually agree on the subject.”
“What?” He was distracted by the lovely curve of the back of her neck, small and vulnerable just where her glossy dark hair was rolled in a braid; he was distracted by the delicate shell of her ear.
And he was preoccupied by her response and her questions.
She wanted to know how he felt. That was fair, though he was not entirely certain.
This was moving fast, and overt sentiment went strongly against his nature.
“Miss MacArthur,” he said. “I care. I do.”
She kept her back to him, studying open pages. “Do you?”
He touched her shoulder, then traced a finger along the back of her neck. She turned quickly, sweetly, into his arms.
The kiss happened naturally, familiar now, tenderness without ruse or agreement.
He knew the risks, knew he was losing his heart, his very soul here and now.
He wanted to lose those to her. Brushing his lips over her cheek, her earlobe, he remembered the fierce passion of the night before that had so overtaken him.
Drawing back, he set her a little apart, reluctant again to let the depth of his feelings show. He was not used to this.
“What if we were engaged briefly? You could break it off when you want. If you want,” he added.
“It is a wicked bargain.” She tapped a finger on his chest. “Never make a bargain with the fairy ilk.”
He went still, reminded of his grandmother’s demand. “Are you of the fairy ilk?”
“Who knows?” She looped her arms around his neck. He could not resist her, felt a spinning within so compelling that he pulled her close, kissed her. He felt like a man drowning, and she his capricious, beautiful rope.
He drew back. “Any more of that, my lass, and we should forego an engagement and marry quick.”
“If we both agreed.”
“You drive a tough bargain,” he murmured, and took her face in his hands to kiss her, feeling her arch against him, feeling her sigh on his lips.
The door to the study pushed open then, and at the creak of the door, James looked up to see Osgar enter with the terriers trotting after. He had forgotten the hounds had been there and had wandered off. He scratched the wolfhound’s great gray head as the dog pushed between them.
“Enter the fairy hound to rescue his mistress.”
“He wants to remind me to leave before anything else happens here.” Then she closed her eyes. “But we will not be alone for long.”
“The MacKimmies will not be here until later today. Perhaps tomorrow with the bad roads.”
She shook her head, her back to the window, silhouetted in the light. “Someone is coming to the house. A girl. There is a coach not far behind. And I feel that my grandfather is already returning. He will be home tonight, sooner than I thought.”
“The lass with the Sight knows all,” James said, bewildered.
“She does, sometimes.”
He glanced through the window at a view that spanned eastward, and saw gray drizzle and mist floating in long clusters over hills purple with heather.
Then, far off, he saw a small figure, a woman walking along the ridge of a hill. Moments later, a coach rounded the base of a hill, coming slowly along the muddy track.
“Someone is coming,” she said. “I told you.”
Puzzled, James shook his head. “Even if you had the eyes of a hawk, you could not have seen them coming. Your back was turned to the window.”
“Now will you believe me, James MacCarran?” she asked quietly. “I know things. I am not what you think I am, nor am I much suited to life in the city.”
He struggled to piece all this together, yet desire warmed him, and a sense of hope rose in him, rusty and yet there. He did not understand her, but he wanted her quite desperately now. But he would not make a fool of himself by falling for fairy nonsense. Everything had an explanation. Everything.
“Then we should go, sooner than—I wanted.” As she walked past him, a feeling overwhelmed him, physical desire mingling with deep longing. “Elspeth.”
She spun and reached out just as he took her into his arms and kissed her again, long and thoroughly, and she returned a fervent kiss that erased doubt, frustration, time itself.
Then he drew back, brushed her hair back, kissed her brow. “You cannot deny that there is something strong between us. Shall we agree on an engagement? I will speak to your grandfather.”
She shook her head. “I think not.”
“Fickle lass. I thought you were ready to agree.”
“I am. And then it changes. Perhaps it is my fairy blood,” she said lightly. “They do say it is in my kin, far back. Or more recently,” she added.
“You have no idea,” he said, “how much I want to believe that.”
“Perhaps you will come around to it someday.” She smiled, whimsical, amused, and walked ahead of him.