Page 17 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

Seven Years Earlier

Pettercairn, Scotland

T avish paced in the wee clearing, anxious for Isla to arrive.

Instead of climbing the slope of Cairnfell, today he was meeting her at its base on the north side.

Here, the River Northcairn swung inward in a slow loop, creating a hollow around a quiet pool of water against a granite cliff.

Secluded and remote, it was difficult to find unless one knew the way through the dense underbrush.

He tilted his head upward, his skin eager for the sunshine after months of drab skies.

Each year, April would steal a day or two from July, warm lazy afternoons that brimmed with light. Today was precisely such a day. Hot enough that Tavish couldn’t help a longing glance at the dark pool of water. A swim would be just the thing to chase away the lingering remnants of winter.

A twig snapped. He whirled around just as Isla emerged from the surrounding forest, the broad smile on her face somehow brighter than the sun overhead. She dropped a basket covered with a muslin cloth on a nearby rock before racing to him.

“Tavish!” She breathed his name on a happy sigh, throwing herself into his arms.

He wrapped his hands around her waist and pulled her into his chest, breathing in the heady scent of her lavender soap and clean skin. Her head tucked neatly into the side of his neck, slotting into his body like the final piece of a puzzle.

“I missed you,” she whispered into his throat, lips grazing his skin and igniting a wee fire there.

But then, all of him felt afire near Isla.

What had begun as a meeting between friends had evolved over the past months . . . moving into something deeper and more profound.

At times, Tavish marveled at the depth of his affection for this lass. He was merely seventeen years of age; Isla, only sixteen. Surely, neither of them was old enough to form a true lasting connection. The sort of love that a life could be built on.

And yet . . .

It thrummed within him. A bone-deep assurance that had been steadily growing over the past weeks and months.

He loved her.

Not as a boy loved a friend or as some calf-love flutter of infatuation.

No.

Tavish loved Isla as a man loves a woman.

He adored the way her laugh shook her shoulders. How her eyes never failed to track a bluejay or robin in flight. How she became agitated and loud over any slight toward a friend, himself included.

How their thoughts and dreams felt like two halves of a whole, and when they conversed, it seemed as if they were the only two people to see reality through the same eyes.

They were strange creatures, he and Isla.

He knew she felt like an outsider in her family—the only girl, the one her brothers usually ignored, just as her father had before them.

Tavish was lost in a different way within his own family. There simply wasn’t enough money or love to go around. The demands of his other siblings had always been louder than his own, and so Tavish faded into the background—the afterthought. The son no one ever asked after or fretted over.

Having a person of his own was a profound gift. Someone he could confide in, who trusted him with her own confidences. Their snatched bits of time were never enough. The longer this secretive relationship went on, the more unbearable it became.

He wanted to spend every hour of every day with her.

They hadn’t kissed. Not yet. Their minds were so attuned that Tavish already understood her thoughts.

Until he and Isla kissed, they could pretend that this wasn’t happening. That they weren’t scions of the Montagues and Capulets, falling in love. Everyone knew Romeo and Juliet ended in disaster.

But did Tavish and Isla have to endure the same fate?

Today, Isla pulled back first from their embrace, a grin on her lips. “I have come prepared!”

Bouncing on tiptoe beside the pool, she turned back to her abandoned basket. Instead of the scones or cheese he had supposed, she removed the top to reveal a towel. She unfurled it proudly.

It took Tavish a moment to understand.

He laughed. “Today is the day, lass?”

She nodded, eyes lit with excitement. “Today, Tavish Balfour, I will learn to swim.”

“Huzzah!”

Tavish had been trying for weeks to coax her into learning to swim.

It was a lifesaving skill and one that most gentlewomen never learned, for obvious reasons.

Unless a lady had a brother or father or husband who wished her to learn—or she was scandalously daring, as Tavish’s Isla—a lady would never be so unclothed in company.

Isla clasped her hands. “I can scarcely believe I am going to undertake this. You have described the basics, but as you’ve said, I need practical experience. I am determined! So turn around, if you please, while I disrobe to my shift.”

He jolted at her words.

Och, he spent far too much time trying not to imagine Isla in her shift. What had he gotten himself into?

On a steadying breath, Tavish did as he was bid, turning around and shucking his own jacket, waistcoat, neckcloth, socks, and shoes. After a moment’s consideration, he pulled his shirt over his head, too, leaving him in only his breeks. The sun felt heavenly on his bare chest.

Behind him, he could hear Isla moving . . . the rustle of her clothing, the shuffling of her feet. It was almost unbearably intimate. A preview of his yearned-for future.

Tavish was unsure if swimming together was the most brilliant idea he had ever had. Or, categorically, the worst.

The urge to turn around, to swing her into his arms, was almost overwhelming.

Instead, he took three steps to the water’s edge and dove in.

The icy water swallowed him whole, jolting his system and instantly cooling his ardor.

He and Callum had spent many an afternoon swimming here over the years.

Tavish doubted there was an inch of the swimming hole he hadn’t memorized.

He stroked across the pool to where the water met the cliff face.

A wee ledge rested there, the perfect height for sitting.

He slid onto it, water lapping at his breastbone.

Finally, he dared a glance toward Isla.

She stood at the edge of the pool where it sloped up a grassy bank, the white of her shift a stark contrast against the dark cliffs and trees. Sunlight rimmed her from behind, catching the indistinct outline of her narrow waist and the length of her legs.

He forgot to breathe.

Some faint voice in his brain suggested closing his eyes, but he could no more look away than Aladdin beholding his Cave of Wonders.

She dipped a tentative toe in the water and shuddered before shooting him an accusing look.

“You didn’t mention the water would be baltic.”

“I did. Ye simply chose not to believe me.”

She dipped a toe again and hopped backward, shaking her head .

“Ye can’t ease into the cold, lass. Ye have to jump in, all or nothing.” He pushed off the ledge, swimming across to the bank where she stood. “Once you’re in the water, it’s not half bad. As I’ve said, it’s the first minute that is the worst.”

Standing half out of the water, he extended a hand.

Isla’s eyes flew wide, her gaze instantly engrossed with cataloging every feature of his bare chest.

Gooseflesh flared across his skin.

“Isla?”

Her gaze jerked upward to meet his eyes, a rosy blush on her cheeks. She looked so young in that moment. Her hair straight and uncurled around her face, the smattering of freckles stark on her cheekbones.

A girl hovering on the edge of womanhood.

At times, Tavish swore he could hear in her words the woman she would become.

She would be speaking—about the plight of women in the local poorhouse, about the flawed logic of the minister’s sermon, about her dreams for a house of her own to run and manage—and he would see an older version of her laid over top the current.

As if he could envision the woman she would be five, ten, or even thirty years from now.

He longed to know every iteration of her in every period of her life.

“Come, lass.” He waved a hand. “I ken my body is bonnie enough to be a distraction, but ye must resist temptation and forge onward.”

She rolled her eyes, but her blush deepened regardless.

A large breath swelled her chest. Biting her lower lip, she reached for his hand, stepping fully into the water with a gasp.

The grassy bank quickly turned to moss in the water, and Tavish well knew how slippery it could be underfoot.

Though he was holding her hand fast, her left foot slid out from under her.

Shrieking, she grabbed for his arm, nearly pulling him under with the sudden collapse of her weight into his. Tavish managed to steady her, but not before they both splashed into the water, buried up to their necks. Isla’s legs ended up half atop his own in the water, an arm around his neck.

She wheezed at the cold, her hand fisting into his hair. Gently, Tavish wrapped his arms around her waist, steadying her .

“I have ye, lass.”

She nodded, but he could feel the cold trembling of her body.

“Let’s get ye moving,” he said. “The more ye work your muscles, the warmer ye will feel.”

Holding her at arm’s length, he walked backward into the pool. She scrambled to hold onto him.

“What did I tell ye before? When we discussed this?”

“L-let the buoyancy of the w-water hold me aloft,” she chattered.

“Precisely.”

Slowly, Tavish showed her how she could float on her back before moving to a basic swimming motion. Before long, Isla was treading water and doing a rudimentary sort of paddling around the pond.

She insisted on exploring the small ledge at the back of the pool, sitting as she kicked her feet, water lapping against her collarbones.

Tavish sat beside her, an arm braced behind her back.

“Thank you,” she said, looking up at him. Water clung to her eyelashes. He ached to kiss them away.

“For teaching ye to swim?”

“Yes . . . and for teaching me to be brave.”

“ Och , lass, I’m not sure ye needed any lessons in that.”

Isla’s hand cupped his cheek, her wee fingers cold against his skin.

Her blue eyes searched his.

“I’m tired of this in-between,” she murmured. “The knowing of not-knowing.”

Tavish smiled. How like her, those words. And how like him to immediately understand them—

I want to know what it is like to kiss you. I want to decide that we will fight to be together.

Bending down, Tavish pressed his forehead to hers. “Are ye sure, lass?”

“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything, Tavish Balfour.”

“Here?”

“Yes.”

“Now?”

She smiled, looking around them—the dark water swirling against their bodies, the black cliff at their back, the trees and grass rimming the pool, the sunlight glittering on its surface.

She turned back to him.

“Yes. Now.”

Her grip tightened on his head and, stretching upward, she pressed her lips to his—soft, fleeting, tentative.

A riot erupted in Tavish’s chest—the wonder of her trust warring with the urge to chase her mouth and feast.

She went to pull back, but Tavish stopped her with one hand around her waist. His hand trembled, caught between opposing desires.

Isla touched a finger to his lips. A finger that also trembled, he noticed.

“You appear so . . .” Her voice drifted off.

“Appear so . . . what?”

“Yearning,” she finished.

He nearly laughed. Of course, he yearned. He ached and craved.

Capturing her fingers, he pressed a slow kiss into her palm.

Her lungs caught.

It was all the permission Tavish needed.

Shifting his hand to the back of her neck, he tilted her chin upward, his mouth unerringly bending to hers.

Her lips were chilled, soft and pliant, and he sucked her gasp into his lungs.

She was the sweetest thing he had ever tasted.

Lady Isla Kinsey wasn’t the first lass he had kissed.

But by all that was holy, Tavish intended she would be the last.