Page 21 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

Seven Years Earlier

Pettercairn, Scotland

I sla buried her face in Tavish’s chest, hands clasped around his waist. She adored the perfect way her frame nestled into his, as if his body had been made for the simple purpose of supporting hers.

“I never get to hold ye long enough.” His chin rested on the top of her head. “I want ye with me every minute of the day, not these wee stolen hours.”

Haar had settled over the landscape—great sheets of fog rolling in off the North Sea and blanketing the coast in an ethereal mist.

Today, Isla and Tavish were standing in a copse of dense brush halfway up Cairnfell. It was discreet and difficult to find unless you knew where to look, particularly in the haar . No one should discover them here.

And yet, Isla worried.

She worried that Gray would learn of these meetings and would send her away. Or that Lord Northcairn would uncover them and forbid Tavish from seeing her. Or that a comet would fall from the sky in a great pillar of fire and obliterate them all.

Her worries were not precisely bound by logic.

“I miss you, too.” Lifting to tiptoe, Isla pressed a kiss to the underside of his jaw. “The worst is watching you walk away, not knowing if or when I’ll be in your arms again.”

Tavish tightened said arms. “I always fear each time will be our last together.”

Isla pulled back, looking up into his beloved face. The warmth in his gray eyes, the tumble of his red hair across his forehead. She pressed a finger to his impossibly full lips, marveling at their give. He kissed her fingertip.

Would it ever grow old, she wondered? Touching him like this? Tavish touching her in return?

She rather thought it wouldn’t.

“I love you,” she whispered.

He kissed her forehead. “And I love ye, lass.”

He had said the words to her for the first time three weeks past, and she had immediately echoed them.

Now, it had nearly become a benediction.

I miss you, and I love you.

Until we meet again, and I love you.

As if the words simply could not be repeated enough.

She saw him, and it was akin to coming alive, like the Tuscan sunflowers Miss Farnsworth had once described. Girasole , they were called in Italian, which translated as turns-toward-the-sun . Or sun-turners .

Isla felt like that. Tavish was her sun, and whenever he appeared, her entire soul rotated in his direction, helplessly drawn to his brilliant light.

Finally, she understood the profundity of every poet who had scribbled lines about love. What had Shakespeare said ?

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Yes! That was the precise sentiment. Isla would cast herself to the very edge of doom—beyond, even!—before she would cease loving Tavish Balfour.

“What are we to do, Tavish?” she whispered.

Their situation felt untenable—a band stretched too taut that could snap at the slightest disturbance.

They never spoke of the future. But the deeper she fell in love, the less Isla could envision a life without Tavish.

He stroked her cheek with his thumb. “Ye do know that in Scotland, we don’t need permission to marry.”

“Yes. It’s why the English fly north to Gretna Green to tie the knot.”

“Aye. Anyone can marry here, even at our ages. It only requires two witnesses.”

“Is that all?”

Isla hadn’t thought . . .

Or, rather, she had thought. About it . Marriage and all its attendant activities . . . at great length and in shocking detail. She had even gone so far as to bribe one of the housemaids to tell her precisely what occurred in the marriage bed between a man and a woman.

She supposed most gently-born ladies would swoon over what the maid had described. Isla, however, had hung on every word. And then, to imagine engaging in that activity with Tavish. Her Tavish.

The thought left her flushed and warm with a terrible, empty yearning deep in her belly.

“I have given it some thought. How we could go about a marriage . . .” Tavish began. “Or, rather, that is . . . if ye should like . . .” A ruddy flush crawled up his neck.

“Are you . . .” Isla stepped out of his arms. “Are you asking me to marry you, Tavish Balfour?”

He tugged on his neckcloth. “And if I am?”

Euphoria . That was the only word Isla could summon to describe the emotion that battered her breastbone .

Married.

To Tavish.

YES!

“Well,” she said, breathless. “If you ask me to marry you, I expect you to do it proper-like.”

“Proper-like?”

She pointed at the ground. “On your knees, of course. And including many flowery things about my person and your adoration of my virtues.”

He grinned.

But he did not kneel. Instead, he grasped her hands loosely in his.

“I can’t offer ye much, Isla Kinsey.”

“Are you proposing?”

“Am I on my knees?”

“No.”

“Precisely. I am merely discussing. Exploring possibilities. We both know, if we were to marry, it would be against our families’ wishes. My father will refuse to harbor us.”

“Yes, and Gray will not release my dowry to you.”

“I don’t want your dowry.”

“You should.” She smiled. “I understand it’s thirty thousand pounds plus a pretty estate in Gloucestershire called Malton Hill. I’ve never seen the house, but I’m told it’s a lovely old Tudor building.”

His eyebrows lifted. “I would hate for ye to lose it.”

She placed a hand to his cheek. “But I would be gaining you.”

He kissed her lips. “All is not lost. I have a bit of money set by. My own inheritance from my mother. It’s not something that my father can deny me.

It won’t be much to begin our life together, but I am hale and hearty and determined to succeed.

I shall explore options and ensure there is a future for us. ”

“Yes! I will be at your side, cheering you on with every step.”

Tavish bent down and kissed her lips again. “Someday, our families will see the error of their ways and reconcile.”

“We merely need to set the example.”

“Aye.”

He kissed her longer, lips clinging. Isla stepped into his body, eager to deepen their embrace .

Instead, he held her away from him.

Isla cocked her head in confusion.

And then clapped her hands over her mouth as Tavish dropped to his knees.