Page 3 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

Nine Years Later

Cairnfell

Pettercairn, Scotland

H e had arrived back at the beginning.

It seemed fitting, Captain Tavish Balfour supposed, that his path should take him here—across the River Southcairn at the shallow west ford and into the shade of the ancient Caledonian forest before sending him up the slopes of Cairnfell.

Yes. Returning to this place was good. To remember before confronting . . .

Well . . . everything.

The towering Scots pine dripped with moss as he urged his horse, Goliath, up the narrow path. Clouds raced overhead, blocking the sun and promising rain later. Wind tugged at his hat and snapped his greatcoat, bringing with it the scent of damp earth and whispered memories.

The trail crested the hill, the trees receding.

In the middle of a clearing, the ruins of Cairnfell Castle loomed—the abandoned ancient seat of his family, the Earls of Northcairn.

Four stories of stones so old that ferns and lemon-colored marsh marigolds clung to them.

Only the impressive oak front door guarded by an iron yett and the first two floors with their panes of glass showed any signs of habitation in the past century.

Generations ago, Tavish’s family had built the roomier Castle Balfour to the north, leaving Cairnfell Castle to be slowly reclaimed by the elements.

Beyond the tower house, the hill rose a final time to an area of bare ground. There an ancient cairn stood—the cairn atop the fell—an enormous pile of stones over thirty feet high.

In short, climbing the path to his ancestral lands felt like traversing through History itself.

Or perhaps it was merely Tavish’s own history, specifically. The ghosts he had returned home to banish.

This reckoning had been long in coming.

He swore he heard laughter on the wind. Her laughter. A giggling sound that had always clung to his senses like the sweetest honey.

Swinging out of the saddle, Tavish looped the reins around an obliging post beside the castle. He and his older brother, Callum, had driven the post into place when Tavish had been fourteen.

“Can’t leave our horses untethered while we . . .” Callum had drifted off with a suggestive lift of his eyebrows and a sideways glance at the castle, slamming the post into the loamy earth.

“While we what?” Tavish had asked, holding the oak pole steady.

His brother had rolled his eyes. Callum was nearly seventeen, and Tavish knew he had been spending far too much time with Farmer McKay’s bonnie widow.

“Ye’ll figure it out soon enough,” Callum had replied.

Tavish had figured it out—both Callum’s meaning, as well as what his brother had been up to with Widow McKay and other lasses at Cairnfell .

More history. More pain to be confronted.

At least Tavish had gotten Goliath out of Callum’s penance. He patted the horse’s neck before checking his Baker rifle and saddle bags—the muscle memory of a soldier too long at war.

All secured, Tavish turned for the tower house. He pulled on the yett—the metal gate protecting the oak front door—only to find it locked fast.

Huh . Here was something new.

The yett had never been locked, but now its iron bars appeared recently cleaned and oiled. At least someone was tending to the place. Mariah, most likely. His eldest sister had always been the first to address a need.

The laughter came again, tinkling and happy.

He frowned. Truly, this place could play fae tricks.

Walking around the corner of the castle, he looked to the cairn beyond. The views were always the best from its summit. Perhaps the higher elevation would give him some metaphorical perspect—

A shushing sound had him looking left.

Later, Tavish would wonder how that particular faint rustle had garnered his attention. But as a former officer of the 95th Rifles, a regiment of snipe shooters, he had spent years honing his instincts—slipping through forests like a phantom, attentive to the slightest noise.

Regardless, that soft swish stood out as significant.

He froze.

As if summoned, she emerged from the surrounding trees.

Tavish’s . . . she.

Lady Isla Kinsey.

A jolt pinned him into place. Like lightning shocking his muscles and stealing his breath.

She looked ahead, eyes on the cairn. She certainly didn’t see him, pressed into the shadow of the tower.

Why was she here, a Kinsey on Balfour lands?

His pulse pounded against his eardrums.

Tavish cataloged her differences. The passage of years had changed everything . . . yet nothing .

She was older, obviously—her expression more firm, her face settled into the defined lines of womanhood, the curves of her body more pronounced and, well, curved.

Unlike the girl she had been, Lady Isla now wore the height of current fashion—a blue satin spencer over a white gown of flowing muslin with a matching blue satin bonnet on her head. An ensemble that only the most expensive of modistes could create.

Lady Isla had spent considerable time in London, he realized.

Eejit . Of course, she had. What did he think she had been doing all these years? Sitting in the vast drawing room of Dunmore, embroidering bed curtains and swapping bonnet trimmings?

Lady Isla was the previous Duke of Grayburn’s only daughter and sister of the current duke.

No doubt, she was the most sought-after heiress in Polite Society.

While Tavish had been urging his men through the muddy slop of the Peninsula—fighting hunger, low morale, and French rebels in equal measure—she had attended dinners and routs and balls.

Watched the fireworks at Vauxhall and danced the night away in silk slippers.

Surely some half-drunk swain had stolen a kiss or two.

The thought curdled his stomach.

Naturally, the clouds decided in that moment to part. The sun blazed through . . . illuminating Lady Isla in a beam of light.

Tavish nearly rolled his eyes. Truly? he longed to ask the Universe. Isn’t this laying it on a wee bit thick?

Enough.

She was the reason he had returned here. They had unfinished business, the two of them. Why put off until tomorrow what he could accomplish the now? Tomorrow was hardly a guarantee. Carpe diem thoughts—those of a rifleman too accustomed to living in the shadow of Death.

Pushing off the stone, he walked toward her.

She startled—her gaze whipping to him, a hand pressing to her stomach in surprise.

Drawing near, he noticed her eyes were, as ever, the pale blue of Loch Cairnbeg in winter. And the framing bits of blonde hair on either side of her face still militantly refused to hold their curl, hanging defiantly straight .

Even seven years on, Lady Isla remained the bonniest lass he had ever seen—pointed chin, button nose, a smattering of freckles atop her cheekbones.

Tavish stopped a respectable four feet in front of her, his heart thumping against his ribs.

Lady Isla blinked, a slow up and down of her long eyelashes, as if she believed him a ghost and needed to verify his tangible being.

How odd. Not even a word said, and he could read her thoughts.

“Lady Isla.” He lifted his hat in greeting.

“Mr. B-Balfour,” she stammered. She did not, he noticed, dip her head or bob a shallow curtsy in greeting. Nor did she call him Tavish, as had once been her wont.

Either he had spooked the manners right out of her, or she rightly viewed him as beneath her notice. He felt every inch of his shabby greatcoat and scuffed boots.

“ Captain Balfour,” he couldn’t help but correct. “I may have traded in my uniform, but the military remains.”

“Captain,” she whispered. “With the Gordon Highlanders?”

“The 92nd Regiment?” Tavish frowned. “Nae, I only enlisted with them initially. I was transferred to the Rifle Corps, the 95th, shortly thereafter.”

“You are . . . were . . . a rifleman?”

“Aye.”

A damn fine shot, too.

He didn’t add that bit.

Her eyes darted to the faint scar across his upper right cheekbone. If the saber tip of Napoleon’s chasseur had slashed even an inch higher, Tavish would have lost his eye.

“H-how . . . or r-rather why are you here?” she stammered.

Her accent was melodic and achingly English, courtesy of years of governesses and elocution lessons. Once, there had been faint traces of Scotland. Now, their homeland had been scrubbed out of her. Just as memories of him had surely been scrubbed clean.

He managed a weak smile. “There are . . . matters here to be settled, as well ye know. ”

Her chin lifted two inches, acknowledging the hit.

“I see.”

“Never fear, I shan’t be home long. Just . . . long enough.”

“Oh.”

That’s all she said. Oh. Lips pursing into a perfect circle. As if they were discussing the weather and not the enormity of everything that lay between them.

“Isla—” Tavish stopped himself and cleared his throat. “That is, Lady Isla, if ye could spare a minute, perhaps we might discuss—”

A shadow flickered in the trees behind her.

Her elder brother, the Duke of Grayburn, strode from the tree line—walking stick swinging, clothing immaculately pressed and styled.

Time had changed the man not at all.

Grayburn still had the mien of an insufferable arse.

Why were two Kinseys on Balfour land?

Head down, the duke watched the ground, placing his feet with care.

Tavish noted the deep sole of the man’s right boot—nearly two inches thicker than the neighboring left one.

Grayburn might be a duke, but he had to pay Hoby, his boot maker in London, a wee fortune to balance out the length discrepancy between his two legs—a defect that had plagued His Grace since birth.

Sometimes, Tavish was petty enough to take comfort in the man’s deformity.

Today was one of those days.

“Look who has come home, Gray,” Lady Isla said.

Her brother’s head snapped upright.

Tavish nearly chuckled as he watched a series of emotions flicker across the duke’s face—curiosity, shock, horror, before finally settling on fury.