Page 35 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

“Save funds?! What if you cannot save sufficient?” The nervous energy thudding her heart blackened her thoughts. Rationality fled.

All Isla could see was the desolation of Tavish’s betrayal.

He had promised they would be together. She had married him based on that promise.

Instead, he had allied himself with Gray.

And now . . .

Now, he was leaving. Perhaps never to return.

“I don’t know!” The sentence burst from him on a frustrated rush. “I don’t know, Isla. Our plans unraveled and now every obstacle feels insurmountable and . . . and . . . I don’t know what to do. We’re both so young and inexperienced and . . .” He drifted off on a huff.

Regret.

That was what Isla heard in the breaths between his words. Regret that he had married her. Regret that she now hung like a millstone about his neck.

Just as Gray regretted the burden of her life.

The cuckoo in the nest. Unwanted. A noxious millstone to bear.

Isla took a step back from Tavish. Then two.

“Isla.” He reached for her .

But she was already shaking her head, tucking her hands to her chest and wrenching his wedding ring from her finger.

“You are trying to twist the reasons for your actions, Tavish, but they all reach the same conclusion—you are letting Gray buy you off. You decided to take his money and run. You can take this, too!”

She hurled the ring at his chest. It bounced off, clinking to the path at their feet.

Tavish scarcely glanced at it.

“Love, that isn’t at all what I’m saying, and ye ken it.”

“I’m not your love!” she hissed. “If you l-loved me, you would take m-me with you.”

“Isla.” He reached for her then, trying to pull her into his chest. “I’m promising to return for you. Ye be twisting my words, too.”

“No!” She wrenched free, dancing back.

“Ye must look at this logically, Isla. As an adult with a mature perspective. I ken that ye be not even a month seventeen, but we must—”

“So I’m a child now, too?!”

“Please, lass. Don’t do this. I want ye as my wife.”

She heard the pleading in his voice, but something had fractured within her. Some deep mooring that Gray’s cruelty had loosened. And now with the harsh battering of Tavish’s plans, her ties to rationality snapped entirely.

“Go then! Go and never come back!”

“Isla—”

“You cannot call me a child, and yet consider me a wife in the same sentence. You cannot tell me to behave like an adult, and yet dismiss my reasons as immature. I might be a child —” She leaned on the word with acidic scorn. “—but even I know that this isn’t what a marriage should be.”

“We’re both new to this, lass, but that—”

“No! We stand together. We go together. That’s the only marriage I want!”

“Isla. Please stop.”

“Don’t bother sending for me. I won’t come! Don’t write me, as I surely will not write you! ”

She hated that her self-pitying demands sounded like those of a child. Angry and taunting.

“Ye will change your mind, Isla. Ye must!”

“I won’t!”

“I’ll write ye as soon as I can. I’ll arrange some way for ye to receive—”

“No! Do not write me! I don’t want to hear from you. I shan’t read anything you send. I’ll burn it unopened!”

The following silence rang with the echo of her fury.

She could hear the harsh exhale of his breaths. As if, like her, he was seconds from screaming his rage.

Finally, Tavish shifted on his feet, lungs settling, gaze shuttering. His actions declared that, unlike her weak, juvenile self, he was capable of controlling his emotions.

“Very well, Isla. I won’t write ye. I will wait for you to write me.” So measured and precise those words, maturely shifting the decision back into her hands. “Ye can send me letters through Mariah. She doesn’t know about us. No one does. But I know she will help, if ye explain—”

“Go to the devil, Tavish Balfour.”

Spinning on her heel, Isla picked up her abandoned valise and walked home.

Isla returned to Dunmore as if in a fog.

She unpacked her bag, crawled into bed, and didn’t stir.

Once again, food was sent back down to the kitchen, uneaten. Not born of stubbornness but of a deep melancholy of spirits.

Tavish refused to listen to her. To understand why she couldn’t bear remaining under Gray’s merciless thumb.

Instead, when faced with the loss of his inheritance, Tavish had accepted Gray’s offer and left for a separate life—one that wouldn’t contain her .

What did Tavish think she would do without him? What future did he envision for her? What waiting? His plan sounded like more hope than any logical reasoning. At best, it was a thin excuse to abandon her, as if she were a burden he regretted taking on.

Tavish was gone and would likely be killed.

She would never see him again.

What was the point of life?

Her thoughts probably were childish. Petulant, even. But her heart simply overflowed with too much feeling , and Isla didn’t know how to channel it.

The doctor came and went, Gray on his heels. Gray even went so far as to place a warm hand on her forehead, his own brow furrowed.

She didn’t care.

Let him watch me die , she thought . Let him see what he has wrought.

The housekeeper asked her questions that she didn’t hear.

It was Matt—dear, kind Matt—in the end, who reached a hand into the darkness and tugged her toward the barest hint of light.

Sitting beside her bed, he laid his single palm on hers.

“Come, Isla,” he said. “I cannot bear another moment of this. Neither can Gray. He has said we can away, just you and I. Somewhere free of memories. A new place. One ready to nurture our happiness.”

The next day, a footman lifted Isla into a carriage heading south to Malton Hill.