Page 38 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

I sla’s pace didn’t falter as Tavish fell into step beside her.

But then, she mused, he had never been one to deliberate. Quick to action. That was Tavish Balfour.

She had decided to prolong their walk for one simple reason:

Isla wanted to know this man—the person her erstwhile husband had become. Perhaps the man he had always been, and she had simply been too young, too inexperienced, too . . . something to see it.

After studying him over the past several days—listening to his friends speak of him, watching him interact with others, and the ready admiration he inspired—a dreadful curiosity had lodged in her soul.

Yes, they were both still intent on divorce.

But that didn’t mean Isla couldn’t learn more about the experiences that had formed his character these past seven years.

If nothing else, she and he had once been friends.

And she wanted to know more about her friend before he disappeared forever into the wilds of America .

They walked in silence for a few minutes. Like herself, Isla could practically feel Tavish churning with questions he evidently refused to ask.

“We were speaking of you,” she said into the quiet.

“Pardon?”

“I suspect you wish to know what Colonel Archer and I were discussing. The answer, it turns out, is you.”

“Ye were discussing me? Why?”

Isla spared him an amused glance. “Our Colonel Archer is quite sure you hang the moon. He admires you greatly.”

She didn’t miss Tavish’s wince.

For her part, Isla couldn’t help but compare the two men.

Yes, they were both handsome in their way. Colonel Archer with his ready smiles and kind eyes that glinted with good humor. Tavish with his rugged jaw and quiet, looming presence.

But in other ways, the difference was stark.

Colonel Archer was careful in his pursuit of her—flirtatious but cautious. He treated her like a prized orchid, something with a fussy temperament that had to be kept in a well-regulated glasshouse. A delicate creature.

Tavish, however . . .

In many ways, being around Tavish was like stepping into a forgotten room in her soul—a place of sunshine and security she had once reveled in dwelling. There, Isla was accepted precisely as she was, and perhaps more importantly, as she wished to be.

But outside that room, he felt like a stranger.

The paradox of him overwhelmed her. Known, yet unknown.

That terrible grief bucked again—sorrow and betrayal she thought long dead and buried alongside the girl she had been. Emotions she had supposed her time at Malton Hill had healed.

“What did Fletch have to say about me?” Tavish asked. “He exaggerates, I assure ye.”

Isla shook her head. “You do realize that comments like that only confirm his high opinion, not lessen it?”

“Fletch has the incredible gift of seeing the best in people. He inspires fierce loyalty. It’s what made him such a tremendous commanding officer in the army, and why he counts so many of us as his closest friends.”

“Well, he spoke at length about your bravery.”

“Ah.”

“He told me . . . he told me of your heroism in killing —” She choked on the word.

On the imagined scene of Tavish being tasked with taking others’ lives, war or no.

“—killing a French general. He described how you took the shot—half lying down as you did for that final shot yesterday. Well over three hundred yards distant with a stiff breeze blowing. An impossible shot, Colonel Archer declared. And yet, you downed the general with ease. And then reloaded, aimed, and fired again, killing the officer who ran to assist his fallen leader.”

The most astonishing thing I’ve ever seen , Colonel Archer had said. It’s been four years, and it’s still talked about in hushed reverence.

Little did Colonel Archer understand how Isla would react to his storytelling. The horror of it. Of imagining her Tavish bearing the physical and moral responsibility of that act. The boy she knew would have grieved over taking another’s life.

Tavish said nothing.

“You don’t speak because I assume that scene still haunts you,” she continued. “That, yes, you did what you must that day—and the thousand days before and after it—knowing that your actions saved more lives than the ones you took. But it didn’t leave you unmarked.”

They walked in silence, listening to the rustle of wind through the leaves and the call of starlings quarreling in the trees. The clouds continued to darken overhead. It would likely rain before luncheon.

Finally, Tavish cleared his throat. “Ye be correct, of course. Our actions as Rifles saved more lives than the ones we ended. But that doesn’t mean the lives we took had no value.

That French general had a wife and three daughters waiting for him at home.

Four women who surely suffered greatly because of the general’s loss.

I learned of this later from a prisoner of war we took.

There are no winners in war. Only horror and heartbreak. ”

Isla had to take several steadying breaths. Anything to tamp down the knot of painangergrief that filled her throat.

“I know they all see you as a hero. And they should. You are! But . . . ”

He clasped his hands behind his back. “But?”

“I hate it,” she whispered. “I hate that you had to become exceptionally good at killing others in order to survive.”

Isla paused and looked up at him. Really looked.

His gray eyes held storms, thundering clouds and tumultuous winds. Pain and loss and the moments in between when he had to pretend the pain and loss had never happened. Had he relegated her and their relationship to that same in-between place?

“I hate . . . I hate that it feels like I never knew you.” Her hand closed into a fist, as if she could contain the sting of that truth.

“I just knew some version of you. But not all of you. I didn’t know that you could shoot a gun, much less that you were a crack shot.

I didn’t know you were quiet in company but always observant of others.

I didn’t know .” Her voice broke. “And now I wonder how much else I didn’t know. How deluded I was. How naive.”

His hand lifted, as if he would cup her cheek or pull her against his chest. Because, as she knew, it wasn’t in his nature to see her suffering and not offer comfort.

His hand hung there between them for a moment before dropping. As if he recalled just in time that offering her comfort was not something he was permitted to do anymore.

And that terrible grief swelled under her breastbone. How much longer would she be able to keep it at bay? To see him and not . . . remember all that had been lost?

“Ye knew me, Isla. Ye knew me as no one else has, before or since. Ye may not have known the outward bits of me. Shooting a rifle, my abilities there, that is merely one of a thousand things that I do . But those skills are not who I am . They are not the heart of me—the soul ye knew and loved.”

It hurt to look at him. To see her Tavish peeking out from his gaze.

It surged upward—the disorienting feeling she had experienced in the lake just yesterday.

Somehow, she inhabited two places at once—the devastated girl who had lost her lover and all hope in one awful stroke, and the resilient, thriving woman who had risen from the ashes of that girl.

Without meaning to, her eyes dropped to his mouth, to those pillow lips that still surfaced in her dreams. Her pulse thumped when she dared to recall how they had felt pressed to her wrist. The soft give of them, followed by the gentle rasp of his night whiskers against her skin.

Just the memory caused a disturbing weakness in her knees.

Attraction hummed between them like a living thing. Like a band strung too taut, just waiting for that final bit of pressure to snap.

She lingered too long, staring, lost in memory.

Who knew what might have happened had Mother Nature not intervened.

A large wet raindrop splashed onto her nose.

Isla startled and looked to the heavens, only to receive three additional raindrops to the face for her trouble.

“Blast!” Tavish nodded to the lake, where a wall of rain rushed across the water toward them.

Whirling, Isla scanned the landscape for some sort of shelter.

“There!” She pointed toward an outcropping up the path, rocks overhanging a small hollow. Without thinking, she grabbed his hand and began running.

They reached the hollow just as the worst of the rain hit.

Dashing inside, they stood shoulder to shoulder, watching the rain cascade in sheets, dimpling the lake and shaking the leaves.

“Quick thinking. Spotting this.” Tavish squeezed her hand in approbation.

At which point, Isla realized she was still holding it.

His hand, that was.

She dropped her grip as if scorched.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught Tavish’s grin. The wretch likely understood her every action.

The thought made her frown. And maybe huff a sigh.

“Am I so transparent to you?”

He laughed then. “Nae, lass. Not always.”

She huffed again.

“Though I will admit,” he continued, “sometimes reading ye feels as easy as a book.”

Hearing him echo her own thoughts . . . a shiver traveled her spine.

She nudged him with her shoulder. It was meant to be a display of annoyance, but as he didn’t move an inch, it only reinforced the hard solidity of his body.

He said nothing for a long while, both of them staring out from their small grotto as rain hammered the landscape.

“I feel it, too.” His words so quiet, she almost didn’t hear them. “The sense that there are wee bits of ye I never learned. Or perhaps never clearly saw. For example, I didn’t know ye play the piano with such skill. I sat in awe listening to ye the other night.”

Isla flushed at the compliment. “Yes. Pianos were rather in short supply atop Cairnfell, so I was never able to give you a proper demonstration.”

“I imagine ye have other talents I have yet to see.”

“We were so young. Am I so changed then?”