Page 39 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

“No more than myself. But I remember that wild lass, standing atop the cairn, screaming her rage into the wind. The lass who bravely took my hand and stepped into the swimming hole that day. And I wonder . . . what happened to that lass? Or was I merely seeing what I wished?”

“Gray happened,” Isla whispered around the sudden ache in her throat. “That’s what befell that lass.”

“He hurt ye?”

“Not physically. Never that. Just . . . my mind. My soul. He was angry and cutting. My life always balanced on a knife’s edge.” One of a thousand reasons why Isla had found such joy at Malton Hill. It was the one place Gray never intruded.

“A knife’s edge,” Tavish repeated slowly. “Ye mentioned his threats to cast ye out. Is that what ye refer to?”

Isla swallowed, refusing to let tears fall. She had already shed a lifetime of them over her parents’ betrayals, over Gray and his changeable nature.

Rain continued to patter down, the world a soft hush.

The heat from Tavish’s large body saturated her left side.

The scent of damp wool and his cologne—bergamot and sandalwood and an exotic spice she couldn’t quite pin down—engulfed her senses.

She was torn between gulping it in or breathing through her mouth to avoid it entirely.

But then that rather summed up how she felt about Tavish as a whole—did she want to run far and fast from him? Or grab hold of those broad shoulders and lose herself in his kiss ?

Standing beside him now felt like times past. When he would take her hand and they would talk and everything else would simply . . . melt away.

How she had missed this. The ability to speak without worrying about what the other person might think or say.

“There is more . . .” she began.

Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Tavish lift an eyebrow. “More? To the situation with Gray?”

Isla nodded. “Given everything . . . and what is yet to come with our divorce . . . you should know all.”

“All?”

She didn’t speak for a moment, rallying her courage.

“Remember how Gray withdrew from me after my father died? Began treating me like my father had?”

“Aye. Ye were right upset. The pressing duties of the dukedom made him distant, ye thought.”

“The dukedom had nothing to do with it, unfortunately.” She swallowed before continuing, “On his deathbed, my father informed Gray that I was not his daughter.”

Tavish hissed in a breath. “Pardon?!”

“Just that. My mother had refused to share my father’s bed after Matthias’s birth. She had borne him two sons, she said, both with deformities of the limbs. She refused to birth another. Eventually, she sought physical comfort elsewhere.”

“With whom?”

“I don’t know who my natural father might be.

Gray may know, but he has never said. Obviously, he found the truth about our mother difficult to bear.

I think he views her infidelity as the most craven betrayal, both of her marital vows and the dukedom.

The horror that she would so cavalierly heap scandal on our heads.

Gray’s reasons scarcely matter, I suppose.

The moment he learned the truth of our mother and my birth, I became an unwelcome millstone around his neck.

A physical manifestation of scandal and betrayal.

That night, when Gray found you and me together .

. . he marched me home and, with cutting words, informed me of my illegitimate status. ”

Tavish’s chin lifted on a sharp jerk .

“You thought you were marrying a duke’s daughter, but in fact, you tied yourself to a cuckoo in the nest,” she continued, unable to stem her bitterness.

“Ye ken well that your parentage, noble or otherwise, was never of concern to me.”

She rallied, flattening her palms against her skirts.

“Perhaps not. But I care. My father didn’t denounce me as illegitimate at birth, mostly to protect the family reputation, Gray said.

But—” Here, she paused, shoring up her defenses.

“—but my father did leave a letter in Gray’s keeping.

A declaration in his own hand that I am not his daughter.

He gave it to Gray in case my brother ever wished to divest himself of any obligation toward me. ”

“Oh, Isla,” Tavish breathed. “Gray told ye that he would publish the letter unless you gave me up?”

“Yes.”

“How could ye not have told me this?”

“I tried, Tavish! During that last conversation, but . . .” She fluttered a hand.

“I was too stubborn to listen.”

Isla nodded, blinking rapidly.

“I’m so sorry, Isla. I should have realized. I should have—”

“Enough. We could both drown in the regret of our decisions then. But, in hindsight, we both know our marriage was a catastrophic mistake.”

He let out a gust of air. His shoulder brushed against hers and unleashed a small riot in her midsection.

She shouldn’t be standing beside him in this narrow space.

“Are you truly going to marry Fletch?”

Right.

There was that, too.

“Of course. If he’ll have me. He will make a good husband.” The words came out almost as a reflex.

She had scarcely given Colonel Archer a second thought since leaving his side.

Rather telling, that.

But what else could she do? She wanted to remain Lady Isla Kinsey, the legal daughter of the Duke of Grayburn.

She wanted Malton Hill. She loved the woman she became there—her confidence and sense of purpose, the people like Mrs. Tippets who relied upon her.

She would not abandon them to an uncertain fate under Gray’s indifferent care.

Tavish doesn’t know about Malton Hill , Isla thought. He doesn’t know the person I became. The rebirth I experienced. He doesn’t understand why I wish to marry someone—anyone, really—like Colonel Archer. Why retaining my dowry is so important.

She liked Colonel Archer. More importantly, Gray liked Colonel Archer.

Ergo . . . she would marry him.

“But ye don’t love him,” Tavish grunted.

A statement. Not a question.

“How do you know that?” She pivoted to face him in the small hollow.

The rain had morphed from a raging tempest to a more docile drizzle. They would likely be on their way back to the house soon.

Tavish made no move to leave their secluded grotto. Instead, he mirrored her actions, turning toward her.

She had to look up and up to meet his gaze.

Gracious, but he was close. So close, the scant six inches of space between them arced with electricity.

“How do you know I don’t love Colonel Archer?” she repeated.

“Because I know what ye look like when you’re in love, lass.

And this—” He waved a hand to indicate her entire person.

“—this isn’t it. Ye’ve decided ye want the life Fletch offers—a comfortable house, a fine carriage, expensive gowns, and servants to wait on ye—but the man himself is fairly irrelevant. ”

As ever, she found his rapier-sharp dissection of her thoughts unnerving.

“It is not wrong to shun a life of poverty.”

“A life of poverty with myself, ye mean?”

“I didn’t say that.”

“What about love?”

“I cannot say what true love is. Not anymore. I thought I was in love once, but perhaps what you saw was more a form of obsession and mania than true love—emotions that end in pain rather than fulfillment. Perhaps the respect and quiet admiration I feel for Colonel Archer is more the genuine definition of enduring love.”

“Is that what ye tell yourself?”

“Yes.”

Deliberately . . . as if it were a test of some sort . . . he closed that remaining half-foot between them, bringing his chest flush with hers.

Isla’s heart lurched to a gallop.

She could step back. The grotto was small, but not so confining that she couldn’t move away from him.

She should step back.

It was only . . .

Her head tilted back of its own accord, taking in the new difference between them in height. Perhaps Tavish had always been this tall. Perhaps it was her own memories that had diminished him. Somehow, she had needed to shrink how much he had meant to her in order to accommodate his loss.

But now, he filled her vision. Literally larger than her dreams had ever painted him.

His hand found hers again, prying it from her side and gently lacing their fingers together.

It was a dare, she realized. Again, he was challenging her. Offering her choices. A different way of seeing and being.

Are ye sure it’s Fletch ye want, lass? the press of his hand in hers said.

Slowly, so slowly, his head bent down. He hovered just above her mouth, the warmth of his breath skimming her skin . . . giving her all the time in the world to change her mind, to step back or tug her hand away. Anything, really, to interrupt the downward slide of gravity drawing his lips to hers.

Isla didn’t so much as twitch.

She gasped when his mouth touched hers. The barest of brushes. A feather press of soft lips. Fleeting and gone too soon.

He lifted his head just enough to peer at her.

Tavish’s eyes. Open and honest and desperately hungry. Wild eyes. A reflection of the terrified pounding of her heart .

“Isla . . .” he exhaled, those same eyes dropping again to her mouth. As if she undid him. As if within the two wee syllables of her name, he could find salvation.

His head bent again, and she raised to tiptoe. Eager. No . . . desperate . She had to know if reality matched her memories. If his kisses still burned like lava in her blood.

Their lips touched, faint as an owl’s wing in moonlight—

Voices intruded.

Loud voices.

Male voices, calling and coming closer.

Isla and Tavish lurched apart as if jolted by lightning, shifting as far from one another as possible in the small space.

“Gray,” Isla choked, recognizing the timbre of her brother’s deep bass.

“Of all the bloody luck.” Tavish met her gaze, and she watched him retreat—yearning icing over as sure as a pond in January.

Turning away, he walked into the rain.

Tavish stepped from the hollow, his senses reeling from the feel of Isla pressed against him, his lips still tingling from the shadowed caress of hers.

She insisted she didn’t want him. Not in any permanent sense.