Page 47 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

H ere we are,” Lady Mariah said, leading the way up the ancient spiral staircase of Cairnfell Castle.

Isla followed, the heat of Tavish’s large body at her back.

After crying for the better part of two days, a melancholic numbness had set in, as if the tidal wave of her grief had annihilated every other emotion with its weight.

Her inner landscape resembled the aftermath of a flood—mud and tree limbs pushed against rocks, houses knocked from their foundations. Labels fluttered from each destroyed thing: Love, Belonging, Family, Hope.

And yet . . . Tavish remained—stalwart and true.

That realization seemed momentous, but the feeling struggled to reach her.

The stairs opened up to the great hall of the old castle. Isla stepped into the room, Tavish at her side.

Neither of them said a word to one another. In fact, they had exchanged only a handful of perfunctory sentences since their incendiary kiss rather literally burned both their lives to ash.

Isla’s nerves still felt raw and scorched.

Surely, they were both remembering their previous encounters at Cairnfell Castle.

But what had once been a damp, chilly room cluttered with sparse bits of furniture had now been refurbished into a more habitable space.

Lady Mariah noticed their surprise. “I have been slowly bringing the old castle back to life when I can find the time and spare a shilling or two.”

“Ye’ve done wonders here, Mariah,” Tavish said, voice sincere.

Isla agreed. Gone were the rickety table and mismatched wooden chairs. The sooty fireplace and cold flagstones underfoot.

The walls had been plastered a gleaming white and hung with faded tapestries, while a rug had been laid on the floor.

The furniture was still mismatched, but now a worn velvet sofa and a pair of stuffed armchairs sat before the hearth.

A sturdy table surrounded by four chairs and a sideboard with dishes and crockery took up the other half of the space.

“I’m glad ye like the changes. I couldn’t bear to watch this place crumble to ruin if I could help it.” Lady Mariah managed a wan smile.

Even in a simple day gown and apron, she looked astonishingly beautiful—dark hair pulled back with loose curls framing her face, her striking blue eyes always flashing with humor or exasperation or some other emotion.

That same sadness weighed on Isla. In another lifetime, she and Lady Mariah would likely have been fast friends. One more thing lost.

“I’ve been raiding the attics at Castle Balfour for discarded furniture and linens. The tapestries were a particularly nice discovery. A bit worse for wear, but still serviceable and warm.” Lady Mariah beckoned. “Come see. I’ve refitted the bedchamber, as well.”

She led them through the door to the left of the fireplace where a decrepit bed pallet and moldering mattress had once resided.

Like the great hall, this room, too, had been plastered and a carpet laid. A fireplace stood just to the right inside the door, the opposite side of the enormous fireplace in the great hall, both sharing the same solitary chimney .

Before the hearth, a large tester bed with a deep tick, heavy counterpane, and woolen bed curtains dominated the space.

Isla sucked in a slow breath.

Lady Mariah continued to talk, pointing out a small writing desk and washstand before retrieving a set of towels from a wardrobe.

But all Isla could do was stare at the bed. It looked decidedly . . . matrimonial.

Tavish touched her arm from behind, the slightest of brushes.

“I’ll be sleeping in front of the fire in the great hall,” he murmured in her ear. “Ye will have this bedchamber as your own.”

Isla blinked, unsure how she felt about his words.

For one, they showed his uncanny understanding of her thoughts. The two of them were, even now, nearly an extension of one another.

Moreover, the memory of their kisses continued to thrum between them. Isla found it appalling. How, after all the damage that attraction had wreaked, could she still feel the pull of it? Would she have the presence of mind to reject him if he did join her in that bed?

She turned away before she could imagine the scene—his enormous chest curving around her body and pulling her to him.

Lady Mariah bustled back into the great hall.

“As we discussed, Callum and I will do our best to prevent others from learning of your presence here,” she said.

“Jameson and several other trusted servants have agreed to help us keep you both hidden. I have already put it about that Lady Isla left this morning to visit friends in Edinburgh. Tavish, ye are supposedly off sorting matters with Captain Ross. Lord Northcairn never comes up here—the steep incline is too much for his heart, even on a horse—so he is not a concern. The reprieve will give ye both a couple of weeks to sort yourselves out. In the meantime, I will send up meals from the kitchens as I am able.”

“There is no need for that, Mariah,” Tavish said. “Ye have already done much. If ye could muster some supplies, I can cook well enough for us.”

Lady Mariah lifted one elegant eyebrow in question.

“Soldiers cook for themselves in the army,” he explained. “I became rather handy at the basics. Just deliver some daily bread and possibly the occasional pastry or sweet.” He quirked a grin .

“Ye always had a sweet tooth,” Lady Mariah sighed. “Very well. That’s settled then. A trusted groom will deliver your trunks this afternoon. I will send up a maid every other day or so to collect laundry and tidy up, if ye need. Until then, I’ll bid ye both adieu.”

Tavish motioned to his sister. “I’ll see ye out.”

The great hall rang with silence in the wake of their departure. Isla unpinned her bonnet and set it on the table, ignoring the tremor in her hand.

The indistinct murmur of Tavish’s voice carried up the stairwell. Lady Mariah said something in response. The great door closed below, and he reappeared in the doorway.

There was a sense of waiting about him. As if he expected Isla to do or say something specific. What? She hadn’t a clue.

“So . . . what are our plans?” Her voice sounded overly loud to her ears.

Crossing the room, Tavish pulled off his hat and tossed it onto the table. He had donned a kilt today in the blue-and-gold Balfour tartan, shedding the finery he had worn at Kingswell House. His coat and waistcoat were neatly pressed, but loose and well-worn.

He gave her an assessing look once again. The skin around his blackened eye was slowly fading from blue and green to a rather sickly yellow.

“At the moment, there isn’t much to do besides wait. Hopefully, we will hear soon from my solicitor about proceeding with our divorce.” Tavish paced the perimeter of the room, studying the tapestries. “I also assume your brother will need a week or two to cool his temper and begin to see reason.”

“Tossing me from the family will have social repercussions he will wish to minimize. Gray hates scandal, as I’ve said.”

“Precisely. I am confident Grayburn will come around to some sort of reconciliation with yourself. That reconciliation will go better if I am well on my way to being out of the picture. In short, it’s all just an enormous tartan knot that we will pick, stitch by stitch, to untangle.”

“And once we untangle it?”

He stopped and looked back at her. “Ye will be free.”

Abruptly, the room seemed far too small to hold the enormity of their shared history. Isla felt like a thief returning to the scene of a crime .

Once, she would have loved nothing more than to marry Tavish and set up house together in this small tower. Now that she had achieved her wish, she and Tavish were scrambling to unravel it.

The irony.

“Free,” she repeated.

“Aye . . . free from this,” he said quietly.

She gave him a questioning glance. For once, she wasn’t quite following the trail of his thoughts.

“This.” He gestured to the space around them. “The humbleness of this existence. ’Tis why I left seven years ago. That lass I had wed deserved so much more than this lowly life.”

He picked up a pewter plate from the sideboard. A far cry from the fine silver dishes and Sèvres china of Dunmore.

And yet . . .

“I don’t think that lass would have cared,” Isla said, sadness whispering between each syllable. “All she wanted was you.”

After Mariah’s departure , the hours crawled by.

Some foodstuffs and their trunks were delivered. Isla unpacked her things. When at Dunmore, her lady’s maid would take care of smoothing her dresses and seeing them properly hung in a wardrobe. But at Malton Hill, Isla had typically done for herself.

She carefully hung her few gowns and underclothes on pegs in the wardrobe and placed her shoes underneath in a neat row.

But once everything was put away, there was little else to occupy the hours.

She took her book, Waverly, by Mr. Walter Scott into the great hall, intending to curl onto the sofa and read. But she hadn’t the stomach for swashbuckling tales of doomed Jacobites—naive idealists who couldn’t accept the harsh reality of their world.

It felt a bit too on the nose .

Tavish, on the other hand, scarcely stopped moving.

Once he settled his effects, Isla watched as he shed his coat, leaving him in his kilt, waistcoat, and shirtsleeves.

From there, he sharpened an axe and chopped wood beside the oaken front door before carrying it upstairs, kilt swinging, to stack it neatly against the wall to the right of the fireplace.

With each movement, Isla felt she was witnessing him settle back into his Scottish skin after so many years away. A relaxing, perhaps, of the militant Captain Balfour.

He laid a fire, and once it crackled in the hearth, he pulled a stool close to the flames, toasting bread for their luncheon. A crock of crowdie cheese, a jar of marmalade, a loaf of bread, and a plate covered with a pretty embroidered cloth sat on a side table at his elbow.

Isla studied him from her perch on the sofa, that unfortunate pull of attraction still humming.