Page 49 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

T avish stilled at Isla’s words.

“Malton Hill?” He searched his memory, cutting himself a slice of the Savoy cake. The scent of citrus, butter, and brandy wafted upward. “The estate that is part of your dowry?”

“Yes.”

He might have felt stung over her admission—that he mattered less to her than a pile of masonry and adjacent land—but something in the fervor of her tone stopped him.

She answered the question in his eyes.

“I went there after we parted, and . . .” She held her plate with her own slice of cake. “Matthias accompanied me. I was so distraught, so melancholy . . . even Gray must have been concerned, as he made the plan for us to go.”

Tavish mentally winced, relaxing back into the sofa.

“How selfish of me not to inquire after yourself. I grieved your loss during my first two years in the army. Perhaps even longer. I waited for a letter from ye, hoping against hope that ye would write. That we could mend what had broken between us.”

It felt bleak to recall those years. The letters he would scribble to her and then toss into the fire before he was foolish enough to post them. The dangerous risks he took as a soldier simply because he didn’t value his life enough to be careful.

“At times,” he continued, “I think being transferred to the Rifles is the only thing that saved me. It gave me a higher purpose at a time when I needed it most. Of course, ye would have searched for a similar sense of purpose.” He took a bite of cake, but it tasted more of regret than sugar and lemon.

“Yes.” She nodded, eyes going bright once again, though no tears fell. “I did. Need a purpose, that is. And I found one at Malton Hill.”

Tavish let out a long breath, trying to order his riotous thoughts.

First, Isla did want him. That knowledge felt momentous. Like he should cup her cheek and bring her in for a pulse-pounding kiss.

And second, like himself, Isla had suffered greatly in his absence. Of course, she had. But he had never imagined it as a crushing force that had caused her to reach for a new cause. One that, like the army for him, had bent and reformed her desires and priorities.

“Tell me,” he urged, suddenly desperate to know, to relearn each piece of her. “Every last experience. Every reason ye love Malton Hill so much.”

Because it was painfully obvious that she did.

She laughed and finally pulled a handkerchief from her pocket, dabbing her eyes.

“I didn’t mean to fall so thoroughly in love with the estate.

But I arrived with my heart full of affection and desperate for an outlet—or perhaps it was too newly wounded and quick to empty—but .

. . Oh, Tavish. Malton Hill is so beautiful!

Like a jewel box nestled into the green hills outside of Tetbury—honey-colored limestone and arched Tudor windows set with thick, wavy glass.

Gray calls the house an antiquated pile, and I suppose he is right, as it has acres of wood paneling and plastered ceilings that haven’t been fashionable in at least two hundred years. But it is my antiquated pile.”

It was as if she were describing a beloved child, the way her eyes softened and her voice took on an almost astonished quality. As if she could scarcely believe something so clever and wonderful existed, and that she had been the one chosen to care for it.

Oh, Isla .

She broke off a small piece of their birthday cake, chewing it slowly.

“Don’t mistake me. It isn’t a grand estate like Dunmore with corridors of bedchambers and a room for every hour of the day.

It’s a modest country house, polite in its manner rather than extravagant.

Big enough to be grand in its own way, but small enough to feel like home. My home.”

The sort of fine house Tavish was unable to provide.

That bit went unspoken, of course.

“It sounds like a wee paradise,” he said instead. “I can picture ye thriving in a place like that.”

And he could.

In his mind’s eye, she strolled through airy rooms, dappled with English sunshine, a beatific smile upon her lips. A man joined her there—someone with Fletch’s expressive face and merry demeanor. Children spilled in, blond-haired and rosy-cheeked, speaking in elegant English tones.

A scene that would never include Tavish.

Something of his bitterness, no matter how slight, must have spilled out.

“Tavish, you mistake my meaning. The house is certainly lovely, but even if the house burned tomorrow . . . it’s the people of Malton Hill who hold my heart.

The previous Duke of Grayburn had neglected them.

When compared to the vast holdings of the dukedom, Malton Hill is the smallest of properties.

Gray hadn’t had the time to assess everything yet, so he was unaware of its shambolic state. ”

Side by side on the sofa, both eating their birthday cake, Tavish listened as she told of arriving there, her despair and grief.

And how, little by little, the house and estate awakened her.

How she cast off the old steward with his slovenly ways and hired the new, bright-eyed Mr. Cranston with his modern, ingenious ideas to manage the house and farm and tenants.

How she integrated with the community—dining regularly with Dr. and Mrs. Sumsion and courting a friendship with the prickly Mrs. White—until she became one of them .

The sun was dipping toward the horizon, the Savoy cake nearly gone, by the time she finished.

“I don’t have much power as a woman in the larger world, but at Malton Hill, my actions make a difference.

I have ensured that my tenants have sound roofs overhead and windows that don’t leak.

I rallied other women in the village and established a dame school for the laborers’ children to learn how to read and write.

I reviewed practices in the parish poor house and worked to make conditions there more humane.

And in the process of doing all of that, I became someone different.

A woman who knows her own mind and has the confidence to help others.

Do you not see how much Malton Hill means to me? ”

And he did.

Tavish could see with astonishing clarity the magnitude of her commitment to her people.

His beautiful Isla with her vast capacity for compassion would never give them up. Nor would he ever ask her to. Some things were simply more important than romantic love.

“Of course, ye would fight for those people. It’s all your fierce heart knows how to do. Ye were like that as a lass, and ye remain the same today. Ye love with your whole self.”

And if she heard in that an echo of her own love for him, long dead and gone, then so be it.

“I do love them. It unlocked this maternal instinct I didn’t realize I possessed. A need to shelter and protect.”

And here was another key to the woman she had become.

A change just as profound as his own. While Tavish led and shepherded men, fighting for her safety here at home, she was doing the same work, only on the opposite end.

Fighting to ensure the women and children of the men he led not only survived, but thrived—bettering their situations and learning important skills.

Yet more proof as to why he loved her so.

The sheer scope of her determination humbled him.

“I want ye to have Malton Hill, lass. I want ye to keep your people.”

“It’s all I dream about, to be honest. I spent two years there after you left.

I would be there still, but Gray likes having me close, both to act as a hostess and to ensure I marry where he wants.

” So sardonic that last bit. “So we compromise. I spend half the year at Malton Hill between September and March, hiring a widow friend to act as my companion while there for propriety’s sake.

I then join Gray for the Season in London.

Often, I can plead the month of August, too. But not this year.”

“Because of Fletch?”

She nodded.

Neither of them added the other truth. Because Fletch, or any gentleman who met Grayburn’s approval, would ensure Malton Hill stayed in her possession forever. Yet one more reason why she needed to be reconciled with her brother.

Tavish was certainly a glutton for punishment because one question rang in his mind.

The one most likely to pain him to hear her answer.

And yet, after a pause, he opened his mouth anyway—

“If all things were equal, if I could offer ye Malton Hill and everything else that a gentleman like Fletch could, who would ye choose?”

You!!

The answer shrieked in Isla’s head.

As sure as breath moved in and out of her lungs, she knew the answer.

You.

I would choose you.

In a thousand lifetimes, I would choose you.

She sat impossibly still, the force of her reply stunning her senses as thoroughly as a cold plunge into the River Northcairn.

“Ye look aghast. Never mind.” Tavish waved a hand. “’Twas an unfair question. Forget I asked.”

Mmm.

Forgetting his question would be highly unlikely.

They moved on after that, speaking of how Tavish had met Colonel Archer and Captain Ross .

Isla listened, but her mind still reeled.

Her immediate internal reply to his question had cracked a vital part of her foundation, letting a piece of the girl she had been escape. The girl who had loved him with shattering force.

And now that force pulsed there within her breast, a vagabond reminder of her past self—of a love so deep and vast, it stretched to the horizon of her mind. And now, it hovered at the edge of her vision, eager for rebirth.

What was Isla to do?

Because this feeling meant that the innermost core of her loved Tavish yet. That, in many ways, she was still that starry-eyed girl, longing for things she had best not keep.

And, more to the point, how was she to reconcile this knowledge with her future plans? Could she return to Malton Hill, knowing that Tavish would always be the true love of her heart?

They cleaned up the dishes and tidied the room.