Page 5 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

I sla could scarcely think, much less string sentences together, as she followed Gray down Cairnfell. Her thoughts had taken on the shape and density of wool batting.

Tavish has returned.

Returned, returned, returned . . .

The word looped through her mind, tangling her powers of speech.

Fortunately, Gray was speaking enough for them both.

“A captain! Hah! The nerve of that—” Her brother broke off, censoring his tongue.

He needn’t have bothered.

Isla had no difficulty filling in the rest— arse, bastard, blackguard . And that was just the beginning of the alphabet. She supposed Gray would happily work his way through to wastrel before he finished.

He was limping. Badly. As ever an excellent barometer of his foul mood.

Only three things needled her normally level-headed brother to the point of rage :

Mention of their deceased mother,

Any interaction with the Balfour family,

And even a whiff of scandal touching the Kinsey family name.

Unfortunately, encountering Tavish Balfour encompassed the last two and had faint echoes of the first.

In short, Gray was furious.

“How dare that . . . that man approach and speak with you!” He swung his walking stick in an arc, slashing through a patch of nettle. “The brazen nerve of those Balfours never ceases.”

Isla declined to point out the obvious: She and Gray had been trespassing on Balfour land. Propriety demanded that Tavish acknowledge and greet her.

Seeing her husband after an absence of seven years had been . . .

Isla hardly knew where to start. The Tavish of her memories was barely eighteen years old, untried and untested. A youth on the final cusp before manhood.

But the man she had encountered atop Cairnfell just now . . .

He is huge.

That had been her first thought. Had he always been so tall, so broad of shoulder?

Her Tavish had worn his heart on his sleeve, his gaze open and warm. It was one of the things she had loved best—the easy way he loved others.

But Captain Balfour had been armor-wrapped steel for all the emotion he showed.

No.

The body of Tavish Balfour had come home, but Isla was rather certain that her Tavish had died right along with their love.

“Balfour’s return will bring difficulties, of course,” Gray was saying, cane still slashing about.

Difficulties? Hah!

Her brother, in his ignorance of her marriage, didn’t quite grasp the understatement of that.

“I had almost convinced Northcairn to sell Cairnfell to me, but who knows now?” Gray continued. “One word from the conquering hero, and I’m sure the old Scot will choose to hold to his pride and his poverty. ”

To hear Gray talk, only Northcairn’s status as a Peer of the Realm kept him from debtor’s prison. The earldom was on the verge of bankruptcy. And as the Northcairn estate was currently unentailed, the present earl—Tavish’s father—could sell off chunks to pay his debts.

It was no secret Gray wished to buy Cairnfell. To avenge the “Infamous Jack of Hearts” card game and bring their ancestral lands back under his own control.

And he didn’t care who he trampled in the process.

Isla had learned that bitter truth more than once over the years.

It was the primary reason she hadn’t told Gray about her marriage. The knowledge that, when the topic of the Balfours reared up, her ducal brother could be cruel.

Isla and Gray reached the carriage, a coachman and two footmen standing at attention.

Gray handed her inside before stepping in himself.

They hadn’t intended to stop here today, but a visit with local acquaintances had been cut short, and Gray wanted to have a “tramp” around Cairnfell before returning to Dunmore.

Return .

That word again.

Synonyms chased it— reemerged, come back, resurfaced.

Isla bit her lower lip, anything to tame the jittery energy banding her chest.

Why, after all this time, had Tavish chosen now to return home? And her most pressing question—did he intend to publicly claim her as his wife?

Her pulse thumped, anxiety acrid on her tongue.

“Do I need to order you to steer clear of Balfour?” Gray asked as the carriage lurched into motion.

“Of course not.” Isla stared out at the green hills and the purple heather just beginning to flower . . . anything to prevent Gray from seeing her rising panic. “I have no intention of repeating the indiscretions of my youth.”

That was only a partial truth.

Isla would never rekindle the wild, frenzied affection she had once felt for Tavish Balfour. It had scarcely been love at all. More like a fevered madness. A reckless slide into starry-eyed infatuation that, in her youth and inexperience, she had labeled love .

Could any girl know her heart at barely seventeen years of age?

Now facing her twenty-fourth birthday, she rather thought not.

In hindsight, Isla considered it a mercy that she and Tavish had shattered apart as spectacularly and quickly as they had fallen in love. Or, at least, that was how she envisioned it—a torch to a powder keg, obliterating the whole in one violent billow of flame and ash.

However, staying away from Tavish would be impossible given the pesky matter of their marriage—a fact known only to herself, Tavish, and the doctor and his wife who witnessed and signed the lines of their handfasting. A marriage that Isla had long regretted.

She now had a clear understanding of her own desires for the future.

One that would not involve a Balfour.

She could only pray Tavish felt the same.

Please feel the same!

Gray stared out his own window, a muscle twitching in his jaw.

He tugged irritably at his constricting neckcloth.

Despite his finery, her brother loathed the feeling of clothing tight against his skin.

On an irritated huff, he ran a hand through his hair, turning it from respectable to a lion’s mane, tawny-colored and shaggy around his face.

His inner anger was fast unraveling his exterior.

It was astonishing, really, how quickly a Balfour could get under his skin.

In London, Gray relaxed into an urbane gentleman.

He smiled with ease and always said the proper thing at the proper moment.

He laughed over dinner and bestowed ladies with the exact right amount of charm.

He tended to his responsibilities in the House of Lords just as meticulously as he managed his lands and tenants.

But when at Dunmore, that gentleman became harder for Gray to capture. The constant presence of one Balfour or another in the village of Pettercairn, combined with the lingering memories of their mother at Dunmore, had him frequently on edge.

“Are you still considering Colonel Archer and his suit? He would make you an excellent husband,” Gray finally said, voice level .

Ah. Changing the subject, I see.

“I agree.” Provided Isla could convince her current husband to divorce her and somehow keep the fact of their divorce quiet. “I am eager to deepen my acquaintance with him.”

“Excellent. As I mentioned earlier, we have been invited to a house party with Colonel Archer and his parents at their hunting lodge in Aberdeenshire in about two weeks’ time. I shall send them our acceptance.”

“Please do.”

Isla clasped her hands together, anything to mask the fine tremor that had started there.

Colonel Edward Archer was the second son of the Earl of Milmouth. Despite the similarity of title to Tavish—both men being the second sons of an earl—the Archers were everything the Balfours were not, namely English, wealthy, and highly respected.

Isla had met Colonel Archer last autumn in London.

He was all a lady could wish in a suitor—kind, handsome, genuine.

The consummate gentleman. Theirs had been a slow courtship, moving from acquaintances to friends at a snail’s pace—Isla terrified to encourage him too much as she knew her former marriage to be a barrier.

She refused to add “bigamy” to her list of sins.

Gray approved of the match as he was eager to form an alliance with Lord Milmouth and gain a powerful ally in the House of Lords.

Gray’s support meant Isla would retain her dowry.

Which meant Malton Hill would be forever hers.

Malton Hill guided most of Isla’s decisions at present.

In the wake of Gray discovering her attachment to Tavish—and in turn, Tavish permitting Gray to irrevocably separate them—Isla had fled south to England and Malton Hill, the small estate tied to her dowry.

She had arrived bereft, her heart an open wound. There, she discovered an estate as devastated as she felt. A place that needed her attention and love.

Over the following months and years, Isla had become a tigress, dragging Malton Hill back from the edge of ruin, defending her lands and people.

And in the process, she reassembled the shattered pieces of herself into a new form.

Into a woman who finally left behind the words compliant and timid.

A woman who stood tall in adversity and no longer mourned the loss of a boy.

She loved the woman she had become.

If Isla remained married to Tavish Balfour, she would not see Malton Hill again, much less retain ownership of it. She would lose that vital piece of her sense of self. Her brother would never cede a farthing of her dowry to a Balfour. She only kept Malton Hill if she married with Gray’s approval.

But with her erstwhile husband returned home, she could finally take measures to dissolve her marriage. She could attend the house party, smile and flirt with Colonel Archer, and accept his courtship with a clear conscience.

Despite her feelings as a young girl, sometimes complying —always a variant of that word—to the role laid out for her by family and tradition was not ill-advised, particularly when her dowry and the ownership of Malton Hill hung in the balance.

First, she simply needed to convince Tavish Balfour to grant her a divorce.