Page 6 of A Tartan Love (The Earls of Cairnfell #1)

“I am pleased with this house party,” Gray said. “It will allow me to formalize my alliance with Milmouth, and give you a chance to see Archer in his native environment and decide if you will suit.”

“Native environment? At their hunting lodge in the Highlands?” Isla couldn’t help the touch of asperity in her voice.

She could scarcely imagine Colonel Archer in any sort of rough or tumbledown setting.

An ancient drafty lodge in the foothills of the Cairngorms did not strike her as his “native” environs.

“Kingswell House is hardly a hunting lodge.” A faint smile touched Gray’s lips. “Lord Milmouth’s mother was the only daughter of a wealthy Scottish lord. The estate came into the family as part of her dowry. It is anything but a hunting lodge.”

Ah. A Palladian palace, then, something akin to the Earl of Dalhousie’s stately home outside Brechin.

“You will find the place charming and restful,” Gray continued.

“I look forward to it.” Isla prayed Gray couldn’t hear the quiver in her voice .

She breathed in a slow breath. Anything, really, to mask the agitated pounding of her heart.

One week.

She had just one week to run Tavish to ground and somehow convince him to set her free.

Isla stared out the window at the slashes of purple-shadowed earth rolling past—a field left fallow, exposing the red-brown soil of this corner of Scotland, as if the very dirt itself were rusting away. So unlike the rich loam of Malton Hill, eager to sprout roses and feed spring lambs.

She called up the house, nestled into the Gloucestershire hills.

The gleam of sunlight in her study as she pored over the estate books with her steward.

The sparkle of crystal and china as she laughed over dinner with friends in the dining room.

The fiery light of the woman she was within those walls.

A life that was a vast cry from the uncertainty and mayhem Tavish had proposed seven years ago.

“We’ll run away, you and I. Make our own fortunes in the world. I have a bit of money set by. We can use it to start our life together. Do you fancy New York City?”

In her youthful folly, Isla had thought the idea a grand adventure. Tavish had nearly shone with love for her, and her for him . . . until Gray, until those shredding words, until—

There was no point in reliving their ending.

She had been thirty ways a fool.

A flaw she had no intention of revisiting.

Arriving home, Gray collected his afternoon post off a silver platter in the entry hall and disappeared into his study—limping, wrenching off his neckcloth and unbuttoning his collar.

No doubt he was already penning a letter to his solicitor, venting his frustration over Captain Balfour’s return and its implications for the purchase of Cairnfell .

Walking into the drawing room, Isla flipped through the letters that had arrived for herself—missives from friends and an update from Mr. Cranston, her steward at Malton Hill. Apparently, the west fields had flooded, and he had questions about measures to improve the drainage there.

Like Gray, she should retire to her writing desk and pen a reply.

If only her hands would stop shaking.

Tavish had returned.

Returned. Returned.

Isla helplessly replayed the events of the afternoon.

I shan’t be home long, he had said. Just . . . long enough.

What did that mean? Long enough for what precisely?

Panic raced in her veins as she contemplated the options.

Tavish could claim Isla as his wife—assert all legal power over her life—and drag her away with him unwillingly.

Or, worse, denounce her as his wife and then abandon her to Gray’s fury.

Or, perhaps worst of all, simply do nothing and leave Isla in this in-between place for another seven years.

Unable to contain the nervous energy, her feet wandered the quiet rooms of Dunmore, the tap of her boots and the tick of cabinet clocks trailing her steps.

Built around eighty years ago when the family had grown tired of their ancient, drafty castle, Dunmore was a grand palace—the sort of estate more at home in the Wiltshire downs than their corner of northeast Scotland.

The famed architect, William Adam, had designed it to impress—a central pedimented block with two wings connected by curving galleries.

Enormous symmetrical windows punctuated the gray granite exterior, rendering the interior rooms light and airy on even the most dreary of days.

Seeing Tavish earlier had shaken Isla’s moorings, and now memories echoed off the walls with each footstep.

There was the sofa where Mamma had loved to sit with a needle and thread when she was home.

Given that the former duchess was rarely at home, the moment had always been a holy one.

Isla would gather her small embroidery basket and curl up beside her mother, content to work in companionable silence and the soothing scent of Mamma’s French perfume .

Ah, and here was the table where Gray had once discovered her hiding. Piers—she had called him by his first name then—had been around fourteen; Isla, eight.

She had found a kitten in the stables and claimed it as her own—much as she had claimed Tavish that fateful first meeting in the cemetery, come to think of it now. She found something to love, and so she loved it.

At the time, it hadn’t even occurred to her to ask for permission to keep the kitten, any more than she had asked for permission to keep Tavish. Her parents were usually gone, and her brothers scarcely paid attention to her.

But the kitten had jumped out at the duke’s feet as he tread the stairs, startling him. Her father’s rage had burned hot. The kitten had been cast back to the stables, and Isla berated—everything from her slovenly manner to the hint of Scotland in her vowels—until she crumbled to sobbing tears.

Piers had found her huddled under a console table in the music room, face splotchy from crying. He crouched on the ground before her—neckcloth missing and shirt unbuttoned, as was his wont.

“Ah, poppet, you look a proper fright,” he had said. “I’m sorry about your kitten. You should have been allowed to keep it.”

He sat on the floor and opened his arms.

Isla crawled from underneath the table, instantly collapsing onto his chest.

She could easily recall it now. The steady thump of his heart. The soothing shush-shush as he quieted her tears. The upswelling of love in her heart for her older brother. Here was a person who cared about her. Who would defend her.

And he was. And he did.

Until Tavish or some other Balfour entered the picture. Then, all semblance of a loving brother disappeared.

That lesson had been bitterly learned.

Now, just as Cairnfell held the memory of Tavish, Dunmore reminded Isla of all the people who had abandoned her in one way or another. Her mother through death. Her father through his coldness. Gray through his deliberate actions and harsh threats .

Only Matthias, her other brother, remained at her side. Matt might never be her advocate, but he at least did no harm. And when she had needed a supporting arm, Matt had lent her his.

Eventually, her pounding heart and anxious feet led her to the library.

It was a properly grand room, occupying the entirety of the central floor of the west wing of the house.

Three walls boasted bookshelves between large windows.

A sitting area, a map table, and a desk dotted the floor.

Dust motes hung in the air, breathless in the golden sunlight.

Perhaps Isla should have written Tavish at some point. During their final argument, she had made him swear not to write her, and he had been true in that. Pity, he hadn’t been true in his belief in her and their supposed “love” before that point.

Regardless, writing him had always felt too risky, too fraught.

Besides, by the time she had recovered from the pain of their breaking, she was immersed in her work at Malton Hill.

She hadn’t wished to encourage his affections when hers had changed so utterly.

Her impulsive marriage had been a fatal mistake—the reckless offering of an adolescent’s heart.

And therefore, she had buried the weight of it deep inside until it became a small thing—a smooth, light stone easily avoided.

But if she had written him, she might now understand his reasons for returning.

As it was, her heartbeat refused to settle in her chest, preferring instead to mimic the ratatat of a military tattoo.

Crossing the soft Axminster carpet, Isla opened a long drawer and stared at its contents—past issues of the London Gazette . Seven years’ worth, to be precise.

Gathering them, she spread the papers atop the map table. The Gazette helpfully supplied the general movement of regiments, rank advancements, as well as lists of the officers who were wounded, captured, or killed in each battle.

All this time, Isla had thought Tavish to be in the 92nd—a regiment she had followed with an almost unholy attention. After all, a lady needed to know if she had become a widow.

With every new special issue, she had searched for Tavish’s name—heart a pulse on her tongue.

But she had never once found him. Certainly not among the wounded or dead.

No rank advancements, but also no mention of him in battle, either.

Based on this, she had assumed that he had simply done his duty and nothing more.

That he had never seen any true action and, instead, spent his time rusticating in a barrack well away from the fighting.

On occasion, though, she would wonder if he had ever journeyed to the front line. And if he had—if he spent long nights under a quiet sky of stars, fellow soldiers sleeping around him—did he ever look upward and think of her sleeping under the same heaven?

But, as it turned out, she had been looking in the wrong place.

Flipping through the pages of the Gazette , she charted the fortunes of the 95th regiment. The Rifle Brigade.