Page 28 of Hard-Hearted Highlander

“Thank you,” she said to Miss Mackenzie. “It has been a pleasure. You must thank your cook for the bannock cakes. They were delicious.”

“Aye, you must come to Balhaire and thank her yourself.”

“I will. Very soon,” Avaline said.

“We’ll look forward to it, then,” said Miss Mackenzie.

Her brother reined his horse about. “We best ride on,” he said, and glanced at Avaline. “Good day, then.” He glanced at Bernadette, his eyes raking over her before he turned his back and rode on.

“Yes, thank you,” Avaline said, but he’d already sent his horse to trot.

Miss Mackenzie, Bernadette noticed, watched her brother move with murderous intent in her eyes, but then sighed and shook her head. “He must seem wretched to you, aye?”

“What? No!” Avaline said at the same time Bernadette muttered,“Entirely,”and received a look of mortification from Avaline.

“Aye, as he does to us all,” Miss Mackenzie agreed. “He’s no’ always been so...”

Rude? Churlish? Tactless?

“Wounded,” she uttered.

Wounded.That was the second sibling of his to allude to some deep wound, and yet, Bernadette glanced down so no one would see her skepticism. She couldn’t imagine what could have happened to make him unbearable at every turn.

“One day perhaps I might explain it,” Miss Mackenzie said. But she sounded uncertain, no doubt owing to the reality that there was no explaining such insolent behavior.

“Cat!” her brother called over his shoulder.

Miss Mackenzie gathered her reins, then paused and looked at Avaline. “He’s really no’ a bad man, he’s no’,” she said softly, and then spurred her horse to catch her brother.

“Then he has fooled us both,” Bernadette muttered.

Miss Mackenzie quickly caught up to her brother, and when she did, she slowed her mount and reached her hand for him. Much to Bernadette’s surprise, he took his sister’s hand, his gloved hand closing protectively around it. There was something quite tender about it, something that reminded her of that strange twinge of compassion she’d felt for him earlier today.

Or maybe it was hunger she felt. She turned away from them, and from her complicated feelings, and said to Avaline, “Well then! How was your day?” And then she saw Avaline’s face. “Oh, dear,” she murmured.

Tears streaked Avaline’s cheeks. Her skin had gone pale and her fists were curled tightly at her sides.

“Avaline!” Bernadette said with alarm.

“He is the most awful, wretched,unbearableman,” she said, so angry that her voice shook. “I hate him.”

“Oh, darling—”

“Ihatehim,” she said again, and whirled around and ran into the house.

* * *

AVALINEWOULDNOTcome out of her room for the remainder of the day and refused her supper.

“What will we do?” her mother fretted to Bernadette.

“Nothing,” Bernadette said gravely. “She won’t starve herself to death, madam. She will, eventually, come out of her room.”

Her mother did not look convinced of that and tried, unsuccessfully, on two more occasions to convince her daughter to open the door.

Bernadette did not press Avaline, but she brooded about the girl’s situation. She decided at last that the only thing to be done for her was to appeal to Lord Kent.

She realized, as soon as she was admitted to his study, that perhaps that was not a very good idea.