Page 25 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

“You’d better be going after your lady’s powders, Huntly, or you’ll have a war on your hands.”

“War?” He chuckled. “I doubt it. The chit doesn’t have enough spirit to fire a well-aimed shot. As for the headache…she doesn’t have one any more than I do.”

“What are you going to do? Make her wait? We have a game of cards to finish, don’t forget.”

“I haven’t forgotten. She can wait. It will do her good,” Huntly said.

Annabella stepped away from the door, feeling completely discomfited. She knew now that Huntly was both a scoundrel and a tyrant. Let her wait, indeed. She moved up to the door once more and heard Huntly continue.

“When she’s had time to reflect,” he was saying, “and is feeling sufficiently humbled, I’ll go accept her apology.

” Apology ? Annabella almost choked. For a moment she was thrown off balance, trapped between her yearning to show Huntly just how much spirit she could muster and her desire to keep her father uninformed about what was happening, maintaining her ardent position as the resolute daughter of an English duke.

But then Huntly’s words came back to prod her.

Apology ?

That did it. She was going back to the ballroom, and she intended to have a wonderful time.

She opened the door a bit to take a peek.

Huntly was still there, and so were the dogs.

The moment she opened the door, they both bounded toward her.

She closed it quickly, hearing the howls and barks of the dogs on the other side.

Now they were scratching on the door. She knelt and whispered into the keyhole, “Shoo! Go away!”

“Looks like your lady is going to be leading a dog’s life,” one of the men said, breaking into laughter.

“Not until we’re married,” Huntly said.

Without another thought, Annabella scrambled to her feet and darted across the room.

She slipped through another door, one that opened onto a sweeping slope of lawn dotted with lanterns.

She saw only a few strolling guests who escaped the warm activity of the ballroom.

She lingered for a moment in the shadows along the perimeter of the castle.

The discordant notes of instruments being tuned in readiness for the next set drifted out the open doors, mingling with sounds of laughter and the clink of glasses.

Annabella picked up her skirts and hurried down a winding path, its stones worn smooth with use.

The path divided the garden where clematis and roses mingled with foxglove, irises, and meadow rue.

Going down three steps, she ducked beneath an arch where roses drooped in rosy foam.

In her white dress she would be highly visible, unless she went toward the loch, beyond the wide circle of dim yellow light made by the lanterns.

Her heart pounded. What if someone saw her and told her father?

Or worse, what if they told Huntly?

Alone and on the shores of the loch was the last place she wanted to encounter the likes of Huntly. And yet…if she were careful, she wouldn’t have to see him at all.

The mist covering the island was growing thicker, the jagged, dark image of the Black Cuillins barely visible in the distance, against the deep blue-black of the evening sky. Ahead of her, Annabella could hear the soft lapping of water against rock.

Night sounds were all around her.

If I never hear the name the Earl of Huntly again, it’ll be too soon.

How could she hate someone this much—someone she barely knew?

She reached the edge of the loch, putting Huntly out of her mind with thoughts of the beauty of the moon shining like Gypsy spangles upon the water.

A moment later she stumbled against the overturned hull of a small rowboat.

The wood was rotten, but the planks held.

A moment later the hull provided her with a seat and she took it, after giving it a proper cleaning with her handkerchief.

Ross wasn’t the kind of man to go lurking after a woman, in fact, he had never done anything like this before.

In Annabella’s case, he broke one of his own rules.

He followed her. Stepping into the hallway, he saw her talking to Huntly.

Suddenly Annabella stepped back and turned away from him.

Ross couldn’t hear what Huntly had said to her, but she didn’t look too happy.

He watched her walk to the drawing room, as elegant and refined as the most genteel lady, but her face was red as a beet and her brow was furrowed, and she walked fast, as if she was in a big hurry to get there—or away from Huntly. Probably the latter.

He watched her until she reached the drawing room and went inside. Ross glanced back at Huntly. He and the two men remained where they were, still talking. Apparently the oak brain didn’t have a grain of sense. He wasn’t going to follow her.

Ross wasn’t so noble.

He went back into the ballroom and walked through it to a door leading outside.

The evening air was cool. It felt good after the stuffy heat of the ballroom.

He looked out upon a black-and-white world watched over by a silvery moon, so round and bright it reminded him of the pocket watch his grandfather had given him.

Never before had he thought about the color white having such variety, but the world lay before him, in varying shades from the silvery cast of the moon upon the grass to the fleeting shadows of the softest white that danced in and out of the heavy mist, fading to gray.

The sky was black, but the earth was blacker.

And everywhere the mist lay, looking black as a witch’s hat one minute and white as starshine the next.

It was a night for secrets, for mystery and intrigue, where the heavens seemed to give their blessing by lowering a misty cloak of concealment.

He went to the drawing room, finding the outside door flung open.

He went inside. The room was empty. He barely cracked the door that led into the hallway and saw Huntly and his two friends still there.

Huntly’s dogs headed for the door and Ross quickly closed it.

Retracing his steps, he went back outside.

Where had she gone? He followed the scattered stones of the walk that gently sloped down to the loch, then, looking out over the shadows made by antique statuary and climbing roses, he suddenly saw her sitting like a pearl inside an oyster, all iridescent white trapped in a moonbeam.

He headed in her direction and stopped a short distance from her.

Annabella was apparently preoccupied and did not see him.

Of course, she had seen the handsome American more than once over the course of the evening—twice by accident, the other thirty or so times by calculated intent.

In her mind she wasn’t doing anything wrong in looking at him.

He was a barbarian, and it was all right, in her book, to look at a barbarian—even a handsome one—as long as look was all one did.

So, she looked. Much the same way she looked when the royal family was visited by that envoy from India last year—the one that brought two Bengal tigers as a gift for Queen Victoria.

Time after time Annabella had found herself slipping away from the exposition to approach the animals’ cage, just to stand a few feet away and look at the strange, magnificent beasts.

She wouldn’t have dared to touch them, of course, but there was something exciting about being that close to danger, yet remaining within the perimeter of safety.

That was exactly how she felt when she looked at the duke’s grandson—excited, because she knew she was courting danger, yet safe, because of her betrothal, unpleasant as it might be.

Her primary reason for leaving the Duke of Dunford’s ball had been to gain control of herself and restore her composure, which should have put her in a better frame of mind to enjoy—no, to endure—the attentions of her betrothed.

If she hadn’t encountered the handsome American barbarian by accident.

She sighed wistfully and kicked at a stone with her slipper.

The stone rolled over a few other stones and stopped.

She would have to admit she was rather happy things worked out as they did.

It was infinitely nicer down here than it had been back in the ballroom.

She didn’t want the attentions of her betrothed, and she certainly had no desire to enjoy them—ever.

What she wanted, and needed, was time to think about what she was going to do. Right now the options didn’t hold much appeal: She could drown herself. Or she could give herself to the church.

So much for options.

Another mournful sigh and she looked up through the mist t the hazy ring of light that surrounded the moon.

Annabella was thinking that God was up there somewhere in the heavens, beyond the mist and farther away than the moon, probably much too busy with serious matters to pay her small problems any mind.

Annabella had been raised according to the dictates of the time, which included a liberal dose of decorum.

Her strict religious upbringing involved a grim daily ritual in which her father led his household—both family and servants—in morning prayer.

This daily drudgery was something some people seemed to think was necessary.

Annabella had never really understood her parents’ fondness for rigorous morning prayer, for if the truth were known, she found the whole thing excruciatingly boring.

Prayer was something she was accustomed to, but in this particular case, it was a little late for prayer—since the betrothal was already official—but it never hurt to try. After all, Daniel was in that den with the lions, and look what happened to him.