Page 23 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

“A re you entirely certain this is wise?” Brendan asked, glancing at the letters in his hands.

Hamish didn’t answer him, choosing instead to remain silent.

There were some questions that should never be asked, a lesson that Brendan had yet to learn.

There were times when he thought his brother would be forever young.

He possessed the careless insouciance of an adolescent.

The only place he didn’t act with joyful abandon was on the bridge of his ship.

From time to time, Hamish had the impression that being a ship’s captain was a role Brendan donned like a large and uncomfortable cloak, almost too heavy for his younger brother to wear.

“I want you to take Micah and Hester with you.”

“You’ll need people to help you,” Brendan said in protest.

“I require no help. I lived here well enough for three weeks before you arrived. We’ll do so well enough after you leave.”

“So you’ll keep Mary prisoner?”

Hamish smiled at that thought. Mary Gilly would be no man’s prisoner. Hadn’t Brendan learned her well enough to know that?

“Leave two horses for us, I will see her safely to Inverness when the time comes.”

“When will that be, Hamish?”

“When it’s time,” he said, more forcefully than he’d intended.

Brendan turned over the two letters in his hands once again, as if committing their addresses to memory.

“I know this one place; it’s the goldsmith’s shop. But the other?”

“A friend of Mary’s. Surely you don’t begrudge her communicating with a friend?”

“I only begrudge her making a mistake. Or your doing the same.”

“Have you become the arbiter of our morals, then, Brendan? I don’t need fatherly advice from you. Go back to Gilmuir and forget about us.”

“You would never have done such a thing before India, Hamish.”

Nothing could restore the past, or the man he’d been.

“What if Mary’s friends question me? What am I supposed to say to them?”

“Silence would be the best answer, Brendan.”

“The world is not your hermitage, Hamish.” Brendan lifted his hand and gestured around the room as if to encompass the whole of the castle. “It’s not an empty place like this deserted fortress. It’s filled with people and opinions, reputations and words like honor and dignity.”

“If you don’t tell anyone, Brendan, then no one will know what goes on here. So I place the ruination of Mary’s reputation in your hands.”

“And your honor, Hamish?”

Brendan looked so intent that he almost answered his brother. But Hamish knew that he could never explain how he truly felt, or translate what he’d gone through into words. Words sometimes weren’t enough; a man had to live through an experience in order to understand.

Honor? Honor was a code of ethics, a way a man behaved in society.

Dignity? Again, a way of behavior. A man did not take tea naked in the parlor, or appear drunk in the company of ladies.

But to a prisoner, what did either word mean?

He’d lost his honor the first time he’d screamed in agony, and his dignity had been stripped from him as he was led nearly naked from village to village.

He’d faced himself in those months in India, seen himself as he truly was, not as he wished to be.

He’d tested each of the words he’d been reared to believe in, coming away with the knowledge that he’d strayed far from his upbringing.

He’d faced, at the last, the true degradation of his spirit.

Not from the acts of others, but from his own behavior.

That was something else he wouldn’t tell Brendan.

Mary offered him a respite from himself, and he would greedily and gratefully accept the interlude.

Perhaps she was unwise to agree to stay with him for however long he could convince her.

However, he thanked Providence, or heaven, or whatever mankind wished to call it that had convinced her to do so.

He’d been given a reprieve from his own shame and horror in the form of a gently smiling, forthright lover.

He was not going to be so noble as to send her away.

Brendan’s look darkened in the silence, as if he bit back a hundred words. It was the first time in their lives that he could ever remember Brendan being so restrained. His brother turned and would have walked from the room, but hesitated on the threshold. He glanced over his shoulder at Hamish.

“India really did change you, didn’t it? You told me that it had, but I refused to believe it. I told myself all this time that you were so different only because you were injured or simply lonely for home. I never realized that you weren’t the same man I’d always known.”

“You should have believed me,” Hamish said gently. “I wouldn’t lie to you.”

“Then tell me the truth, Hamish. By keeping Mary here, won’t you hurt her?”

“I don’t know,” Hamish said. “I only know I must.”

“Is he gone?” Mary asked, walking into Hamish’s tower room an hour later. She carried his lunch tray and gratefully set it down on the table beside the door. Climbing the stairs had not become easier with familiarity.

“He’s crossing the bridge now,” Hamish said, glancing over at her. “Hester and Micah are leaving also.”

“I know,” she said. “I’ve said my farewells.”

“You’re not going to try to convince me to let them stay, are you?”

“Should I?” Her friends would know that she was here with him, but there would be no one to tell that they were alone.

She doubted if Brendan would divulge that information.

Therefore, there would be no one to tell tales of her behavior, or look at her disapprovingly.

Even so, Hester had made no secret of her disappointment, and Micah had not once looked in her direction.

Mary had only known them a few days, and their opinions of her shouldn’t matter, but oddly enough she found that they did.

Brendan had only looked at her across the courtyard and turned and walked in the other direction. Repudiation in a glance. It was practice for her, if anyone in Inverness ever learned of what she was doing.

She studied Hamish, framed as he was in the window, bared to the light. She’d known him even less time than Hester and Micah, and here she was, altering the very framework of her life to stay with him.

He turned his head and returned her stare, as if he knew every doubting thought that tumbled into her mind.

“They’re barely over the bridge. If you hurry, you can catch up with them.”

Her conscience was remarkably silent. Her heart didn’t even speak. Her mind had no logic at all to offer.

“I know that I should,” she said softly. “I can occupy myself very well in Inverness. There are probably patients to see even now.”

“No doubt,” he said dryly.

He turned and watched the empty wagon roll over the bridge.

“They left all their provisions here,” Mary said. “We won’t starve.”

“When you’re tired of jerky and smoked fish,” he offered, not turning his head, “I can hunt.”

“Are you a good hunter?”

“All the MacRaes are,” he said offhandedly. His hands clutched the edge of the window frame tightly, belying his casual speech.

She should have been shy with him. Instead, it felt as if he were the dearest of companions, someone she’d known for most of her life.

She came and stood beside him, placing her left hand on his right arm, slowly caressing him from forearm to shoulder, a long smooth stroke. He glanced at her once, his smile summoning hers.

“Brendan looked very angry when he left,” she said. “He doesn’t approve of my staying with you, does he?”

He shook his head.

“We’re both doomed to perdition, then.”

“Do you care what the world says about you, Mary?”

“I should say that I don’t, shouldn’t I? The mark of a truly independent person. Like you. But I’m afraid that I do. Does that make me foolish in your eyes?”

He turned toward her. Her hand fell, and she clasped it with the other, standing in front of him, the object of his intense regard.

“Do you care about my opinion of you, Mary?”

“Yes,” she said softly. “I find that I do.”

His smile slipped. “You shouldn’t, you know.” He threaded his fingers through the hair at her temple. “I’m no one to judge another. I have sins beyond sins on my soul.”

“Do you?” She placed her hand on his cheek, feeling the scars beneath her fingers, wondering why he should be handsome to her when he was so marked.

There was something about him that was greater than all his scarred parts.

“Then you and I have something in common. I can claim a multitude of sins, not the least of which is remaining here with you.”

His smile was back in place, and this time, it was replicated in his eyes.

“You’re the Angel of Inverness. What great sins can you have?”

“I question entirely too much,” she said, dropping her hand to place it on his chest. His heart beat so steadily and loudly that it was oddly reassuring. “I used to wonder, if God did not wish me to question, why he’d given me a mind with which to do so.”

“An appropriate curiosity. What did people say?”

“I learned not to mention my thoughts,” she said, her fingers playing on the buttons of his shirt. They looked to be carved from bone, or perhaps ivory.

“I give you free rein to do so, at any time you wish.”

She glanced up to find that his smile had disappeared again, and in its place a solemn look. One he might wear when giving his promise or granting a wish.

Too many times, she’d wanted to discuss what was on her mind and had no one with which to do so.

At first, Gordon had been amused at her thoughts, but then she’d realized that for all his fondness of her, he would forever treat her like a gamboling kitten or a frolicking puppy.

Nor could she speak of such things with Elspeth; the young woman looked to her as an example, for all that they were friends.

How could she teach Elspeth to question all that society had taught her to believe?

Why deliberately foment rebellion when there was no need?