Page 28 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

“Captain Brendan MacRae,” her father said, his words dispelling the fog that seemed to surround her.

She made a small curtsy and tapped Jack on the shoulder so that he remembered his manners. He bowed impatiently, but ruined his effort at politeness with a rude outburst.

“You’re a captain, sir?” he asked excitedly. “A sea captain?”

Captain MacRae nodded, but his attention was directed toward Elspeth. She knew because her gaze hadn’t left him from the moment she’d entered the room.

The disappointment she felt was so powerful that Elspeth thought she might faint from it. A sea captain?

She wanted to tell him how sorry she was that he would be leaving them so soon, for places and destinations too far away from Inverness. Words, however, were suddenly beyond her, trapped at the base of her throat. She placed her fingers there as if to urge them forward, but not a sound emerged.

Her mother escorted Mr. Marshall to a chair, but the elderly gentleman hesitated until the women were seated. Elspeth took a seat on the settee, next to her mother, and directly across from Captain MacRae.

He didn’t actually look like a ship’s captain.

He could as easily have been a solicitor, perhaps, or a clerk at her father’s distillery.

His hair was clubbed at the nape of his neck with a soft blue ribbon, and she wondered if a woman had helped him with it.

More than once, she’d seen her mother assist in her father’s dressing, teasing him as she patted the folds of his stock into place while he gave her a kiss on her forehead in payment for her solicitousness.

“Where’s your ship?” Jack asked, only to receive a quelling look from their father.

“Some distance from here, I’m afraid,” he said.

“Captain MacRae has brought word from Mary, dear,” her mother was saying.

She glanced over at her mother and nodded, still feeling incapable of speech.

Captain MacRae held out a letter to her, and she took it, her fingers trembling. For a brief moment, the paper linked them together, and neither he nor she relinquished their grip. She glanced up to find him staring at her as intently as before.

“Thank you,” she said, feeling the constriction in her throat.

He let go, withdrawing his hand and nodding, leaving her absurdly disappointed not to hear his voice.

They were all looking at her, and although she would have liked to take the letter to her room to read it, she opened it there. Her smile grew as she read Mary’s words.

Glancing over at Captain MacRae, she asked him, “Are you acquainted with this patient of hers?”

“He’s my brother. You have me to thank for her absence, I’m afraid,” he said. “My older brother and his wife had heard of her reputation, and I coaxed her to treat Hamish.”

His voice was lower than she’d expected. The kind of tone that resounded in a room, revealed an inner confidence.

“This castle sounds as if it’s a fascinating place,” she said. Mary seemed equally as charmed with her patient.

“It’s a deserted fortress in the middle of nowhere.”

If she hadn’t been watching him so closely, she wouldn’t have noticed the fact that his features stiffened almost imperceptibly. Had she offended him, or did talking about the castle disturb him in some way?

“What does she say, dear?” her mother said gently, and Elspeth realized that she’d once again been unconsciously rude.

She didn’t feel comfortable reading the letter aloud, but she explained the gist of it. “She says that she cannot leave her patient until he’s well, and that she’s especially disappointed not to be able to meet with you, Mr. Marshall.”

“I do understand,” Mr. Marshall said, nodding and smiling affably. “The well-being of a patient comes before all else, I’m afraid.”

“Is he so very ill?” she asked Captain MacRae, feeling sorry for him to have such a grief to bear.

“I expect his complete recovery any day,” he said, smiling at her.

“Will you be returning to the castle, then?” she asked, holding the letter firmly on her lap so that the vellum did not betray the tremulousness of her fingers. She concentrated her attention on it and not their visitor.

“I had planned on returning to my ship.”

Elspeth felt a tiny pang, too small really to note, in the area of her heart.

Even her breath seemed tight, and her chest felt as it had when she was ill last winter of a lingering cold.

But she forced her smile to remain as it was, clinging fiercely to her lips.

“Then I shall wish you a safe journey. Will you be leaving soon?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

She glanced over at him in surprise, to find him looking at her in an altogether strange way. Never had a man regarded her as intently as this young captain, and with such a somber expression on his face. He was studying her as if she held the answer to his plans.

“Perhaps you can join us for dinner,” her mother said, standing. “In order to welcome Mr. Marshall to our home.”

He replied courteously, the words slipping past Elspeth as if they were simply a faint breeze.

She couldn’t stop staring at him, even though she knew that what she was doing was hideously impolite.

It seemed, however, as if her heartbeat were tied to his gaze, and the only way to calm it was to keep smiling at Captain MacRae.

She heard her mother saying something, and Jack murmuring a reluctant assent. Perhaps her father conversed with Mr. Marshall, or the maid responded to her mother’s query. The world could have marched into their pleasant and cozy parlor at that moment, and Elspeth wouldn’t have noticed.

Nor, did it seem, would Captain MacRae.