The Laird Takes a Bride(103)

Duff didn’t respond at first. Their horses clopped along. Finally he replied, pensively, “I may have altered my beliefs about that.”

“And here I thought you were the one thing I could count on not to change.” Alasdair meant to sound wry, jocular, but somehow his voice was more serious than he wished.

“It’s slowly been dawning on me, lad, that life is about change.”

A memory of Fiona saying that very thing seared through Alasdair, painful and harsh. He said nothing, only listened as Duff continued:

“Never thought I’d shave off my beard. Or care what my stockings looked like. Never thought I’d begin to value courtesy over rudeness, kindness over selfishness. God’s blood, I never thought I’d spend countless hours making fishing rods for the children, and enjoying every minute of it.” He rubbed at his bare chin. “It’s unsettling, to say the least—old habits die hard—but there you are.”

In a kind of despair, hoping to turn the subject, Alasdair said lightly, “If we’re to talk of being a favorite among the ladies, I notice you’re causing a stir among a certain set yourself.”

“What, among the old tabbies? Well, I can’t help it. There’s no getting around the fact that I’m a good-looking fellow.”

Alasdair smiled. Success. A diversion.

But then Duff added somberly, “I’m trying to move on, too. I’ll admit, though, that I’m not making much headway. I might flirt a little, but the truth is that my heart’s not in it.” He sighed. “I won’t pry, lad. Not judging you, either. But if you want to talk—I’m here.”

Alasdair met Duff’s eyes, nodded his thanks. It was enough. It was all he could manage.

They had come to a place where the trail gave way to a vast rolling meadow in which the heather’s violet bloom had quietly faded away. Alasdair pulled his horse to a halt. He looked around the meadow as if he had never seen it before.

“Where to now?” asked Duff.

“We’ve been invited to Hewie’s. One of his mad dinner parties. You know—the usual.”

“Wine, women, song.”

“Aye.”

“It’s up to you, lad.”

Alasdair thought about what the evening would, predictably, entail. The pattern of Hewie’s parties had been long established. He could eat until he was ready to burst, get splendidly drunk, play billiards, dance reels. And, very likely, he could allow himself to be seduced by Hewie’s widowed sister-in-law, the attractive—and aggressive—Nora.

Old habits die hard.

“I believe,” he now answered Duff, “I’ll pass.”

“Then so shall I. Race you back home?”

Motion, speed, the chilly wind pressing hard on his face: a fast gallop in the gathering twilight. Yes. Alasdair nodded.

They both dug their heels into their mounts, and were off.



Reestablished at the Douglass keep, Fiona seemed to have been seamlessly absorbed back into her old routine, in a way that was deeply unnerving, as if her time at Castle Tadgh had been collapsed into nothingness. Nobody asked her about it, whether out of sensitivity, respect, or lack of interest. It had been her hope that as the long days passed, the image of Alasdair would begin to fade from her mind and her heart, but it did not. After a while, it occurred to Fiona that she now had a better and more vivid understanding of that old Greek myth about Eurydice, the girl who’d stepped on a poisonous snake and been sent for all eternity to live in the ghastly Underworld—a place of despondence and woe from which ordinary mortals could never escape.

It felt a little like she was living in a sort of underworld, too, invisible to everyone else but evident to her, every minute, every hour.

She did her best to tamp down a restless longing to be somewhere else.

Anywhere else, perhaps.



Alasdair stood in the Great Drawing-room, staring at the window-hangings. Even though no one came in here anymore—he and Duff now went to the library in the evenings—apparently somebody had, at some point, drawn open the heavy, tasseled lengths of dark green velvet to admit the sun.

He remembered Fiona saying scornfully:

Three hundred and eighty pounds for the fabric alone. And nineteen pounds for the tassels.

God’s blood, but that was a lot of money.

There was a tap on the open door, and Alasdair turned. In the doorway stood Mrs. Allen the housekeeper in her tidy spotless gown and ruffled cap.

“You sent for me, laird?”

“Aye. Come in.” He gestured toward the curtains. “Could you have those taken down, please, and cleaned?”

“Of course, laird.”

“And afterwards—I want to give them away. To someone who’ll find them useful. Any ideas?”