Hard-Hearted Highlander--A Historical Romance Novel Page 22

  Rabbie was astonished. She so clearly despised him—why would she not take what he was offering?

  “I haven’t smuggled anything. My conscience is clear. I see no reason to end our engagement.”

  She was entirely impossible to understand.

  “May we go back now?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. He tried to think how to explain this to her. “You do realize you will vow to honor and obey me for all the rest of your days in two days’ time, do you no’?”

  “Of course I do,” she said softly.

  He stepped closer. “You will be wed to a man who doesna want to be wed to you, Avaline. A man who is a free trader. And a Highlander. Are you certain that is what you want?”

  She laughed nervously. “Well...no. Are you certain of it?”

  “I donna want it at all,” he answered truthfully.

  “But the agreement has been made.”

  “Agreements can be broken,” he said, but she was shaking her head.

  “I understand,” she said carefully. “But if I don’t marry you as agreed, my father will return me to Bothing, and mine will not be a happy life, sir. At least here...at least I have Killeaven.”

  For the first time since meeting her, something clicked in Rabbie’s head, and he thought he understood her—she was as trapped as he was. He clenched his jaw and nodded. His chest felt as if it was cracking open.

  “May we please go back now?” she asked.

  He nodded again, feeling suddenly incapable of speech. The lass practically ran for the door. She despised him, she feared him, and yet she was determined to wed him to escape life under Kent’s thumb. Rabbie was not unsympathetic.

  The world seemed impossibly unfair to him. He’d finally found the spark that ignited his will to live again...only to have it doused by Avaline’s determination to escape her father.

  He followed Avaline into the great room and watched how she hurried in the direction of his siblings, all of them gathered near the hearth. But before Avaline could reach them, Ellis intercepted her.

  Rabbie spent the rest of the evening in a haze of disbelief, anger and longing. It seemed an eternity before Lord Kent agreed it was time for them to depart, but not without first exacting a promise that the Mackenzies would dine at Killeaven on the morrow. His mother agreed, Rabbie suspected, just so the Kents would go.

  “We’ve not much time left, have we?” Kent said jovially. “Another supper, a wedding and a feast, and then, we shall leave our daughter in your care and return to England,” he explained to Rabbie’s mother.

  “So soon,” she said mildly as she handed Lady Kent her cloak.

  “I am needed at Bothing. It’s an estate of great standing, you see. Quite larger than anything you would have experienced in the Highlands.”

  “Naturally,” Rabbie’s mother said. “Then by all means, you should make haste.”

  When they had poured themselves into the coach and it had lumbered away, the Mackenzies wearily retreated to the family salon.

  “Impossible people,” his mother said. “And we must dine with them again on the morrow! I’ve never in my life done so much celebrating of a nuptial!”

  “I knew Old MacGregor would sell the land, I did,” Rabbie’s father said as he caned his way to a seat and sat, stretching out his bad leg.

  “Aye, but Kent doesna have a ship,” Cailean pointed out.

  “No, but Kent has money, and a lot of it, he does. He’ll buy a ship, and then fill it with Highlanders looking for work. We canna stop it.” He glanced at Rabbie. “And you, Rabbie. Have you anything to say?”

  Startled, Rabbie looked around him. “Me?”

  “Do you mean to go through with it?” his father asked bluntly.

  Rabbie knew a moment in which he thought he would speak the truth and say no. But he said, “Aye, as I’ve said.”

  “Aye, you’ve said...but it is verra clear that your heart doesna want it.”

  They were all watching him, and Rabbie had that uncomfortable feeling that his family had discussed this without him, much as they had his melancholy. They knew him better than anyone, and they would know if he deceived them now. He looked around him, at their faces. “My heart doesna want it, no,” he admitted.

  “Then donna—” his father began, but his mother interrupted him.

  “Then don’t what, Arran?” she demanded. “It’s too late. It’s all too late! The banns have been posted. We have set this marriage in motion, and to end it now would be ruinous to that young woman!”

  “Why must we care about her?” Aulay grumbled.

  “Because she is helpless in this, Aulay. Because we will live on, but her life will be ruined—”

  “I mean to wed, Maither,” Rabbie said, aware that his father was shrewdly watching him. “I am no’ happy with her, no, but I will find a way.”

  His mother’s face fell. She sank onto a chair. “Oh, Rabbie. This is our fault, your father and I—we should never have asked this of you. No, it’s even worse than that—it’s my fault,” she said, pressing both hands to her bosom. “I thought—I hoped—that this young woman would bring you back to us, pull you back from such despair.”

  How could she have believed that Avaline Kent would ever make up for the loss of Seona? And now she was to make up for the loss of Bernadette as well? Rabbie swallowed down his bitterness. “Donna blame yourself, Maither. I should no’ have agreed, then,” he said, and turned away, unable to look at them all now. Unable to bear their pity. Determined that no one would see how his heart was beginning to shatter.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  AVALINE DID NOT wake Bernadette as she’d promised when they returned to Killeaven. She didn’t want company tonight, fearful that any conversation would cause her to forget all the things she wanted to remember about Aulay.

  As she dressed for bed and brushed her hair, she reviewed everything Aulay had said. Every smile. Every glance in her direction. She was utterly convinced that he esteemed her in the same manner she esteemed him. She was also utterly convinced that the only reason he hadn’t told her so was out of the respect he felt for his brother and, of course, the untenable situation in which they found themselves. Aulay was a gentleman and a loyal brother and a moral man. It would not do to declare his adoration of the woman his brother was supposed to wed in only two days’ time.

  In fact, when they were standing in the corner, away from all the ears and prying eyes, Avaline had glanced over her shoulder at the others and said, “Oh, Aulay, how I wish we could surprise them all.”

  “Surprise who, then?” Aulay had asked her.

  “Our families,” Avaline said and gave him a knowing look to convey she understood his dilemma. “I should very much like to surprise them, wouldn’t you?”

  Aulay sipped from the wine he was holding as he considered her. “Surprise them how?”

  She looked him directly in the eye and said, “With a wedding they never expected.”

  Aulay smiled and idly looked away as he nodded. “Is there something in particular you have in mind?”

  “Yes, actually,” she said as saucily as she knew how, and leaned in to tell him...but at that very inopportune moment, who should appear but her betrothed. His appearance had been unfortunate indeed, and she’d been quite perturbed by it. He hadn’t even had the common courtesy of allowing her and Aulay to finish their conversation. And she’d lost her opportunity to sit beside Aulay at the dining table because of that wretched Lord Chatwick.

  She knew Lord Chatwick requested that he be seated next to her—she’d overheard the butler tell a footman. What bother that boy was, whether he wished to believe it or not. She didn’t care that he’d soon be seventeen as he’d pointed out to her. She was seventeen, and she had to point out to him that clearly made her superior in age a
nd in life. But the boy was so obtuse he didn’t seem to understand at all, because he followed that with inviting her to Chatwick Hall.

  “It’s one of the largest homes in all of northern England,” he’d boasted, as if she wasn’t aware.

  “I know,” Avaline said pointedly.

  “Do you enjoy riding?” he continued eagerly. “We have a stable full of horses. Or perhaps you prefer archery? We have everything at Chatwick Hall.”

  “I enjoy all those things,” she assured him, as if he was a child. She tried to turn her attention back to Catriona, but Chatwick kept interrupting. He could teach her to shoot, he said, or to hunt, he said. He said his Pappa taught him to hunt, and he’d nodded at Mr. Cailean Mackenzie, who was most certainly not Lord Chatwick’s father, everyone knew that, and then he’d mentioned they had the best hunting dogs in all of England.

  Did he really think she cared a whit about dogs? When she married Aulay, she would have to insist that dogs did not roam the house freely as they did at Balhaire. It seemed she was forever bumping into one, or nearly tripping over another. There were far too many of them, and they touched their wet snouts to her fine gowns, and she didn’t care for it at all.

  But never mind Chatwick. They were all to dine again on the morrow, here at Killeaven, and she had to find a way to speak to Aulay of her feelings, as she was running out of time. She was certain she could convince him that everything was really perfectly aligned for them. The wedding was set, and Avaline believed it hardly mattered if one Mackenzie married in the place of another. The posting of the banns was really just for show, wasn’t it? And if not, there was surely something that could be done for it. Her father always said that everyone had their price.

  Avaline drifted to sleep with the image of meeting Aulay Mackenzie at the altar.

  She was awakened early the next morning by Bernadette, who shook her awake. Avaline blinked the sleep from her eyes then looked up, and almost gasped with surprise. Bernadette looked truly awful. “Good Lord, you really are unwell,” she said.

  “What?” Bernadette asked. She touched her face. “I didn’t sleep well.”

  Well, Avaline had slept like a baby and she stretched her arms high overhead. “What time is it?”

  “Eight o’clock.”

  “Eight!” Avaline exclaimed, and meant to complain.

  But Bernadette said, “I must speak with you, Avaline.”

  “Yes, all right, but at breakfast,” Avaline said, and rolled onto her side, intending to return to sleep.

  Bernadette put her hand on Avaline’s hip. “It really must be now,” she said, sounding a wee bit hoarse.

  Avaline groaned. There was nothing she hated worse than conversations in the morning. “Very well,” she said irritably, and pushed herself upright. She pulled her braid over her shoulder, drew her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Well? What is it?”

  Bernadette didn’t answer straightaway. She began to pace. Her hair was unkempt, Avaline noticed, as if she’d slept with it loose. She had never seen Bernadette like this, had never seen her with a hair out of place. Bernadette was always so...confident. In appearance, in word and in deed.

  She suddenly stopped pacing and fixed her gaze on Avaline. “Well, I can think of no way to soften it, so I’ll just say it. Mr. Mackenzie and I have...we have...” Her chin trembled, and Bernadette pressed her fingertips to her cheeks.

  “What have you and Mr. Mackenzie done? Argued?”

  “Kissed,” Bernadette said tightly.

  It took a moment for Avaline to fully grasp that. What did that mean, precisely? A peck on the cheek? Or a kiss? “Pardon?”

  “We have kissed,” Bernadette said again. A blush was creeping up her neck.

  And still Avaline didn’t understand. “Why?” she asked, truly astounded. She couldn’t imagine why anyone would kiss that man if it wasn’t necessary, not even his own mother.

  The questions seemed to confuse Bernadette. She pushed her hair back from her face. “I’m really not sure,” she said softly and, amazingly, tears filled her eyes.

  Avaline’s eyes widened with surprise. Bernadette never wept. Avaline leaned forward. “Do you...do you esteem him? I thought you despised him.”

  “I don’t despise him...” She winced. “That’s not true, I did despise him in the beginning. But mostly I didn’t want to see you wed such a cheerless, hard-hearted man.”

  “So why then did you kiss him?” Avaline asked, terribly confused. “Was it part of a scheme to save me?” she asked hopefully, although she couldn’t see what sort of scheme would require Bernadette to kiss him.

  “No, God, no,” Bernadette said quickly. “It just happened, Avaline. I can’t really even say how. And it happened more than once. It happened—” a tear slid down her cheek “—in a manner I can’t even describe to you.”

  Avaline blinked. She was very curious to know what manner could not be described.

  “It’s horrible, I know,” Bernadette said. “Somehow, we, ah...well I, came to esteem him in a way that defies all logic—”

  “Do you love him?” Avaline exclaimed, shocked and horrified for Bernadette.

  “No!” Bernadette quickly insisted. But she didn’t look as if that was true. She looked as if she was trying not to love him.

  Bernadette fell to her knees beside Avaline’s bed, and clasped her hands before her as if she was praying. “I know what I’ve done is the height of betrayal, and for that, I offer you my sincerest apologies. If I could take it back, I would, but I can’t. I don’t know what possessed me, other than I was swept away by sentiments I’ve never experienced quite like this.” She bowed her head over her hands, hiding her face from Avaline.

  Avaline stared down at her dark head. This was brilliant. It was the answer to her prayers! “Oh, dear, you mustn’t upset yourself,” she said, and put her hand on Bernadette’s head. She wouldn’t have to worry about that wretched man now—she would give him to Bernadette!

  “It’s too late. I’m beside myself with grief,” Bernadette said tearfully.

  “Well, of course you are,” Avaline said soothingly. “No doubt you saw a kiss from even him as your only opportunity for passion.”

  Bernadette stilled. She lifted her head. “I don’t think—”

  “Were I in your shoes, I’m sure I’d have been tempted as well,” Avaline said soothingly.

  Bernadette’s brows dipped into a dubious vee. “You would?”

  “You mustn’t give it another thought, Bernadette. I completely understand how you must have needed the attention, and I forgive you.” Avaline felt a bit like a saint. Of course, Bernadette would never have any chance at happiness, and Avaline could hardly blame her for stealing a bit of hers. Not that she’d stolen anything from her at all, really.

  Bernadette dropped her head again. “I am so sorry, Avaline.”

  “There is no need for apology,” she said. “It’s not as if I’ve found any rapport with him, after all.”

  Bernadette sniffed. She slowly pushed herself to her feet. She looked much older and...and ill when she wept. “I’ll gather my things.”

  “Why?” Avaline asked, confused again.

  Bernadette frowned again. “Avaline—you must dismiss me. You must send me home to Highfield.”

  “I beg your pardon! I won’t hear of it!” Avaline exclaimed. She didn’t intend to live in the Highlands by herself, for God’s sake.

  “But...”

  Avaline shook her head, and slid off her bed. “You won’t leave me, Bernadette,” she said as she made her way to the dressing table. It occurred to her that she ought to admonish Bernadette in some way, and glanced back, pointed at her and said, “But never do that again. All right, then, we’ve had our talk. I’d like to be alone now.”

  Bernadette stared
at Avaline. Clearly, she was astounded by how forgiving Avaline was to her. And she ought to be, for kissing Mackenzie was badly done, very badly done. In any other circumstance, Avaline would have been quite cross and would have gone to her father to tell him of the betrayal. But she was astonishingly grateful for Bernadette’s wretched behavior. She just had to think of how to best use it to her advantage.

  Bernadette was walking to the door, still sniffling.

  “Bernadette? You’ll be at supper this evening with the Mackenzies, won’t you?” Avaline asked.

  “The Mackenzies are coming here?”

  “Yes, all of them. You’ll dine with us this evening,” she said. It was not a question.

  “Do you think that wise, given what I just told you?” Bernadette asked.

  Avaline sighed and turned around to Bernadette. “I want you to be there. I might need you.”

  Bernadette grimaced. “If you like.”

  Avaline smiled. “Don’t look so despondent, dearest. It should be a very interesting evening. Very well, that’s all.”

  Bernadette went out.

  Avaline smiled at her reflection. She didn’t know how she was going to manage it, but Bernadette kissing Mr. Mackenzie was the opening she needed to wed Aulay.

  Avaline couldn’t wait for tonight.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  BERNADETTE HARDLY HAD a moment to understand what had happened in that extraordinary meeting with Avaline this morning, much less do anything about it, because Lord Kent wouldn’t allow it. He was in a very foul mood and kept bellowing at them all to do this and bring that.

  They were all gathered round him now in the dining room, sitting or standing nervously as he had his luncheon. Bernadette had tried to avoid this meeting, but he’d commanded her to come, and frankly, she feared what Avaline would say if anyone questioned about her absence. I don’t rightly know. Perhaps she has gone off to kiss my fiancé again, although she promised she would not.