Page 31 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
“Why?” Bernadette demanded again. “What possible good can come of it?”
Avaline shrugged.
Bernadette bit her tongue to keep herself from accusing Avaline of being the most cake-headed person she’d ever met. “What will you give him?” she asked skeptically.
“I don’t know,” Avaline admitted. “But I’ll think of something.” She drew her knees up to her chest and absently picked at a loose thread on the coverlet. “Iwouldvery much like to see Catriona again. I rather like her.”
“That’s no reason—”
“I’ve thought quite a lot about it, Bernadette,” Avaline said primly, interrupting her. “I’ve gone about it all wrong, I am certain of it. I want to try again.”
Well, then. Bernadette supposed she ought to be encouraged that Avaline had actually come to this conclusion all on her own, but she could only think she was woefully naive and impossible. “If that is your wish,” she said, forcing herself to sound as pleasant as she possibly could in spite of her great frustration.
“It is,” Avaline said.
“It won’t work,” Bernadette said, unable to help herself.
Avaline shrugged again. “Perhaps not. At least I will know I tried everything within my power to do as my father wished.”
That was the thing that made Bernadette groan. She sank down onto the edge of the bed. “What about whatyouwish, Avaline? What aboutyou?”
Avaline gave her a tremulous smile. “Really, Bernadette, you know the answer to that. It doesn’t matter what I wish. It never has.” She stood up from the bed and walked to her bureau. She opened it, looked through the few things there and then held up a lace handkerchief to Bernadette. “I’ll embroider his initials on this.”
Bernadette looked at the delicate thing and imagined it in the hands of a brute. “It’s made of lace. He won’t care for it.”
“Perhaps not. But it’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?”
“In any situation but this,” Bernadette said bluntly.
Avaline looked at her curiously. “Why are you so cross?” she asked curiously. “You’ve always said a good woman’s first instincts should always lean toward compassion and kindness.”
The question set Bernadette back on her heels. Shedidalways say things like that to Avaline. And for the first time since seeing the dark eyes of this particular Scot, Bernadette wondered why her instincts had leaned so far the other way. Oh, but it was obvious, wasn’t it? He was cold and cruel, and...and he was much like Bernadette’s father that was what.
Except that he wasn’t, really.
Today, she had sensed that Mackenzie’s was a different sort of darkness than her father’s.
“I’ll find some thread,” she said, and went out, mulling that over.
CHAPTER NINE
THEYFEELASif they are rebels, hiding away at Auchenard as they are, lying in bed, their legs laced with each other and in spite of the bitter cold in a lodge with empty hearths, both of them slick with the sweat of having made wild love.
Seona twirls a bit of Rabbie’s hair around her finger, then traces a line down his chest. He catches her hand and kisses it, too spent to have another go. He wants to marry this lass, to make her his wife, to live at Arrandale and begin a family. But they won’t until her brothers return from Inverness, where they are part of the Jacobite army that has seized, and now hold, that stronghold.
“I donna want to wait any longer,” he tells her. “I want to wed you now, Seona. What we do here is immoral.”
She strokes his cheek and smiles sadly. “You know very well my father will no’ allow it before my brothers have returned, Rabbie Mackenzie.”
“Have you any word of them?” he asks, and kisses her breast.
“No. My father says Lord Cumberland is advancing, and they are needed to hold Inverness.” She shrugs and nuzzles his neck. “I donna want to speak of it now...do you?” She nibbles his ear.
Rabbie doesn’t want to speak of it, either, but he is filled with foreboding.
* * *
CAILEANMACKENZIE, RABBIE’Soldest brother, was laird of Arrandale, the estate just up the loch from Balhaire. He’d built his house with his own hands. But as stately as it was, it was nearly uninhabited, save for its current resident, Rabbie, accompanied by the ghost of Seona’s memory, and Mr. and Mrs. Brock, an elderly couple who had survived the dispersal of the MacAulay clan. They had a cottage down on the shore of Lochcarron, only yards from Arrandale, and kept the house and grounds and animals and cooked for Rabbie when he was about. Their living was so quiet that Rabbie scarcely noticed them.
