Page 9 of The Last Debutante
Mamie laughed. “I am perfectly fine! There is nothing to warrant such a look of concern, my love. When the gentleman is better—and he will be, as soon as the fever breaks—we might ask him a bit more about himself and send for his family.” She waved her hand. “Let him sleep. I want to know aboutyou.”
Daria could scarcely think how to proceed when a low, rumbling groan from the back room caused both women to still. Daria looked over her shoulder, then at her grandmother.
Mamie smiled thinly. “Poor thing is in need of some medicine. I’ll be but a moment.” She stood up and hurried to the shelf on the wall. She reached high on her tiptoes and stretched her arm up, feeling about the shelf and then pulling down a brown vial. She glanced at Daria from the corner of her eye. “It’s just a bit of laudanum. Do stay seated,” she said, and disappeared down the hallway. Her hair, Daria noticed, was coming undone from her uncharacteristically haphazard bun.
She heard Mamie open the door, heard her say, “There now, just a bit of this will aid you.”
“No,” the man said in English, his voice deep and as rough as tree bark.
“I am only trying to help you.”
Daria stood up. She moved hesitantly down the hall, but as she reached the door, Mamie appeared. “Daria, I asked you to stay seated,” she said coolly as she pulled the door shut behind her. “You must leave him be. He will not heal if he does not rest.” She moved past Daria.
Daria stared at the closed door for a long moment, debating. She would get to the truth of what had happened here. She only had to determine how to do it.
She turned around and walked back into the main living area. Mamie was up on her toes, putting the brown vial away.
“Do you not think that man requires medical attention?”
Mamie whirled around to face Daria, her mouth in a grim line. “Daria, my love, as I said, when he is recovered, we might learn more from him. In the meantime, I need to make a poultice to draw the infection out of his wounds, and I will need you to help me gather some devil’s bit.” She picked up a basket and thrust it at Daria.
Daria stared at the basket. “I don’t know what that is!”
“You will learn,” Mamie said firmly. She marched to the door and flung it open, almost tripping over the dog that had followed Daria here. “You wretched dog!” she said sternly. “Off with you! Come along, Daria! Don’t mind the dog—he roams the hills rather freely. Now, tell me all your news,” she said, reaching for Daria’s hand. “I want to hear everything. About my daughter, about Hadley Green, and of course I want to know which handsome young gentlemen have caught your eye.”
She would speak of suitorsnow? Before Mamie could shut the door, Daria glanced back at the end of the corridor. Foreboding sank into her bones.
Four
IN WHAT WASoptimistically called the throne room at Dundavie, there was a chair in which the Campbell lairds had sat for hundreds of years to receive members of the clan. The seat’s leather was cracked now, and the paint peeling from the arms. Duff had long wanted to replace the leather and paint the wood, but Jamie wouldn’t allow it. That chair was as familiar to him as the back of his hand. He knew every sag, every lump, every crack.
He was tracing a tear in the leather next to his knee with his thumb while Gwain Campbell expounded vociferously upon his latest complaint. Gwain had thatches of unruly red hair on his chin, which were almost indistinguishable from his ruddy cheeks. He was a man who was rarely satisfied, and when he was, it was not without qualification. He’d had a prosperous year, for example, but not without working himself to the bloody bone. His infant son, born one month before he should have been, had survived and was now thriving with a great personal sacrifice of sleep on Gwain’s part.
His complaint this day was something about sheep, but his gravelly voice was only a distant noise to Jamie, whose attention had wandered to the tapestry behind Gwain’s head. It had hung there forever, but until now he hadn’t really noticed the pale white unicorn with the flowing mane. Or that it romped in a field of yellow spring flowers. Today, the flowers were moving. They were swaying left and right on a slight breeze that he could feel slip down his body. He could hear the trees rustling overhead, could smell the sweet scent of the flowers.
Something about those flowers stirred Jamie deep within—they were too close, the color of their petals too deep. He turned his head from the tapestry and a sharp pain shot through him. The crack in the leather seemed to have deepened, growing rough as stone on one side. His head was foggy and it seemed as if everything around him was just beneath the surface of water, shadowy figures. He saw something move above him.A unicorn. No, not a unicorn.A woman. A woman with a long tail of hair that brushed against his cheek. Isabella?Ah, Issy...He lifted his hand to her nape, stroked her earlobe with his thumb. She smelled sweet, so sweet.“Leannan,”he whispered.
Isabella whispered to him, but Jamie couldn’t make out her words. His hand was drifting down, brushing against the swell of her bosom, and he was pleasantly, warmly, reminded of how it was to hold her, to kiss her, to feel her. An overpowering need to fill her now began to pulse in him, and Jamie pulled her down to him, whispering, “Leannan,” before he kissed her.
The kiss sent a shiver through him. It was so delicate, so reverent. He shaped his lips around hers, and warmth filled him, sliding out to his limbs, swirling around his wounds. The sensation was so light that it seemed almost a dream, as if he were drifting on a cloud. Maybe this was an angel’s kiss for a dying man.
He felt pressure against his shoulder. She was pushing against him. He felt her knee move against his hand and knock into his side, causing fire to streak down his leg. Jamie groaned and opened his eyes; his gaze was blurred, but he was aware that weak light was filtering in from someplace above him. It slowly began to dawn on him: he was not at Dundavie.
He was in the Sassenach’s cottage.
A small hatch of a window above his head was open to allow a soft breeze and what seemed like morning light. His finger was between the bed and a rough stone wall. Jamie slowly turned his head, saw the vase of wildflowers beside him. He blinked, his vision coming into focus. He moved his head again. The pain was bearable; he glanced down the length of his body and his gaze fell on a young woman.
She was sitting in a chair near the foot of the bed, a plaid around her shoulders. Her knees were tucked up under her chin, her arms wrapped around her shins. And her hair, tied into one long tail, hung over her shoulder.Honey,he thought. The color of her hair made him think of warm honey.
He remembered her—he’d seen her before.
She blinked. “Sir?”
Sir?No one called him sir. They called him laird.
“Are you awake?”
English.It was coming back to him. He vaguely recalled her standing rigidly, gaping at him. Aye, now he remembered—she’d been staring at his cock. Who was this English female, and why did it suddenly seem as if the Highlands were teeming with them? Was this the woman he’d kissed, or had he dreamed it?
