Page 72 of The Last Debutante
Isabella smiled and sipped again from her drink. “Well, I may no’ see you ’ere you go, so I will wish you God’s speed to England, Miss Babcock.”
That was a dismissal if ever Daria had heard one. “Thank you.” Daria forced a smile and put her untouched whisky on the sideboard. “Good evening, Miss Brodie.”
Having delivered her thinly veiled message, Isabella glided away.
Daria walked in the opposite direction, out of the great hall, without looking at anyone. She walked away from Scotland and Campbells and Brodies, and summer kisses and mammoth castles.
She wished she had never seen the naked man in her grandmother’s cottage. The image would haunt her all her life, for she had fallen in love with Jamie Campbell.
In her rooms, Daria began to pace. She had to leave Dundavie before she lost her mind. She had found such joy these last few days, and tonight, such desperate pain. It hurt everywhere; it pressed against her chest and her head.
She had fallen in love with her captor. She couldn’t imagine anyone else that she might ever love like this. But what did it matter? Her spring in Scotland had ruined her. No one would have her now.
She was alone.
Once, when she was a girl, she and Mamie had seen a bird with a broken wing. It had lain on the lawn, still very much alive, its wing at an odd angle. Other birds flew down and hopped around the poor thing, looking at it, but eventually they all flew off.
“But who will come to save the bird?” Daria had asked Mamie.
“No one,” Mamie had said sadly. “She has a broken wing. She cannot fly, and if she cannot fly, she cannot remain with her family. They’ve gone on without her.”
In despair, Daria collapsed onto the window seat. The full moon cast a milky glow around the castle. Daria glanced up at the moon, wishing that someone, anyone, would come for her.
Then a movement caught her eye. She looked down to the battlements and saw Jamie and Isabella walking arm in arm.
A broken bird. Daria felt like a broken bird.
Twenty-two
THERE WERE MOMENTSin a man’s life when he no longer knew the things he thought he knew. Jamie had believed he knew what was best for the Campbells and for himself, but he was no longer certain that was true.
Why could he not seem to be rid of the image of her?He could see her now, lying on her back, her arms behind her head, her legs crossed at the ankles, smiling up at the sky. He could see her as she’d appeared tonight, in a beautiful silk gown that hugged every feminine curve, her hair loosely knotted at her nape, her skin luminous, her eyes at once sparkling and shrewd.
And yet, here was Isabella, her green eyes fixed on him, shining in the candlelight as they had moved around the dance floor. He had cared very much for Isabella. He still did. But something had changed in his feeling for her. Everything felt a wee bit off.
It wasn’t because she’d cried off; he would have done the same. It wasn’t that there was anything less appealing about her.
It was him. It was all in him. He could feel a sea swell of change in him. It felt as if his heart were turning over, end to end. Everything he’d thought he’d known was upside down.
The evening was winding down, and the Campbells and Brodies, most now well in their cups after an evening of forced reconciliation, were staggering off to their rooms. That was where Jamie wanted to be—in his rooms, enveloped in silence so he couldthink—but Isabella had led him out of the great hall and outside, up to the old battlements. From here, the view of the glen in which Dundavie sat was spectacular. The full moon cast a glow so bright that Jamie could see cattle grazing next to a stream.
Isabella stood next to him, her head resting lightly on his shoulder. “You’ve not said much this evening,” she said in Gaelic. Jamie kept his gaze on the view below, of the land his family had overseen for two centuries. “I think you are not as happy to see me as I am you.”
“That’s not true,” he said instantly.
She lifted her head and gave him a skeptical smile. He couldn’t escape the fact that she knew him rather well. She rested her head again on his shoulder. “You are a fortunate man, Jamie Campbell,” she said. “You’ve managed to keep your clan together when others have failed.”
“I’ve tried,” he said. “I made a promise to my father that I would.” He’d promised that he would keep the clan as close to him as if they were his own children, that he would do everything in his power to keep them intact. But a question had dogged him of late. Did the clan want that, too?
“I have long admired that about you,” Isabella said, turning to face him. She rested her chin on his shoulder, gazing up at him. Jamie draped his arm around her, but the closeness felt forced. There had been a time when he’d been eager for her touch, but tonight, he found it cumbersome. He wasn’t the sort of man to take pleasure with one woman in the afternoon and then kiss another that evening.
“Your clan admires you, too, Jamie. They look to you for strength and guidance in all things. I don’t think they would like to see you sell land to the English. Or worse.”
He looked down at her. “Worse?”
She shrugged and looked down. “Marry one.”
Jamie snorted, but his dismissal felt false. Hadn’t he thought of Daria in that way today? He’d rejected the foolish notion, of course, but he’d thought it all the same. “That’s ridiculous. Of course I won’t.”
