Page 71 of The Scot Beds His Wife
“Well… er…” Dammit. Was this some kind of a nightmare?
“Are you in love with him?” The dowager hurried on, blessedly saving her from the previous question.
Samantha agonized over what to tell her. Ultimately, she chose the truth, as she could really only stand so many lies at once.
“No. I do not love him.” Hell, she barely liked him. “But I… but we need each other.”
“I believe that’s for the best.”
Samantha gaped at the woman, thinking she couldn’t be more shocked if God reached down and miraculously restored her sight.
“Don’t misunderstand me, Sam—I hope I may call you Sam, as I dearly wish that we will be friends—but while my son is an unfailingly good man, he’ll make a terrible husband if you expect love, devotion, or forgive me, fidelity from him.”
“I don’t,” Samantha whispered.
Lady Eleanor nodded her approval. “It isn’t his fault, you know.” She invoked the chorus of many a mother with a roguish son. “It’s not that he has his father in him. I don’t believe that he’ll ever harm you physically. But… he was—is—such a sweet boy. And his tender heart has been broken simply too many times, you see, there are too many pieces for him to give away.”
The expression on Lady Eleanor’s face was so painfully earnest, Samantha forgot herself for a moment and reached for the woman’s hand. “I understand, Lady Eleanor—Mother—Gavin and I have an arrangement, nothing more. In truth, if he gave me his heart I—I don’t know if I’d have anything to give back.”
“For that I am both sorry and grateful.” Lady Eleanor smiled forlornly.
Samantha couldn’t remember ever having such a candid discussion with a friend, let alone a veritable stranger. It was both unsettling and wondrous and unspeakably sad.
“I’ll admit to some excitement when Alice told me we were welcoming a gunslinger into the family,” the dowager continued. “What an ordeal you’ve suffered. I’d be nigh catatonic in your place.”
“I was lucky your son found me when he did.” Samantha was glad Lady Eleanor couldn’t see her flush of pleasure at the rare compliment. “Who is Alice?” she asked, never truly comfortable at being the subject of a conversation.
“She’s my companion and maid. For a woman with myparticular ailment, she’s no less than invaluable. She’s my eyes and sometimes my ears, and she’s heard a great deal about you.”
“Like what?” Samantha asked nervously.
“Like that you’re clever and capable and brave. That you’re an unparalleled horsewoman and—apparently—a crack shot. That my son finds you infuriating, but that he calls you bonny.”
“Oh…” Samantha brought a hand to her burning cheeks, wishing she could be just a tiny bit more verbose and erudite than one of the gutted fish Callum was in the habit of leaving for her.
“I wish we’d met back when…” Lady Eleanor’s eyes closed and remained that way, as though hiding a secret pain. “As a girl I was considered the best horsewoman from Cape Wrath to Argyll. But that was before… before I married Laird Ravencroft. I’d have showed you the very best riding paths along the moors, and taken you to the highest point of Gresham Peak, where it seems that you could almost see across the whole of the Highlands, all the way to Inverness.”
So Lady Eleanor hadn’t always been blind. Samantha burned to ask her what happened, but something told her she would regret the answer the moment she learned it.
A door bounded against the stone, announcing an interloper, and Samantha jumped just as violently as Lady Eleanor did.
“It has been always said the women of Wester Ross are the most beautiful outside of Tyr na Nog, and here be the evidence right in front of me, not that I doubted it.” The years Eammon Monahan had spent in Scotland did next to nothing to change his Irish brogue, and Sam was very glad. For he was as lyrically jovial as his son, Callum, was enigmatic. It was obvious that the lines at his eyes hadbeen grooved by smiles rather than scowls. Unlike Callum, his beard was more gray than red, and matched his darker hair not at all. He was like his voice, big, merry, and approachably handsome.
“Beauty i-is not a-always a blessing, Mr. Monahan.” Eleanor’s grip tightened to crushing around Samantha’s fingers, though she kept her features and voice schooled into the very picture of passivity.
Strange, the woman hadn’t struggled with a stutter before.
“And beauty is not always encompassed by the scope of what the eye can perceive, is it, my lady?” He addressed the dowager marchioness, but winked at Samantha, who pulled the counterpane up to cover her bare shoulders.
Lady Eleanor fell silent, her shoulders curling forward, and her sternum doing its best to kiss her spine as she seemed to deflate. It was a protective gesture. A way of making herself seem smaller, unthreatening.
Eammon regarded the woman for a silent, compelling moment. His familiar golden eyes moved over her elegant frame as though reading her like the page of a book he couldn’t put down.
Samantha saw Callum in his father’s look. The long-denied yearning. The unbreachable loneliness. What did Callum long for? she wondered. Or who? Because with Eammon, the answer was readily apparent.
“I’m after checking on my patient,” the Irishman sang. “Someone tried to poke holes in all of you at Erradale, and I did my best to sew you back together. ’Tis a wonder they missed Locryn if you ask me, as you’d think he’d be the easiest target.” He patted his own belly beneath his vest, only a mild testament to a love of evening ale and sweet rolls.
Despite her pain, Samantha joined him in a short laugh.“You should have seen him, Mr. Monahan. For a man so short and round, he sure can move.”
