Page 57 of In Search of a Husband
The stable hand ran out to meet them in the courtyard when they arrived. Birds flitted from the trees to the stable block as the clouds began to darken in the sky. He didn’t wish for another day of rain when he had work to do outside as well.
Gabriel dismounted and strode over to Kate.
He looked up at her, feeling a little breathless at how beautiful she was, and she gazed down at him. She really was the worst governess that he could have hired in all of England. But he wasn’t interested in that, not anymore. She had been correct. The girls needed their family, and he would show up for them now, just as he would show up for Kate. He could show up for his family without expecting them to do that for him, not because he owed it to them, but because he owed it to himself.
“What am I doing here?” Kate asked as he reached up to help her dismount.
“I’ve a lot to do,” Gabriel said, his voice low and raspy. “And I ken I can count on ye, Kate. I need yer help.”
“I don’t see how you can count on me after last night. After these past few weeks with the girls.”
“It’s no’ as if I havena had those nights before as well,” he said, and she looked at his lips, then his eyes before sighing.
“I am not meant to be your friend, Gabriel. I have been brought up my entire life to become the wife of a peer. And then I made a horrible choice, and I have to live with that mistake now. As governess, I am meant to live in that attic. I am meant to be no one’s friend. I am meant to live on the fringe, to be reminded of my behavior and what little options I have left to exist in this world.”
“It doesna have to be like that,” he said. “Ye’re here today no’ as a governess but because ye’re my friend. I’m only asking for a lil’ faith.”
“I don’t know where I should go,” Kate confessed. She swallowed hard, then looked out into the distance before returning her gaze to his, and his heart twisted in his chest. “I don’t want to be in London and to be treated so poorly,” she said, “and I don’t want to be a companion or a governess and be so invisible.”
“Ye’re no’ invisible to me,” he insisted.
And she flashed a sad smile at him before continuing, “I don’t feel as if I even belong to myself. I’ve only been living life to complete someone else’s dream. I don’t know what my wishes are, or what my dreams and hopes are. I have been told since I was a girl what those would be, and now that it’s no longer an option, I’m just...” She swallowed hard once more and raised her hands up into the air, then let them drop. “I am just Kate Bancroft,” she said, “who has a history of poor decision making, is unusually tall, and very proficient at what is necessary for a good wife. But I don’t enjoy those things, and I can’t make myself be anything I am not. That I know. But what’s left for me to find out is too big at this moment. I’m scared, Gabriel. I’m afraid of ending up alone, but all my friends are getting married and having children and starting families and moving on as they should in this world, and I am quickly getting left behind. And I ran off to Scotland, thinking that it would be the perfect place to hide, but I don’t want to hide anymore.”
“Then dinna,” he said.
“Then that means I must…” She searched for the words. “I don’t know what I must search for—me, I suppose. That sounds silly whenyou are trying to rebuild the distillery and save this inn and see what you have left of your family. You go marching around this village as if your life depends upon it, and I understand now that it does. So when I decide to drink too much whisky and cast up my accounts and ruin your boots, it makes my quest to make sense of my own life… well, silly.”
“It’s far more important to ken who ye are in this world than anything else. And in the meantime, and until ye can figure it out, yer welcome to stay here.”
Her brows furrowed. “I don’t know what that looks like,” she said. “I can’t stay here as a friend because it’s improper, and I have no money of my own, so I need wages if you no longer employ me as your governess.” She looked at him, and her voice trailed off. She leaned down to whisper, “That was a very nice kiss, Gabriel. But you and I both know it will only complicate things further. You don’t want to marry, and I don’t know if I am ready to marry yet, either, after what has happened. Anything more would only tie me back to the in-between. I will only cause trouble for you, and I don’t think my heart can take any more heartbreak right now.”
“Verra well,” he said.
He had never been one for many words. He was never much of a talker. That had always fallen to his brother, who could spin the best tales. Gabriel was mostly quiet and, to the disappointment of much of his family, stern and focused. Truth be told, he didn’t want to be stuck here, either. He had made a life for himself outside of Scotland, and it was a fine life, full of fine things, but it didn’t feel quite right either.
And returning home as he had was not how he planned for it. All those years gone, only to return home to bury his brother and take guardianship of his brother’s daughters. He resented bearing the weight of his family’s crumbling legacy on his shoulders. But something recently had struck him, and that was, it was less of a burden and more of an opportunity. There was hope here. He could save this all and turn his family legacy into something for him, something he could create for himself.
Because he was lost as well.
He reached up and gripped her waist, she leaned forward and shifted her weight so he could catch her. It reminded him of the evening before.
They would strive to remain friends. That kiss could remain in the past, even if it did haunt all his thoughts currently. At some point, he could rid himself of the memory of her taste and not act like some besotted schoolboy.
He set her on her feet, and she smiled at him, and he thought for a moment she didn’t wish to be apart either.
“When my father was alive, we would age the whisky in casks in the back of the carriage house.” He laughed, remembering how his mother would greet the excise men with fresh pie as the groom saw to their horses. “No one kent. No’ for a time.”
“And now?”
“The carriage house roof is collapsing. And the stills that were in the basement of the inn weren’t in a place that was safely ventilated. The casks of the whisky he didn’t bother selling are stashed everywhere, and I am trying my best to track them all down to use that for funds to see to the proper licensing of the distillery. But Archie and Finn don’t see the need to modernize. They think we should stick with illicit whisky. They like the challenge and don’t wish to give an edge to our competitors. And Finn hates the English.”
“I’ve noticed.”
He scratched the back of his neck. “I’ve come back, Kate, to fight. Everything could go wrong, but I’ve done right in this world to realize there’s a chance here. I’m no’ about to waste it.”
The crows cawed overhead, darting across the sky as the autumn air spun around them.
“I believe you,” she said, clasping her hands in front of her.
