Page 58 of To Wed an Heiress
They lived in two different worlds, not just New York and Scotland. He was a man fighting to protect his legacy while following his interests. She was a woman expected to conform to a certain role. Of the two of them, he had the more exciting life and it was one he had crafted himself.
She couldn’t even conceive of a circumstance in which she was given a chance to follow her interests. If she even had an interest in anything beyond herself.
The thought brought her up short, made her turn and apply herself to the task that she’d been given once more.
Was she that insular? Yes, she had been. Her entire life, from the first moment she’d drawn breath, had been lived inside a luxurious bubble. Nothing was as important as she was. Life revolved around her.
Lennox was willing to put himself in danger to prove something. She had nothing that meant enough to her to fight for—except for her freedom.
She’d read newspaper accounts of women who’d been heroines during the war. They’d been nurses or operated as couriers or spies.
Even Ailsa had kept her farm going in the middle of a war with Elizabeth helping. They’d only come back to Scotland after they’d been burned out.
The only thing Mercy had done was leave America. Her freedom had been important enough to brave censure and the endless lectures she would receive in the future from her disappointed parents, but it hardly seemed as significant as the actions of those other women.
Each of them had believed in something outside themselves that was more important than their own safety. Even Lennox’s single-minded pursuit of flight wasn’t for himself as much as to prove that it could be done.
Her life had never expanded beyond the big gray house in New York. If nothing else, this time in Scotland had taught her that and one thing more: she wouldn’t be able to live in such a narrow world again.
“Why don’t you get along with the Macrorys?” she asked, desperate to change the tenor of her thoughts. “You both lost someone you love. Wasn’t that enough to bridge any gulf you might’ve felt?”
“I didn’t know your family,” he said. “I rarely had anything to do with them when I was a boy and then I went to Edinburgh to study and live. I didn’t come back to Duddingston very often. Robert always came to Edinburgh.”
She turned and looked at him, wanting to know more and hoping that he’d continue.
“Robert made arrangements with a variety of people,” he said. “Most of them refused to honor any contracts once he was gone. I saw your great-uncle’s hand in that. Our cattle were grazing on Macrory land. I had to sell the herd because I had no way of feeding them. There was a right-of-way your great-uncle forbid me to use. Robert had developed a new way to dry seaweed. That stopped. Even the fishing contracts he made with the villagers weren’t continued.”
“And you think Douglas was behind all those things? Why would he do something like that?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. No, that’s not true. I suspect I know, but I’ve never gotten corroboration from him. I think he blamed Robert for Mary’s death. It’s always neat and tidy if you can blame someone for acts of nature or accidents. So he was determined to obtain his own form of justice. If he could ruin me, all the better.”
“Do you think him that petty?”
“He loved his daughter. He couldn’t see that I loved my brother. For some reason, or because I was a Caitheart, I had to be punished, although I wasn’t responsible for the accident. No one was.”
He remained silent for a moment and then spoke again. “There are times, Mercy, when things happen. There isn’t anyone to blame. You can’t wrap everything up in a nice little bundle and put a bow on it and say this is why that happened. Life doesn’t work that way. Douglas doesn’t understand that. He’s a scales kind of man. Everything has to be balanced in his world.”
She hadn’t known her great-uncle for long, but from their conversations at dinner, she got the impression that he and her grandmother were alike. They each had a penchant for blaming others for their ills. In Ailsa’s case, it might have been appropriate to blame the war and the Union soldiers—especially those who’d set fire to her home—for her current situation. But it seemed unfair to hold Lennox accountable for the tragedy that had befallen both families.
Now it seemed as if both sides were deeply entrenched in their respective positions. She wasn’t going to solve anything in the time she would be remaining in Scotland. That thought joined the others, succeeding in ruining the happiness she felt by being here with Lennox.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lennox hadn’t expected her to want to help, but once again Mercy surprised him.
When she asked a question, he felt compelled to give her the truth. It was genuine curiosity he saw in her eyes. Or a wish to understand him.
It was a heady experience having a beautiful woman look at him in such a way.
He should’ve banished her the moment he tended to her wound. Instead, he’d lifted up her face, studying her. He’d wanted, in those moments in the kitchen, to kiss her. A forbidden yet exciting compulsion, one he hadn’t acted on but that still lingered in his mind.
For the last hour, he hadn’t paid enough attention to what he’d been doing. Instead, he’d been watching her, how she was intent upon brushing the solution on each side of the struts, then carefully moving them to the table in the middle of the courtyard.
He should have given her an apron, but she didn’t seem concerned about her dress. She was an heiress, a fact that he needed to remember. She probably had never been given such a mundane task to perform. Yet she hadn’t balked. Nor had she spoken for the past quarter hour, intent on what she was doing.
“Why did you come to Scotland?” he asked, letting his curiosity escape.
She didn’t look at him. Instead, she finished painting the strut she was working on, put the paintbrush back in the jar, and carried the strut to the table.
