Page 69 of To Wed an Heiress
He shouldn’t have kissed her, but it had been an unmistakable temptation. He wasn’t a saint, after all. Nor did he aspire to be. His hermit-like existence of late, however, put the lie to that thought. He truly needed to return to Edinburgh for a time, just to prove that he wasn’t avoiding people. Or women, for that matter.
His friends would have more than a few plans for him, he was certain, if he let them know he was coming. They would schedule dinner parties where he was the guest of honor, tout him as being the reclusive Earl of Morton. He hated using the title. Every time someone mentioned it or called him Your Lordship he felt like he had usurped Robert’s position and wanted to apologize to his brother’s shade. Yet his friends liked it. Reflected glory, they called it.
Most of them were physicians now while he had taken an entirely different track in life. Yet he still gave in to his curiosity about how things worked. He’d improved the Mordan pencil by adding a spring inside the mechanism. When he pushed down on the top of it, the lead was advanced. He’d developed a new type of window latch that opened the window from the top. He’d created braces for his shoes that cut into the surface of Ben Uaine when he had a yen to climb a steep face. The greatest of all of his inventions, however, was his airship, a physical representation of his desire to master flight. To at least understand, as no one had been able to yet, what components were necessary for a man to emulate a bird.
Things were a great deal easier to understand than people. He could figure something out if he took it apart. For the life of him, he couldn’t fathom Mercy Rutherford.
Yes, it would be a good idea to return to Edinburgh, just for a while. Long enough to dispel any thoughts of a certain American woman.
She was like a burr in his mind, something that had stuck there that he couldn’t easily budge. He liked the way she smiled, the slow dawning of humor traveling from her lips to her eyes. She had a habit of spreading her fingers on her knees and then closing them again. And her voice was soft, soothing, although her accent was different from those voices he heard every day. He even liked her name: Mercy.
Irene was right, Mercy was kind. It was there in the way she talked to Connor and Irene and cared for Ruthie. The way she talked about her guard was another indication. Or how tender she’d been when stitching his wound.
Yet she’d been damn cruel in hiding the fact she was going to be married.
No, he most definitely needed to rid himself of any thoughts of Mercy Rutherford.
Chapter Thirty-Two
Mercy heard the thunder as she waited for the household to fall asleep. A little before midnight she slipped down the servants’ stairs and into the kitchen, made bright by the flashes of lightning. She hesitated at the outer door. The rain was coming down so hard she couldn’t see to the walled garden. She’d only worn a light summer shawl over her dress and it would be drenched within minutes.
The question was: How desperate was she to escape her situation?
Desperate enough to brave a Highland storm.
She clutched the valise to her chest with both arms, doubting that it would become waterlogged because of the oilskin lining the interior.
The darkness was absolute, the black clouds obscuring the sky. She had followed the drover’s trail once to Duddingston Castle and again on her return. She could find her way. She had to.
She made it to the walled garden, then found the secret door and headed for the trail. What she’d seen in the morning light was harder to find in the midst of a rolling storm. More than once she stopped and tried to get her bearings, but couldn’t stay in one place for long because her feet started sinking into the ground. She hadn’t thought to borrow Mrs. West’s boots again and the ground was like a marsh.
Wind howled through the pines, sounding like the screaming banshees Ruthie talked about so often. Thunder roared directly above her, almost as if the fist of God was about to pummel her into the ground like a giant hammer.
Clamping her lips together, she battled the wind with each step. The sideways rain turned into shards poking her skin like needles. She kept her eyes lowered, determined to make it to Duddingston Castle.
Her hair escaped the bun and lashed across her face, the wet mass of it stinging her cheeks.
She was bent nearly horizontal, her head butting the wind. Twice she almost fell and twice righted herself without losing her grip on the valise. The distance felt much longer than what she’d walked only this morning, but she kept moving, one foot in front of another.
She had to reach the castle and Lennox. He was the only one who could help her.
The eerie whistling began to fade as the wind changed directions, no longer fighting her approach to the castle, but pushing her there. She had no choice but to stumble down the track to the bridge. As she crossed the causeway, the water came up to her ankles. She kept one arm around the valise as she gripped the handrail with her other hand, trying not to be swept into the loch.
She had never been so cold. It felt as if ice was coating her hands, bare as they were to the elements. If she was shivering, she was too frozen to know it.
No one had ever warned her about a Highland storm. If they had she wasn’t sure she would have believed that it could feel like the depth of winter in New York. Or that she was certain she would be drowned in the deluge.
She was finally past the bridge and into the ruined tower. The wind keened around the castle like a beast who’d been stripped of its prey, but at least she’d found some type of shelter.
Would Lennox turn her away?
She had to convince him. Somehow, she had to.
It was so dark that she couldn’t see her way. She stretched out her free hand until she felt the door, and then followed the rope to the iron ring. Her fingers wouldn’t work the first time and curve around the ring to pull it. After blowing on her fingers to try to warm them she tried again, finally managing to hold on to it. If it rang she couldn’t hear because of the booming thunder and the sound of the rain.
She was going to scandalize Irene, but hopefully the other woman would understand once she heard her story.
No one was coming to the door. Mercy wasn’t sure how long she stood there, but it felt like hours instead of the few minutes it had probably been. At least she wasn’t out in the rain or being thrown about by the wind. Pressing her back against the door, she slid down to sit on the stone floor. Hopefully, Duddingston Castle didn’t have mice or rats. With any luck they—or other creatures—weren’t sharing this dark space.
