Page 5 of The Scot is Hers
That got him moving. Quite quickly, as a matter of fact. He leapt backward as if she’d slapped him, and Giselle had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
“I see we understand each other.” She tried hard not to roll her eyes, but it was a feat she did not succeed in. “It was no’ my pleasure to meet ye, sir. In future, if ye do no’ wish to irritate the fairer sex, try no’ to act as though being linked to one is a nightmare.”
“As if ye would no’ think the same for me,” he scoffed, then touched his face, his finger tracing over the large scar there. How vain could he be to think such a thing would matter?
“What reason would I have? Except for maybe your rudeness.” With that, Giselle lifted her skirts and hurried across the garden toward the side door that she’d slipped out of previously, hoping that no one saw her.
Once inside, she made her way to the ladies’ retiring room, and then swiftly out again, making certain to ask the first person she saw if they’d seen her mother, the Countess of Bothwell, so that she could have a witness to exiting the retiring room if anyone did decide to put her in the garden with the Beast of Errol.
She was quickly pointed in the right direction. Her mother had finished a conversation with one set of friends and taken a champagne glass from a passing footman, intent on inserting herself in another conversation when Giselle intercepted her.
“Mother, please, I must go. I’ve been in the ladies’ retiring, trying to get rid of this megrim.” Giselle touched her forehead with the back of her hand and feigned pain for good measure.
“Oh, dear. Well, I wondered where ye’d gone off too. Though I did no’ see ye in there when I checked.”
“I do no’ know how ye missed me.” Giselle shrugged and let out a long-suffering sigh.
Her mother narrowed her eyes, but taking in Giselle’s person, must have decided she didn’t look as if she’d been mauled by anyone or been out having an assignation. There was no other choice but to believe her.
“We shall go,” her mother finally consented. “We have to be up early tomorrow anyway for the morning service.”
The morning service was what Giselle was subjected to quite often, and it had nothing to do with the church. Instead, the morning service was when she volunteered her time with the older ladies of society as their companion, doing menial tasks like writing letters and reading to them. Her mother seemed to pick the crankiest ones each time.
“I do hope my megrim is gone by morning,” Giselle said.
“It will be,” her mother quipped as if she could control such a thing.
Out they went into the night. For the rest of the season, Giselle searched for signs of Alec Hay, The Beast of Errol, mostly so she could avoid him, but he seemed to have disappeared from society.
2
May 1817
Three years later
The road to Boddam Castle near Aberdeenshire, Scotland was bumpy and wet. Giselle and her family had been traveling for two days from Edinburgh, continually stopping because of the storms that raged outside.
Already, they’d had a broken axle that had almost killed them and an unfortunate touch with lightning that left one groom incapacitated for bordering twelve hours. Poor bloke. He was lucky to have made it after that.
And still, her parents were insistent they continue when all of nature compelled them to cease their journey northward. Giselle was prepared to consign herself to death. For that was how this treacherous journey seemed doomed to end. “Ah, there’s the castle in the distance.” The Earl of Bothwell pointed out the rain-streaked window toward a looming shadow that rose from the misty moors.
What looked like towers on the north and south sides of the structure jutted menacingly into the clouds.
Lady Bothwell swished the curtain covering her window out of the way and glanced outside. “Nay, dear, that is Slains, the Earl of Errol’s residence. We’ve still several miles to go, but we’ll be there within a couple of hours, I predict. If we do no’ run into any more trouble.”
Anymoretrouble... That seemed a statement that would only tempt Fate to see it done. Giselle stroked her hand over her book, wishing she were back in Edinburgh in her library. The jostling of the carriage made reading impossible unless she wanted to get sick.
“Ah, Errol,” her father mused. “I’ve no’ heard that name in some time.”
“He’s kept himself holed up here for nigh on three years now. His poor mother.”
The Earl of Errol.Giselle also had not heard that name in as long. She pressed her face to the glass, squinting through the dripping rain and trying to part the murkiness with her mind to get a better look at his castle in the distance. It’d been years since she’d thought of the Beast of Errol. Nor had she seen him since that fateful night they’d met in the garden of his Edinburgh residence.
The gloomy castle seemed very fitting for him.
Shifting her gaze toward the cliffside fortress, she imagined him brooding on battlements, staring over the land as if some medieval warrior, waiting for his enemy to come calling. Except his enemies seemed to be maidens and their meddling mothers. A small smile touched her lips as she recalled the night they’d met and the way he’d assumed she’d find him hideous or scary. How vain he was to think she’d find him anything at all.
After that night, the rumor was that he’d gone north and not come back to civilization since. Was he there now, stomping around the glum castle?
