Page 6 of The Scot is Hers
No light illuminated the massive pile of stone. Did he hide in the dark as he had in his garden?
“Giselle, have ye heard a word I’ve spoken?” Her thoughts were interrupted by the shrill and sound of her mother’s voice.
Giselle glanced back at her mother, whose lips were pursed as though she’d eaten something sour. “Pardon me, Mama, I was fascinated by the...shore,” Giselle lied, as she couldn’t see the shore at all but didn’t want to tell her mother she’d been thinking about the castle’s owner. There weren’t enough hours in the day to explain the unexplainable, nor did she have an infinite amount of patience when it came to her mother.
“Whatever may have caught your fascination, it is imperative we get right the introductions.” Lady Bothwell wrung her gloved hands in her lap as she said it, overthinking things.
A trill of butterflies in her belly—and not in a good way—reminded Giselle of why they’d gone out in this terrible weather in such a hurry and without stopping. She was going to meet the master of Boddam Castle. The man she’d be forced to marry imminently if her parents had their say.
Sir Joshua Keith resided there. They’d had the misfortune to meet this past season, and the baronet had formed an unhealthy attachment to her, a fancy that she did not return.
Nay, Giselle found Joshua Keith to be quite revolting. And mostly, this was because he was an arrogant arse. Throughout the season, he’d followed her around, sometimes to the point where she felt as if he were breathing down her neck. Watching her every move. His behavior had the hairs at the base of her skull rising in warning. When he asked her to dance, she tried to refuse, but often her mother shoved her along, and then she was subjected to his scrutiny of every person in the ballroom and what he thought of them. More often than not, it wasn’t nice. There was also the repulsive habit he had of his hand sliding dangerously low on her spine. Enough so that his pinky finger slid unwelcomed across the top of her rear, if only for the briefest second. She shuddered just thinking about it.
Giselle had told her mother she thought the baronet was a little handsy, and Lady Bothwell shooed away her concerns. Something about how all bachelors were eager, whatever that was supposed to mean.
“Giselle!” Her mother’s piercing call interrupted her thoughts once more. “I want to hear ye practice the introductions again.”
“We’ve already been introduced. Many times.” Giselle tried to keep her voice sweet, but it was hard. Why on earth her mother wanted to pretend as if this was a shiny new moment was baffling.
“Still, first impressions upon gracing his doorstep will be most important.”
Giselle sucked her tongue against her teeth, trying to stop herself from being impertinent, but she couldn’t help it. “I do no’ wish to marry him, and so I’m no’ worried about first impressions.”
“Oh, do quit that whining,” her father interrupted.
Giselle did not think her matter-of-fact statement to be considered whining, but her father couldn’t stand when she argued with her mother, even if Giselle’s opinion was just and logical when her mother’s was not, as was the case currently.
“We’ve already been over this. Sir Joshua is taken with ye, and he boasts a sizeable fortune that will do ye quite well in the future. Not to mention the land in the Americas,” her mother said.
Giselle stifled her groan before it came out in all its raging glory. “I do no’ wish to go to America. I wish to return to Edinburgh.”
“Giselle, now see here, I told ye no more whining.” Her father’s tone had sharpened.
“I amno’whining.” She hadn’t meant to snap, it wasn’t in her nature to be so sour, but honestly, this whole situation was becoming too much. The stress of an impending match with a man who was going to stifle her entire being left her feeling ragged and distraught.
Her father slammed his hand down on the seat beside him as if that crude and violent gesture were meant to silence her by squashing her words beneath his meaty hand. She didn’t jump. Not as she did when she was a child. Her father might have had a loud bark, but that was the extent of it. He left most of her punishments to her mother.
As the daughter of an earl, Giselle could expect to marry a man of equal status, which the baronet was not quite yet. But once his father passed on, Sir Joshua would become the Earl of Marischal, which was indeed a prestigious, if not antiquated, title. In medieval times, it used to mean something more. The nobleman who protected the Scottish Royal Regalia and the king’s personal guard when he attended parliament. Despite the title being irrelevant in today’s age, her parents seemed a bit obsessed over it.
And for Sir Joshua’s part, he was interested in her dowry, for he’d never asked her one thing about herself, and so he could not, therefore, know who she was in the least. Besides, she was fairly certain he didn’tcarewho she was.
For her part, Giselle had learned a great deal about Sir Joshua, and that was because she’d had the not-so-great privilege of listening to him babble on about himself for hours and hours. Arrogant didn’t begin to cover what he’d revealed about his attitude. He was selfish, pompous, idiotic, mean—she could go on for hours. But her parents batted away her worries whenever she sought to bring his true nature to light. Instead, their eyes flashed in the way they had when they met anyone of importance, and right now, a marriage between herself and Sir Joshua was going to elevate their social standing to one they’d not been able to reach before. Or at least that was their opinion.
Giselle was a means to their elevation, and they would hear none of her complaints.
“Now, when we arrive, ye will offer to play the piano, and ye will sing as we practiced at home.” Her mother went on to mention several songs that Giselle had practiced a million times and still not perfected.
Giselle grimaced, trying to quell the turmoil inside her. Her belly rolled and lurched. Thank goodness she’d only picked at her breakfast. She was by no means a talent at either of the tasks her mother set before her—maybe that was a favor on her side. She’d show Sir Joshua that he would want a more accomplished wife to host his many events, rather than one who sang as appealing as the squeal of a rabbit being chased by a fox.
But she didn’t want to argue with her parents anymore, not in this small compartment where there was no room to escape. Instead, when they arrived, she would ask her soon-to-be betrothed if he wished for her to play and then modestly say she didn’t think her talent would impress him. Once he heard a few notes, if he were a gentleman, he’d put her out of her misery. This would be a tough spot because he was likely not going to be a gentleman. He’d likely dismiss her so he could discuss with her parents the coin they were about to bestow on him in a large coffer as her dowry. She’d be left to go through the entire musical list her mother had compiled.
Rather than the jovial songs her mother wanted her to perform, perhaps Giselle would take matters into her own hands and playMoonlight Sonataby Beethoven, which she always found to be quite a lot more satisfying to a melancholy mood. If only she had a black veil she could don as well. A lass had to find her fun somehow, didn’t she?
The silence inside the carriage was as good a prediction of doom as Giselle could have conjured up in her mind. She felt like one of the heroines from her books, about to be imprisoned in a tower for a very long time and not by the sort of hero who would let her out and that she’d fall in love with. Nay, Sir Joshua was most definitely not that sort of man. He was just as likely to lock her up for the rest of her life as set her free in the wild to fend for herself with the wolves.
Except she had the sneaking suspicion that hewasone of the wolves. And not in the way she’d once thought Alec Hay to be. Now, that man had been wolfish brooder, but something was aching and broken beneath that moping exterior that she wanted to soothe. Sir Joshua was just mean.
The miles crept past in agonizing slowness, and eventually, they arrived at the long gravelly path toward Sir Joshua’s castle. The carriage rumbled along in such a way that Giselle was concerned for the structural support of the axle they’d had fixed less than twenty-four hours ago.
