Page 51 of A Scot's Pride
Freya peered out the window beside the front door. Darkness still blanketed the moors, though the tiniest sliver of light was on the horizon. Hopefully, that meant only another hour at most until sunrise.
It was still too dusky to walk alone, so she opted for the drawing room and reading to bide her time. But her belly fluttered the moment she sat down, and she could barely read one sentence. When she’d read the same line eighty-three times, she gave up and started to pace, waiting for the sun to make its entrance so she could at least burn off some of her nervous energy on the moors.
Today Bryson would come to the house and ask her father for her hand. Today she would say yes and be betrothed to a man who made her feel like singing and dancing. Her skin even prickled with the thought of calling him hers for the rest of her days. Within her mind, she replayed their torrid kiss, the way he’d touched her. His mouth at her breast.
Something within itched to be scratched, and she had a feeling that Bryson was the only man who’d be able to relieve her of this intense need. Suddenly, her clothes felt constricted. Her boots were tied too tight. Her bonnet was strangling her.
Thankfully, the sun rose enough that she felt she wouldn’t get into too much trouble, so she grabbed her shawl and started to march outside. However, before she could close the door, she heard something from upstairs. Footsteps. The floorboards creaked as someone moved around.
Freya listened, wondering who it could be, but there were no more noises, and she could not pinpoint where they came from. Whoever it was had probably gotten up to use the chamber pot. As she walked her normal path in the morning, she kept expecting to see Bryson’s horse on the horizon as he came to ask her father for her hand. Every little sound had her perking up from her daydreams to look, but so far, she was quite alone with the birds, squirrels and crickets.
After an hour, her fingers ached from the morning cold and she headed back home, eager for a warm cup of tea as it was a little chillier this morning than usual. As she turned the bend in the road, she strained to see the front of their country house, imagining a horse tied to the post there as if Bryson had rushed inside seeking an audience with her father, and she’d simply missed him on the road.
But there was no horse. Just the climbing ivy on the grayish stonework.
All through breakfast, she repeatedly swiveled her head to peer out the window, and Riley kept looking, too, then giving Freya odd glances. She’d barely touched her eggs, and her toast was too dry for her already dry mouth.
“Are you expecting someone?” Riley asked.
Freya stirred another lump of sugar into her cold tea, knowing full well she wouldn’t drink it. “Just curious about the weather. I thought maybe I’d take a trip into town later and see if the milliner has any new ribbons,” she lied, unsure of why she’d done so. But the more time that passed, the more she felt that maybe she’d imagined the whole thing or that Bryson had returned home last night and come to his senses. With every second the clock ticked, she was more and more certain that a marriage proposal wasn’t coming, and she’d been a fool to get her hopes up.
“I would like to go with you,” Riley said, placing her fork down on her plate and wiping delicately at her mouth.
Freya nodded absently, her spoon clinking as she stirred and stirred her tea.
Their mother bustled into the room a moment later, nervous energy about her as she did, causing Freya to drop her teaspoon with a clatter. “Has anyone seen Leila this morning?”
Freya shook her head, frowning as she took in her mother’s disarray. She looked as if she’d literally risen from bed and tossed on a dress. From the wrinkled appearance of it, she might have misbuttoned it too.
“She’ll probably sleep until noon with all the dancing she did last night,” Freya offered.
“She’s not in her room.” Their mother’s tone was high-pitched, her hands white as she wrung them in front of her.
“That’s odd.” Riley voiced what they were all thinking.
Papa gazed up from his newspaper, narrowing his eyes. “That is odd.”
“Perhaps she’s taken up Freya’s bad habit of walking the moors alone.” Her mother turned to look outside as if Leila would appear.
Freya pinched her lips, not wanting to argue that she didn’t think walking to be with one’s thoughts was a bad habit because her mother would only recite the long list of reasons why she believed it was, and it never did anyone any good to argue with the baroness.
Their father grunted with a nod and went back to reading his paper. Cousin Arthur leaned toward Molly and said, “You don’t walk on the moors alone, do you?”
Molly shook her head, and he seemed pacified, which only had Freya fighting a retort.
But by noon, Leila was still nowhere to be seen, and neither was Bryson.
Freya went back and forth between worry for her sister and heartbreak over what a sap she’d been to think that he would actually come. That their dalliance in the dark had been anything other than his need to get something from her. The last word, the last—she didn’t know what. But it made her feel like complete rubbish, and she started to hate him for it.
Between hatred and panic came a headache, and she felt completely useless sitting here, but this was what her parents had asked her to do.
Papa had gone with some of the servants into the village to see if they could find Leila there, and Mama had gone with Molly and Cousin Arthur to check on Leila’s friends in case she’d visited one of them.
This left Riley, Freya and Grace in the house to pace the drawing room in case Leila returned, and it was from this unfortunate position that she saw a carriage approaching on the road.
Freya leapt to her feet, feeling a moment of hope dissipating her headache.
Was it too much to wish that it were Bryson, come at last to propose? At the same time, she wished it were Leila because she was scared to think what could have happened to her sister and wondered if the noises she’d heard that morning before she’d gone for her walk had been her sister.
