Page 9 of The Lass Initiated the Laird (Explosive Highlanders 3.5)

“Don’t,” he said as her gaze met his, and her fingers froze.

Slowly, her hand rested on the wooden surface, leaving her wheat strands over one shoulder. The faint fire shone on the wavy, glossy mass, making him wish to bury his face in it.

His fixed attention seemed to stir her, eyes restless like a butterfly. “Did you retrieve what you needed” she asked, her satiny voice filling the nightly silence.

He nodded. “I crossed paths with Trent and his crowd on the way,” he added. Over the years, he realised Harriet had no love lost on the future Marquis. “You care little for him, I can see.”

At that, her eyes snapped down, concealing her thoughts. “A useless ruffian.”

“I cannot disagree with you there,” he replied, and they fell into their own thoughts for a moment.

A minute or two elapsed before she spoke again. “Do you miss Scotland?”

He did, a lot. But to tell the truth, he had not thought about his home country in quite a while, so absorbed had he been in his studies and, well, in her. “I do miss it, yes. When I’m not so busy, that is,” he paused to witness her interest. “My father keeps me informed of the latest news.” And Sam travelled home on holidays.

“And what about your mother?” she asked and sipped her tea.

It was his turn to lower his eyes at the wave of emotion that filled him. “She died when I turned three,” he said after a pause then looked back at her quizzical stance.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” the words became compassionate.

Sorry was not a term he would use to describe how he felt. A void would be more like it. A place where his mother should have stayed full of affection and memories. But no. After giving birth to him, she took off to Aberdeen, where she died in a drunken accident. As far as he gathered, she displayed a flighty disposition, a woman to whom childbirth was not a positive thing. The elderly servants whispered that Fiona had fallen in a melancholy mood in the months following his arrival in the world. In Aberdeen, his mother enjoyed the city life she had been so keen on experiencing. And died knocked down by a carriage while trying to cross the street on tipsy legs.

“I never knew her,” the simple answer more appropriate. “My grand-fathers arranged my parents’ marriage when they were barely seventeen.” Taran, his father, concluded that they both had been too young, which probably meant Sam’s late mother had problems understanding the responsibility marriage encompassed.

But there was the undeniable fact that Sam grew up without a mother, receiving care from nannies and governesses. His father was kept constantly busy with the clan’s affairs and receded into a shell of wariness. Only Aileen, his father’s second wife, succeeded in dragging him out of it. She came as a breath of fresh air that healed both the McDougal men.

“But you have brothers,” she commented. Naturally, he had told her about six-year-old Roy and two-year-old Errol, the most recent addition to the family.

A fond smile lit his face. “My father married Aileen just before I came to Oxford,” he quipped, remembering the torrid love The McDougal and his wife shared. “Actually, she was the one who convinced him to let me come.” Sam had dreamed of academic life for a long time. Aileen told Taran that she would marry him only if he stopped being so stubborn and granted it to his son.

Harriet smiled too. “She must be a remarkable woman.”

“Exceptionally so,” he admitted. “They’re happy together.”

She nodded, but a flitting glimmer of hurt passed over her features. “Good to know that there are marriages which pane out.”

Concerned, his brows pleated, “Yours wasn’t?” Funny how little he knew about her life before becoming a governess in the professor’s household. Not that he could discuss marriages with that much knowledge.

“I cannot say that, no,” a delicate hand took the cup, her thumb gliding over it distractedly.

He waited, uncertain if he should ask why or refrain from interfering with what had surely resulted in a difficult time.

Harriet took a sip, placed the cup on its saucer as her fingers traced the ridges on the table. An undefinable amount of time slipped by before her head raised to him.

“He proved to be a drunkard more interested in soused brawls than domestic life.”

The selfish bastard! Sam cursed. With a woman like her by his side, he had been stupid to the point of wasting his life and missing the chance to enjoy her company and her warmth. Had it been himself, he would not even think of leaving her bed, let alone the house.

“How did you meet him?” he asked to dispel his murderous thoughts.

“He was a newly graduate attorney who my father met at work,” a nostalgic faint smile drew her tempting lips. “John started to come to my home. When he asked for my hand, my parents thought he had a bright future ahead of him.” With a tilt of her head, the smile vanished. “His charm concealed his true personality, and at nineteen I fell for it.”

“To me, he sounds like a stupid man,” Sam stated candidly.

Those crystalline eyes blinked, and she smiled her gratitude for his words. “We’d better retire. There are loads to do tomorrow,” she said becoming serious again.

Sam looked at her, a strong reluctance dominating his insides. He did not want the night to end. Or better, he did not want for them to finish the night separated by those walls between their chambers, separated by the walls determined by society and foolish morals. He wished them to spend days and nights together talking, kissing, working. They could lie even if chastely, but he wanted to revel in her warmth, to wrap his arms around her, inhale her scent, hear her voice, watch her sleep. And go on doing this his entire life.

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