Page 18 of The Scot Who Loved Her

Down the steps she went, biting the inside of her cheek, her face averted from where she’d last seen the Scot standing. When she reached her mother, she glanced up and wished she hadn’t.

He was looking right at her. Recognition lit his bright green eyes. There was a twitch of his lip, not quite a smile. Nor was it a snarl. It looked more as if he were saying, “I’ve got ye.”

Olivia jerked her gaze back to Lord and Lady Carlisle and dipping into a curtsy before her mother could pinch her again. “A pleasure to...” But she couldn’t make her tongue work. Everything felt fuzzy.

“My dear?” Her mother’s hand slipped around her elbow and glanced toward where Olivia had been staring. “Are you well?”

“Apologies.” Olivia mustered a smile and short laugh. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance. If you will excuse me, I just saw a friend I’ve not seen in a very long time.” The lie came easy, as did the hurried curtsy and tug from her mother’s elbow.

The Scotsman was also excusing himself from his party and approaching her. His boots crunched on gravel at a slower pace than her slippers, and yet he gained. The Highlander remained a barrier between her and the only means of escape back into the house.

So, she did the only thing she could think of. She took off at a hurried pace deeper into the garden.Drat him!He followed. Long strides got him closer and closer to her with every breath she took.

Smiling, nodding, she dodged this way and that as she walked with quick purpose toward the maze. She’d been to Lady Cowper’s many times over the years and knew the maze like the back of her hand. She also knew it had two entrances, and she was determined to enter and exit without a hitch—leaving the Scotsman to get lost in the middle.

Olivia breathed a sigh of relief as she entered the maze, making quick work of the first few turns. The sounds of the music and chatter from the garden party disappeared the deeper she went into the maze. Hedge bushes that were easily ten feet high towered over her, shutting out the world. Hiding her from his view. Even still, she could hear the hurried booted footsteps of the man who pursued her.

“Lass...” he called gently, his voice surprisingly soothing yet terrifying.

Well, she knew his trick, and she refused to answer him, as it would only give away her position to him. Though her slippers crunched a little on the gravel, she hoped that the hedges would muffle it or at the very least confuse him as to where she was.

“Do no’ be afeared of me, Miss Aston.” Oh, that brogue, so unique and enticing. And drat him again, mesmerizing.

Afeared. Heaven help her. A madman was chasing her. He had to be. Or was it her mind? No, no, not this time.

“Come now, let us talk.”

Not on her life! Olivia picked up her pace. She made it around three more rows of hedges before she realized something terrifying—she couldn’t hear him any longer.

Pausing, she stopped breathing, willing her heart to cease pounding in her ears. But she wasn’t mistaken. The maze was silent.

No, no, no...It was possible that he’d given up and turned around, not wanting to get lost in the maze. But she doubted it. Indeed, if she were he, she’d be pruning the blasted hedge bushes in order to find her. He probably had a pistol hidden on his person and intended to use it on her. An eye for an eye, and all that.

Well, she wasn’t going to remain here as a sitting duck to be aimed at. Lifting her skirts, she took off at a run, not caring about the crunch of the gravel beneath her feet. She just needed to get away from him.

Finally, she came to the end of the maze and had just leapt out into the garden, Scot free, when warm fingers grazed her elbow.

Olivia whirled around in time to look up into his emerald gaze. Eyes that were filled with triumph, and that curve to his lips that sent her head spinning.

“Let go of me,” she hissed, yanking.

He started to shake his head, then her mother’s voice brought them both up short.

“Olivia, where have you been?”

The hand at her elbow disappeared, but she still felt the heat of his stare on her back.

“I wanted to see if I could still remember the maze,” Olivia said with false cheer. “And I do.”

“You cannot run about by yourself in there,” she said overloudly. “What if you’d gotten lost?”

By yourself. Thank goodness, her mother had not seen the Scot. How he’d melted into the shadows so quickly without the eagle-eyed regard of her mother finding him was beyond Olivia’s comprehension.

“Lucky for me, Mother, you have found me.”

Her mother made an irritated noise and tugged at her elbow. “I want to introduce you to Lady Caroline. Her father was the late Earl of Dunlyon, and her mother has just married the second cousin of the Duke of Wellington.”

Olivia’s mother’s voice trailed off as she steered her back through the floral gardens. Surreptitiously, she looked over her shoulder, but the Scotsman had made himself scarce, and she feared once more that he was a figment of her imagination.

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