Miss Linley again looked at Mr. Anderson, who now looked as if he wanted to crawl in a hole. “Very well, then! Good day,” Mared said and twirled about, intending to make a quick exit.
But she was stopped at the door by Miss Sarah Douglas. She folded her arms across her middle and looked Mared up and down. Mared expected a tongue lashing and was prepared to do battle, but Miss Douglas suddenly smiled. “Well done, Miss Lockhart.”
Mared blinked. “Praise? From ye, Miss Douglas?”
Miss Douglas shrugged and looked over Mared’s shoulder. “He’s a despicable man and I am rather fond of Miss Linley. So thank ye for having the courage to say what no one else would.”
Impossibly pleased, Mared beamed at her. “Ye are quite welcome.” She stepped around Miss Douglas and walked on. But then she suddenly paused, turned around, and walked back to Miss Douglas. “And by the by, Miss Douglas, I love Payton. I may no’ be what ye imagined for him, but I love him.”
Now it was Miss Douglas’s turn to blink. Mared smiled. “Good day, Miss Douglas,” she chirped and sailed through the doors of the hall and out into the bright sunlight and bitter cold. Mared reached up and swept the bonnet off her head. She never cared for the damnable things anyway. She blinked up at the sun. Funny, but it always seemed colder here than at home. She longed for her boots, for the rocky sheep trails that crisscrossed Ben Cluaran through heather so thick you could lie on it. She longed for the smell of spring, the fields of thistle, and the streams that gurgled down into the lochs. She longed for the mists that would come down from the top of the hills and swallow her whole, so that she walked in a dreamy fog with nothing but years of walking the same trails and her dogs to guide her.
She missed the Highlands. She missed her family.
And she missed Payton desperately.
She was going home, where she belonged.
Mrs. MacGillicutty was not the least bit surprised that Mared wanted to go home and happily set about helping her pack her things into two new trunks. She laughed as Mared related what had happened to her. How she had thought Mr. Anderson’s attention sincere, and how terribly na?ve she’d been to believe it could be true affection, given that the talk never progressed beyond banter. How she had been loved very deeply by a man and had tossed him aside like so much rubbish.
“If he loved ye as much as that, lass, he will love ye still,” Mrs. MacGillicutty assured her.
“No,” Mared said morosely. “He said he didna love me any longer.”
“Men say such things when they are angry and wounded,” Mrs. MacGillicutty said. “But they rarely mean what they say. A man’s pride is quite fragile, like fine crystal, but it is easily rebuilt, what with a bit of kowtowing. So go home, lass. Ye will find that his heart is still calling to ye.”
Mared caught a breath in her throat and whirled around to the woman. “What did ye say?” she whispered.
“That ye will find his heart still calls to yers,” she said with a smile.
Tears suddenly welled in her eyes, and Mared quickly turned away.
She hadn’t felt his heart call to her in weeks.
Twenty-eight
T he snow began falling when the public coach reached Callander. A merchant agreed to take Mared a few more miles to Aberfoyle, but the journey was excruciatingly slow, given the snowfall.
It was dusk when they reached Aberfoyle, and Mared had no choice but to take refuge at the public inn. She was given a room that overlooked a meadow, and beyond it, Ben Cluaran stood majestically in the distance. She stood at the window and stared at the mountain in the waning light of day, longing for Payton, traveling the hill in her mind’s eye, cresting it, and seeing Eilean Ros below her.
How ironic, she thought as the sun finally slipped behind Ben Cluaran, that she’d spent so many years despising him for the sake of his name, and now, she couldn’t possibly care if his name was Douglas or Lockhart or Diabhal. Just as long as he forgave her, that was all that mattered. Just as long as he looked at her with those warm gray eyes, the glitter in them the evidence of his adoration for her.
The very next morning, she washed and dressed and had her luggage carried to the confectioner’s shop, where she knew she might stow it until she could send someone back for it.
“Ah, Miss Lockhart!” the confectioner called as she walked in the door. “I had thought ye were in Edinburra!”
“Aye, I’ve been away for a time, but I’ve come home now,” she said. “Might I keep my luggage here until I can send my brother for it?”
“Of course, lass. Come here, come here, then…on the occasion of yer homecoming, I’ve a new sweetmeat ye must try.”
“Oh, I shouldna—”
“Ye best come now, lass, for Laird Douglas takes them all. He has a sweet tooth, he does, and he bought them all up yesterday to give to Miss Crowley.”
That remark dealt her a blow. “Did he?” Mared asked weakly and glanced down at her gloves and blindly fumbled to remove them.