“Impertinent,” he uttered, leaning down, so close that she had only to move slightly to kiss him. An inch, maybe less, and her lips would touch his. He was challenging her, she realized, forcing her to take the initiative if she wanted a kiss.
She wanted to kiss him. She honestly, desperately wanted to, but she’d learned a very valuable lesson at the pool. She was here because he had forced her to be here. Not at Talla Dileas. Not in Edinburgh, where she so wanted to be. “Enslaved,” she whispered and pulled her hand free before she did anything as foolish as kiss him. But she couldn’t help smiling as she picked up the crest and pinned it expertly on the knot of his neckcloth.
Payton felt the neckcloth. “Aye,” he said, nodding his approval. “Well done.” He gave her a smile that absolutely curled her toes as he picked up his waistcoat and slipped into it, buttoning it quickly. Then he donned the evening coat.
He looked splendid. He’d make Beitris delirious with joy, she thought morosely. But the image of him with Beitris did not mix with the warmth he had created in her, and she felt suddenly out of sorts. Inexplicably angry. She didn’t want to feel this warmth for him.
“Is there more ye want from me, then?” she asked impatiently.
Payton turned and looked at her with surprise, and Mared felt something slither between them, a thought, perhaps, a hope…something so hot and hard that it intimidated her, and she unthinkingly stepped back.
His gaze went from warm to confused. “No,” he said quietly, shifting his gaze away. “Ye may leave.”
She quickly walked to the door and exited his room before that thing between them could slither around her conscience and squeeze all good sense from her.
Fourteen
M rs. Mackerell had outdone herself—turtle soup, sweetbread au jus, cullen skink, a stew make of haddock, and asparagus in a lemon cream sauce were served to Payton’s supper companions, which included the lively Glaswegian guests of Payton’s neighbor, Mr. Sorley, and Miss Crowley and her parents. The former, Payton had invited because he needed Sorley’s agreement to siphon water from a particular stream running down Ben Cluaran for his distillery.
Miss Crowley and her parents had been invited, truthfully, to annoy Mared, for he harbored no desire to court Miss Crowley, and she had no desire to be courted. She’d confessed to him, on one of their walkabouts of Aberfoyle, that her heart was rather firmly set on the smithy’s son. She indicated there was some resistance to the match from her father, who, Payton surmised, preferred his educated daughter marry someone with greater fortune than a blacksmith’s apprentice—him, to be precise.
The Sorley party, surprisingly, was made up of several young unmarried women—Sorley’s sister and her husband and their daughter had come, as well as Sorley’s niece, whose four dearest and closest friends had tagged along. Undoubtedly because Sorley’s two nephews were also present.
The young women were absolutely giddy to be at Eilean Ros, but the nephews seemed bored. They were young yet—Payton rather imagined that they’d find nothing less agreeable to them than a supper in the country. Alas, none of the attractions of town life were to be had as far away as Eilean Ros.
The young Sorley party was rather unruly, and Payton wondered if the loud and lively conversation was the way of society in Glasgow and Edinburgh these days. When he was a young man, he’d spent quite a lot of time in Edinburgh. But when his father died, he’d been needed here, and now his trips were infrequent—only once or twice a year, it seemed, to call on bankers and to procure provisions they could not obtain in Aberfoyle.
The Sorley party reminded him of many people he’d met among the so-called high society of Edinburgh. For all their finery, they could be as shallow and loud as the eight young people here tonight, convinced of their own self-worth and piteously lacking in regard for others less fortunate than they.
As if to prove it, the Glaswegians argued about the increasing industrialization of Glasgow, which the two young gentlemen insisted was necessary for progress, and the women insisted was turning Glasgow into a town of tenements. From what Payton could make of the conversation, the young ladies’ objection to the tenement buildings that were springing up across Glasgow was that they were not aesthetically pleasing.
“Ye can’t mean ye dislike the poor, Miss Alyshire,” one of the nephews teased one of the lassies. “Have ye forgotten yer charity, then?”
“Not in the least,” she said imperiously. “But with all the poor flocking in, they shall turn our Glasgow into a Londontown.”
“Then where,” Payton asked quietly, “would ye suggest they go, those who canna make a living off the land any longer?”
“However should I know?” Miss Alyshire had asked, wide-eyed. “I suppose other towns and villages in Scotland.”