“I may have misjudged him,” Gage said, interrupting my thoughts. He lifted his eyebrows in query. “Perhaps he’s just playing the protective older brother.”
This time I did look away to stare out across the winter fields outside the window. “Maybe.”
The silence stretched between us, heavy with our unspoken thoughts, and I suddenly realized this was the first time we had been alone, without the potential of interruption, since Gage had climbed into my carriage in Edinburgh to say good-bye. I swallowed the sticky residue of nerves that coated my throat and mouth and wondered just what he was thinking.
And then I wished I hadn’t.
“Kiera, why did you send for me?” His voice was gentler than normal, but determined. As if he’d been initially hesitant to ask the question, but changed his mind.
Though I’d known it was coming, it was the question I had been dreading. Mostly because I did not know how to answer it. Or perhaps more fairly, did not want to answer it.
“Because of the investigation, of course,” I replied, unable to look at him. “Lord Buchan asked me to.”
My gloved fingers clenched tighter together in my lap during the pause that followed.
“Is that all?”
“I . . . I don’t know what you mean.” I stared blindly out the window while I braced for the onslaught of whatever his response would be, if there was any response at all. After all, I’d risked wounding the man’s pride.
“Liar.”
I jolted at the quietly teasing tone of his voice. I turned to see his pale winter blue eyes twinkling at me as if in jest. But I would’ve been a fool not to also notice the hard edge to his stare, the fierceness.
I sat immobile, not knowing how to reply. Was I glad to see him? Yes. But would I have ever sent for him of my own accord if I had not been prodded into doing so? I didn’t know. Everything inside me was jumbled when it came to Gage. I didn’t know how to sort it out.
So ultimately I settled for the truth.
“You confuse me.”
I could tell I’d surprised him, for some of the surety vanished from his expression. “I confuse you?”
“Yes.”
When he simply stared at me as if willing me to elaborate, I sighed and lifted a hand to my forehead.
“I don’t know what else you want me to say,” I snapped in exasperation. “I don’t seem to know anything when it comes to you.”
His gaze softened, though that edge of fierceness remained. “Surely that’s not true.”
I glared at him.
“You know how I feel about you.”
I blinked at him in astonishment. Was the man daft?
I shook my head. “No, I don’t.”
His eyes flashed. “Then I’ll just have to remind you.”
The next thing I knew I was in his arms, and he was kissing me with all the devastating thoroughness I’d come to expect from him. And yet under all of his skill, there was also a note of urgency, of desperation—and it was that emotion that resonated with me most of all, for it matched my own.
When he pulled back, I could not open my eyes, not with my emotions so stirred up inside me, shimmering on the surface. But I clung to the front of his greatcoat, unwilling to let go. So he pressed his lips to my forehead and held me close.
I had just decided to venture looking up at him when a shout from outside the carriage forced us to separate. We turned to see a man outside the window hailing our coachman as the carriage began to slow and the first row of cottages at the edge of what must be the village of St. Boswells came into view.
? ? ?
Our first stop was at the Abbot Inn, presumably named for the past heads of nearby Dryburgh Abbey. My uncle had recommended we stop there, recalling an altercation the innkeeper had with a pair of body snatchers several years back. He had not been specific about just what type of confrontation, so I was more than a little anxious about hearing the innkeeper’s tale.
So with my nerves still shaken from Gage’s kiss, I grabbed my sketchbook and let him help me out of the carriage in front of the inn at the edge of the wide village green. The inn stood in a row of whitewashed stone buildings with charcoal gray shingles, sparse and unassuming except for the sign hanging out front featuring the figure of an abbot in his habit holding an overflowing tankard of ale.
We entered the inn’s front room, which also clearly served as the village’s pub, and I was first struck by the scent of wood smoke, barley, and stale ale. The room was steeped in dark shadows, lit only by the fireplace, a few braces of candles, and the sparse light filtering through the room’s two dusty windows. Probably better to mask the sticky substance that coated the floor fashioned from sturdy planks of wood. The same wood the gouged and chipped tables and chairs were fashioned from. I suspected the establishment had seen its fair share of rowdiness.