Victoria swallowed a yawn before securing her bonnet more firmly on her head. It seemed like years since she’d gotten a decent night’s sleep. But there was little point in complaining, particularly since Alec and his family had fussed over her in the nicest way possible. It was no one’s fault but her own that guilt and anxiety continued to plague even her dreams.
“I’m fine. Truly,” she said.
She brushed aside the curtain. The views had grown increasingly wild on their trip north, with craggy mountain peaks looming on the horizon and rough, scrub-covered hills rising around the isolated road. “I just dozed off for a bit, which is a shame. I’m missing all the best scenery, I’m sure.”
“The area around Loch Long is certainly dramatic. And I do hope you’re suitably impressed, Miss Knight, especially with our fine Scottish roads,” he said with a wink.
She gave him a reluctant smile. “I’m sure I’ll find the views impressive once my brain stops rattling around in my skull.”
They’d set out early this morning from Captain Gilbride’s manor house just outside Glasgow. Within a few hours, they’d left the civilized Lowlands of Scotland behind and approached the first range of mountains that signaled the entrance to the Highlands. Ever since they passed through the village of Arrochar and left the well-traveled main road, conditions had worsened, rattling her bones as well as her brains. Victoria was tempted to walk the rest of the way to Kinglas, despite the cold.
“We’ll be there soon enough, Miss Knight,” Alec said. “And then you can have a nice cup of tea and a rest.”
“I look forward to that more than you can imagine. And please call me Victoria. I feel certain we’ve achieved a degree of informality—not to say a camaraderie born of hardship.”
Alec laughed. “True enough. It’s been years since I traveled in these parts. Many people go by boat when journeying up the west coast, or farther north. You can certainly see why. I think I lost a tooth when we hit that last rut.”
“It was so kind of you, but you truly didn’t need to play escort. I’m perfectly capable of traveling by myself, as I told Sir Dominic. I feel terrible that you had to meet me in Glasgow, much less travel all this way to introduce me to the Earl of Arnprior.”
Victoria feared she’d made a dreadful mistake when she left London, now more than a week ago. Aside from the constant cold, the long days on the road, and her perpetually damp boots, she couldn’t shake the growing sensation that she was running away. Disappearing so suddenly couldn’t help but reflect poorly on her—as if shehaddone something wrong. To outsiders, it would appear she was fleeing the scene of the crime.
If her reputation was her greatest asset, why wasn’t she standing her ground and telling the truth to whoever would listen?
She reminded herself again that Dominic and Aden had insisted they could manage the situation more effectively without her, and that her only task was to maintain a steadfast silence about the incident. The quickest way to snuff out gossip, Dominic had reiterated, was to deny it fuel in the first place. Still, her instincts were telling her that a happy resolution to the situation wouldn’t be quick or easy. Whenever she was tempted to think so, she had only to recall Lady Welgate’s shrieking demands to have her charged with murder.
Alec braced one booted foot against the rise of the opposite bench as the carriage drove through a series of bumps. “I’m happy to escort you, Victoria. And if you think this weather is bad, I’m afraid you’re in for something of a shock come January.”
She wrinkled her nose. “That sounds rather alarming.”
He waggled his brows. “We’ll toughen ye up soon enough, Sassenach, I promise ye. After a nice dram of whisky and some good flannel, all will be right in tha’ world.”
She couldn’t help chuckling at his exaggerated brogue. Alec Gilbride, despite his formidable appearance, was no rough Highlander. He’d been a captain in Wellington’s army and was heir to a Scottish earldom. An intelligent man who spoke at least four languages fluently, he was also her cousin, though she’d known nothing of his existence until shortly before she departed London.
She was collecting new relatives at a rather precipitous rate.
It had been awkward when she first arrived in Glasgow, but Alec hadn’t blinked an eyelash after she haltingly explained her situation. Dominic had sent an express to him outlining her dilemma, thus sparing any need to go into uncomfortable details. To her relief, Alec had patted her hand and said Fletcher was lucky to die with so little fuss. If Aden or Dominic had gotten their hands on him, Alec had said, things would have been much worse for the rotter.
Alec’s sanguine attitude was another interesting—if rather alarming—insight into her larger-than-life royal relations. That she was out of their league, both in temperament and station, was entirely evident.
Still, they’d all welcomed her with open arms.
“You’ve all been so generous to me,” she burst out, feeling the need to thank him once again. “I truly don’t know what I’ve done to deserve it.”
Alec gave her a quizzical smile. “You don’t have to do anything, lass. You’re family.”
“But you barely know me, and yet here you are, leaving your wife and family to go on a wild goose chase with me.”
“Oh, I have a habit of getting on my poor wife’s nerves. She’s delighted to get rid of me for a few days.”
Victoria eyed his sincere expression, but noted the twinkle lurking in his gray gaze. Her cousin was not only a very handsome man; he was both kind and charming. She found it hard to imagine that any woman in her right mind would find him irritating.
“Is that really true?” she asked.
“That I sometimes irritate Edie? Absolutely. That she wants to get rid of me?” The satisfied smile that curved the edges of his mouth conveyed the opposite. Like Aden, Victoria suspected that Alec had a very happy marriage.
If not for the fact that her goals did not include the wedded state, she might be a tad jealous that her brother and cousin had both secured the sort of family life a woman like her could only dream about. Illegitimacy was never an easy obstacle to overcome regardless of one’s sex, and it was doubly hard for women. Like mother, like daughter, was the standard way of thinking. Tainted from an early age, a girl was likely to follow in those sinful footsteps, rendering her unfit for marriage to a respectable man.
Thomas Fletcher had certainly thought so.
