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Margaret gave a little start and, with a quick glance at her cousin, obeyed. The vicar looked as if he was about to repeat the order to his niece, and then thought better of it. Instead he waded in himself and helped her to pull the man from the burn and up onto the bank.
They made him as comfortable as possible, with a shawl from Margaret’s saddle bag under his head, while the vicar removed his own coat to place over the man, “for the sake of decency” as he put it. By now the others had arrived, and he was just about to call over their guide—a weedy fellow who was lurking in the background with Mrs Willoughby—when the dog turned up.
It was a large brown animal, and Olivia remembered it had been barking when she first arrived, only to run off somewhere afterwards. She’d forgotten all about it, occupied as she had been by the injured man. Now it had returned with another man. This was an older grey haired man, also wearing a kilt, and he gave a cry at the sight of them gathered around the prone Scotsman.
“Rory!” His eyes were wide and shocked. “My son!”
Olivia moved back as he flung himself at his son’s side, feeling over his chest and shoulders, and then shaking him as he called his name.
“Perhaps you should allow him to wake naturally,” Margaret suggested, but as usual she was ignored.
“Is this your son, sir?” Once more the Reverend Willoughby took charge. “He seems to have taken a fall.”
“He is my son,” the man replied, still obviously shaken, his lean face ashen. “I am Archie Maclean of Invermar Castle, and this is Rory Maclean, my son and heir.” He said it so proudly that Olivia found herself very much taken by his words. There was something awfully romantic about them, and, she admitted, about the sight of Rory Maclean lying unconscious at her feet.
Just then Rory gave a groan and his eyes flickered open. They were hazel, Olivia noted, and they widened as he took in the vicar and then Archie Maclean. “Father?” he said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Hush, Rory,” his father said quickly. “There’s no need to be sorry, not when these kind people have come to your rescue.”
Rory seemed to be trying to grasp the meaning of his father’s words. His gaze wandered again, and then fixed on Olivia.
Later, when her heart had slowed to normal, she was quite certain that in the moment their eyes met, something passed between them. Was it possible to fall in love in an instant? She had always thought such a thing inconceivable, and yet that was what it had felt like.
“Have I died?” Rory whispered, his voice pleasantly deep, his handsome face puzzled.
“No, lad, you are alive,” his father reassured him.
“And yet I think I must be in heaven,” Rory said, “because I am looking
at an angel.”
Chapter Three
Summer 1816, Mockingbird Square
Mayfair
Rory had been out, walking and thinking. This morning Olivia’s father had come calling and he didn’t want to be there to listen. Not that they would have invited him into the conversation—the door had been shut firmly against him. So he was walking. He found the exercise helped to focus his mind and calm his emotions, even if there were no hills and glens through which to tramp.
He had been living in London for some months now and with every day that passed he missed Scotland more. He dreamed of the cool, misty rain in his face and the changing light on the loch beyond his castle window. His heart ached for the wild lands he had been born to rule.
I must go home to Invermar.
He knew it. He’d known it before all of this happened, but he’d been playing a game of pretend with himself. He also knew he was a liar and a scoundrel; his current awkward circumstance was entirely his fault and it was up to him to remedy it. Rory wanted his wife to look at him with love in her blue eyes, as she used to, before she grew to hate him. He was also aware that it was doubtful she would ever love him again.
“Mr Maclean?”
Rory looked up. He was in one of the ubiquitous Mayfair squares, on his way back to his town house. Olivia’s town house. He remembered crossing the river several times by bridge and realised he must have walked for many miles.
“Rory?”
The voice spoke again. It was unwelcome but for politeness sake—or perhaps he was just too weary to be rude—he bowed briefly in Monkstead’s direction. Sometimes on his walks he would see the earl at a distance, but they rarely crossed paths.
“You seem distracted?”
Rory took an unsteady breath, the bitter words spilling out of him. “That is because my future is as bleak as it is possible for it to be.”
The earl took a step closer. Rory would not have said more. He’d already said too much, but the other man’s dark eyes were full of understanding. The gossip was that Monkstead had also suffered heartbreak—was that why he too went on solitary walks? It occurred to Rory that here was someone who might understand his torment, and suddenly he was tired of being alone.
