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Charles lifted the window covering to peek outside. “Another hour or so and we should arrive.”
“Are you nervous?”
Charles shook his head. “I’ve only been gone for a year and yet I am eager to return. The estate might belong to my grandmother, and be run by my cousin, but it is still my inheritance.” He shrugged. “I will probably always be drawn to it.”
But Mac stopped listening, his mind caught up on two words that had slipped from Charles’s lips. His cousin. Mac swallowed, a slow ripple of apprehension moving through him. He could not hear about Charles’s cousin, Mabel Sheffield, without remembering his own misdeeds from years ago. When she’d put her heart on the line and he’d dashed it away as easily as flicking lint from his sleeve.
Passing the summer under Mabel’s roof was an intimidating prospect. Perhaps Mac would get lucky and she wouldn’t remember the way he’d treated her during their final interaction before he’d left for the navy. He cringed. No, she was unlikely to forget such a scene. But he had changed significantly in the last six years. He’d grown very tan, his hair lightening quite a bit from the sun. He’d grown from a lanky boy into a strong man.
What would Mabel think of him? He shook his head. He was likely overthinking this.
Charles’s voice broke through his thoughts. “You have not met Pippa yet, I assume.”
“Not formally. She was just a babe when I left,” Mac said.
A contented smile lit Charles’s lips. “I am eager to see her again. I hope she has not forgotten me.”
Mac laughed, and Desmond stirred beside him. “It has only been a year, Charles. Of course she hasn’t forgotten you.”
He gave a self-deprecating smile. “I suppose we will find out within the hour.”
Charles’s steady announcement of how close they were drawing to Graton and Sheffield House did nothing but heighten Mac’s trepidation. He lifted the window covering and turned his attention to watching the countryside roll by.
He didn’t yet know how he was going to manage it, but he most certainly owed Mabel an apology for his past indiscretions. He only hoped she allowed him the chance.
