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I almost jump out of my skin when I hear Finlay whisper, “now!” I lunge for the exit of the hide and out into the open air.
Before I have a chance to adjust to being under the open sky again, he bundles me toward the buggy, and then we are driving, with me slumped in the passenger seat out of sight until we’re a fair distance away.
“I’m sorry,” I mutter, miserable, as I sit up and stare out the window at that magnificent view. It was nice to see it. But it’s a shame I will never get a real look at the deer. I guess that chance is over now.
“What for?” Finlay asks, glancing over at me, and then focuses on driving again. Up ahead, the house is waiting on the hill, seeming to stand out watchfully as we approach.
“You had to lie because of me,” I say. In truth, I don’t really know what I’m sorry for, except that nothing has gone as planned.
Maybe I just want him to say he’s sorry. To explain that he doesn’t want me now. As if that will make me feel better at all.
Finlay chuckles quickly. “No, I had to lie because of Hamish,” he says. His humor confused me for a moment.
Isn’t he upset about what I told him?
“The old coot wouldn’t let me hear its end if he knew I took a girl into one of the hides. He’d say I was acting like a teenager again. We’ll go to the house. Now that he’s got a job to do. We won’t be disturbed.”
I backtrack mentally, trying to make sense of what he’s just said.
“You mean…,” I start, but I can’t find a way to finish the sentence.
Finlay glances at me again as he shifts gears, steering us toward the last approach to the house.
“You’ve changed your mind?” he asks. “If you have, it’s alright. I don’t want to pressure you into anything.”
“No!” I almost shout, catching myself and realizing I’m only managing to make myself sound weirder and weirder as I go. “I mean – that is – I thoughtyou….”
“Oh, I see,” Finlay says. “You thought I’d be so put off by the fact that you’re a virgin that I wouldn’t want you anymore.”
“Well…,” I say, not wanting to admit it out loud.
“I don’t,” Finlay says firmly, then catches my look of alarm as he parks the buggy and shakes his head. “I mean, I don’t feel put off. I just need to be more careful with you, that’s all.”
“More careful?” I frown as the engine dies. “What does that mean?”
“It means your first time should be special,” Finlay says, eyeing me with a twinkle in his eye. He gets out of the buggy and walks around to my side, opening the door to let me out before I have time to react and pre-empt him. “And I intend to make sure that it is. I’m not going to let you lose your virginity in some cramped, smelly hide.”
“It wasn’t smelly,” I object, getting out of the car and taking his offered hand. “But, then, you mean the house is better? Is that it?”
Finlay wrinkles his nose. “It is better, but I meant a lot more special than just changing venues,” he says. “I mean it. I need a day or two to prepare. It should be better thought-out than a quick fumble, no matter how passionate that fumble almost was.”
“Then why are we here now?” I ask, frowning.
Finlay grins and pulls me after him by the hand toward the big double doors of the grand house. “Because there’s more we can do that doesn’t involve you losing your virginity. A kind of a taster, if you will.”
“A taster?” That is all I say before he tugs me along through the main hall and down a hallway, where we pass between more portraits of old Lairds and their families and statues and paintings of various wild animals.
I can barely take it all in before I find myself following him into a small library room. Finlay closes the door behind me, meets my eyes, and chuckles.
“The best part of an ancestral home that was built years ago by people who were ready to fight at any time is the secrets,” he says.
He reaches over to the wall, where the bust of an angry-looking man sits on top of a short column that appears to have been built into the design of the room. There is a matching column on the other side of a wide bookcase, framing a central element of the library.
When he touches the bust on the top of the head, it gives a click and swings forward, and a corresponding click comes from the bookcase itself. Then, before I can figure out what is happening, the bookcase swings open – revealing a hidden room beyond.
“Come on,” Finlay grins, disappearing behind the books and into a dimly-lit room beyond.
“Wow,” is all I can say.
