Chapter Fourteen

A night of sleep did not bring the definitive answers that Brynne sought. After she and Weston finished seeing off the last of the carriages, she considered confiding in her brother. It was a rare problem that they did not share. A benefit of being born at the same time...and often only having each other to rely on.

But it was because of that close bond she knew that Weston's opinion wouldn't be all that different from Lady Crowley's. And while she had the courage to defy her former chaperone, she doubted if she'd be able to do the same with her twin.

"Are you leaving for London today or tomorrow?" he asked, neatly slicing a knife through the middle of his sandwich. They sat across from each other in the solarium at a table that felt infinitely larger now that it was just the two of them sharing it.

"Tomorrow," she replied, absently spearing a pickled beet with her fork even though her appetite left much to be desired. "Or perhaps the day after. There are some things I need to tend to yet."

He dabbed at his mouth with a linen napkin. "What sort of things?"

Even though she understood it was nothing more than idle conversation, her back still stiffened. "This and that," she said, being purposefully vague. "Not to mention, I've yet to begin packing up my art supplies, and that's a trunk unto itself. I'll most likely join you at the end of the week."

If I join you at all , she thought silently. Her grip on the fork tightening, she stabbed another beet with unnecessary force and it split in half, causing the metal edge of her utensil to clang loudly on the plate.

Weston sat back in his chair and crossed his arms. "If you're planning what I think you are, you'd best reconsider now, because I won't stand for it."

Her face paled. "You–you won't stand for what?"

"Bringing that hellhound into town with us."

Brynne breathed a sigh of relief.

"That hellhound" was her dog, Drufus. An impulsive purchase from a nearby farm (she already had two bassets, Ellie and Emma, who, at ten years of age, spent most of their days napping in the sun), he'd quickly grown from an adorable puppy into an enormous, rambunctious mutt with paws the size of saucers and all the grace of a bull in a china shop.

For the past two Seasons, she'd attempted to bring him to their manor in Grosvenor Square and the results had been...less than ideal. While Ellie and Emma were content to sleep on a divan in the music room, Drufus had gamboled around the entire house. Chewed shoes, knocked over tables, and dug holes in the garden that a dinosaur bone could fit in had all promptly led to his premature return to Hawkridge Manor.

Happy to chase the swans in the pond, accompany Mr. Grimsby on his daily rounds, and guard the horses in their fields during the day before sleeping in the barn at night, Drufus was far more suited for the country than the city.

While she would miss his presence and jester-like personality, Brynne had already decided weeks ago to keep him at the estate. It was where he was the most content. And anymore, he belonged as much to Mr. Grimsby as he did to her. The aging groundskeeper would never say as much, but he absolutely adored the hound and, on more than one occasion, she'd caught him slipping Drufus chicken livers that he'd specifically asked the cook to set aside.

"No," she said, smiling. "I am not going to set Drufus loose on the ton this year."

"Thank God," Weston said with feeling.

It occurred to her then, as it should have before, that if she went to Scotland, none of her three pets would be able to accompany her. Ellie and Emma were too old for such a disruption, and if Drufus were to get loose in the hills and valleys of the Highlands, then she'd never see him again.

Her position in Society, her family's goodwill, and now her dogs…what else would she be giving up if she threw caution–and the weight of the ton's expectations–to the wind and eloped to Gretna Green?

Oh, a tiny voice whispered. But what will you gain?

Ellie, Emma, and Drufus were happy at Hawkridge Manor.

But she wasn't.

She never had been.

Yet if she didn't leave now, would she ever have the daring to do it later?

People were loath to abandon what made them comfortable. And she was comfortable in this life, with enough awareness to understand that her perceived difficulties were someone else's paradise. But that was not an excuse to keep her feet where she'd been planted.

She thought of an exchange she'd had with the gardener once, when she was young. It was the summer before she met Lachlan. Weston was away touring schools, her father was heaven knew where, and she was–again–all alone.

After sneaking out early from a lesson, she'd gone to the pond to feed the swans stale breadcrumbs where she discovered the gardener, Mr. Treadwell, tending to a long row of heirloom roses.

He was weeding, and as she sat on her haunches to watch (a very unladylike position, but what Miss Hardgrave didn't know wouldn't get a ruler struck across Brynne's backside), she'd noticed that he had missed one.

"There," she'd said, pointing at a spindly white flower that clearly did not belong amidst the cultured roses. "Should I pull it?"

"That's not a weed, Lady Brynne," Mr. Treadwell had said in his deep, somber voice. He'd scratched beneath his plain cap, and smiled kindly at her.

"Then what is it?" she'd asked, frowning.

"That's a wildflower. A daisy. See the yellow center?" At her nod, he'd gone on to say, "It must have blown in on the wind when it was a small seed and germinated there."

"But why don't you remove it?"

"Can I tell you a secret?"

A secret was a very important thing indeed, and she'd nodded seriously. "Yes."

Mr. Treadwell had cupped his hands around his mouth. "Because the daisy doesn't know it isn't a rose. And as long as we don't tell it, it will continue to grow where it was planted."

She'd considered that for a moment. "But it's in the shadow of that rosebush. Wouldn't it be happier in a wide open field? By the stone wall, or the meadow across the way. There's plenty of room there."

"Maybe," he'd said. "But if we were to try to move it, there's a high likelihood it wouldn't survive the journey. Best to leave it where it is, Lady Brynne. It's safer here than it would be anywhere else."

But as she'd looked more closely at the daisy, and noticed how its leaves were already beginning to wilt, Brynne had wondered if it wasn't more humane to give it a chance to blossom in the sun than to let it slowly perish in the shade.

"Weston," she said abruptly.

"Yes?" he asked, pausing with his fork halfway to his mouth.

She pushed her chair back. "I need to blossom."

"In the middle of breakfast?"

"I don't want to marry Lady Martha Smethwick."

Her brother's dark brow furrowed in bemusement. "I should hope not. Brynne, are you sure you're feeling well? You still seem…out of sorts. Should I call for Mrs. Grimsby? Or a doctor?"

"No doctors," she said as she stood up. "But I will need Mrs. Grimsby. I'm going away, and there are some things I'd like to go over with her before I do." She took a deep breath. "Weston, I need to tell you something."

"I already know," he said briskly. "And I think it's brilliant."

She stared at him in astonishment. "You–you do ?"

"Yes. I saw your latest painting of the seascape where we went on holiday last year. You're talented, Brynne. Very talented. And the école des Beaux-Arts is the best in the world. How long is the program?"

"Six…six months." He thought she was talking about art school, she realized. The one in Paris that she'd asked her father if she could attend and had yet to receive a response.

"You'll miss the Season, then. But there will be others. When do you leave?"

"Today." She wet her lips. Half of her wanted to tell Weston the truth. To confess everything. But the other half of her, the colder, more logical half, recognized this as an opportunity to avoid hurting the two men she loved the most. If Weston knew her real plans, he'd try to stop her. And if he did that, she'd never make it to Lachlan by noon. But this way…this way she could have her proverbial cake and eat it, too, as the Duke of Norfolk had once commonly written in a published letter to Lord Thomas Cromwell.

When guilt threatened, she tamped it down.

She wasn't lying.

Not outright, anyway.

And this would grant her the time she needed to acclimate her brother to the idea of his sister eloping with one of his oldest friends.

Really, she was doing him a kindness.

"So soon?" he asked.

"I'll write you when I get there." Impulsively, she went around the table to wrap her arms around his shoulders and kiss his freshly shaven cheek. "I love you, Weston."

He twisted in his chair to observe her with a critical eye. "Are you positive that you're all right? Nothing has happened that I should be made aware of? Someone didn't say anything untoward at the ball last night, did they?"

With her mind finally made up, Brynne's smile rivaled the sun. "I am fine," she assured him. "Better than fine, I think I might actually be happy."

"Now I know you're feeling off," he said wryly. "Our family is many things. Happy isn't one of them."

"That, brother dear, remains to be seen."

She wasn't coming.

As Lachlan prowled back and forth beside the brougham he'd rented to ferry them across the border to Gretna Green, his ungloved hands clenched and unclenched, giving cause for the other pedestrians in the village square to give him a wide berth.

He looked at the clock tower, and when he saw the time–five minutes past noon–his heart sank all the way down to his boots.

No, Brynne wasn't coming.

And he was a bloody fool for ever thinking that she would.

"Let's go," he growled at the driver, a thin man with a head as smooth as a billiard ball that he kept diligently covered with a black cap.

"Yes, my lord." The driver hesitated. "Do you still wish to continue on to Gretna Green?"

Lachlan's mouth twisted. "That depends. Am I tae marry meself?"

"Straight to Carlisle, then."

"Aye," he said bitterly. "Carlisle."

Courtesy of an influx of new rail over the past decade, Lachlan could board a train in Carlisle, a growing city ten miles shy of the Scottish border, and be in Glasgow within five hours. From there, he'd board the Highland Railway, and after a stop to change trains in Perth, would arrive in Inverness, the closest major town to Glenavon, by day's end.

Excluding the time it would take the carriage to reach Carlisle, a journey home that had taken two weeks when he was a boy had since been reduced to a mere twelve hours by rail. Begetting the question of what advancements in transportation the next decade might bring.

The world was changing. Old ways constantly being shuffled out to make way for new. But whether ships one day sailed the skies or trains hurtled down the tracks at the unthinkable speed of fifty miles per hour, one thing would always remain the same: he'd love Brynne Weston until the day that he died.

Stepping up into the carriage, he was about to slam the door shut when he heard her voice calling his name.

At first, he thought it was a cruel trick his ears were playing on him. A manifestation of his greatest desire to help fill the hole her absence had carved out of his chest.

"Bluidy hell," he groaned, striking the back of his head against the wood paneling above the velvet-upholstered bench seat. Then he lifted his arm, and slapped the palm of his hand on the underside of the roof to signal his readiness to depart. But the pair of horses, a bay mare and a brown gelding, didn't move.

"It appears there is a lady trying to get your attention," the driver called. "Should I go around her?"

Lachlan erupted from the brougham with such force that the entire carriage rocked on its wheels. His heart lodged somewhere in his throat, he scanned the village square with the panicked, hopeful desperation of sailor spying a lifeboat as he churned water.

And there she was.

Walking, no, running towards him across a flat section of grass, her skirts flapping in the wind, her hat partially dislodged, and her blonde hair blowing in the breeze all the while clinging to a cumbersome leather carpet bag.

Passersby stopped and stared as he ran to her, picked her up by the waist, and spun her around. The carpet bag fell to the ground with a heavy thud , but neither Brynne nor Lachlan bothered to retrieve it. They were too busy gazing into each other's eyes and laughing, like two people gone mad.

And maybe they were mad to be eloping together based on a vow they'd made as children. Or maybe it was everyone else, everyone who went about their daily lives without doing everything in their power to grab on to this sort of delirious, once-in-a-lifetime-love, that were the mad ones.

"Ye came." He resisted–barely–planting a kiss upon her mouth the likes of which would have sent the elderly spinster observing them from the doorway of the teashop into a dead faint. Instead, he swung her around once more, and then reluctantly returned her feet to the ground.

"I apologize for being late," she said breathlessly, brushing a tendril of hair out of her eyes. "I had trouble finding the dress I wanted to wear for our wedding, and then Drufus made off with one of my shoes. My maid found it in a flowerbed, and–"

"Ye came," he repeated. "Nothing else matters."

"Is that our carriage?" she asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"Aye. I know it's probably not as large as ye are used tae, but as long as the horses hold up, we'll be in Gretna Green tomorrow eve."

She ducked her chin, then peered at him from beneath her lashes as a demure smile played across her lips. "I would think a smaller carriage would lend itself to a more intimate seating arrangement, Lord Campbell. Don't you agree?"

"Aye," he managed to growl as lust gripped him by the bollocks and gave a tantalizing squeeze. "I do."

"Then what are we waiting for?" She flitted past him and, after lifting her carpet bag, he quickly followed suit.

"Gretna Green," he told the driver, who tipped his cap.

"With clear skies and smooth roads, we should make excellent time, my lord."

Lachlan barely heard him. He was too busy admiring the plump curve of Brynne's backside as she climbed into the brougham and settled against the far window, the narrower skirts of her emerald green traveling habit taking up far less room than her gown from the night before.

Every fiber of his being wanted to pounce on her the instant they set off. To be this close, with nary a hawkish chaperone in sight…suffice it to say, it took a considerable amount of self-control to remain on his side of the carriage.

"Ye packed lightly," he remarked, having noted the inconsequential weight of her luggage before he'd pushed it beneath the seat.

She nodded. "Enough for a few days. I thought it would be easier to have my belongings sent to me once we reach Campbell Castle. My maid is packing a trunk as we speak." As she shifted to face him, her eyes shone with curiosity. "Can you tell me more about it? The castle, that is. You've shared bits and pieces over the years, but I would enjoy having a clearer picture of where we are going to live. I'm sure it's absolutely breathtaking."

Aye , he thought silently. If ye dinna mind bats in the stairwell and fresh rain falling from the ceiling.

"It does have its own unique charm," he allowed. "Given her age–nearly four hundred years–there's always work tae be done and improvements tae be made. But she's a sturdy old lady, whose walls have withstood many a battle with a flood thrown in here and there for good measure."

"And your father doesn't live there anymore?"

"When he inherited Kintore Manor, there was a lot of work tae be done. He stayed here for most of it, and then moved a few years after I left Eton. Fancies himself a real gentleman now." Lachlan grinned as he recalled the last time he'd gone to visit his sire. Robert Campbell had been wearing an actual cravat, with a tailcoat to finish it off. He'd even carried a silver-tipped cane, which he had used to whack his son good-naturedly across the shins when Lachlan doubled over in laughter. "He wouldna lower himself tae be caught in a crumbling castle."

"Crumbling?" said Brynne, her head tilting.

"A matter of speaking," he said hastily. "What…what did yer brother have tae say when ye told him we were eloping? I willna lie, I expected tae see him hot on yer heels and tae be rocked back onto mine if he caught ye." He grinned. "Not that I'd blame him, seeing as I'm running off with his one and only sister."

"He…didn't have much to say about it."

"Really?" Lachlan said skeptically. "I find that hard tae believe."

Brynne looked down at her hands that she'd folded neatly across her lap. She wore ivory kid gloves that extended past her delicate wrists and ended in a scalloped lace edge. "Maybe because I…I didn't tell him."

His eyes narrowed. "And why wouldna ye do that?"

"Just as you said. I knew Weston would try to stop me, and…and I didn't want him to. This was my decision to make, Lachlan. Not his. Not anyone's but mine."

It was a plausible explanation, and yet…

"Then ye mean tae tell him by post after we're married."

"I…of course. I'll send a letter straightaway explaining everything."

The hesitation was slight, he'd given her that.

Less than half a second.

But the lack of sound it made was the equivalent of a cannon sailing through the air right before it blasted through a wall.

"Are ye ashamed tae marry me, Bry?" he said stiffly. "If ye are, then say it now, and I'll have the driver return ye tae Hawkridge Manor before we go another step."

Lachlan acknowledged that he wasn't nearly as wealthy or highly titled as the sort of gentleman that Brynne and her family were accustomed to rubbing shoulders with. Her grandfather was a bloody duke , for Christ sakes. While Lachlan only had a "Lord" in front of his name because some bloke had fallen off a ladder and snapped his neck. The social distance between himself and his bride-to-be could span a large country. But while he was able to stomach others looking at him in silent judgment as they questioned how the hell he'd managed such a fine catch as Brynne Weston, he'd be damned if he gazed upon his wife and saw the same question in her eyes.

Money didn't make a man.

Drive and determination did.

He had plans. Grand plans. And he wanted Brynne by his side as he executed them. But he was not without his pride, and he'd not have her there out of pity or hiding in his shadow because she was afraid of what others would think of her if she stood at his side.

"That's not it at all," she protested as the color drained from her cheeks. "I am not ashamed of you, Lachlan. What a horrible thing to accuse."

"Then what reason–what real reason–do ye have for not telling yer brother?" he said roughly. "Yer father, I can understand. For all that the man's given ye his attention, ye dinna owe him a second of yers. But there's no one ye are closer tae than Weston, and lying tae him–"

"I didn't lie," she cut in defensively. "I…I merely did not dissuade him of the assumption he made that I was going to Paris to attend art school. Not because I want to hide our marriage, but because I want to celebrate it. And I won't be able to do that if Weston is storming the blacksmith shop while we're trying to say our vows. I'll write to him once we're settled at Campbell Castle. I will." She reached across the space dividing them and placed her hand on his thigh. "I love you, Lachlan."

He sucked in a sharp breath.

"What is it?" she asked uncertainly.

"That's the first time that ye have said that ye love me." Enveloping her small hand with his larger one, he shifted closer and rested his chin upon the top of her head. Her hair was soft and smelled subtly sweet, like honeysuckle warmed in the afternoon sun. "We're going tae have a wonderful life together, Bry. We'll chase down all those dreams ye told me about when we stared at the stars, and we'll raise a beautiful family. There will be hard times, aye. There's no use pretending that there willna." He moved his fingers down her back. "But they'll always be outweighed by the good."

"I'm sure they will be, Lachlan." On a quiet sigh, she slid her arm across his lap and closed her eyes. "As long as we're together. That is most important."

This time, he pretended not to hear the hesitation in her voice.