Almost Heaven Read online

  An hour later, her hair still damp, she put on a simple peach gown with short puffed sleeves and a narrow peach ribbon at the high waist. Sitting on the bed, she brushed her hair slowly, letting it dry, while she reflected with some amusement on how ill-suited her clothes were for this cottage in Scotland. When her hair was dry she stood at the mirror, gathering the mass at her nape, then shoving it high into a haphazard chignon she knew would come unbound in only the slightest breeze. With a light shrug she let go of it, and it fell over her shoulders; she decided to leave it that way. Her mood was still bright and cheerful, and she was inwardly convinced it might stay that way from now on.

  Ian had started toward the back door with a blanket in his hand when Elizabeth came downstairs. “Since they aren’t back yet,” he said, “I thought we might as well eat something. We have cheese and bread outside.”

  He’d changed into a clean white shirt and fawn breeches, and as she followed him outside she saw that his dark hair was still damp at the nape.

  Outside he spread a blanket on the grass, and she sat down on one side of it, gazing out across the hills. “What time do you suppose it is?” she asked several minutes after he’d sat down beside her.

  “Around four, I imagine.”

  “Shouldn’t they be back by now?”

  “They probably had difficulty finding women who were willing to leave their own homes and come up here to work.”

  Elizabeth nodded and lost herself in the splendor of the view spread out before them. The cottage was situated on the back edge of a plateau, and where the backyard ended the plateau sloped sharply downward to a valley where a stream meandered among the trees. Surrounding the valley in the distance on all three sides were hills piled on top of one another, carpeted with wildflowers. The view was so beautiful, so wild and verdant, that Elizabeth sat for a long while, enthralled and strangely at peace. Finally a thought intruded, and she cast a worried look at him. “Did you catch any fish?”

  “Several. I’ve already cleaned them.”

  “Yes, but can you cook them?” Elizabeth countered with a grin.

  His lips twitched. “Yes.”

  “That’s a relief, I must say.”

  Drawing up one leg, Ian rested his wrist on his knee and turned to regard her with frank curiosity. “Since when do debutantes include rooting around in the dirt among their preferred entertainments?”

  “I am no longer a debutante,” Elizabeth replied. When she realized he intended to continue waiting for some sort of explanation, she said quietly, “I’m told my grandfather on my mother’s side was an amateur horticulturist, and perhaps I inherited my love of plants and flowers from him. The gardens at Havenhurst were his work. I’ve enlarged them and added some new species since.”

  Her face softened, and her magnificent eyes glowed like bright green jewels at the mention of Havenhurst. Against his better judgment Ian kept her talking about a subject that obviously meant something special to her. “What is Havenhurst?”

  “My home,” she said with a soft smile. “It’s been in our family for seven centuries. The original earl built a castle on it, and it was so beautiful that fourteen different aggressors coveted it and laid siege to it, but no one could take it. The castle was razed centuries later by another ancestor who wished to build a mansion in the classic Greek style. Then the next six earls enhanced and enlarged and modernized it until it became the place it now is. Sometimes,” she admitted, “it’s a little overwhelming to know it’s up to me to see that it is preserved.”

  “I’d think that responsibility falls to your uncle or your brother, not you.”

  “No, it’s mine.”

  “How can it be yours?” he asked, curious that she would speak of the place as if it was everything in the world that mattered to her.

  “Under the entailment Havenhurst must pass to the oldest son. If there is no son, it passes to the daughter, and through her, to her children. My uncle cannot inherit because he was younger than my father. I suppose that’s why he never cared a snap for it and resents so bitterly the cost of its upkeep now.”

  “But you have a brother,” Ian pointed out.

  “Robert is my half-brother,” Elizabeth said, so soothed by the view and by having come to grips with what had happened two years ago that she spoke to him quite freely. “My mother was widowed when she was but twenty-one, and Robert was a babe. She married my father after Robert was born. My father formally adopted him, but it doesn’t change the entailment. Under the terms of the entailment the heir can sell the property outright, but ownership cannot be transferred to any relative. That was done to safeguard against one member or branch of the family coveting the property and exerting undue force on the heir to relinquish it. Something like that happened to one of my grandmothers in the fifteenth century, and that amendment was added to the entailment at her insistence many years later. Her daughter fell in love with a Welshman who was a blackguard,” Elizabeth continued with a smile, “who coveted Havenhurst, not the daughter, and to keep him from getting it her parents had a final codicil added to the entailment.”

  “What was that?” Ian asked, drawn into the history she related with such entertaining skill.

  “It states that if the heir is female, she cannot wed against her guardian’s wishes. In theory it was to stop the females from falling prey to another obvious blackguard. It isn’t always easy for a woman to hold her own property, you see.”

  Ian saw only that the beautiful girl who had daringly come to his defense in a roomful of men, who had kissed him with tender passion, now seemed to be passionately attached not to any man, but to a pile of stones instead. Two years ago he’d been furious when he discovered she was a countess, a shallow little debutante already betrothed—to some bloodless fop, no doubt—and merely looking about for someone more exciting to warm her bed. Now, however, he felt oddly uneasy that she hadn’t married her fop. It was on the tip of his tongue to bluntly ask her why she had never married when she spoke again. “Scotland is different than I imagined it would be.”

  “In what way?”

  “More wild, more primitive. I know gentlemen keep hunting boxes here, but I rather thought they’d have the usual conveniences and servants. What was your home like?”

  “Wild and primitive,” Ian replied. While Elizabeth looked on in surprised confusion, he gathered up the remains of their snack and rolled to his feet with lithe agility. “You’re in it,” he added in a mocking voice.

  “In what?” Elizabeth automatically stood up, too.

  “My home.”

  Hot, embarrassed color stained Elizabeth’s smooth cheeks as they faced each other. He stood there with his dark hair blowing in the breeze, his sternly handsome face stamped with nobility and pride, his muscular body emanating raw power, and she thought he seemed as rugged and invulnerable as the cliffs of his homeland. She opened her mouth, intending to apologize; instead, she inadvertently spoke her private thoughts: “It suits you,” she said softly.

  Beneath his impassive gaze Elizabeth stood perfectly still, refusing to blush or look away, her delicately beautiful face framed by a halo of golden hair tossing in the restless breeze—a dainty image of fragility standing before a man who dwarfed her. Light and darkness, fragility and strength, stubborn pride and iron resolve—two opposites in almost every way. Once their differences had drawn them together; now they separated them. They were both older, wiser— and convinced they were strong enough to withstand and ignore the slow heat building between them on that grassy ledge. “It doesn’t suit you, however,” he remarked mildly.

  His words pulled Elizabeth from the strange spell that had seemed to enclose them. “No,” she agreed without rancor, knowing what a hothouse flower she must seem with her impractical gowns and fragile slippers.

  Bending down, Elizabeth folded the blanket while Ian went into the house and began gathering the guns so that he could clean and and check them before hunting tomorrow. Elizabeth watched him removing the guns f