The Secret Gift (11 page)

And the only person she could possibly talk to quite obviously wanted nothing to do with her.

Back in the den, she was too keyed up to even think about going to sleep. She couldn’t watch television or listen to the radio, so instead she headed for the shelf of books she’d spotted earlier, partly out of occupational curiosity, but also from a sheer desire for something to read.

She wasn’t disappointed. Mr. Mackenzie, in fact, had impeccable taste in reading material, from both a substance and an investment standpoint. And his library revealed a lot about him.

He liked poetry, and historical literature, and also had a thing for contemporary thrillers. The
Culpeper’s Herbal
was a bit unexpected, especially such an early edition, professionally rebound in tooled and gilt leather with some of the pages closely trimmed to the text. The book looked as if it had been well utilized, with some pages containing handwritten notations. On the market it would fetch easily into the thousands. A rare find, indeed.

As she scanned the other titles, her gaze fell on one book in particular. The gilt lettering on its spine read simply
The Book of the Mackay.
Libby removed it from its place on the shelf, turning it in her hands as she quickly assessed it with the eye of a collector.

Leather-covered boards. Raised bands on the spine. She opened the book and held one page up to the light. Laid paper. Late eighteenth century, she suspected. She turned to the title page, did a quick translation of the line of Roman numerals printed at the bottom: 1774. It was a rare edition, but what made it unique was the realization that it had been written by a woman.

Libby stared at the name printed in blocked letters across the title page.

“Lady Isabella Mackay of Wrath.”

Had she been lady of this same castle? Women had rarely achieved publication at that time in history, and if they did, it was typically in poetry, more seldom in fiction, but rarely, if ever, in nonfiction.

Libby turned to the first page, and began to read:

What follows on these pages is an account of great history about a clan of profound importance in the annals of Scotland. In chronicling the generations, this author humbly hopes to impart not only the events of the past, but the lives of those who witnessed them. It is my hope that perhaps, God willing, my own descendant might one day continue this endeavor in a subsequent volume, setting down the lives and history of those who will follow after me.

The heartfelt message, so beautifully written, immediately captivated her. Libby took the blanket and curled up on one end of the sofa where the light of the candle burned brightest.

Snuggling in, she began to read.

It was near two in the morning when the storm finally slackened, moving off to sea. Graeme knew, because he’d been lying in his bed, listening to the ebbing sound of it for the past several hours.

He hadn’t slept at all.

All the while he’d been lying there, he’d been thinking about, picking apart, and troubling over the woman who lay just a room and a floor away. He wanted to know who she was. Then again, he didn’t. Libby Hutchinson, she’d said. If that was her true name. What did he care if it wasn’t? He didn’t want to know her, didn’t want to wonder about her, didn’t want to imagine what she might look like without his sweater falling to her knees even as he knew he would never be able to wear that sweater again without remembering the way it had looked on her.

He’d tried everything he could think of to put her off—threatening her, glaring at her, being unforgivably rude. Still, there was something about her, some odd vulnerability that just didn’t seem to fit with the image of the fortune-hunting coquette he usually found himself faced with. He’d come to recognize the signs rather easily in the past eight months. And this wayward American just didn’t have that hungry spark in her eyes. Perhaps that was just her game, a subtle charade to try to take him off his guard. Perhaps she was just better than most at hiding her true intentions.

Graeme gave up on sleep when he heard the clock ring two. He got up from the bed, crossed to the window. Standing there, leaning one arm against the wall, wearing only a pair of pajama bottoms, he looked out on the expanse of depthless, endless black that was the moonless Highland night. The only light that could breach it came from the distant lighthouse that stood farther north along the coast.

As usually happened whenever he was left alone with only his thoughts for company, memories of Teddy and Wins began to surface. Teddy would have turned forty that year. And Wins probably would have taken the cup in polo. One had been his brother, the other his cousin, although for all their short lives, they’d been more like the Three Musketeers. They had grown up together, spending summers at the Gransborough ducal estate, going to Eton within years of one another, even attending university at Trinity Hall at Cambridge.

It never should have happened the way it had. They’d both been expert skiers, had skied the slopes of Klosters since they’d been lads. But the slope they’d chosen to race each other down that day had been clearly marked
off-piste.
Dangerous—forbidden. Graeme had tried to dissuade them, but in the end, not wanting to appear gutless, he had reluctantly gone along. He hadn’t even tried to keep up. He’d never been as reckless, as fearless, as the other two, had never felt the need to win so deeply as to risk his life.

He remembered seeing them tearing down the slope, side to side as they took the first turn. Graeme had barely caught a glimpse of them before they’d hit the patch of ice, missing the second turn and colliding straight on with a wall of sheer, unmoving cliff.

It had happened so quickly, so suddenly. And had been so horribly irrevocable.

Turning from the window, Graeme ran a hand back through his hair, then over the rasp of his unshaven jaw. He pulled a robe on over his lounging pants but didn’t bother to belt it, looked for his slippers but didn’t see them. He’d probably left them in the drawing room.

His bedroom was the first off the upstairs landing. He’d chosen it both for ease in getting to it, situated as it was just across the hall from his office, and also because it was directly above the drawing room and thus drew some of the warmth from the hearth below. It wasn’t the largest of the upstairs chambers, but it suited him adequately. It wouldn’t have made sense to open one of the master chambers on the floors above just so he could sleep alone in a bed made for two.

As it was, he’d been living at the castle only a few weeks and hadn’t had the time to give the other rooms more than a cursory glance. But he’d paced the hallways enough at night to know each step on the stairwell, each turn of the hall without benefit of any light.

He took the back stairs and emerged into the kitchen, lighting a kerosene lantern kept on the counter there. Power outages were common, and he’d yet to look into getting a generator. He wanted tea, but since there was no power to heat the water, he went to the deep freeze instead. The ice cream he’d been going for, however, wasn’t there.

He glanced in the rubbish bin, saw the empty carton, and realized she’d beaten him to it. He smiled to himself as he took the container of Hob Nobs from the cabinet, poured himself a glass of milk, and dipped the biscuit before taking a bite.

When he’d finished his early-morning snack and rinsed out his glass, he started for the back stairs. But he stopped, hesitating on the first step. A moment later, he turned for the opposite hall.

The fire in the drawing room had died down to a barely burning glow. Graeme took a fresh peat brick from the sledge near the hearth and set it atop the embers, stirring them with the fire tongs until the brick took flame. He added a couple of logs to keep it burning, noticing the chill in the room. Then he stood and turned toward the sofa.

She was asleep, snuggled tightly into the corner of the sofa with a book barely clinging to her fingertips and a pair of wire-rimmed eyeglasses barely clinging to her nose. He remembered the glasses from the first night, when she’d driven down the drive so apparently lost. He remembered, too, how she’d burst into tears and how he’d felt like the biggest cad in the world.

Graeme bent, took the book and set it on the table, took the glasses and set them on top of the book. But he didn’t leave. Instead he lowered himself into the armchair and studied her in the light of the fire.

She really was quite lovely. The rain had brought out the natural curl in her dark hair, softly framing her face, and her lashes, long and dark, curled against her cheek. He knew from the first time he’d seen her that her eyes were blue, but not just any blue. They were the color of the North Sea, and when she’d been standing there, out in that rain, practically demanding that he let her inside, they’d been just as stormy as the sky.

She had one arm raised, supporting her head, and her mouth was curved just slightly, as if in sleep she knew some delicious secret. It was a full mouth, a mouth made for kissing, and he knew a sudden almost undeniable desire to do just that.

But he didn’t.

Graeme rose from his chair and reached for the blanket that covered her, tugging it back from where it had slipped off her shoulders. He watched as she stirred, the sleepy smile fading from her lips as she let go a heavy sigh.

Had it been another time, another place, had he lived another
life,
Graeme wondered ... perhaps things could have been different.

Unfortunately, wondering was all he could allow himself to do. He was, after all, Graeme Mackenzie, the most hunted bachelor in all Britain.

“Bloody hell!”

The sound of the muffled curse stirred Libby from her sleep, had her opening her eyes and scanning the room around her.

She was alone, a fire burning in the hearth, fueled by a fresh supply of peat that was infusing the room with its earthy sweet scent. Outside, the day had broken, beaming through the scattered clouds and splashing its light across the room. The window was open, just barely, and she could hear the birds outside, chattering to one another in a symphony of chirps, tweets, and chitters.

Until a pot went crashing against the stone floor.

An even more colorful curse followed.

Libby retrieved her eyeglasses from the table beside her and ran a hand through her disheveled hair. She must look a fright. How she wished she’d thought to grab a hairbrush the night before when she’d ducked out to the car, sheltering beneath the cover of an umbrella she’d found near the door, to retrieve her glasses so she could remove her contact lenses for the night and not wake to find them glued to her eyeballs.

Standing up from the sofa, Libby followed the sound of crockery to the kitchen, where she found Graeme Mackenzie in front of a conspicuously smoking frying pan. She watched as he shoved the sleeves of his sweater up over his elbows, appreciating the view of his rather well-fitting Levi’s.

“Good morning,” she said after a few stolen moments.

He turned, his expression visibly flustered. “Oh. Good morning, Miss Hutchinson.”

“Libby,” she corrected.

“Libby. Sorry if I woke you. I—” He glanced nervously at the stove. “I seem to be having a bit of trouble with the hob this morning. I trust you slept well?”

She started to answer that she had, that she’d slept better than she had in a long time, but there came a loud sizzling sound from the stovetop. Graeme turned to where a pot of something milky was currently frothing over.

“Ballocks!”

He pulled the pan off the burner and swung it, dripping and steaming, to the butcher block to cool. He really did look as if he were in over his head.

“My apologies for the outburst. Apparently the rigors of preparing a pot of porridge are beyond my very limited culinary capabilities.”

“Well, at least the power is back on.” Libby came into the room. “I’m no gourmet chef, but my guess is you’ve just got the fire a little too hot on the burner,” she said, taking up a spoon and stirring the porridge pot. She added a dash of water from the tap to the fast-thickening mixture, stirred it some more. “It’s all right, though. It’ll finish cooking and cooling fine enough there.” She looked at the frying pan and the blackened pieces of bacon curling inside of it. “Those, I’m afraid, cannot be salvaged.”

She spotted Murphy sitting, watching them both from the far corner of the kitchen, no doubt having fled from the ruckus. “Although he’d likely appreciate them,” she said, plucking the bacon from the pan and into Murphy’s dish before she set about scrubbing out the frying pan for a fresh try. “Have you any eggs?”

A half hour later, Libby followed Graeme into a dining room, carrying plates of freshly scrambled eggs, some much less blackened bacon, and two small bowls of porridge on a tray.

In contrast to the den where she’d spent the night, the ceiling in this room was quite high and fretted in decorative plasterwork. A wall of tall, elegantly draped windows faced out onto the sea, and an elaborate marble-framed hearth highlighted one wall with a huge mirror framed in gilt above it. A glittering crystal chandelier hung over the center rosewood table, reminding her of the mansions she’d toured on a school field trip as a child in Newport, Rhode Island.

They took the two seats at one end of the long, stretching table, closest to the windows. They sat together and shared a pleasant breakfast with the sun beaming in through the windows.

“The view is stunning,” Libby said over a small bite of toast.

And it truly was.

The restless sea stretched in all directions, capped in white, bold and deeply blue, with fat, billowing clouds scattered across the morning sky. Gulls dipped and soared on the current of the wind.

Graeme nodded over a sip of his coffee. “Whoever it was who chose this site to build a castle, he certainly knew what he was doing.”

“Actually, his name was Angus Du Mackay. I read a little about the castle last night before I fell asleep. Did you know a fortress has been standing on this site for nearly six hundred years? It fell to ruin during the seventeenth century and was restored in the eighteenth century by a Mackay chieftain and his wife. In fact it was she who wrote the book I was reading.”