“What is it?” Fergus asked from a few feet away.

Smiling in welcome, she raised her head from her drawing. “I didn’t hear you arrive.”

Marina was sitting on the hill, not far from where she’d challenged him about his dismissive attitude to the women in his life. She hadn’t seen Fergus before she started work. These days, she knew the estate well enough to find her way to the places she’d decided to paint for the duke.

He leaned in to kiss her with the casual affection that always made her heart stutter and stop. Her hand tightened on her pencil, and she made a false line that she brushed at with her thumb.

As he’d predicted, the good weather had held until the end of September. October had come in with squalls. She’d emerged from her lover’s arms long enough to remember that she needed to return to Italy with preliminary work done on the duke’s commission, and that her hundreds of sketches of Fergus wouldn’t fit the bill.

So the last two weeks, when the weather was fine, she’d resisted Fergus’s blandishments and worked. Autumn in the Highlands, she discovered, brought forth beauty to rival summer. The heather had faded from the hills, but the trees turned a magnificent red and gold, and bracken covered the slopes with a rich, rusty brown. Sunrise was magical, too, with the unreliable light sparkling on the frosty grass, portent of colder weather to come.

Fergus’s duties as laird often called him away from her side, too. As the days went on, they settled into something like a life together. Their relationship began to feel oddly domestic, as if they shared something important and lasting, instead of the brief affair that she had to remind herself was the reality.

Although she was wanton enough to appreciate the frequent bad weather, when a roguish Scotsman and his half-Italian mistress had no choice but to seek shelter in the hunting lodge.

“Did you decide where to put the new school?”

Fergus and Reverend Angus, the minister, had met today to discuss parish matters. Once she’d condemned her lover’s lordly behavior, but she’d come to admire his endless care for the people in the glen.

“Aye,” he said with a hint of mockery.

“Who won?” The minister hadn’t much liked Fergus’s plans to build the school on land he’d earmarked for a new rectory.

One dark red eyebrow tilted. “Who do ye think?”

She didn’t need an answer. She flicked over to a fresh page, and her pencil skimmed across the paper. “Stay like that.”

He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes, lassie, I think ye only want me because you’re short of an artist’s model.”

“Oh, you make a good subject.” She cast him a teasing glance. “Not to mention your other uses.”

“Naughty wench.”

“That’s me.” Her heart leaped at the magnificent sight he made in his kilt, as much part of this wild landscape as the steep hills and the sky. “Turn your head a bit to the right.”

“As my lady commands. How is your work going?”

“I’m surprised how well, considering what little attention I’m giving it.” After she became Fergus’s lover, her art changed. Even for someone as self-critical as she invariably was, she knew that these sketches were the best things she’d ever done. If she could transfer the magic to the finished paintings, His Grace would receive some extraordinary work from her.

“You were frowning when I came up. Is something wrong?”

She traced the line of his arrogant nose on the paper. “I often frown when I’m working.”

“Aye, you do. This was different.”

The close attention he devoted to her always surprised her. Nobody ever had before.

Most of the time, she liked it. Occasionally, like now, his keen perception made her afraid that she’d never hide anything from him. And she had a horrid feeling that something powerful took root in her heart, something she’d rather he didn’t guess was there.

“I was thinking how the last time we came here, you disagreed with me about a woman’s right to an opinion.” For some reason, puzzling over her father’s inexplicable blindness to his daughter’s ruin seemed too revealing.

Fergus rolled his eyes again. “Don’t tell me you’re going to use that as a stick to beat me with.”

“I wondered if your ideas had changed.”

He cast her a knowing look. “Are things going so well that you’re looking for trouble where there is none?”

Was he right? Her departure loomed closer and closer. Within a fortnight, her father should be walking, and once he was, she had no real excuse to remain at Achnasheen.

Tags: Anna Campbell The Lairds Most Likely Historical
Source: readsnovelonline.net