The Highlander's Lost Lady (The Lairds Most Likely 3)

Nearly everything on that list loved her back—although perhaps not the luscious, buttery shortbread. She’d needed to let out her favorite frock an extra inch for this Christmas house party. But Brody Girvan, to her infinite regret, didn’t know she was alive.

Now she sat in front of her dressing table mirror in her pretty bedroom in Achnasheen Castle and recognized the bitter truth. When it came to love, she’d set her sights too high. The dashing Laird of Invermackie was never going to view her as anything but a distant acquaintance, one of a crowd, nobody special.

Accepting this unpalatable fact ripped her heart to shreds because, ever since her first encounter with charming, disreputable Brody Girvan five years ago, she’d been under his spell. She hadn’t been quite sixteen. That was an impressionable age for a girl, when she was prone to infatuations with unattainable objects of desire.

Elspeth, with her dreamy, romantic soul, was more prone than most to powerful adolescent passions. Brodie with his wild, dark eyes, and wild, dark curls, and penchant for riding the most unmanageable horse in the stables, was sure to set her innocent heart fluttering. Of course, back then, when she was a spotty, plump, bookish fifteen and her beloved was a worldly twenty, she’d barely entered his consciousness. He hadn’t noticed her mooning around Glen Lyon all summer, frantic for a mere glimpse of him.

Most girls left their youthful fancies behind as they matured. But while Elspeth had grown out of her spots, and during this last year, her figure had gained some shape—despite the shortbread’s machinations—her heart had never wavered. It was Brody’s from the moment she saw him take a reputedly unrideable stallion over a high fence, then race across the hills with a careless élan that stole her breath away.

To her regret, in the years since that momentous day, Brody’s heart hadn’t shifted either. He remained happy to flirt with any attractive woman in sight, and get up to unknown wickedness in Edinburgh, and ignore the quiet girl who worshiped him from afar.

Now Elspeth surveyed her unimpressive reflection and decided she really couldn’t blame her idol for failing to fall at her feet and declare his love. The Laird of Invermackie was everything exciting.

While she…wasn’t.

Elspeth was the cuckoo in a family of peacocks. Or rather the humble sparrow. Cuckoos made their presence felt more than she ever had.

Her mother was one of the two famous Macgrath sisters, notable beauties who had dazzled London society before making brilliant marriages to rich Scotsmen. Elspeth’s mother had since become a powerful political hostess, and her influence had helped her husband rise high in the War Office. On the way, she’d borne five children: Elspeth’s older sisters Grace, Charity and Prudence, then the longed-for heir, Hamish. Eight years later, her mother’s “afterthought” arrived.

Elspeth had been an afterthought in her family ever since.

Most of the time, she didn’t mind. Life as the sole quiet member of her noisy, brilliant, opinionated, physically splendid family had its compensations. It allowed her to sit back and observe. It let her do what she wished, because nobody paid her a scrap of attention.

But when she came to attracting the man she wanted, her self-effacement was a complete disaster.

Discontentedly she counted off her mediocre physical attributes. Brown eyes. Brown hair. Unremarkable features. She wasn’t hideous, her face was quite pleasant, but as memorable as a potato. She sighed and bit her lip, and told herself she’d cried enough over Brody Girvan. Tears had never done her an ounce of good.

She and her mother lived with Hamish in Glen Lyon near Oban. Her brother had scorned the idea of following his father into civil service and spent his time being frightfully Scottish on his rich estates. A couple of times a year, he and his cousin Diarmid got together with their great friend Fergus Mackinnon, Laird of Achnasheen. Various family members often turned up to share the fun.

Brody Girvan was Fergus’s cousin. While he didn’t always appear at social gatherings, he was present often enough to remind Elspeth that no other man would ever match him.

Much good that did her either.

This year, there were changes in the air. The Christmas party was more exclusive than usual, and for the first time, Fergus and his bride, the famous artist, hosted the seasonal festivities at Achnasheen. Brody had arrived with Diarmid this afternoon, and Elspeth had a sick feeling that when he greeted her in the crowded great hall, he’d struggled to remember her name.

Now she met pensive brown eyes in the mirror. She’d had enough of feeling rejected and disregarded and boring. Things were due to change for her, too. She wasn’t going to be in love anymore. She was twenty years old, and it was time to grow up and forget silly infatuations.

No more broken heart. She was a mature woman, and she’d act like one.

So, take that, Brody Girvan.

She would embrace the fact that she was dull and drab. No longer would she eat her heart out for what she could never have. A new, free life started today, and may she be hauled through thistles in her nightie before she devoted another moment to yearning after handsome young men who wasted their best years in idleness and dissipation.

To prove she’d claimed the higher ground, the mature woman made a face and poked her tongue out at her uninspiring image.

***

Brody Girvan, Laird of Invermackie, was altogether a dashing fellow. Or at least that was what people told him.

But as he sauntered down from his bedroom at Achnasheen, crossed the medieval great hall with its decorations of holly and pine, and approached the breakfast room, he harboured the unwelcome suspicion that he wasn’t quite as dashing as he wanted people to think.

On his first night back in his cousin’s home, he’d stayed up with Hamish and Diarmid, drinking far too much of Fergus’s excellent whisky. It was good seeing his friends, but he greeted the morning with a headache and the grim knowledge that he frittered away his life and youth on pleasures that began to pall.

For months, this feeling had been growing on him. At first, he’d given it the cut direct. After all, what else could any man want but plenty of reckless women to warm his bed and the freedom to pursue whatever vices beckoned?

But his lurking dissatisfaction hadn’t taken its dismissal in good spirit. It had pursued him, like bailiffs harrying a laddie who hadn’t paid his tailor’s bill. Over recent months, its clamor had risen to the point where ignoring it took more effort than anything else in his hedonistic, useless life.

Good God, was that really how he’d describe his gilded existence?