Page 38 of To Wed a Wild Scot
They scurried about as if Queen Charlotte herself had just honored them with her presence. Logan thought sourly that if they’d made half as much effort searching for the sheep, Lady Juliana might not have fallen into the burn in the first place.
“Take a seat right ’ere, my lady.” Callum dragged the best chair in the room closer to the fire and patted the seat.
“Wait! Callum, you eejit, let me take Logan’s coat off ’er first. It’s wet.”
Callum shot Logan an accusing look as Dougal tenderly removed the coat from Lady Juliana’s shoulders. “Yer coat iswet, Logan. Muddy, too.”
Logan scowled. “That does tend to happen when a man jumps into a burn, Callum. My shirt and breeches are damp as well, so if you don’t mind, a blanket would be wel—”
“A blanket, ’o course! Dougal, go fetch the lass a blanket.”
Dougal darted out of the room as if his heels had caught fire. He returned a moment later, draped a thick blanket over Lady Juliana’s shoulders, then tossed another one across the room to Logan. “Here. Stop yer moaning.”
Logan caught it and used it to dry the last of the droplets from his hair. It had taken them the better part of an hour to ride back to the Robertsons’ farm, so his clothes were mostly dry.
He tossed the blanket aside and threw himself into the chair across from Lady Juliana’s. She was still holding the lamb on her lap, just as she’d done the entire ride back to the Robertsons’farm. None of them had tried to take it from her, not even when she entered the farmhouse. It snuggled against her, its white, woolly head resting on its curled legs.
“Aw, look at the wee thing.” Brice paused with a tea tray in his hands and grinned down at Lady Juliana. “Ye should keep ’er, my lady. Take ’er back to the castle with ye.”
“How kind you are, Mr. Robertson. Thank you.” Lady Juliana beamed at him.
Logan could have sworn he saw Brice Robertson blush.
“Ach, well, it’s nothing at all, lass.” Brice fumbled with the teapot, his big hands clumsy, but at last he managed to pour a cup of tea. “Here ye are. This’ll warm ye up.”
Lady Juliana took it with a grateful smile, but Logan noticed once she finished it she was still shivering under her blanket. He reached over and fingered a fold of her heavy riding habit.
Still damp. Likely her hair was, too.
He grabbed the bottle of whisky from Brice’s tray and poured a generous measure into a glass. “Here. Drink this.”
She accepted the glass, took a tiny sip, and wrinkled her nose. “It burns.”
Logan chuckled. “Drink it. It’ll warm you faster than tea will.”
She sipped obediently from her glass, and after a little while her eyelids began to droop. When she dropped into a doze, Logan gently drew the glass from her slack fingers and set it on the table.
“Poor lass,” Brice murmured. “She’s too weary to keep ’er eyes open.”
Logan studied her in silence. Her heavy, dark lashes rested on her pale cheeks, and the fair hair that had escaped its pins hung in damp curls around her face. One hand rested on the chair’s arm, but the other was still cupped around the lamb’s head.
She looked very small sitting there, half-buried in the blanket Dougal had put over her, but in every way that mattered, there was nothing small about Lady Juliana Bernard.
Brice was right. Shewasa brave lass. A bit mad too, perhaps, certainly sharp-tongued and impatient.Bhig galla, just as Callum had said. She was as troublesome a lady as Logan had ever known, but he also didn’t know many ladies who’d risk their own safety to rescue a terrified lamb from drowning.
Shouldn’t someone do the same for her?
For all her bravery, for all her tenderness of heart, Lady Juliana was drowning, and by some strange twist of fate, he was the only one who could pull her back to the surface again.
Logan hadn’t slept at all the night before. He’d been up pacing from one side of his bedchamber to the other, haunted by the despair on Lady Juliana’s face when he’d left her alone in the library last night. The hurt and disappointment on Fitzwilliam’s.
He might have been able to brush aside his pangs of conscience again this morning, but then Lady Juliana had gone and saved that blasted lamb…
To some people, it would have been a small enough thing. It was just a lamb, hardly worth anything really, but to Logan, compassion wasn’t a small thing at all. He’d seen the lack of it too often to think of it as insignificant.
He leaned back in his chair with a sigh and turned his attention from Lady Juliana to Brice. He’d been distracted by her all day, but now it was time to get down to business. “I want to talk to you, Robertson.” He nodded at the other two men. “Dougal and Callum, too.”
Logan hadn’t come here today just to search for sheep. That had been a convenient excuse to visit the Robertsons’ farm. He glanced from Brice to Dougal, and from Dougal to Callum. All three Robertson brothers were big, strong, healthy men—the sort of men with the brawn and the heart to make a success out of a chance at a new life.
