Page 46 of To Wed a Wild Scot
And if he’d started to dream of green eyes instead of blue, and fair hair instead of dark?
Christ, he didn’t know. He couldn’t make sense of how he felt, or what he wanted. He knew the right thing to do was to marry Lady Juliana and pull her free of the chaos he’d plunged her into, but knowing it was right didn’t mean he wasn’t plagued with doubts.
He thought of what Juliana had said last night, about accepting help from others. Leaving Scotland would mean accepting Fitz’s help—trusting him—and he wasn’t sure he could do that. He wasn’t sure he’d ever trust Fitz, no matter if they were brothers.
There was a chance the clan would thrive under Fitz’s leadership, and all might yet be well. There was also a chance Fitz would grow bored with Scotland. He could begin to find life here tedious, and start to yearn for his friends in England. He could choose to move Emilia back to Surrey, and leave the clan behind.
“You’ll have to make a decision soon, Logan.” Fitz’s voice was gentler now, and Logan wondered if his brother had seen the struggle on his face. “Lina’s father needs her, and that’s to say nothing of Grace. She can’t remain in Scotland much longer.”
Logan dropped his head into his hands. “I know. I’m trying to…I’m doing everything I can, Fitz.”
Fitz was quiet for a moment, then he rose from his chair and dropped a hand on Logan’s shoulder. “Do everything you can to make up your mind to marry her, Logan. Meanwhile, I’ll do everything I can.”
Logan frowned up at Fitz. “If I choose not to marry her, there won’t be a thing you can do about it.”
Fitz looked down at him, an enigmatic smile hovering at the corner of his mouth. “We’ll see, brother. We’ll see.”
Chapter Twelve
Three days later
“Kiss me, Kate, we shall be married o’ Sunday…”
Juliana tossed Shakespeare aside with a derisive snort. Well, it was perfectly delightful a kiss should have led to Kate’s wedding, but not every lady was so lucky.
A kiss hadn’t led to anything at all for Juliana, other than three long days of silence. After their adventures at the Robertsons’ farm, she’d hoped she and Logan had reached some sort of…well, if not an agreement, at least a truce. She’d even half-convinced herself he’d eventually agree to marry her, but since they’d returned to Castle Kinross, she hadn’t exchanged more than a half-dozen words with him.
He’d become more distant than ever.
He rode out early each morning without telling a soul where he was going. Even his valet wasn’t privy to his whereabouts. He did return in the evenings, but only in time to change his dress and join the family at the dinner table.
Then he’d take his place across from her and sit through five or more courses without addressing a single word to her. He did look at her a good deal, with a raw intensity in his gaze that made her breath catch. She was hard-pressed to describe his expression, but she thought it was more analytical than anything else. He studied her the way a mathematician studies a particularly complex problem, as if she were a knot to be untied. It wasn’t at all flattering, yet those blue eyes sweeping over her never failed to make her flush with heat.
It was disconcerting, to say the least.
With every day that dragged on, she became more and more convinced marriage to a London fortune hunter would have been much easier than this. What a pity the easiest thing never proved to be the most effective. She hadn’t used to think so—she hadn’t used to think of anything in terms of ease or difficulty. One didn’t, when they were so rarely faced with a challenge.
But then adversity was meant to build character, wasn’t it? A lady never knew what she was capable of until she was forced to rise to a challenge. Or not rise to it, as the case may be.
Well, she’d risen to it. She’d risen all the way to northern Scotland. As little as three months ago she would have shrunk from the idea of such a journey, but now here she was, scheming to marry a man who’d taken to fleeing his home every morning to escape her.
This time, he was succeeding.
She’d made her way down to the stables just as the sun was rising this morning, intending to coax some information about Logan’s daily jaunts from one of the stable boys. As luck would have it, she arrived just in time to see Logan Blair himself riding out of the stable yard, his gray stallion’s massive hooves kicking up a thick cloud of dust behind him.
Logan must have taken the stable boys to task after she’d followed him to the Robertsons’ farm, because no plea, threat, or bribe could induce any of them to divulge his direction. Juliana, more disheartened than ever, had returned to the library for another empty, endless day of worry and anguish.
Precious moments were ticking by. She still had no idea how Fitzwilliam planned to bring Logan around to the marriage, or if he’d even made any progress on it. All she knew was Fitzwilliam left every morning to conduct some sort of mysterious business in Inverness, and was usually gone for most of the day.
She was going mad, sitting about the castle all day with nothing to do but wait. Emilia had done her best to entertain Juliana for the first two days, but she’d left for her father’s farm yesterday morning to spend some time with her family before her wedding.
Aside from Stokes, who hadn’t yet forgiven Juliana for abandoning him at the Sassy Lassie, she had no one to talk to, and nothing to distract her.
Juliana gave up pretending to read and crossed the room to peer out the window. As if the day weren’t gloomy enough already, it had begun to rain. She stood and watched the drops strike the glass. Well, it was some consolation at least to imagine Logan Blair soaked to the skin and shivering.
She turned from the window with a sigh, and crossed to one of the bookshelves. Sir Walter Scott had seemed an apt choice for today, but the novel wasn’t holding her attention. She needed something a bit more scandalous to distract her. Richardson, perhaps, or Henry Fielding. Ah, yes—there was a copy ofTom Jones, just one shelf above her head.
Juliana rose to her tiptoes and reached for the first volume, but just as her fingertips grazed the spine a sudden loud knock made her jump back, a startled cry leaving her lips.
