Page 23 of A Match Made in Heather

“No, lad,” Lady Rowland assured, suddenly sympathetic. “Not better, just different. Isn’t that so, Arabel?”

“Yes,” she agreed quietly.

“Don’t tell me you believe that.” He pinned her with a disbelieving look. “Not with your family pedigree.”

Instead of raising her chin proudly, as he expected, she tucked it into the folds of the throw and lowered her gaze to the fire. “I’ve learned that the true measure of a man isn’t his name but his deeds.”

He didn’t know what to make of that answer.

“Aye,” Lady Rowland seconded. “An’ what good deeds have ye done, lad, since ye left the highlands?” She snorted. “If any.”

Thatpricked his masculine pride, and he bit out, “Far more than you realize, my lady.”

Her gray brow lifted silently in challenge to prove himself.

He obliged. “When I left Kincardine, I had no money, no prospects, no one to vouch for my character.” In other words . . .nothing.“But I survived.”

With Lady Rowland pretending to listen attentively—and Arabel listening attentively but pretending she wasn’t—he related the events of the last ten years, sparing few details. Lady Rowland wouldn’t want to be spared the more gruesome parts of that life, and Arabel didn’t deserve to be. He told them how he’d arrived in England and lived on the streets, stealing to survive and nearly starving before he stumbled across a proper job, then how he’d scrimped and saved to purchase an officer’s commission of the lowest rank.

Lady Rowland listened with her eyes closed, opening them only to take an occasional glance at Arabel, who listened raptly as he told how he’d volunteered for battle on the continent so he could put behind him all the memories of the highlands, purging by fire what time and distance hadn’t been able to. She didn’t shrink away from descriptions of the fighting and the horrors he’d witnessed.

When he finished, silence fell over them, interrupted only by the crackling of the flames and the soft howl of the wind through the eaves.

“You left out part of yer story, lad,” Lady Rowland admonished softly. “The part at the very beginning.”

Garrick tensed. How did the old woman know about that? Had MacTavish bragged about the way he’d sent him to England?

He darted a glance at Arabel. A soft expression of confusion pulled at her beautiful brow.

A cold realization sank over him, leaving a wash of pain and guilt in its wake. All these years, he’d blamed her for not loving him enough to choose him over her family, raged against her for setting them against him—

She had no idea what MacTavish had done to him that night, on her family’s orders.

His gut clenched with sharp remorse. No wonder she thought he was waging war against her, right along with the rest of the Rowlands. But if he revealed what happened, would she believe him? Or would she assume that he was once more attempting to come between her and her family?

He shook his head, dismissing the old woman’s comment along with the past. “Not important.”

Matilda’s eyes shined, seeing right through him. Thankfully, though, she let the comment drop. “Now yer back in the highlands,” she said instead. “Where ye belong.”

“My estate tenants might think differently, my lady,” he corrected with a bit of cheek. “Along with parliament.”

She cackled a raspy laugh. “That remains to be seen!”

He smiled grimly. “And the end of my good deeds.”

“So does that,” Arabel whispered, so softly that Lady Rowland didn’t hear.

But Garrick did, and the unbidden tingle stirred by her voice twined down his spine. She’d sounded as if she were proud of the man he’d become. He didn’t know what to make of her subtle compliment, but he’d gladly take it.

“Back to the village where ye were born an’ raised, back to Highburn where yer heart lives,” her aunt mused. Then she sang in a gravelly voice, “Farewell to the Highlands, farewell to the North . . . Wherever I wander, wherever I rove . . .” Her aunt stared boldly at him as she sang the last line, ”My heart’s in the Highlands, wherever I go.”

Garrick said nothing, unprepared for the aching hollow in his chest. His mother used to sing that song when he was boy. But that was so long ago now that the memory felt as if it belonged to someone else.

“That’s beautiful, Auntie,” Arabel whispered, breaking the awkward stillness that had fallen over them.

Not moving her eyes away from Garrick, Lady Rowland leaned forward, her gnarled hands firmly clasping the chair arms. “But yer plannin’ to scurry south as soon as ye can, ain’t ye, Townsend?”

He clenched his jaw. Certainly, he’d had no intention of remaining in the highlands longer than necessary to secure the property, then put it up for sale . . . and to convince himself that his home was no longer here. To prove that his heart had healed enough that he was no longer affected by the sight of mountain crags and glens, that he no longer felt his belly tighten at the scent of heather.