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“No,” she rasped. “I have chosen the abyss.”
We arrive at Strathrannoch tomorrow. Do you recollect the bit in the Vindication in which Wollstonecraft claims that the only way for women to achieve spiritual vigor is for them to first run wild? Well—let us hope she was not wrong.
This whisky-pouring giant was a stranger who had seen her faint and vomit in close succession. A wedding did not seem imminent.
The censures which may ensue from striking into a path of literature rarely trodden by my sex will not cause me to keep silent in the cause of liberty. —from Lydia’s private copy of Catharine Macaulay’s THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES I, underlined thrice
“Where did you say Angus went?” Angus, she had learned that morning, was the postboy. The groom ran his hand through his thinning sandy hair and looked apologetically at her. “The sheep walk, lass.” “Perhaps you might point me in the direction of—” The groom coughed. “With his wife, you ken.” Lydia did not precisely ken.
Dinna fash? Had the man not realized she was composed primarily of worry?
Dolt, he told himself. She was trying not to fall off. But his mind had been full of pent-up terror, and his arms had been full of the sweetest, roundest curves he’d ever encountered, and when he’d looked down at her mouth, he’d thought of— A great many things, most of which weren’t achievable on horseback. He prayed—an actual, carefully worded prayer to the divine—that she had not recognized his abrupt and violent erection.
He absolutely refused to think about nipples in her presence.
Outside of his job at Strathrannoch Castle, Huw had developed a predilection for rescuing abused animals from traveling menageries. Abetted by the ever-crafty Bertie—whose Jamaican solicitor father had bequeathed to him a capacious knowledge of English legal codes—Huw had embarked upon several philanthropic (and slightly felonious) trips across Great Britain to rescue exotic creatures. All of which explained why Strathrannoch Castle was now home to sixteen zebras, two flying squirrels, six macaws, and the small and fuzzy Annabelle.
Her sex, her unmarried state, her natural reticence—all of it had led her to come at politics in the shadows, always working just out of sight. But this man—blunt and softhearted by turns, somehow rough and gentle at the same time—tackled the problems of his world differently, with his sleeves rolled up and his hands set to a plow. She admired that. She admired him.
The drawing room was where she worked during the day, and when he sat at the desk at night, he found that he could still catch her scent. It was soft—warm—edible, like cream on scones. The room whispered echoes of Lydia, and he was helpless to resist, no matter how much he knew he ought to stop.
She was surprisingly unfreckled for an ivory-skinned little ginger.
And then he turned on his heel and fled from her—from her big blue eyes and the heady, high-proof softness of her skin, and from the longing that rose in him when he looked at her.
Do you know when it started for me, love of mine? It was that first moment. The very first instant that I saw you on the doorstep, in your green dress and your green shoes and your hair the color Nature uses for things so sublime you cannot hold them in your hand. Autumn. Sunset. A flame.
If she started to cry, he was going to kill his brother.
Lydia stared, agape, at the sight of Arthur holding her brother against the wall like a rather forlorn quilt.
“Next time, damn it, trouble me! You can always trouble me. God knows you already do.”
Now that Arthur’s jaw was clean-shaven, she could see the muscles leap as he ground his teeth. It was astoundingly attractive. She prayed his whiskers grew quickly. Perhaps she could ask Georgiana to abscond with his razor.
I worship the ground you walk upon, my darling, in case that was not apparent from the way I came on your tits. Would you like to be my wife?
You are the summer and the winter, the spring and the fall. When you change, I want to change alongside you. I want to discover you anew every morning. I want to forget what dawn looks like except in your eyes.
You’ve not frightened me away with your radical ideas, so dinna fash.”
I am built for you, Lydia Hope-Wallace. My body and my heart were formed for the loving of you.
I am gravely disappointed in you, Strathrannoch. You may call me Mrs. Hope-Wallace until further notice.”
