Belhaven would have been my choice over Thornton, as you know." Obviously anticipating that she would try some tactic to stall, he'd added, "If you return within a sennight, you may participate in the betrothal negotiations. There's no reason to waste time in Scotland. "Elizabeth," her uncle had written, "Come home at once. There's a pair o' horses out there for you and Miss Throckmorton-Jones, and a carriage down at the road we can use to get back to the inn where yer coach is waitin' to take ye home."Įlizabeth nodded absently, opened the message, and stared at it in dawning horror. In answer to the second he said gruffly, "Your uncle was so anxious to have you start home that he told us to rent whatever we needed, just so's we'd get you back posthaste. In answer to the first question he handed her a folded message. "What's wrong? How on earth did you get the coach up here?" "He's brought an urgent message from your uncle."Ī feeling of dread swept through Elizabeth as she stood up, and she rushed into the house where Aaron was waiting. As soon as the dishes were put away she went to her work in the garden, only to have him appear at her side a few minutes later, a worried expression on his face. For all his kindness and Scots bluntness, he was also, she suspected, an extremely perceptive man who did not give up easily when he set his mind to get at the bottom of something. The ploy failed although she exhibited sympathy and shock at the story, she was no more inclined to reveal anything about herself than she had been before.įor Elizabeth's part, she could scarcely wait for the meal to end so she could escape his steady gaze and probing questions. In the hope that she would confide in him if she understood Ian better, Duncan went so far as to explain how Ian had dealt with his grief after his family's death and why he had banished the retriever. Finally, she tried to divert him by asking about Ian's sketches. By the time breakfast was over, however, he had received only the most offhand and superficial sort of replies-replies he sensed were designed to mislead him into believing her life was perfectly frivolous and very agreeable.
Repeatedly and without success he tried to question her about her original meeting with Ian in England, what sort of life she led there, and so on. Ian left at first light the next morning to go hunting, and Duncan took advantage of his absence to try to glean from Elizabeth some answers to the problems that worried him.