under her skirt. “Will we ever get out of here, I wonder? Home seems so far from here, so distant. Will it feel the same after seeing all of this?”
“It won’t, but it’s not a bad thing to start over.”
“Like in America?” He twitched, but it wasn’t fast enough for her not to notice. “The postcards from your office, and you said you had nothing to return to in Glasgow.”
“It’s as a good a place as any.” No demons to haunt me there.
“No past to shackle you to its demands. How nice that sounds.”
“Come with me. Pretty sure they don’t care if you’re a blue blood or a bartender over there.” He clamped down on his back teeth to hold back a groan. What was he talking about? A woman like her up and leave for a strange place with a penniless nobody like him? The sun was wreaking more havoc on his senses than he realized. “Unless you’re tired of me by now. I know I would be if I were you.”
“I’m very grateful to have you. Not that I have you—I just mean that you’re always here. Always with me. I mean, no one’s always with me.” Red rushed across her face. “I’m bobbling this, aren’t I?”
“A wee bit.” A blond strand unfurled across her burning cheek. Without thinking, he reached for it, weaving it between his fingers like a satin ribbon. Last week, such an impropriety would have had her reaching for her nearest hairpin to tame the errant hair back in place. Or stab him with, depending on her mood and who was around. “Dinna worry, lass. Yer secret is safe with me, for I willna tell ye dinna have it all together all the time.”
She turned to him, slipping her hair from his fingers. “Your slip into brogue hints at mockery and I’ll tell you, I dinna appreciate it.”
He grinned. “I’m remembering a certain English lady with her nose in the air curbing me to stay out of her private affairs. About time you started appreciating my usefulness.”
“I was quite detestable in the beginning, wasn’t I?”
“Only in the beginning?”
She brushed a dried blade of grass from her skirt with an agitated flick of her wrist. “As if you’ve been perfectly affable this whole time.”
He leaned back on his elbows, stretching out his legs and crossing them at the ankles. “I’ve been told I’m extremely affable. You’re just not used to those slicks you usually encounter in your perfumed drawing rooms telling you how it is.”
“No. They’re much too polite, but in the end the truth always came out.”
“Such as they didn’t have the cleverness to keep you entertained? Just another injustice to the Englishmen when compared to a strapping Scot.” His poor attempt at a joke fell flat, earning a modest twitch of her mouth.
“Other way around, I’m afraid.”
“About the injustices to a Scot. Oh, aye, I’ve got a complaint list a mile long.”
Her eyes dropped to her lap. She picked slowly at the pills rolling at the seam as she tried her best to hide it, but her poker face was terrible. He knew the pain that burrowed in her heart as if she’d shouted it. He’d gathered enough from her dropped comments to piece together the picture, and it made him want to thrash the man who’d used her for his own gain. “His loss, poppy.”
“The all-important Whitford name and ties. Yes, quite a loss.”
“He wasn’t man enough for you.” Her head cocked back and forth as if weighing his words until a small snort dismissed it. “You don’t believe me.”
“Times are hard now. Men want a girl they can go out and have fun with and forget about their troubles.” She plucked one of the gray pills from her skirt and flicked it into the dirt. “I’m the boring girl you take home to Mother.”
“You show me a boring girl who scales walls and beats down Nazi soldiers in back alleys, and I’ll show you a three-legged talking coo.”
“I don’t know what a coo is.”
“It’s a Highland cow, with the big horns and shaggy fur. My point is a mere boy does things like that. A real man sees the treasure before him, and will fight tooth and nail to be worthy of the claim. No matter how long it takes him.”
Worthy was something he’d never be accused of. The opposite, in fact, for every corner of his life. Bastard born, with the town drunk for a father, wasn’t much to instill