He spoke to the driver, who was walking two steps behind him with one of the ponies, then he caught up with his wife. “This path brings us to the banks of Loch Muick,” he informed her. “We could walk around the loch or could climb up the first slope.”
“I don’t mind either way,” she said, “as long as we move.”
They walked in silence for a mile. The path ran parallel to a murmuring stream, but the peaceful sound of water was soon disturbed by guttural roars echoing across the valley. Harriet finally slowed. “Of course,” she said. “It’s rutting season.” She shielded her eyes with her hand and searched the barren ridges flanking the valley. “There is one!”
It took him a minute to find the stag—he was but a dot against the sky. “He’ll have a rival right across,” she continued, and searched the opposite slopes. He supposed her family were hunters. They were at the heart of Balmoral estate, prime hunting ground for the high and mighty, if invited.
Harriet dropped her hand and let her gaze roam across the vastness before them.
“‘Yet, Caledonia, beloved are thy mountains,’” she said. “‘Round their white summits though elements war; through cataracts foam ’stead of smooth-flowing fountains, I sigh for the valley of dark Lochnagar.’”
When she fell silent, he asked, “More Jane Austen?”
She laughed. Her first laugh all day. “No,” she said, her brown eyes shimmering with mirth. “Lord Byron.”
The amused curl of her lips transfixed him. He had actually taken a step toward her.
“Imagine being a stag,” she said, staring at the small silhouette on the left-hand ridge. “You would enjoy this sweeping view every day and could roar your lungs out, and no one would think it’s odd.”
“A good life,” he said. “It’s healthy to have a decent roar now and again.”
“I wouldn’t know.”
“Well,” he said. “Now is your chance.”
She looked around. Save for the stags’ mating cries, silence hung over the valley, tangible like mist.
“There is always someone near in the city,” she said. “There is always someone even when I walk in the meadows.”
“Go on, then,” he said.
“You just like hearing me scream,” she murmured with a sideways glance.
Lust licked through him. “I do,” he murmured back. “I’ll make you, back at the inn.”
She bit her lip and shifted slightly on her feet. “What of the gent and the ponies?”
“He’ll just think you’re an unhinged Sassenach.”
“Fine.” She faced the valley, took a deep breath, and gave a hesitant cry. “Well,” she said after an awkward pause, “that was pathetic.”
“It was sweet,” Lucian said, “like a wee lamb.”
He grinned at her annoyed little huff and turned to the driver. “My wife will be a bit loud in a moment,” he said in Gaelic. “It’s for some art exhibition in London.”
The man muttered something into his beard that sounded like “Unhinged Sassenach.”
“He says it’s not uncommon for visitors to scream across Glenmuick,” Lucian told Harriet. She narrowed her eyes at him; she wasn’t daft. Still, she turned and let out a scream. It was a bridled, nervous sound, as if it felt watched and judged by a hundred pairs of eyes.
“Better,” she muttered.
She tried again, angrier. The pony danced on the spot. Her next shout sent a raven fluttering up from a nearby boulder. And then the mechanisms that kept a woman quiet must have broken inside her, for she screamed—drawn out, angry, raw, and loud—pouring all she had to give into her voice, as if she were the last person left on earth.
As Lucian watched her rage, he realized that he couldn’t lose her. Not because it would hurt his political ambitions, but because it would hurt. The thought of a life without her, of having the warmth in his chest ripped from him again, felt like the ground beneath his feet giving way, like darkness itself.
He turned away and took a deep breath, shaken by his bodily reaction. He had trouble with accepting loss; he was aware enough to know as much. But how to keep her? Some good loving could make a woman soft, but his woman was stubborn and had vowed never to love him barely a month ago. Once the drugging effects of pleasure wore off, she might remember. And while the dank inn in Drummuir kept out the world with an old magic spell, their stay there was coming to an end—London beckoned, and there the memories of the social gulf between them lurked in every corner.