The Gentleman's Gambit （A League of Extraordinary Women, #4）
Evie Dunmore
Dedicated to my Tayta, who led the dabkeh ahead of her time
Chapter 1
Applecross, Scotland, July 1882
In a world run by loud people, quiet was a scarce commodity. Catriona was willing to pay for it and she knew all the ways to acquire some solitude. The one thing she couldn’t do was store it in her veins for later use—a pity, because tonight at seven o’clock, a stranger would invade her home.
For now, she had sought refuge in the cool waters of Loch Shieldaig. The lake of her childhood home filled her ears with the heavy silence of a tomb. She floated on her back, her bare white body stark against the black depths, her arms outspread as if trying to embrace the blue expanse of sky above. Now and then a wave lapped over her face, leaving a brackish taste in her throat. Had she known her father would invite a guest to the family seat, she would have thought twice about coming up to Applecross for the summer. One assumed that a remote castle was free from the distractions that lurked back at Oxford: sociable friends. The suffrage cause. The lingering awkwardness of an unrequited crush. Where could she work on a book in peace if not here?
The visitor’s presence would make her feel alien in her own dining hall. She’d do her duty and play hostess, of course. At five-and-twenty, she knew the protocol: hold his gaze, smile slightly, and put her comfort last. Ask light questions about his travels and research plans, all while discreetly observing his plate and wineglass in case the footmen failed to anticipate his needs on time. She did have an eye for detail. Luckily, most people did not. Few ever saw the true emotions behind her mask. The visitor, too, would be none the wiser that she was wishing him away.
The breeze stirred and sent shivers across the loch, and the cold entered her bones, urging her to return. She swam with practiced backstrokes, her mind inattentive as her body knew the route to the eastern bank by habit. No one ever visited the small crescent of shoreline where she had left her clothes. The spot was shielded by a rare patch of forest, and only sheep and old gamekeeper Collins knew the path, neither of whom posed a threat to the daughter of Alastair Campbell, Earl of Wester Ross.
Gooseflesh rose on her wet skin when she emerged from the water. She strode to the forest edge quickly. Her clothes were still laid out on the boulder, secured in place by a thick volume of Virgil’s Aeneid. With clammy fingers, she picked up the book and her spectacles. Then she noticed it: the presence to her right. She froze.
A man.
A man was blocking the entrance of the forest path.
Ice shot through her stomach.
She clutched the Virgil in front of her modesty; her spectacles clattered to the ground. He was five yards away. Watching her. Her heart was racing. He had already seen her . . . he had seen everything. She turned to him fully with the treacle-slow motion of a bad dream. His contours were fuzzy, but conclusive enough: still young, strong features, broad but lean shoulders in a fitted coat—he was in fine fighting form. Not good. And he was still staring. With an age-old expression of awe. As though he had unexpectedly stumbled through the doors of a cathedral and felt ambushed by the dizzying heights and the dusty taste of the eternal. It would have given her pause, except there was a pair of binoculars resting against his chest. A white-hot sensation rushed to her head.
“What do you think you are doing,” she snapped, the words shooting out cold and clipped.
The man came alive as if he had been released from a spell. He turned his face away.
“You . . . are a woman,” he said, sounding vaguely stunned.
“Astutely observed, sir,” she said, incredulous.
He made a noise in his throat, like a surprised chuckle.
The pulse pounding in her ears near drowned out her conscious thinking. “Of course you’re amused,” she said. “One would expect nothing but low humor from a cowardly Peeping Tom.”
He twitched, as though it cost him effort to not whip his head back round to her. “I was not . . . peeping.”
“So you did not, while walking along the ridge, spot me in the water, use your binoculars to ascertain that I was indeed an unclothed woman, and then creep all the way down through the forest to spy on me?”
Her tone had sharpened with every word and by the end, he should have lain on the ground in neat slices. He stood quite intact if a bit befuddled. His head tipped back on a soft laugh.
“That sounds like a lot of trouble just to see an unclothed woman,” he said. “You are very charming, miss,” he added, “but it’s nothing I have not seen before.”