The Bonny Bride. Deborah Hale

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СКАЧАТЬ propriety to keep her from her bright destiny. She would find her way to Roderick Douglas even if it meant swimming the North Atlantic!

      Kirstie slipped a comforting arm around Jenny’s shoulder. “There must be someone else who’d offer to keep an eye on ye. Folks are awful good about that kind of thing. Let’s go find the agent who booked yer passage and ask him to point out the other passengers to us. There might be a family going who’d be glad of some help with their wee ones.”

      Letting Kirstie lead her toward the agent, Jenny barely heard her friend’s optimistic chatter. The man shook his head regretfully when Kirstie asked about other female passengers. Mag Walker and Jenny Lennox were the only women booked aboard the St. Bride.

      The agent read off the names of the other half-dozen passengers. “Gregor McKinnon, Donald Beattie, Lowell Walker, George Irving, Gavin Tweedie and Harris Chisholm.”

      Fairly dancing at Jenny’s elbow, Kirstie thanked the man for his time.

      “That’s a mercy,” she whispered. “For a minute I feared we were out of luck. I’ll ask Mr. Chisholm to keep an eye on ye during the crossing. Then we can just present it to yer pa like it’s all settled. Mr. Chisholm may be a man and he does have a queer way about him. Still, when all’s said and done he’s Dalbeattie born and goes to kirk every Sunday. I ken he’s the best ye can do at short notice.”

      As though summoned by the deprecating remarks of his employer’s daughter, Harris Chisholm suddenly appeared, head and shoulders towering above the harborside throng. Jenny would have recognized him anywhere by his shock of auburn hair. His long, lean face might have been handsome but for the striation of scars along his jawline and his perpetual expression of cool disdain. Evidently on the lookout for Kirsten, he strode toward the girls.

      Giving her friend’s hand a reassuring squeeze, Kirstie muttered out of the corner of her mouth, “Let me do the asking. I’ve yet to meet the man I couldn’t talk ’round.”

      “Thank ye, Kirstie, but I’ll speak to Mr. Chisholm myself.” Jenny held her head high and tried to swallow the lump of dismay in her throat. Wasn’t it just like life, to play this kind of cruel joke? Placing the power over her whole future into the hands of a man who despised her.

      It took Harris a moment to recognize the well-dressed young lady standing beside his employer’s daughter. He wished Old Mr. Robertson hadn’t insisted on bringing Kirsten along. Harris had the uncomfortable conviction that, behind her twinkling blue eyes, the irrepressible creature was laughing at him.

      As he steeled himself to speak to the ladies, Miss Robertson’s companion looked up at him. It was a gaze of singular scrutiny, as though he, Harris Chisholm, was the only man of consequence in the world. Never had he beheld or imagined a woman as lovely as Jenny Lennox looked at that moment.

      He’d only ever seen her in a work dress and apron, or in her severe Presbyterian Sunday best. Today she wore a traveling gown and a matching pelisse of royal-blue. Trimmed with paler blue ribbons, her deep-brimmed straw bonnet served to focus his eyes upon her face.

      The classic regularity of her features put him in mind of several white marble sculptures he’d seen in Edinburgh. How much more alluring such a visage looked in living color. Her skin had a luminous quality compounded of roses and cream. The pert delicacy of her upper lip contrasted bewitchingly with her full, almost pouty, lower lip. The warm red of ripe strawberries, together they made an eminently kissable combination. It was her gaze that held Harris transfixed, though. Whether by some fortunate reflection from her blue dress or the azure sky, her wide gray eyes had taken on a striking violet cast.

      “Might I have a word with ye, Mr. Chisholm?” Her voice held more than a hint of asperity. Harris realized that, while he’d been gaping at her with such blatant admiration, Jenny Lennox had been speaking to him. Lost in the contemplation of her beauty, he hadn’t heard a word.

      “What’s that?” Harris strove to compose his expression into proper gravity. “Ye’re a ways from home today, Miss Lennox.”

      “I am,” she replied, “and mean to go farther. I have a great favor to ask of ye, Mr. Chisholm.”

      So that was it. She wanted something. Why else would such a bonny lass look at him with anything less than aversion? He should be accustomed to it by now. Women always brought out the worst in him. Pretty young women like Jenny Lennox in particular. He’d grown up on a lonely hill croft north of Dalbeattie, with no one but his father and grandfather for company. Women were as foreign to him as creatures from another star. The only females of his intimate acquaintance lived in the pages of Walter Scott’s novels—Flora MacIvor, Diana Vernon, and Ivanhoe’s Rowena.

      In dreams nurtured by Scott’s epic romances, Harris had often imagined how sweet it might be to have a woman look at him tenderly, speak to him lovingly. When instead the lassies drew back in fright—or worse, pity—it hurt him. Out of his pain and anger he spoke coldly, or sharply.

      That only made matters worse. He’d be much better off living in a place with as few women as possible, and those few safely married to other men. New Brunswick, a northern frontier colony across the Atlantic, would fill the bill perfectly. Without the distraction of pretty girls to fuel his hopeless fantasies, he could channel his abilities into the quest to make something of himself.

      Harris felt his brows draw together and his face harden into a stern, intractable mask. Jenny Lennox appeared to sense his antagonism. Staring deep into his eyes, she willed him to look at her, to hear her out, and to grant whatever she might ask.

      “It’s like this, Mr. Chisholm—I’m going to Miramichi, New Brunswick, on the St. Bride, same as ye are. Have ye heard I’m to wed Roderick Douglas?”

      Refusing to let her draw him into a two-way conversation, Harris gave a stony nod.

      “I meant to travel with the Lowell Walkers. Now I hear tell Mr. Walker has suffered an accident and they won’t be sailing with us after all. My father will never let me board that boat if I don’t have somebody he trusts to look out for me. There’re no other women passengers on the St. Bride and ye’re the only man aboard I’ve any acquaintance with. I need ye to promise my pa ye’ll see me safe to Miramichi.”

      She paused to gulp down a breath. Harris detected a slight tremor in the ribbons of her bonnet.

      “I…” The word came out in an adolescent squeak. Clearing his throat, Harris tried again, consciously modulating his voice to its accustomed deep baritone register. “It wouldn’t be fitting.”

      Privately he bristled at the insult. What was he—some eunuch to be entrusted with protecting a woman from the lascivious attentions of the real men on board the St. Bride? Because Miss Lennox wanted as little as possible to do with him didn’t make him immune to her charms.

      “Why not just wait and take a later boat?”

      “Because…” A husky note in her voice portended tears.

      Harris wanted to throw back his head and howl with vexation. As if women hadn’t enough other advantages in the age-old struggle between the sexes! The creatures could dissolve into tears at the drop of a hat, reducing a man to quivering mush.

      “Because I’ve paid my passage money already,” she said. “I don’t expect the agent will want to hand it back again, just because Pa objects to my traveling alone.”

      “Surely yer…intended, Mr. Douglas, can spare a few coins more for СКАЧАТЬ