In Your Wildest Scottish Dreams Read Free Page A

Often enough that she only nodded in response now.
    “I must go and greet Mr. Cameron.”
    “You will come to dinner?”
    “Of course,” she said, hoping Charlotte forgot about the invitation.
    She moved away with a smile. There, the second person she’d escaped from tonight.
    Would the entire evening consist of her bouncing from one encounter to the next as the past reached out to swallow her?
    She turned and caught sight of Lennox standing like a king surrounded by a group of admiring subjects, all young and female. Glynis didn’t recognize any of the women, but she noted the rapt expression on their faces. She’d been the same once.
    Nineteen and thinking she knew everything about life.
    What a fool she’d been, what a naive fool.
    Let them fawn over him. She wasn’t going to act the simpleton. Washington had been filled with handsome, tall, narrow-waisted men with long legs and broad, straight shoulders.
    Yet none of them possessed the power to make her heart gallop with a smile.
    Glynis MacIain, flighty and outspoken, didn’t exist any longer. Richard had trained her well, pressing her into the mold of a diplomat’s wife.
    A pity, since she preferred the girl to the woman she was now.

Chapter 2
     
    L ennox made his way through the crowd, speaking to those who’d gathered to honor his father.
    Tonight was William’s time, an occasion to celebrate the arduous years he’d worked in St. Petersburg.
    Was a medal worth all the sacrifices?
    Lennox wondered what memories the honor invoked. Did his father recall those years he labored in Russia and the strain doing so caused his marriage? Did he even think of his wife and her subsequent betrayal and abandonment? Or did he prefer to focus on each day as it came and abandon the past?
    He should do the same.
    Still, Glynis was on his mind when he answered a question for Miss Oldham. Yes, he was proud. Yes, it was an achievement. No, they had no plans to leave Scotland again.
    He’d done his time in Russia, beginning as an apprentice to his father, learning how to design ships, then overseeing their construction. Once the shipyards had been sold to Count Bobrov, there was no reason to return to Russia.
    Now Cameron and Company was concentrating on the shipyards in Scotland and involved in something lucrative and dangerous: building iron-hulled vessels for the Confederate States of America.
    He scanned the crowd looking for Gavin Whittakerand his wife. He saw Whittaker charming a group by the window, showing them his walking stick. Inside the handle was a razor-sharp stiletto, one he revealed with the delight of a child.
    At least, he thought, Lucy Whittaker wasn’t in sight.
    He’d opened his home to the Whittakers because of his concerns about Gavin’s safety. After three days he wished he’d directed them to a hotel.
    As his houseguest, Gavin Whittaker normally affected the demeanor of a southern planter from the United States, complete with flat-brimmed hat and buff-colored suit. Tonight he was dressed in black. His blond hair, nearly white in the sun, was longer than fashionable. Brown eyes the color of spring topsoil held humor and self-deprecation. When he wasn’t laughing, he was telling stories of his home in Georgia, to the delight of his easily acquired audiences.
    In fact, Whittaker wasn’t a southern planter but a ship’s captain, and from what Lennox had discovered, a good one. He was probably a little too reckless and no doubt courageous. A blockade runner needed to be.
    Whittaker had a blind spot: his wife. He didn’t notice the woman’s endless complaints. To Gavin, Lucy was delicate, shy, and fastidious.
    Evidently, she was too shy and delicate to be worried about her husband. In a matter of weeks Gavin was going to be in danger, captaining a ship through the Union navy’s blockade. If Lucy was worried about her husband, she didn’t show it.
    To Lucy, this trip to Scotland was a wedding journey of a sort, one proving to be a disappointment.