A Borrowed Scot by Karen Ranney

Author:Karen Ranney
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: HarperCollins US
Published: 2011-02-28T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 16

You were unkind, Montgomery. Caroline’s voice censured him.

She’d said the same when he’d ignored one of her cousins, a girl with a braying laugh who’d come to spend a few weeks at Gleneagle. He’d found almost any excuse to avoid her. Caroline had had fond hopes, of course, and he’d already warned her about trying to pair him with one of her many female relatives.

The woman he was watching, however, wasn’t one of Caroline’s cousins. Nor did Veronica have a braying laugh. She was, however, stubborn. No doubt a Scots trait. What about her disconcerting ability to disturb him? He suspected that was something only Veronica possessed.

Her eyes were warm, too compassionate and caring. He didn’t believe she could feel his emotions. Yet she always seemed to know when to touch him, when to lend her support.

She surprised him with both her curiosity and her passion. He suspected there’d be no sensual limits between them, and that was an arousing thought, one that momentarily took his mind from the tasks at hand.

He turned, walked back into the distillery, and tried to occupy his mind with something other than his wife. Veronica, however, refused to disappear that easily. She was as determined a ghost as Caroline, for all that Veronica was alive.

He’d have to apologize.

What did he say? That he was as uncertain of himself as he’d ever been? That he felt out of place? He hadn’t yet formulated a goal, a reason for waking every morning.

The only thing in his life that was familiar and comforting was his airship.

Resolutely, he began an inventory of the items being uncrated, pushing thoughts of Veronica away. Thanks to the fortune accompanying the title, he’d had enough money to order items he couldn’t afford since before the war: two envelopes of silk, one in an inverted teardrop, the other in an oval shape, a burner, made in Germany and boasting a paraffin oil reservoir, and three woven basket-like gondolas, two square, and one in a larger rectangular shape.

He’d utilized enough of his own fortune before the war to know how expensive it was to operate an airship. Nor had he flown in one since the War Department disbanded the Balloon Corps.

Six years ago, he’d amused his family with his love of all things aerial. He’d corresponded with the giants in the field and created an area not far from Gleneagle where he experimented with and launched his own design. The day he took Alisdair and James up in a tethered balloon and seen the expressions on their faces was when he knew they’d never ridicule him again.

Nor had they.

Two years later, he was flying high above Confederate forces, using his airship to spy on the enemy. An enemy comprised of his family and friends, people who no longer existed.

If a man lives on through the memories of others, then the whole of his family would perish when he, too, died. There would be no one to remember all his aunts and uncles, his parents, or his brothers.

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