Highlander Unbound by Julia London

Author:Julia London
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pocket Books
Published: 2004-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

Eighteen

Reliving her story had exhausted Ellen. After years of the whole ugly tale corroding in her heart, the sheer effort to say it all aloud had taken a toll. After slipping from a sleeping Liam’s loose embrace, she had come upstairs, wearing just a chemise, and had fallen onto the old counterpane on her own bed. She was almost immediately in a deep sleep, her mind refusing to belabor her past another moment. It was a dreamless sleep, and it wasn’t until Natalie was shaking her that Ellen could even drag herself up from the depth of it—groggy, she forced her eyes open.

“Mother, you’re still abed!” Natalie complained.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t feeling well,” she said truthfully, and pushed herself up to her elbows, eyeing her young daughter. Natalie’s frock, she noticed, was all askew. “Turn round,” she muttered through a yawn.

“Won’t you feel better now? Captain Lockhart said to come and fetch you, for he’s to take us on a picnic today,” she said as Ellen fumbled to rebutton her dress so that it hung properly. “And he said he’d teach me how to fish!”

“Did he?” Ellen asked, smiling.

“He said the fish aren’t as big as they are in Scotland, and that they’d likely all float to the top and take all the sport from it, but all in all, we’d have a jolly good time of it. But that first we’d walk through Vauxhall Gardens.”

Ellen’s smile deepened. “Vauxhall Gardens…I haven’t been there in years,” she said, patting Natalie’s shoulder. “All right, then, run along and find your boots. I’ll not have you fishing in those slippers.”

Natalie made a sound of elation and ran to the door.

“Mind that you stay in your room! I’ll come fetch you when I’m ready!” Ellen called after her.

“I’m going to fish!” Natalie responded with great enthusiasm, and skipped out of the room so quickly Ellen wasn’t certain if she had heard her or not.

She sighed, stood up from the bed and stretched her arms high overhead, almost regretting that she had betrayed Natalie by revealing the truth about her paternity to Liam. Yet she instinctively believed that if there was anyone she could trust with Natalie’s secret, it was him. Ellen wandered over to the window and pulled open the heavy drapes, feeling the instant warmth on her skin as sun spilled into the room. That was the way with Liam, wasn’t it? Every day filled with sunshine, every day warm and bright and happy.

And as she padded to her dressing room, she thought that he was indeed an honorable man, a gentleman. The sort of man who could hear the truth and not instantly label her a whore. Nonetheless, she had feared deep inside that he would be daunted, disgusted by her lustfulness, and find her behavior so wanton as to believe her to be a whore.

That was a risk Ellen had taken quite willingly—she had needed (for reasons she truly did not understand so much as know innately) to be honest with him, both physically and emotionally, even if it meant losing him.

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