Somewhere Along the Way

291 Pages·2011·1.3 MB·English

by  Coffman Elaine

Somewhere Along the Way Elaine Coffman
Blush sensuality level: This is a suggestive romance (love scenes are not
graphic).
Mackinnon series, Book Three
When she was born, Lady Annabella Stewart was named after a horse—
which was simply improper for a nineteenth century lady. And things went
downhill from there. With an English father and Scottish mother, nothing seems
to go her way. And now, she’s betrothed to a Scot who she despises. But when
she meets handsome blue-eyed Texan named Ross Mackinnon, she finds herself
unable to resist his humorous take on life, his rebellious spirit and his desire for
her.
Determined to break up the engagement and defy his grandfather’s wishes,
Ross will challenge every Highland tradition to make Annabella his own. He just
has to stay out of trouble long enough to do so.
A Blush® historical romance from Ellora’s Cave
S A W
OMEWHERE LONG THE AY
Elaine Coffman
The moment I heard my first love story
I began seeking you,
not realizing the search was useless.
Lovers don’t meet somewhere along the way.
They’re in one another’s souls from the beginning.
—Jalal Al-Din Rumi, Persian poem
I
The Woman

What one beholds of woman is the least part of her.
—Ovid, Love’s Cure (c.a.d. 8)
Prologue
Dornoch Castle, Scotland, 1848

The trouble all began when her mother named her after a horse.
Thinking about her best friend back in England, and how she must be
enjoying the last of the season in London right now, Lady Annabella Stewart
shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. Resentment and humiliation seethed
within her. Everything had looked so bright and promising that day a few
months ago when she left Saltwood Castle and journeyed to her family’s town
house in London. She had just turned seventeen, it was to be her first season, and
she had considered herself the most fortunate of women.
Oh, how the world had turned upon her! You should have known, Bella. You
should have known. Anyone named after a horse…
Shortly before she was born, her mother had attended a horse race, and had
watched a beautiful dapple-gray filly named Lady Annabella cross the finish line
first to win. “But, Bella,” her mother had often said since, “it was a very
beautiful horse. And it did come in first.”
Only when a glass of champagne was thrust in her hand did Annabella pull
her thoughts away from England and the past to Scotland and the present. Over,
she thought. My life will soon be over. This couldn’t be happening. Not to her.
She stared at her father, feeling the panicked pounding of her heart, the choking
ringers of fate tightening around her throat. Feeling sick and desperate, she let
her eyes do her pleading. The Duke of Grenville narrowed his eyes slightly and
cleared his throat. He did not speak.
Annabella closed her eyes, shutting from her sight the vision of her father’s
grim face. He’s going to do it, she thought. He’s really going to go through with
this. She would be betrothed coldheartedly, and without feeling, to a man she
had just met, a man who had been twenty years old when she was born.
Humiliated, Annabella felt the chill of the castle reach out to her from the far
corners of the room. This was a celebration, a gathering of family and clans to
seal a bargain and honor a betrothal. It should be a happy occasion.
But instead, it was a day of sadness. Annabella’s mother tried to look
cheerful, but her eyes sparkled a bit too brightly to be anything but tears.
Upstairs, Bettina the maid was crying. Jarvis, the duke’s valet, had something in
his eye. Outside, the rain poured down. Even the candles in the candelabra
dripped.
“Here’s tae us and to hell with the English!”
The loudly flung toast sliced through the soft tones of conversation like a
thunderclap, leaving nothing but the eerie silence of a tomb behind.
Anyone in the great hall of Dornoch Castle could have shouted it. At any
other time that toast would have been enough to raise the hackles on any red-
blooded Englishman, but Alisdair Stewart, the Duke of Grenville, simply looked
at his daughter, Annabella, and John Gordon, the Earl of Huntly, her betrothed,
and raised his glass. “May you enjoy a long and happy life together.”
He looked at his wife and smiled. The duchess raised her glass, and smiled,
looking at their daughter. But Annabella did not smile. She did not look at
anyone. Instead, she stared at a fixed point in the tapestry across the room, her
breathing uneven, and tried to hide the outrage she felt at being betrothed to this
Scot.
She prayed for a sudden shot of courage, but all she felt was shame—shame
for being such a coward; shame for wanting to cry instead of resist; shame for
being the shivering, quaking thing that she knew she was. Why could she not
think of the hundred things a woman of spirit could say or do at a time like this?
Why could she merely tremble and go pale, or look heartbroken and wretched? It
was a painful thing to see herself as she was—meek, obedient, green as grass; a
malleable young woman submissive to parental authority with no more spunk
than a sleeping babe and very little optimism.
“To my betrothed,” Huntly said with an edge to his voice that stirred terror
within her.
Knowing she must look at her husband-to-be, she turned to face him, smiling
to cover a growing wave of hysteria. Cold and terrified, she blinked to hold back
tears and prayed her thoughts would take their prodding elsewhere. In a blur of
misery, she thought again of Emily, her best friend back home in England. How
Emily must be enjoying the last of the season in London right now. Annabella
shifted uneasily from one foot to the other. She had never felt so lonely, or so
wretched. She wanted to cry. She wanted to go home.
She had said as much to her mother only that morning. “I want to sleep in
my own bed and wake up to a real English breakfast. I want to have tea at Aunt
Ellen’s. I want to paint pictures of the caravans in Peasholme Green during
Martinmas Fair. I don’t care if I never put another foot in Scotland for as long as
I live. I don’t like seaweed jelly. I don’t like eels. And I hate haggis. I don’t
know how anyone could like it. I don’t understand these people. They’re
insulting and intimidating. They talk strangely. They look at me strangely. They
don’t even like me.” She swiped at the tears dripping onto her bodice. “I hate the
thought of being married. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life eating all this
horrible food with a man I don’t even like. Why are things like this always
happening to me?”
“Oh, Bella,” her mother had said, enfolding her in her arms. “Would that I
could do something to make you happy. I feel so helpless. All I can think to do is
send for the hartshorn.” The two of them stood together and cried.
“I shall never be happy again,” Annabella had said at last.
Even now, here at this gathering several hours later, she felt the same way.
She would never be happy. Never, never, never.
Across the room, Annabella’s uncle, Colin McCulloch, studied her
thoughtfully. She stood pale and still as a pine, her eyes so full of unshed tears it
was impossible to tell their exact color. Unlike Annabella and her mother, he
didn’t look particularly sad, but he also didn’t look too pleased with the way
things were going. As if sensing that Annabella could do with a little cheerful
humor, he raised his glass for another toast. “May old Douglas Macleod loan
you his Fairy Flag for your nuptial bed,” he said, looking directly at Annabella.
And then he did the strangest thing. He winked.
The wink would have been enough to send a spot of color to her cheeks. But
the mention of the nuptial bed turned her entire face red. She looked at her Uncle
Colin, wondering what he meant. Colin McCulloch was the Earl of Dornoch and
her mother’s eldest brother. He was head of the McCulloch clan and as
boisterous and redheaded as they came—a Scot from the red pom-pom on his
bonnet to the sgian-dubh in his stocking.
“I’ll be loaning them my Fairy Flag all right, but judging from the looks o’
the wee lass, this betrothal isna sittin’ too well with her,” said Douglas, called
the Macleod by his kin.
“Aye,” Colin said. He studied her gently. “She may be wishing for it to bring
herring into the loch instead o’ bairn to her belly.”
While the laughter was at its loudest, the duchess looked at Annabella,
wondering how to soothe her sad, bewildered youngest child. Leaning closer,
she whispered, “The Fairy Flag is a Macleod treasure that supposedly came from
the Crusades. It has three properties—carried into battle, it increases the number
of Macleods; placed on the marriage bed, it ensures fertility; and it brings
herring into the loch.”
Annabella felt her mother’s arm around her waist. She longed to drop her
head on her mother’s shoulder, as she had so often done as a child, as if that
simple action could somehow act as a mighty stick in the spoke of wheels that
had already been long in motion. Trying to still her panic she looked up at her
mother. “Uncle is right,” she whispered back, unable to keep the apprehension
from a voice that was breathy and unsteady. “I’d rather have herring in the loch.”
“Perhaps,” her mother said, giving her a pat on the arm, “you will be blessed
with both.” The pat was bracing, but the voice quivered too much to offer
comfort. And with good reason. The duchess was feeling mixed emotions
herself. Her heart went out to Annabella for the grief she knew she was feeling,
and it hardened toward her husband for his lack of understanding, for the ease
with which he seemed to forget what it was like to be young and so influenced
by the ways of the heart. She had tried to explain this to Annabella the day
before by saying, “Your father simply has a sort of unruffled practicality that
would drive a sober man to blue ruin.” She would have gone on to say more
about feeling the urge to take a nip or two of gin herself, but about that time the
duke walked into the room—which was always an effective curb to any
conversation.
Whatever the duchess was going to think next was interrupted by the pouring
of another round of champagne. She patted her daughter’s hand, offering
consolation in the only way she could. “The Scots aren’t such a bad lot. Their
ways just seem a bit strange at first, but soon you’ll learn to love them.”
Annabella attempted to stifle a gasp. “Love them? I don’t see how anyone
could love them. I’ve never seen such mean, ill-mannered people in my life.
Father was being kind when he said they were ‘half-tamed’. A wilder lot I’ve
never seen.”
Her mother smiled, leaning closer to whisper, “That’s because you’ve been
around my family. Not all Highlanders are so unruly. Take your betrothed, for
instance. He’s quite the gentleman, even by English standards.” Seeing the
frown on her daughter’s face, she added, “Don’t be f orgetting that more than
half of your blood is as wild as the Highlands where Colin and I were born. Now
smile, Bella, and try to look happy.”
Annabella didn’t want to smile. Happy looks were for happy people, and all
in all, this was a very negative day for her. She didn’t want to be here in
Scotland. She didn’t want to be attending this betrothal celebration. And she
most certainly did not want to be betrothed to anyone. Not to any of the endless
parade of men her father had considered back in London, and absolutely not to
Lord Huntly, the man he had eventually decided upon. Most assuredly she did
not want to be betrothed to a Scot.
And what Englishwoman would? Here’s tae us and to hell with the English,
indeed.
Annabella stole a look at the man she was destined to wed one year hence.
How could her father, a man she had always adored, have done this? All five of
her sisters were married to refined, smooth-speaking men, English men. Men
who would live in a civilized place like London, or Kent, or even York. How
well she could remember her sisters’ reaction upon hearing their father had
promised his youngest and last daughter to a Scot:
“A Scot?” repeated Judith. “He must be daft!”
“How could Father be such a fool?” asked Jane.
Coming to her feet, Sara said, “Every unmarried duke in England has begged
for Annabella’s hand. Why didn’t father settle on one of them?”
To which Margaret replied by asking, “Why is Father shipping her off to
Scotland as if he couldn’t find a good English husband for her? And why would
any Scot want an English wife? They don’t even like us.”
Elizabeth answered that one in her most pretentious Scottish brogue:
“Because the deaf man will aye hear the clink o’ money.”
On any other occasion they would have laughed. But this day was different.
“I’m sure Father has his reasons, and to him it seems quite the thing to do. It’s
simply that men have such an odd way of looking at things,” Jane said, sliding
her arm around Annabella. “Still, I can’t believe he would do such a thing to his
own flesh and blood.”
And neither could Annabella.
Never could she have imagined her father would settle upon anyone for her
husband other than a man from her own country, an Englishman. “But, Bella, the
Scots are English,” her father said.
A point that caused her mother’s Scottish blood to run a little warmer. She
sent the duke a peevish look. “No, Alisdair,” she said with perfect calmness.
“The Scots aren’t English. They won’t ever be English any more than the
English will ever be Scots.”
The duke looked skeptical—something he did a lot around his wife and
daughters. “What do you mean, they won’t ever be English? They’ve been part
of England for over a hundred years,” he said.
“They’re part of Great Britain, but that doesn’t make them English.” The
duke opened his mouth as if to strengthen his position, but the duchess cut him
off with a wave of her hand. “You’re bested and you know it, Alisdair. One man
against seven women…”
“I manage to prevail, Anne,” he said.
“Yes, you do—occasionally.”
“Scot or English, we’re all one,” the duke said in his defense. “It’s the same
with families.”
“Perhaps. As long as you don’t forget that the clan is stronger than the
chief.”
“And don’t you be forgetting that I h’ae a bit o’ Scots blood in me.”
His wife said something that sounded like “humph,” then added, “Your Scots
blood is too watered down with English tea to do you any good.”