In Praise of Younger Men (2 page)

He’d been away fourteen years, fourteen years in which Harriet had blossomed into a woman of incredible, almost otherworldly beauty. What the devil had happened to the endearing brat sister of his closest childhood friend, the one who had stuck out her tongue and thrown mud cakes at him from the stable loft? Had her hair always been so radiantly red? Her eyes so un-fathomably green? Or was it simply that he had been away at war—and away from a woman—for too long?

Later, in the dining room, Geoffrey and Tristan regaled Harriet and Devorgilla with the more fascinating details of their Peninsular campaign over a hastily prepared feast of mutton, ham, assorted cheeses, oatcakes, and hothouse fruits. Time passed quickly, the skies outside grew darker, and the candles guttered lower and lower in their holders, casting a golden glow about the night-shadowed room. Sometime later the rain that had threatened all day had finally come, as if it had simply been awaiting their return, falling softly against the windows across the room as the four chatted away the hours pleasantly together.

Time and again Harriet found her attention straying to where Tristan sat across the table from her. Silently, she studied his face in the candlelight, the clean line of his freshly-shaven jaw, the quiet strength that lay behind his eyes. Had he always been that handsome? What had he been doing all these years past? Had he ever, just once, thought of her . . . ?

“So, sweet Hattie,” Geoffrey said, grinning in a way that made her wonder that he could read her very thoughts, “what has my baby sister been up to while big brother was away?”

Having been born but moments before her, Geoffrey had always referred to himself as her “big brother.” As a child, Harriet had disliked hearing it, thinking it wholly unfair that he should have been pulled from their mother’s womb first before her. Not until that moment did she realize just how much she had missed hearing it while he’d been away.

“Things here have been,” she said on a weary sigh,

“much the same as they always have.” She struggled for something to tell him. “Old Angus’s granddaughter had triplets last fall and Father has bought another painting. Oh, and Uncle Neil and Aunt Phyllis went on holiday to Bristol.”

“And what of you, Hattie? What have you been up to all this time I’ve been away?”

Harriet glanced at her brother and gave a shrug. “I ride. I walk about the firth when I can. But with the weather so poor, I’ve not had much else to do but read and watch the winter pass through the windows.”

Lackluster response
! Oh, how she wished she had something more to say, some tale of adventure to share with him as he always had her, some new and exciting
thing
to tell him just this once . . .

“Actually, Geoffrey,” Devorgilla piped in from the far end of the table, “Harriet does have some news of her own.”

“She has?”

Everyone, including Harriet, turned to look at her.

“
I have
?”

“Yes, dear.” Devorgilla looked at Geoffrey. “Your sister has decided to marry.”

“What?” Geoffrey nearly erupted. “Why wasn’t I told of this? What the devil do you mean you are getting married? To whom?”

Harriet lifted her chin, more than just a little pleased that for once, she had been able to astonish him. “Well, that particular detail has yet to be determined.”

“I was thinking perhaps one of our local lads might do,” Devorgilla suggested. She glanced at Tristan across the table. “Surely one of them would do well enough for a husband.”

“Such as who?” Geoffrey spouted. “Wills Littlebrown?”

“Good heavens, no!” Harriet exclaimed.

Devorgilla nodded. “Yes, he does have a bit of a bucolic quality about him, doesn’t he? I should hate to think of what your children would smell like.” She thought. “It is unfortunate that so many of our young men were lost to the wars or have yet to return from the Continent. Still, is there no one else?”

Harriet shrugged.

“Angus Blackburn?”

Harriet scowled. “Too hairy.”

Devorgilla thought again. “Seamus Armstrong?”

“The man’s teeth are rotting from his mouth!”

“Well, I’m afraid the only others I can come up with are either already married, yet in the schoolroom, or well past the prime of their lives.” Devorgilla looked at Harriet. “You can think of no one else?”

Harriet gave it a moment of serious thought then finally shook her head. “I shall have to go to Edinburgh.”

Where in heaven had that idea come from
? Harriet had never even considered leaving Galloway. But now that she’d said it, she found she liked the idea. Immensely.

Geoffrey, however, did not agree. “Harriet, you cannot simply
go
to Edinburgh for a husband. You’ve never been any farther from home than the summer fair at Dumfries.”

“Precisely my point. In the city, I will be better able to weigh my options.”

“Your options? Just what do you think to do? Purchase yourself some poor fool halfling at the nearest corner market?”

Harriet frowned at her brother. “It is done in London all the time, Geoffrey. They call it ‘The Season.’ Need I remind you that our own mother did that very thing when she met and married out father?”

“It’s true, Geoffrey,” Devorgilla interjected. “Your mother met your father one afternoon at a bookshop in Edinburgh. Within a fortnight, they were wed.”

“But that was different,” Geoffrey sputtered. “Mother knew what she was doing!”

Harriet gasped. “I beg your pardon? I am nearly the same age as Mother when she wed.”

“Actually,” Tristan finally broke in, silencing them both, “there is someone Harriet could marry from right here in Galloway.”

Everyone silenced. They all turned at once to look at Tristan.

He’d been so quiet, and Harriet had been so distracted by Geoffrey’s bluster, she’d nearly forgotten he was there.

“There is?”

Geoffrey added, “Who?”

Tristan answered, “Me.”

“
There are secrets in all families, you know
...”

—Emma,
Jane Austen

Tristan’s godfather had once told him that when a man proposed marriage to a woman, it was like standing before the world utterly naked. Not until that moment could Tristan truly appreciate the wisdom of that man’s words.

The room had fallen ominously silent. No one moved, not so much as to take a sip of tea. Even the rain outside seemed to have stilled as if awaiting Harriet’s response. Tristan stared at her, searching her face in the glow of the candlelight for some clue, some indication of her reaction. But instead of the joy and excitement that every man hoped to see on the face of the woman he asks to wed, on Harriet Tristan saw only dismay.

“Me? Marry you?” she finally said, already shaking her head. “But you said you never planned to marry, Tristan. You were going to live the life of the blithe wayfarer, remember? Traveling the world for the rest of your days?”

They were words he’d spoken after the deaths of his parents fifteen years before, casualties of a slick road, a high cliff, and a stormy night. He had been grief-stricken, insensible. He’d been young. He could never have known then how they would come back to haunt him.

“Harriet, when I spoke those words, I thought to leave Galloway forever, yes. But much has happened since I had to go to live in Edinburgh with my godfather. I’ve been to university, I’ve traveled the world, and for nearly a decade now I have been a soldier at war, surrounded by nothing but war’s destruction. It is enough to change any man. I long now for a quiet life. A stable life. It isn’t by mere coincidence I returned with Geoffrey. I have roots here in Galloway, a family home not a mile away, responsibilities to the viscountcy that have too long been neglected.”

As he sat there watching a range of emotions play across Harriet’s face, none of them favorable, Tristan tried to figure out how he could have been so mistaken. Was it possible that what had happened, that
thing
he had felt the moment his eyes had met hers, that incredible awareness, had only affected him? Had she not felt it, too?

He’d felt certain she had. Her face, her voice, her eyes, everything had told him Harriet had been just as overwhelmed at seeing him as he had her. He hadn’t planned for it to happen that way. On the journey home, the idea of marriage had been a vague, in-the-future prospect, something he would get to
someday
—until the moment he and Geoffrey had arrived at Rascarrel House, and he saw Harriet racing down that walkway toward them with her skirts and radiant hair flying out behind her. All at once, like the melting off of the moor mist with the morning sun, Tristan had seen her—and he’d known.

After too many years of foreign lands and foreign faces, Harriet was familiar, stirring his blood just as unexpectedly as the first glimpse of his Scottish homeland from the ship that had carried him and Geoffrey back from war. He had known her more than half his life, knew the sharpness of her mind, the fire of her wit, the infectious ring of her laughter. Harriet was life. Harriet was home. Harriet could be
his
home, if only she would say yes. Which she wasn’t doing.

But she also wasn’t saying no.

“Of course you’ll need time to consider . . .”

And then she said it.

“No.” Harriet looked at him, her expression filled with gloom. “Time will not change anything. I already know my answer. It is impossible, Tristan. I can never marry you.”

Tristan felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. Hard. He blinked. “But did you not just say you needed to marry?”

“Yes. I do need to marry, and as quickly as possible.”

“So it is just me you don’t wish to marry.”

Harriet looked at him, her eyes dark with torment. “I never said I
didn’t want
to marry you, Tristan. I said I
can’t
marry you. They are two very different things.”

Tristan was falling fast into confusion. “You are saying you would like to marry me, but for some incomprehensible reason you cannot? That you’d rather wed a complete stranger than wed me? What sort of reason could be so compelling as to keep you from wedding the man you want?”

“It”—Harriet stammered, glancing from Geoffrey to Devorgilla—“it is your age.”

His age?

Tristan stared at her, stunned. Of all the things she could have said, all the reasons she could have given, it was the very last thing he would have expected to hear. “What the hell does my age have to do with anything? I’m the same age as you.”

“Yes, I know that. To the day. Nearly to the hour actually, except that you, like Geoffrey, were born before me. I remember you used to tease me about it when we were children. Which is precisely the problem.”

“That I teased you? Oh, good God, we were children, Harriet—”

“No, the problem isn’t that you teased me, Tristan. The problem is that you are older than me and nothing in the world can change that.”

Tristan shook his head, gone beyond confusion now to absolute befuddlement. “I don’t understand. Is there some law that prevents a woman from marrying a man who was born the same day as she?”

She shook her head. “Oh, Tristan, can’t you see? It is all because of this accursed red hair!”

Tristan could only stare. “What in bloody hell does your hair have to do with this?”

Devorgilla broke in, a calming presence amidst the simmering storm of bedlam. “It is a long story, Tristan.”

“A very long story,” Geoffrey added.

Looking around at the faces of the others, Tristan saw one thing clearly. Something was going on to which everyone else in the room was privy but him. “And I have all night to hear it.”

Devorgilla looked at both Harriet and Geoffrey, then nodded solemnly. She took a sip of tea, then quietly started to speak.

“It began more than four hundred years ago, on a small island off the western coast where my ancestors once ruled. The chieftain of the clan, Alain of Macquair, had a beautiful daughter, his only child and heir, known across the land as
Maighdean nan MacGuadhre
—the Maid of Macquair. She had hair the color of flame, eyes the deepest green of the Hebridean sea. When it came time for her to wed, Alain pronounced that only the best of warriors would do, for through her the clan of Macquair would continue—”

Geoffrey broke in then. “Tradition claims the Macquairs were descendants of the great MacAlpin, the oldest and most purely Celtic of the Highland clans, of royal descent from the dynasty of Kenneth MacAlpin who united the Picts and Scots into one kingdom. Such a lofty lineage made the choice of husband for this heiress a most vital decision. Thus the chieftain, Alain, contrived a series of contests whereby only the most worthy of men would succeed to win his daughter’s hand.”

Devorgilla nodded. “Now, as you might guess, warriors from clans far and wide came to compete for this exalted prize, for besides her beauty, the heiress also brought a vast dowry. With each contest, mighty warriors fell, until there were but two remaining. One was another great chieftain like Alain, older, experienced, who had seen many battles and whose strength and bravery were renowned across the land. The other was a young lad, barely twenty, younger even than the lovely maiden but madly in love with her and willing to fight to the death to win her hand.

“Alain, of course, thought the warrior the more fitting husband for his only daughter and so concocted a final contest that would best be won by strength, thereby giving his choice the upper hand. But the young lad had something the warrior did not. He had great cunning, and through this cunning, he bested the warrior against the odds. Everyone was stunned, but when he came forward to claim his prize, Alain refused the lad, sending him off and vowing to wed his daughter to the warrior instead. This angered the lad’s mother, a sorceress, who set upon the Macquair with the
Droch Shuil
.” At Tristan’s questioning glance, she added, “The Evil Eye.”

Harriet suddenly spoke, repeating the sorceress’s prophecy. “
Yon Maid of Macquair, and any after, with fiery hair and eyes as green as ice, shall watch her chosen husband perish, and any man after him, unless she should take to husband a man of honor, a man of cunning, and of an age that is younger than she . . . else the ancient clan of Macquair shall vanish forever
.”