Kidnapped: His Innocent Mistress. Nicola Cornick

the Misses Bennie shift and bob behind me, like the tall poppies that grew by the roadside in high summer. They were positively begging for his notice. I raised my chin and met the dark gaze of the stranger very directly.

      The air was suddenly still between us. Somewhere far away, in the furthest recesses of my body, my heart skipped a beat, and then carried on as though nothing had happened.

      ‘Mr Sinclair,’ Mr Campbell said, and I heard a tiny shade of uncertainty in his voice. ‘We did not expect—’

      The stranger had not taken his eyes from me, and now he removed his hat and bowed. He was young—perhaps five or six and twenty. The sunlight fell on his thick, dark hair and burnished it the blue black of a magpie’s wing.

      ‘Magpies are dangerous thieves,’ my father had once said when we were discussing the ornithology of the British Isles. ‘They are clever and reckless and untrustworthy.’

      It was strange to remember that now.

      The man had taken my hand. I had definitely not offered it, and I wondered how on earth he had possessed himself of it. He wore no gloves, and I was conscious that the inexpert darning on mine would be all too evident to his touch. I tried to pull away.

      He held me fast.

      This was most improper. There was a glimmer of amusement in his eyes now that made me feel as though the sun beating down on my bonnet was far too hot.

      ‘Miss Balfour,’ he said, ‘please permit me to introduce myself and to offer my deepest sympathy on your loss. My name is Neil Sinclair.’

      His voice was very smooth and mellow, like a caress.

      There was a gasp behind me. The Miss Bennies were not good at dissembling their feelings. I sensed that in that moment they would almost have been happy to be attending their own father’s funeral if it had entailed an introduction to this man. But he was not looking at them. He was looking at me.

      And that was how I met Neil Sinclair, Master of Ross and heir to the Earl of Strathconan.

      Chapter Two

      In which I hear of my long-lost family.

      It was late. The funeral supper was eaten, the casks of ale had run dry and the schoolmaster’s house was scoured clean, locked and barred once more against the arrival of its new owner. I had worked my fingers to the bone to tidy up after our guests; anything to block out the cold sense of loss that threatened to break me.

      Now there was no more to do, and I stood in the gardens for the last time and breathed in the heady scent of the roses my mother had coaxed to grow against the sheltered southern wall. Across the village green the lamps were lit in the manse, and the moths were bumping against the windows, trying to get to the light. The sea was calm and its sighing was a muted hush on the sand. The evening was sapphire-blue, with a half moon rising, and very peaceful, though cooler now that the sun had gone.

      I crossed the green and let myself into the manse by the back door. The house was very quiet, but from Mr Campbell’s study came the sound of voices. I had no taste for company that night, and I was about to go past and seek the comfort of my room when Mrs Campbell came around the curve of the passageway. Her face warmed into a smile of relief to see me.

      ‘There you are, Catriona! Mr Campbell was asking for you.’

      I sighed inwardly. I knew that Neil Sinclair was with Mr Campbell, and I had no wish to seek his further acquaintance. After he had greeted me he had spent the rest of my father’s wake talking with Sir Compton Bennie and with Mr Campbell, and I still had no notion as to what he was doing here. Occasionally I had felt him watching me across the room, and had glanced up to meet the same speculative interest in his dark eyes that I had seen when we first met. I had no experience with men but I sensed that his interest had little or nothing to do with me as a woman. Instead I suspected that he knew something about me and was measuring me in some way, assessing my character. For some reason this annoyed me.

      I knocked on the study door and went in, Mrs Campbell following me. The minister was seated at his desk, with Mr Sinclair in a chair beside the fire with a glass of the finest malt whisky on the table beside him. He looked up when I came in. He had a thin, watchful face, tanned a dark brown from sea and sun—a face with character and resolution in the line of his jaw. I gave him a cool nod, which seemed to amuse him, and addressed myself to Mr Campbell.

      ‘You wished to see me, sir?’

      I spoke very politely but I saw the flash in Mr Sinclair’s eyes that suggested he thought this obedience out of character. A faint smile curled the corner of his firm mouth. I turned a shoulder to him.

      ‘Catriona…Yes…’ Mr Campbell seemed flustered, which was unusual to see. He gestured me to the long sofa. This piece of furniture was the most uncomfortable in the house, and necessitated me to sit upright as though I were a bird perched on a twig. This did nothing to improve my temper, especially as Mr Sinclair seemed deliberately to lounge back indolently in his chair with a sigh of contentment as he sipped his whisky and watched me over the brim of the glass.

      Mrs Campbell had followed me in, and now hastened to see to her visitor’s comfort. ‘You have had sufficient to eat and drink, Mr Sinclair? May I fetch you anything else?’

      I watched the gentleman smile his thanks and put Mrs Campbell at her ease. He had a very easy charm. I could not deny it. When Mrs Campbell went out again her face was flushed peony-pink, like a young girl’s.

      ‘Well, now,’ Mr Campbell said, shuffling the papers on his desk, ‘there are matters to be settled, Catriona. Matters to do with your future. You know that Mrs Campbell and I love you as though you were our own daughter, but I have been thinking that now your parents have passed on the natural place for you is with your remaining relatives.’

      I assumed that he meant my mother’s family, who lived far, far away on the south coast of England. My mother had made a scandalous match twenty years before when, as a young debutante, she had visited Edinburgh, fallen in love with my father, a poor schoolmaster, and eloped with him. Her family had cast her out after that, and I had absolutely no intention of going to them cap in hand now, when they had ignored my existence for eighteen years.

      ‘Can I not stay here, sir?’ I asked. ‘Here in Applecross, I mean,’ I added, in case poor Mr Campbell had thought I was suggesting I should live on his charity indefinitely. I knew it must be a wrench for him to speak of my going, for it was true that not only was he my godfather but he and Mrs Campbell had cherished me like their own.

      ‘I could work for a living,’ I added. ‘Perhaps I could help the new schoolmaster, or act as companion to old Miss Blois…’

      Mr Sinclair smothered what sounded suspiciously like a snort. I looked at him.

      ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ I said frigidly.

      There was laughter in his eyes. ‘Forgive me, Miss Balfour,’ he said, ‘but I cannot see you as companion to an elderly lady. Nor as a schoolmistress, for that matter.’

      I set my lips in a thin line. I did not see what business it was of his. ‘You do not know me very well, Mr Sinclair,’ I said. ‘My father taught me himself, having no prejudice against the education of females. I can teach reading, and I write a very fair hand, and I am learned in mathematics and astronomy and philosophy and…’ I ran out of breath in my indignation.

      ‘I do not quarrel with your father’s abilities as a tutor,’ Mr Sinclair said lazily, ‘nor indeed with yours as a scholar, Miss Balfour. I am sure you are most accomplished. It is simply that I have seen no evidence that you have the temperament required to do the job of schoolteacher yourself. Would it not require patience and tolerance and composure, amongst other things?’

      I was so angry at his presumption that I almost burst there and then. ‘Well, I do not see it is any concern of yours—’ I began crossly, but Mr Campbell made a slight movement and I subsided, holding fast to the fraying shreds of my temper.

      ‘It would