Highland Hearts. Eva Hamilton Maria

cheeks with her hands. Standing slowly, she forced her mind to focus on the here and now. The supper hour loomed, and her attendance would be mandatory. Duty and obligations beckoned her. As they always seemed to do.

      After shaking her green, sodden outer skirt several times, she gave up. The chances of her drying those skirts before reaching home stood as high as the skirts themselves coming to life and saving her from her impending engagement. An impossibility.

      Walking as if an executioner awaited her arrival, she spied her white two-story house far too soon. Smoke wafted up from the chimneys on opposite ends of the house, signaling the use of all the fireplaces therein. The numerous windows on each floor winked at her in the sunlight, mocking her foul mood.

      Sheena stopped outside the main entrance and took another deep breath. The walk home had returned her breathing to normal, but her mind remained in turmoil with every thought of Logan. She needed to stop thinking about him. To compose herself.

      She hesitated longer, not wanting to go in. She didn’t know if she could maintain her composure. Although, she reasoned, no one would see the inner workings of her mind if she just kept her expression calm. Not that she would get any sympathy anyway. That, she knew only too well.

      Moving forward, she shoved Logan out of her mind. And not just for supper. She needed to push him out of her life for good. Her future didn’t include him.

      She thrust the door open. “Well, it’s about time,” her aunt Jean shouted, even before Sheena closed the rest of the world out.

      “I’m sorry, Aunt Jean,” Sheena called automatically as she quickly took off her dark blue woolen shawl. She forced one foot in front of the other, propelling herself to the drawing room.

      “Where have you been for this long?” Jean continued.

      “No doubt out roaming the countryside,” Sheena’s mother piped up in her usual tone of resentment, not even bothering to look up from her embroidery.

      Sheena hastened over to her mother’s chair. “I’m sorry, Mother.” She kissed Tavia on the cheek.

      “And what about your aunt? Do I not deserve the same respect as …”

      “Aye,” Sheena interrupted Jean’s tirade, kissing the woman’s cheek as well, then crossing the room to sit close to the fire, hoping her skirts would dry before anyone noticed.

      The chair’s hearth location served an extra purpose in keeping her at a more guarded distance from them. Dealing pleasantly with the pair of sisters on a good day took every ounce of concentration. After seeing Logan mere moments before, Sheena highly doubted she was up to the task today.

      If only she could run straight upstairs to her bedroom, but what a verbal lashing she would receive for behaving in such a way. Best to try and sit quietly until supper got served momentarily, and then she could spend the evening alone, as she did every night.

      “Why do you persist in going out in the countryside, child? What a filthy place,” Jean said, scrunching her face as she took in Sheena’s green skirt. “Just look at yourself.” Sheena tried laying her hands over her knees, but she couldn’t cover the stains taking hold of the woolen fibers. Just as she couldn’t hide from herself the scar Logan had stained onto her heart.

      And to her annoyance, Tavia picked that moment to feign interest and look up from her needlework. “Sheena, do you know how long it’s going to take the maid to scrub that out of your skirt?”

      “I can do it myself, Mother.”

      “I know that,” her mother clucked her tongue. “But you will not. You cannot behave like a servant. How many times do I have to tell you that?” Tavia wagged the needle at her. “And now the maid must waste unnecessary time on your clothes, when she could be doing other, more important chores.”

      Her mother always insisted on Sheena acting like a lady and keeping company with her own wealthier landowning class, even though no one else in the region did and Sheena didn’t even hold the title of Lady. Nevertheless, Tavia had always hated Sheena’s friendships with Logan and his brother’s sister-in-law, Cait. Even when they played as mere children. And it all came down to money. Logan and Cait lived a poor life in the countryside, farming the land. Thus, Tavia considered them useless, due to their inability to help raise Sheena in society. A goal Tavia now neared fulfilling.

      And Sheena remembered well enough her mother harboring ill thoughts toward Logan for constantly “being about” as she put it. But Sheena and Logan always remained careful never to let her mother, or anyone else for that matter, know how much more than just friends they had become. Her mother would never stand for such a match and Logan and Sheena agreed to wait for the perfect time to break the news that they loved each other. Although Sheena knew only too well now that the time had never come. And never would.

      Logan had wanted to do everything properly back then. He never asked Sheena to marry him, because he said he must ask her father first. But instead of following their plan and meeting with her father, Logan had met with Sheena and told her he’d accepted an indenturement in the Americas and would come home in three years, so instead of a wedding band, Sheena received a green moss agate stone to remember Logan by before he boarded a ship and sailed away.

      Sheena’s head had spun for days trying to understand why Logan hadn’t followed their plan to ask her father for her hand. If Logan had, they would already live as husband and wife now. But it didn’t matter. Not now that she had turned twenty-three and Logan twenty-four. It was all so very long ago. When she still believed in fairy tales and love and Logan with all his promises.

      Now, however, she knew better. She wore the scar Logan etched onto her heart. But try as she might to throw away that green moss agate stone, she never could. She’d convinced herself she didn’t hold on to it as a reminder of him, rather for the protection people believed the stone brought to the carrier.

      Sheena looked to Jean, knowing she needed to clear her thoughts, and she couldn’t endure another lecture from her mother right now. The shock of seeing Logan had exhausted her.

      She couldn’t love Logan now. And not just because she didn’t trust him anymore. Her future didn’t include him. He’d left and hadn’t even returned as he promised after three years. For all she knew he’d married another woman during his time away. He’d forfeited all rights to be included in her future plans and that is exactly what happened.

      “Aunt Jean.” Sheena got her attention. “Walking in the countryside is very good exercise. You should try it, at least once.” Jean’s facial expression gave every indication Sheena wouldn’t persuade her.

      “Nothing good ever comes from the countryside, child. Oh, just thinking about some of the people who live out there makes me want to call for my smelling salts.” Tavia laughed at her sister’s theatrics before turning her eyes back down to admire her handiwork. But Sheena only half listened. She succeeded in getting Jean on another tangent, but the fight within her own mind raged.

      “Just take that terrible MacDonald boy who is always spitting. Why didn’t his parents teach him any manners? And just yesterday, I ventured as far as the village and had the misfortune of running into that Murray woman and she just about talked my ear off. Don’t people know when they’ve said enough?” Jean looked to her sister for confirmation, and began again when she met with her sister’s acceptance. “Then there was that McAllister fellow. Remember him? Terrible lad. Good for nothing.” Sheena flinched, her insides tense. Why did her aunt have to bring up his name? All she wanted to do right now was forget about him.

      “Now, Jean.” Tavia laughed. “Even I would say that’s not very charitable.”

      “Maybe not, but true nonetheless.” She held her embroidery tight in her hands, but from what Sheena could see, her work didn’t possess many new stitches since this morning. “I said good riddance to him and I will say the same to all the rest of the poor Highlanders who get cleared out of Scotland.”

      “Then, Aunt Jean, you may have to add a welcome home when they return, as