expression of cool disdain. Evidently on the lookout for Kirsten, he strode toward the girls.
Giving her friend’s hand a reassuring squeeze, Kirstie muttered out of the corner of her mouth, “Let me do the asking. I’ve yet to meet the man I couldn’t talk ’round.”
“Thank ye, Kirstie, but I’ll speak to Mr. Chisholm myself.” Jenny held her head high and tried to swallow the lump of dismay in her throat. Wasn’t it just like life, to play this kind of cruel joke? Placing the power over her whole future into the hands of a man who despised her.
It took Harris a moment to recognize the well-dressed young lady standing beside his employer’s daughter. He wished Old Mr. Robertson hadn’t insisted on bringing Kirsten along. Harris had the uncomfortable conviction that, behind her twinkling blue eyes, the irrepressible creature was laughing at him.
As he steeled himself to speak to the ladies, Miss Robertson’s companion looked up at him. It was a gaze of singular scrutiny, as though he, Harris Chisholm, was the only man of consequence in the world. Never had he beheld or imagined a woman as lovely as Jenny Lennox looked at that moment.
He’d only ever seen her in a work dress and apron, or in her severe Presbyterian Sunday best. Today she wore a traveling gown and a matching pelisse of royal-blue. Trimmed with paler blue ribbons, her deep-brimmed straw bonnet served to focus his eyes upon her face.
The classic regularity of her features put him in mind of several white marble sculptures he’d seen in Edinburgh. How much more alluring such a visage looked in living color. Her skin had a luminous quality compounded of roses and cream. The pert delicacy of her upper lip contrasted bewitchingly with her full, almost pouty, lower lip. The warm red of ripe strawberries, together they made an eminently kissable combination. It was her gaze that held Harris transfixed, though. Whether by some fortunate reflection from her blue dress or the azure sky, her wide gray eyes had taken on a striking violet cast.
“Might I have a word with ye, Mr. Chisholm?” Her voice held more than a hint of asperity. Harris realized that, while he’d been gaping at her with such blatant admiration, Jenny Lennox had been speaking to him. Lost in the contemplation of her beauty, he hadn’t heard a word.
“What’s that?” Harris strove to compose his expression into proper gravity. “Ye’re a ways from home today, Miss Lennox.”
“I am,” she replied, “and mean to go farther. I have a great favor to ask of ye, Mr. Chisholm.”
So that was it. She wanted something. Why else would such a bonny lass look at him with anything less than aversion? He should be accustomed to it by now. Women always brought out the worst in him. Pretty young women like Jenny Lennox in particular. He’d grown up on a lonely hill croft north of Dalbeattie, with no one but his father and grandfather for company. Women were as foreign to him as creatures from another star. The only females of his intimate acquaintance lived in the pages of Walter Scott’s novels—Flora MacIvor, Diana Vernon, and Ivanhoe’s Rowena.
In dreams nurtured by Scott’s epic romances, Harris had often imagined how sweet it might be to have a woman look at him tenderly, speak to him lovingly. When instead the lassies drew back in fright—or worse, pity—it hurt him. Out of his pain and anger he spoke coldly, or sharply.
That only made matters worse. He’d be much better off living in a place with as few women as possible, and those few safely married to other men. New Brunswick, a northern frontier colony across the Atlantic, would fill the bill perfectly. Without the distraction of pretty girls to fuel his hopeless fantasies, he could channel his abilities into the quest to make something of himself.
Harris felt his brows draw together and his face harden into a stern, intractable mask. Jenny Lennox appeared to sense his antagonism. Staring deep into his eyes, she willed him to look at her, to hear her out, and to grant whatever she might ask.
“It’s like this, Mr. Chisholm—I’m going to Miramichi, New Brunswick, on the St. Bride, same as ye are. Have ye heard I’m to wed Roderick Douglas?”
Refusing to let her draw him into a two-way conversation, Harris gave a stony nod.
“I meant to travel with the Lowell Walkers. Now I hear tell Mr. Walker has suffered an accident and they won’t be sailing with us after all. My father will never let me board that boat if I don’t have somebody he trusts to look out for me. There’re no other women passengers on the St. Bride and ye’re the only man aboard I’ve any acquaintance with. I need ye to promise my pa ye’ll see me safe to Miramichi.”
She paused to gulp down a breath. Harris detected a slight tremor in the ribbons of her bonnet.
“I…” The word came out in an adolescent squeak. Clearing his throat, Harris tried again, consciously modulating his voice to its accustomed deep baritone register. “It wouldn’t be fitting.”
Privately he bristled at the insult. What was he—some eunuch to be entrusted with protecting a woman from the lascivious attentions of the real men on board the St. Bride? Because Miss Lennox wanted as little as possible to do with him didn’t make him immune to her charms.
“Why not just wait and take a later boat?”
“Because…” A husky note in her voice portended tears.
Harris wanted to throw back his head and howl with vexation. As if women hadn’t enough other advantages in the age-old struggle between the sexes! The creatures could dissolve into tears at the drop of a hat, reducing a man to quivering mush.
“Because I’ve paid my passage money already,” she said. “I don’t expect the agent will want to hand it back again, just because Pa objects to my traveling alone.”
“Surely yer…intended, Mr. Douglas, can spare a few coins more for another passage.” A somewhat less positive note crept into Harris’s voice.
“Even if he would pay again, by the time I send word, I’ll have lost three months. I ken Mr. Douglas would like to wed soon. It’ll be less trouble to find himself another lass.”
Harris stood there grim and silent. Roderick Douglas would be a fool not to wait for a rare bride like this one.
“So that’s how it stands, Mr. Chisholm.” She summed up her case. “Either I sail on the St. Bride today, to be the wife of a rich man, or I go off to London to be a scullery maid in some rich man’s kitchen.”
Having uttered so dire an ultimatum, her lips unexpectedly twitched into a teasing grin. “Did ye ever fancy yerself as a fairy godfather?”
Part of Harris wanted very much to oblige her, but another part protested. Jenny Lennox embodied everything he hoped to flee. It made no sense to take him with her. “Well…”
Perhaps sensing his indecision, she brought all her powers of persuasion to bear. “Roderick Douglas is a man of influence in Miramichi. I expect he’ll be grateful to ye for helping me out. Whatever ye want—money, a job…anything. Ye’ll have only to ask and I swear I’ll do all in my power to grant it.”
She cast him a look of desperate sincerity, as though making a pact with the devil. Stung by the implied comparison, Harris opened his mouth to refuse once and for all. Then Jenny Lennox reached out and took his hand.
“Please?”
Her touch was so soft and warm. Harris could not find it in his heart to deny Roderick Douglas the chance to feel it. Perhaps he’d follow Douglas’s lead, Harris thought—make his fortune in the colonies, then send home for a bride.
“Aye. I’ll do it,” he agreed at last, with a marked lack of enthusiasm. “I’ll see ye safe to Miramichi.”
Jenny swayed slightly on her feet. For a moment Harris feared she might faint from surprise and relief. He gripped her hand to steady her. Returning his firm hold, she pumped his hand in a vigorous shake to seal their agreement.
“It’s a bargain, then. I swear I’ll be no bother to ye.”
For an instant