In Your Wildest Scottish Dreams Read Online Free PDF Page A

from her childhood. The gardener’s hut had been moved and rebuilt to the size of a cottage. Once, Hillshead had boasted four gardeners to manage the vegetable and flower gardens and prune all the bushes and trees. Were there still four or had Lennox added to their number?
    A movement to her left caught her eye. She jerked, startled, as a shadow slid toward her.
    “I told myself a little patience would be rewarded.”
    She slowly turned, each second measured in hours. The night had been stressful, the only reason the man’s voice sounded horribly familiar.
    Please let me be wrong.
    “Just wait, I said, and Glynis will come out for air. She hates crowds.”
    She turned back to the railing, holding herself tight. Perhaps the girl she’d once been would have screamed in frustration. Or pummeled the man who approached her soundlessly.
    She imagined him on the ground writhing in agony. She would watch him with a detached air, much as he observed life around him.
    Once, she’d accused him of being like a cat in his calm perusal of the world, unaffected by the pain he so effortlessly inflicted on others.
    “But you’re no bird, Glynis,” he’d said, “frightened of me.”
    How wrong he’d been.
    He was too close now, only feet away. She wanted to hold out her hands and keep him at a distance. Words would have to suffice.
    “What are you doing here, Baumann?”
    “Matthew. Haven’t I told you to call me Matthew?”
    “You’re a little far from Washington,” she said.
    He chuckled, emerging from the darkness like a monster from his cave.
    “Did you follow me?” she asked.
    “On the contrary, Glynis. You followed me. I’ve been in your fair country a good six weeks.”
    That’s why she hadn’t seen him in those last months in Washington, why he hadn’t bedeviled her before she left.
    “Why are you here, Baumann?”
    “I like your country,” he said. “You Scots are fiercely independent, just like New Yorkers. You’d rather spit in someone’s face than take orders and you’re not above bending the law.”
    “Are you lecturing me on morality, Baumann?” she asked. “That’s a little hypocritical, isn’t it?”
    “Oh, Glynis, you don’t approve of my being here,” he said in a mock aggrieved tone. “I’m hurt you don’t want to extend a little Scottish hospitality to a visitor.”
    “There’s nothing here for you, Baumann.”
    She faced the night, praying for . . . courage? Faith? Strength? Something to counteract the abrupt and penetrating horror of Baumann’s presence. He couldn’t be here. He mustn’t be here.
    “On the contrary,” he said, his voice hardening. “I would say this place, this Glasgow of yours, might be the most important city in the world right now.”
    Slowly, she turned to face him.
    “Our host is a shipbuilder, Glynis. What do you think he’s working on? Some vessel to take a midnight sail? A paddle wheeler to cruise the Potomac? No, he’s building a ship to run the blockade.”
    “Is that why the War Department sent you?”
    He moved into the light from the ballroom. His thick hair, brown flecked with a lighter shade, curled around his collar. A mustache and a trimmed goatee enhanced his full lips. His eyes, a dark, intent brown, often appeared mocking.
    His nose was pockmarked with scars resembling a row of stitches. When she’d first met him three years ago, she caught herself staring, flushed, and looked away.
    “Barbed wire,” he’d said, grinning at her.
    She had glanced back. “I beg your pardon?”
    “I landed on a bunch of barbed wire in a tumble,”he said. “I was just a boy, but the scar is a reminder not to be so impulsive in the future.”
    “Are you very impulsive, Mr. Baumann?”
    “I find, to my discredit, Mrs. Smythe,” he had replied, “that I can be still, yes.”
    She’d never found him to be impulsive. Instead, he was calculating, his eyes always taking the measure of others.
    Tonight, Baumann was dressed in black, like most of