Her placidity was infuriating. “Ye gie me no explanation?”

“’Tis practice, Gowan.”

“Practice?” The fire inside him was heating his blood to a boil. “Wha’ kind of practice d’ye need tha’ Jeremy Irons’ll help you with? All over the blessit paper. And him a marrit man!”

Mary Agnes’ face paled. “Marrit?” She set one saucer down upon another. China jarred together unpleasantly.

Gowan at once regretted his impulsive words. He had no idea whether Jeremy Irons was married, but he felt driven to despair by the thought of Mary Agnes dreaming of the actor nightly as she lay in her bed while right next door Gowan sweated for the right to touch his lips to hers. It was ungodly. It was unfair. She ought well to suffer for it.

But when he saw her lips tremble, he berated himself for being such a fool. She’d hate him, not Jeremy Irons, if he wasn’t careful. And that couldn’t be borne.

“Ah, Mary, I canna say faer sairtin if he’s marrit,” Gowan admitted.

Mary Agnes sniffed, gathered up her china, and returned to the kitchen. Puppy-like, Gowan followed. She lined up the teapots on the trays and began spooning tea into them, straightening linen, arranging silver as she went, studiously ignoring him. Thoroughly chastened, Gowan searched for something to say that would get him back into her good graces. He watched her lean forward for the milk and sugar. Her full breasts strained against her soft wool dress.

Gowan’s mouth went dry. “Hae I tol’ ye aboot my row to Tomb’s Isle?”

It was not the most inspired conversational gambit. Tomb’s Isle was a tree-studded mound of land a quarter of a mile into Loch Achiemore. Capped by a curious structure that looked from a distance like a Victorian folly, it was the final resting place of Phillip Gerrard, the recently departed husband of Westerbrae’s present owner. Rowing out to it was certainly no feat of athletic prowess for a boy like Gowan, well used to labour. Certainly it was nothing that was going to impress Mary Agnes, who probably could have done the same herself. So he sought a way to make the story more interesting for her.