Page 18 of The Scot Beds His Wife
However, the only places to find markets or supplies were at the Rua Reidh fishing village to the north, or Gairloch to the south. No fishmongers or butchers lined this abandoned stretch of coast, and there was no staff to send on supply errands. Alison would have found the fireplaces cold and the woodstores and larders long empty.
She’d not been to Gairloch to collect supplies—he’d have heard about it—and he highly doubted she could navigate Rua Reidh, as the people of that village held fast to their ancient Pictish ways and were still famous for summarily refusing to speak English.
Even Callum—widely considered a local despite his Irish father—rarely ventured there.
As far as Gavin knew, two old ranch hands named Calybrid and Locryn occupied one of the dilapidated cottages. Then there was Callum, who tended to lurk by the Dubh Gorm Caves, where the cliffs gave way to a very narrow beach carved by the crystalline river.
These notably reclusive men made up the sum of society for miles in any direction. They hunted, trapped, or fished their food, and it wasn’t bloody likely the lass was equipped for any such deed.
Wee Alison Ross didn’t have an extra store of healthy weight anywhere on her scrawny frame. She’d waste away if she missed so much as a meal. Lord, he remembered thinking he’d not seen a lass so thin since he’d been to London. So delicate. Nay, maybe not delicate, but he’d spent more time than he’d like to admit wondering how such a large force of will could be contained by such a weak frame.
He’d had the ridiculous urge to measure the circumference of her arm against his wrist. One angry Highland sea gale and she’d be tossed into the ocean like a leaf torn free of its branch.
Were all her limbs so long and delicate as her arms and swanlike neck? As she’d stood against him, casting aspersions in front of God and all Highland travelers, he’d realized his one hand could completely span that elegant throat.
Meeting her at the train station dressed in his finery and accompanied by those who could facilitate their trade had been considered a courtesy on his part.
One extended at great expense.
Apparently, what the lass lacked in brawn she more than made up for in pluck. That, added to the ax her family had to grind with his, made for a shocking failure of negotiation.
Gavin had long since given up cursing his father. The man had been dead nigh as long as hers. Besides, he’d learned long ago that if he took his hatred out to examine it, it wanted to smother every façade Gavin had worked so hard to construct.
And that just wouldn’t do.
Not when he was so close to getting what he wanted.
As he descended into Erradale, Gavin murmured a line from Shakespeare that had stayed with him since the darkwinter days he’d spent hiding from his father in the library. “’Tis best to weight the enemy more mighty than he seems.”
Orshe,as was this particular case.
He’d underestimated Alison Ross. Though she’d been draped very well, he’d noted her dress had been premade and altered, rather than sewn for her distinctive measurements. Tall, she was. And slim, but not without the distinctive curves branding her a woman.
He might be a Scot, but he was no philistine.
Perhaps she hadn’t the wealth he’d been led to believe. He’d have to look into that. Fiscal desperation could be a weapon added to his arsenal.
Also, he’d not been too astonished by her uncouth vitriol to notice the dark smudges painted by exhaustion beneath her startlingly large eyes. Or the pallor of her skin beneath golden freckles. When she’d not been angrily squaring off with him, her shoulders tended to curl forward, as though burdened beneath a Sisyphean weight.
That had to be why she’d seemed inured to his charm. Hadn’t it? Every woman from eight to eighty, even the happily married ones, took a very obvious moment to simply appreciate his pulchritude in one way or another. They’d cast him furtive glances beneath coy lashes when they didn’t think he’d notice. Or they’d stare outright, their appreciative gazes roving from his lush hair and sculpted features, to every one of his thick bones upon which the famous Mackenzie brawn bunched and bulged in ways that sent their fans to fluttering.
Alison Ross… She only ever looked him in the eyes. Like he was more than his uncommonly well-made parts.
Like she considered him as a man, not merely a conquest or lover.
Had he been mistaken when he’d interpreted a spark of appreciation beneath her scorn?
When the uncouth lady had all but stumbled away from him, Gavin calculated that he’d have to use a completely different advance to achieve his aspiration.
As a slight and fragile woman, her tattered condition certainly wouldn’t improve upon her arrival at Erradale. He’d warned her that she’d be afforded no staff, servants, or creature comforts to speak of in her father’s abandoned home.
According to Callum, to whom he’d spoken yesterday, she’d barely left the manor for nigh on two days, and had made no move to acquire aid.
She had to be starving and desperate, subsisting on whatever tins she might find in a cupboard, or the dubious survival skills of two harmless but essentially useless old goats.
Which is wherehecame in.
Instead of the illustrious Earl of Thorne, handsome, charming, and intimidating in both stature and symmetry, he’d approach Miss Ross as simply Gavin. Handsome, charming, and solicitous neighbor, paying a call to deliver both contrition and sustenance.
