Page 23 of The Scot Beds His Wife
For once in his life, he had no comeback. No witty retort.
Because the lass was right. He’d learned that selfsame lesson in the most terrible ways possible.
Who’d taught it to her?he wondered. The same person who’d conjured the pain beneath the chill in her glare.
Callum sidled up to them, strategically placing himself in front of her pistol. Beneath his beard, it was hard to tell if he smiled or frowned, but his eerie eyes crinkled a bit at the corners. “’Tis wicked work digging a grave in the Highlands after the night frosts have already set in,” he said mildly, his voice heavy with a disarming Irish lilt.
“Good point,” Alison agreed without inflection. “We’ll just toss him into the sea, then.”
This time, Gavin recognized his oldest friend’s amusement, and his own eyes narrowed.
Callum pretended to weigh the idea. “While your logic is sound, you forget the man is an earl. He’ll be missed.”
“You sure about that?” She cocked a brow.
“Well, by his mother, anyway. She lives with him in yon Inverthorne Castle where my father is stable master.” Callum rolled his broad shoulders hidden beneath an ancient cloak made of sealskin.
She wrinkled her nose and lowered the brow. “You still live with your ma?”
“Sheresides withme,” Gavin snarled. “Inmycastle.” Why was he explaining himself to this scrawny, loony, altogether vicious wench? He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had angered him like this since…
Well, since his brother.
“Why don’t you let me conduct him back to Inverthorne?” Callum suggested.
“Let ye?”Gavin repeated, aghast.
The Mac Tíre shrugged again. “I’ve been meaning to pay a call to my father.”
Nodding, Alison returned her pistol to its holster. “Icatch you on my land again, Thorne, even your mother won’t recognize your corpse.”
She rode away before Gavin’s usually glib, biting wit could summon a retort.
“Ill-tempered wench,” he spat, though he knew the retreating woman couldn’t hear him. Turning, he rode abreast of the Mac Tíre, his mind spinning with new calculations. Never before had he met someone like Alison Ross.
“She’s all right.” His friend waved him off.
“Et tu,Callum?” he admonished.
The enigmatic hermit shrugged. “She made me breakfast,” he said by way of explanation. Gavin studied his friend for a moment, noting the way his golden gaze avoided him. There was something the Mac Tíre wasn’t telling him, and he was certain it had to do with the disagreeable Alison Ross.
“One way or another, Erradale will be mine,” he vowed, spurring Demetrius into a gallop. Now was not the time to act rashly, which is what Miss Ross seemed to goad him to do. He needed to think, to scheme, to bide his time because, though bonny Alison Ross had learned to keep both friends and enemies at bay, she’d likely not lived long enough to learn an even more valuable lesson.
To never underestimate the long-suffering fury of a patient man.
CHAPTERFIVE
Dear Alison,
Enclosed are the documents from your solicitor required for your appearance in front of the magistrate. According to them, you must maintain residence at Erradale forno lessthan one year. I hope that is agreeable to you. I’ve heard tell that the place has become a bit ramshackle in the absence of a Ross caretaker, but I daresay it’s better than the American alternative at this point. Most especially since what they have come to refer to as “the Masters Massacre.”
Since you’ve been away from Scotland for so long, I thought I’d remind you a little of your family’s history, so you might use it against our adversaries. Though Highlanders are notoriously a clannish people, the name of the Mackenzie family of Wester Ross was tainted by the previous Laird, Hamish Mackenzie. You know, of course, that he defeated your father in a duel. Unlike the AmericanWest, dueling has been illegal in England some forty years, but Highlanders tend to keep to their own traditions.
Gavin St. James, Lord Thorne, was born Gavin Mackenzie. He is the son of Laird Hamish Mackenzie’s second wife, Eleanor. He didn’t come by his earldom through the Mackenzie line, but through his mother’s family, the St. Jameses, as his great-uncle died childless and Inverthorne passed through Eleanor to her firstborn son. It is widely known that Hamish Mackenzie married Eleanor to gain control of Inverthorne, and then he turned his eye to Erradale.
Lord Thorne isn’t known for violence or cruelty like his father, but he’s a notoriously unscrupulous rake. After a poorly concealed affair with his elder brother Liam Mackenzie’s first wife ended in her suicide, Lord Thorne philandered his way across most of the empire, and some of the Continent, in a hedonistic frenzy unrivaled since the days of Caligula. Though he and Laird Mackenzie—also known as the Marquess Ravencroft—are infamously at odds, he works as the Ravencroft Distillery foreman, as barely less than half of the operation was left to him upon their father’s mysterious death. This is why, I think, he shares his father’s lust for Erradale.
Your presence on the land should render his claim moot altogether, so stay at Erradale as long as you like. Indefinitely, if you wish. We can write to each other, you and I, though I very much doubt you’ll ever see me set foot in the Highlands. I hope you understand. Do with it what you wish. Should you turn enough profit to buy the land, I am open to your offer above all others.
