Page 46 of The Scot Beds His Wife
Listlessly, she shook her head. “I don’t think I believe in villains. Heroes either. Just people. People with agendas and the things they’re willing to do to get what they want.”
Something else they had in common. Gavin’s gaze charted the bruised exhaustion left beneath her eyes, and he suddenly longed to do something about it.
“Why do you want Erradale so specifically?” she queried. “You have a castle, a title, money, obviously. You have everything most men would kill for. You could buy land anywhere. Why do you want this broken-down old place?” She pointed with the barrel of her pistol at a sag in the eaves.
“Ye want the pure and simple truth?”
She made a caustic noise that tugged at his heart. “The truth is rarely pure and never simple. It’s usually hard. I want the hard truth.”
Christ. He’d known she was bonny. That she was small, strong, and spirited. What he hadn’t known was that she was wise. A wisdom bordering on the cynical, he noted. Who’d caused such a tendency in a lass so young?
Gavin had tried every trick in the book to lure her to accept his offer.
All, that was, but honesty.
“The hard truth is, I detest running my brother’s distillery. I loathe traveling there for the sowing every spring, and the reaping every autumn. Ravencroft Keep is where allmyghosts still live, and I yearn for the day I never have to see it again.” He looked to the south, beyond which his childhood home hunched at the top of the Balach na ba pass. Red stones that seemed to run with blood upon a rainy day, blood spilled by the past Mackenzie Laird’s infamous tempers. “I’ll admit, it wasna so bad when my brother Liam was away at war all the time. But now that he’s returned…”
Resolve hardened in his bones and tightened his jaw. “I amnota man who can be ruled. Not by him, not by anyone. I want my own trade. To make my own way. And Inverthorne’s forests are too ancient and sacred to be cleared for timber. Her grounds too craggy for true agriculture. Erradale has the potential to provide me my own legacy. I roamed these moors endlessly as a boy. They’ve always… meant something to me.”
Gavin thought the sound she made might have been one of distress, but when he looked back at her, it was appreciation he read in her eyes.
For once.
She’d really wanted the truth. She accepted that he’d given it. And, all told, it felt like his burden had been made a bit lighter in the telling of it.
“My brother. He’s a true Mackenzie. A violent, high-handed lout. An arse, really. More like our father than he’d ever admit. I’m nothing like them. I would look after yer father’s lands. Cherish them. I would—” God, he was perilously close to begging.
“It seems our only problem is… I want the same things from Erradale that you do.” She said this with a conciliatory gesture. As though she regretted that fact. “They’re not my father’s lands anymore. They’re mine.”
“Not if Liam takes them from ye. Or did ye forget the lease?”
Her features hardened. “Well, that’s up to you, isn’t it? Lady Ravencroft said he wouldn’t.”
“Mena’s not the Laird. She’s a sweet English lass, but she underestimates her husband’s ruthlessness. She doesna ken how to think like the Demon Highlander. Like I said, if ye sold Erradale to me, I’d fight Liam for it, should he lay claim to it, and I’d win.”
“How do you know I wouldn’t?” Her usual blue fire snapped back into her eyes, and Gavin hadn’t been aware of how much he’d missed it until that moment.
“Ye underestimate my brother.”
“Maybeyouunderestimateme.” Turning, she lifted her arm, aimed, and nailed every one of the hanging targets all those yards away.
Ye gods, that was unexpectedly erotic.
“Perhaps ye’re right,” he agreed, suddenly distracted. “Ye know, bonny, I’ve hunted my whole life. Mostly with rifles and arrows, but I’ll admit I’m only a passing fair hand with a pistol.”
The look she leveled at him was knowing and sly, but she shrugged and handed him the spare gun. “Show me.”
Challenge heated the cold autumn air.
Blood singing with it, Gavin took her gun, stepped his left foot back, canted, aimed, and hit two of the four remaining targets.
She assessed him for all of two seconds before she said, “The man who taught you to shoot was a small man, wasn’t he?”
Her guess amused him, mostly because she was right. “Aye, lass, a slight Spaniard. How did ye know?”
“Because you cant your wrist to the inside at a fifteen-degree angle, which I do as well, to mitigate the recoil of the pistol.” She wrapped her long, elegant fingers around his wrist, and twisted it until the pistol perched vertically. “Big as you are, I’d suggest that you’re… er… strong enough to keep your wrist erect.”
“I didna think ye noticed.” He flashed her a flirtatious smile and fought the urge to adjust himself. Wishing she hadn’t uttered the word “erect.”
