Page 26 of A Hot Scot for Christmas
“What did you do?”
“It took months, but we gathered evidence. Crawford was destroying personal correspondence, both incoming and outgoing letters. Because the Brigadier thought favorably of me, the men asked me to present our case. We…I…” he said, sharpening his syllables “made Crawford look bad.”
“He obviously recovered,” she said.
“Command took him to task, but in their estimable wisdom, his affront didn’t warrant a court martial.”
She was apologetic. “They moved him to another post, and Lieutenant Crawford eventually became Captain Crawford.”
“I became the target of his ire.” Mr. MacLeod’s hand curled into a tight fist on the table. “The day he left our regiment, I went back to my tent and found a pile of ashes. Magda’s old letters…every one of them burned.”
She gasped.
Weary eyes met hers. “A year passed without a word from Magda.”
“She stopped writing altogether?”
Tired and drawn, he dragged a hand over his face. “I went to our village, looking for her, but she was gone. No one knew what happened to Magda. That day in Perth was the last time I saw my sister.”
The clock on her mantletick, tick, ticked. The Highlander sunk into the chair. Anger’s poison sapped him. Loss sapped him when he said the saddest three words.
“I lost her. My only family.”
Chapter Eight
The day after Christmas, Sabrina summoned the servants to her salon, a first since she’d taken the helm of Eden House. She clutched sheaves of paper, pacing.
Mrs. Digby strode in with a dusting of flour on her cheeks. She stood beside her husband, Mr. Digby, the stable master and coachman who was tucking his hat under his arm. Polly followed, drying wet hands with a checkered linen. The last was Digby, who’d rounded up the troops.
The four of them lined up in a row, their backs to the hearth and their eyes, inquisitive.
A firing line came to mind, and Sabrina harbored no illusions—she was on the receiving end.
“Is Mr. MacLeod coming, ma’am?” Polly gave last night’s piles of greenery the gimlet eye.
Mr. Digby informed the room, “Mr. MacLeod took himself to Carlisle. Something about an important errand.”
“An errand?” She dropped her bottom onto her settee where the cushion dipped thinly from years of rumps planted there. “Did he mention the nature of this errand?”
Mr. Digby was apologetic. “No ma’am.”
Punching an overbearing captain came to mind.
Sabrina looked to the windows, and let sunlight bathe her. What was she to do about Mr. MacLeod? What could any woman do? The Highlander was not a man to be contained. One would have better luck corralling a lion. But this lion had showed his tender, wounded paw. The thorn sticking there—loss. She wanted to pluck it out, but how did one go about that?
Mr. MacLeod had been circumspect this morning. He’d slept in the barn, having claimed the hay an excellent bed. He told her he’d slept in worse places, and she had no problem believing him. But wisdom had shined from his seasoned blue eyes.
The Highlander was giving a wide berth to propriety.
Where did one put a betrothed man? A small but salient detail. Obviously, he had no kin, but he did have one saddlebag to his name. A man like that could easily move on.
He might not come back.An agonizing thought. She cast it out.
“Maybe he’s arranging for the banns to be read.” This came from rosy-cheeked Mrs. Digby who adored weddings.
Sabrina turned on her seat. The row of servants was animated.
“Well, if he’s gone to see about the banns, he’d go to Rockville, not Carlisle,” Polly said reasonably.
