Page 5 of What a Scot Wants
“You cannot refuse, Imogen.” The look on his face stopped her cold.
Oh, good Lord, what has he done?
“Why?” Imogen asked with some trepidation, and a minute later, after her father had explained the terms of forfeiture, she stared in utter disbelief at her parents.
“You would give him my inheritance?” she whispered.
Her father nodded. Imogen’s heartbeat slowed, and she felt lightheaded. How could they do this to her? If she lost the remainder of her dowry, she would be destitute and completely at the mercy of whichever male was in line for the earldom. And worse, Haven would suffer. Perhaps even close its doors for good.
Her parents were leaving her with absolutely no choice. They were backing her into a corner and setting fire to the rest of the room. She could barely breathe from the injustice of it. A whisky distillery! That was all the man would forfeit—
Imogen blinked, and the fury ringing in her ears suddenly quieted. She peered at her parents, remembering that the duke had something to lose as well, according to what her father had said. Dunrannoch’s forfeiture had to be of comparable worth. “Is it a very large distillery?”
“One of the largest in Scotland,” her father replied.
If so, the distillery had to turn a staggering profit. She could do many things with that income. The purchase of a second building. Expansion for a school. Imogen grew dizzy thinking how many more women she could help. This could be a windfall, not the calamity she’d initially assumed—so long as the laird broke the marriage contract, and not her.
“Very well,” she said. “You leave me little choice. I’ll honor the agreement.”
Imogen had spent a decade successfully deterring the affections of men. And when this thickheaded and entirely too desperate Highlander duke finally cried off, she’d take his reparation payment and put it to excellent use.
Haven and her independence would be secure forever.
Chapter Two
Once his carriage crossed the city limits into Edinburgh, Ronan felt a change take place inside of him. He knew the city well, having traveled there numerous times every year, and had done so all his life. Though his heart belonged in the Highlands, he still enjoyed the break Edinburgh offered, especially these last two years.
Life as duke and laird had not been difficult to adjust to; he’d been primed for the role and the duties it required for a long time. However, he still felt constricted. His every move watched, every word obeyed. He was the center of Maclaren, all else revolving and working intricately around him, and Edinburgh…well, it had allowed him to breathe.
He took especially unrestricted breaths at the two gentlemen’s clubs that he and his brothers belonged to—the New Club, when he wanted to conduct business, and the Golden Antler, when he wanted to loosen his starched cravat a bit. On the whole, Ronan enjoyed his trips to Edinburgh.
Never did he imagine he’d dread one.
Namely, this dinner with the Earl of Kincaid, where he would meet his intended bride. The idea of marriage made him break into a cold sweat. It had ever since his first love, Grace Donaldson, the only girl he’d ever wanted, had crushed his hopes when she’d eloped with another. And now he found himself in this predicament.
Forced wedlock to a spinster.
Ronan recalled what Stevenson had been able to uncover about Lady Imogen Kinley. At twenty-nine, she was a spinster by choice, even though she was dowered with an obscene fortune. She had been engaged once, to a man called Silas Calder, steward to the expansive holdings of the Kincaid earldom; however, the engagement had been broken, and the man had cried off for unknown reasons.
Following that, she’d apparently refused nearly two dozen proposals. As far as the solicitor had discovered, she spent her days entertaining callers in her city manse, gifted to her by her indulgent father, and working with various charities whenever the fancy struck her. Clearly, she was a spoiled, vain heiress with nothing but time and money on her hands.
He swallowed his disgust. Getting her to cry off should be an easy feat.
When the carriage pulled up to a beautifully appointed residence in Charlotte Square of New Town, a few streets over from his own residence, Ronan hopped out and straightened his formal dinner clothing. The snowy white cravat choked him, almost like a premonition of what was to come. He was glad he’d chosen to come separately from his mother, who had also been invited by the Kincaids. It gave him the means to leave separately later, should the need arise. And he fully expected it to.
He climbed the steps and was announced by the butler. “His Grace, the Duke of Dunrannoch.”
Instantly, the voices in the nearby salon dropped as a handsome, smartly dressed older man accompanied by a slender, blond woman walked forward.
“Welcome, Your Grace,” the earl said.
“Thank you,” Ronan said.
Kincaid’s wife smiled up at him. “What a pleasure it is that you are here at last.”
Lady Kincaid had been childhood neighbors with his own mother in England, and her clipped accent reminded him of Lady Dunrannoch’s. Kincaid, however, had a soft Scottish drawl, though it was nothing like Ronan’s own thicker burr. His eyes scanned behind them for the woman he was here to meet.
Kincaid turned, as if sensing his curiosity, and looked over his shoulder. “Ah, yes, Imogen, there you are. Come, my dear.”
