Page 18 of In Search of a Husband
Kate detested mice,spiders, and London’s most infamous rake, the Marquess of Brookhouse.
Now she could add Scotland to that list.
Everything not green was brown, or the sky was gray, and no one wished to speak to an Englishwoman, especially as the coach had continued its journey up toward Aberdeenshire. She had heard of their distaste toward the English, and she had certainly heard of men in kilts battling other clans, but she had never heard tales of the mud.
And there was so much mud.
After the coach left her in a small village consisting only of a few buildings, she waited for her ride to Dunsmuir Castle. The largest ravens she’d ever seen circled in the sky above, caw after caw as a woman unloaded a cart in front of a cottage with a moss-cover thatched roof. But after a few hours, no one arrived to pick her up as had been arranged through the brief correspondence with her new employer.
She pushed through the inn’s doors, her skirts muddy and her stomach rumbling. The inn was nearly empty. A few patrons sat at the long bar that stretched across the back half of the dark room. Filtered light forced itself through wavy, clouded windowpanes.
Her stomach flipped at the stale, stagnate air. Was that smoke she smelled? And fish?
“Hello?”
No one turned around. Very well.
Kate dropped her bags at her feet, ripped off her gloves, stuck her fingers in her mouth, and whistled.
“Christ, woman. Too loud.” A man groaned at the bar counter across the room. He rested his head in his hands. “Too loud.”
“Where’s the barkeep?”
“No barkeep,” the other, much younger man said a few stools down. He turned in his seat and narrowed his dark-green eyes at her, boyhood still clinging to his full cheeks. “No inn. We’re no’ open.”
She tilted her head. Later, this would be funny. Later, once she managed a meal and perhaps a few hours of sleep, but what she discovered in Scotland so far was not funny. “The door was unlocked.”
“I told ye, Archie,” the man mumbled, still folded in half over the bar.
Just then, a third man appeared in the doorway behind the bar, wiping his hands on a grimy dishtowel. A tall man, with broad shoulders and rugged arms, and fine linen shirt sleeves rolled up to reveal strong forearms.
Oh.
“We’re no’ open,” he said, his voice gruff.
She expected him to look away and ignore her as the others had, but instead, he pinned her there to her spot on the filthy wooden floor. It wasn’t disgust in his bright blue eyes, but he certainly wasn’t welcoming. And yet she couldn’t look away.
“Sir,” she said in way of a welcome. Or perhaps it was a warning. She couldn’t tell if she needed to run toward the man or run away from him. But the mess of bronze curls on his head made him appear somewhat angelic. Well, perhaps that was a stretch of the word. The marquess had been handsome, and this man, while not classically so, was beyond striking.
His entire person was a beacon of control. She felt everything within shift as if drawn to him. Which could only mean trouble. Shehad not escaped to Scotland to land in more trouble. She was protecting her independence, and Kate wasn’t about to hand it over to the first man in Scotland who looked at her as if she were dessert and spoke with the most delicious Scottish burr.
“What do ye need?” he asked, clearing his throat. He snapped the towel over his left shoulder which only drew her attention to his arms once more. The arms of a boxer. He certainly had the stance of one.
“I need a meal, please. I have been traveling, and it’ll be awhile yet before I am settled where I need to be.”
“Where do ye need to be?” the man mumbled, slumped over on the counter still.
He moaned once more, cutting off her reply. She shrugged once she reconnected her gaze toward the taller man behind the bar.
“Sit down. I will find something in the kitchen.”
“I don’t mean to impose. If you are not open, then can you direct me to another inn or a coffee house?”
“Isna one,” the younger man replied. He stood up and slapped his hand across the low beam stretching across the ceiling.
“Is he feeling well?” she asked, pointing to the man slumped on the bar.
“Finn? Och, he’s fine.”
