Page 89 of The Texan Duke
She kept hinting that he might be able to change Connor’s mind. He never responded or gave her any inkling that he knew what she was doing. She wasn’t the least bit subtle, but then he suspected Rhona had never had a reason to engage in subterfuge. After all, she was the Duchess of Lothian and her wishes were normally fulfilled the moment she uttered them. It must be galling to know that there was nothing she could do in this situation.
Connor wasn’t going to change his mind. In that way, he was just like his father. Once Graham had set on a course of action, it would have taken an act of God to get him to change. It made him wonder if Gavin had been the same, a question he wouldn’t ask his widow.
“A banty rooster,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
He really did like how her eyebrows went up like that.
“Felix is like a banty rooster in a henhouse,” he said, smiling at her. “Some men are like that. They feel the necessity to preen and strut.”
“Do they?” she asked, nibbling at her cookie. “Are you like that, Sam?”
“Do you think so, Rhona?”
She tilted her head slightly and studied him. “I think, perhaps, that no one truly knows who you are, Sam Kirby. That you reveal only parts of yourself to one person and maybe different parts to the next.”
That was so close to the mark he was surprised. Uncomfortable, he wasn’t sure how to answer. Thankfully, she took command of the moment in a demonstration of her greatest talent: that of graciousness.
She moved back to where the McCraight daughters were sitting, took a place at the end of the settee and encouraged him to sit beside her with a welcoming smile.
He had the strangest feeling that his past was repeating itself. The moment reminded him of days spent with Graham’s family. The difference was that Connor wasn’t in the room. And he had never had more than a brotherly feeling for Linda, Connor’s mother.
These women, for all their familial resemblance, were different from the Texas McCraights.
They had a reserve about them, which was probably due to being a duke’s daughters, being Lady this or Lady that. Or it could have been Rhona’s influence. She seemed a mite too fixated on propriety. He’d heard the wordproperfrom her at least a dozen times in the past few days. It seemed to matter a great deal to her whether or not people were behaving correctly.
He’d met enough of those types of women in Dallas and Austin. They seemed to have their corsets tied a little too tight. They looked down at others, peering through their lorgnettes, raising their thin bridged noses as if trying to avoid an unpleasant smell.
But Rhona wasn’t like that. There was a core of sweetness and softness to her, evident from the way she laughed at his foolish jests, or looked at him from time to time.
She’d let him kiss her, too, on more than one occasion.
He’d never attempted to be anything but the hoi polloi. He liked working around the ranch hands as much as he occasionally liked taking a cigar and a brandy with one of the state representatives.
Money was the great equalizer. It brought greedy people to your level, and it camouflaged you when you ascended to theirs. He could be as rude and as roughneck as any drover, but the minute people knew how rich he was, they forgave him all his assumed bad habits.
Being in Scotland was an unusual experience for him in that he didn’t have to pretend to be anybody but who he was. He wasn’t as uncouth as certain people thought him, or as polished as some believed him to be. He was simply Sam, a man from Texas. More than that, nobody seemed to want to know. And that was fine with him.
He sat and smiled at the girls.
He liked Muira because she had an open way about her. She smiled a lot and she said nice things about other people. Granted, she was a little too fond of sweets, but everybody had something they needed to work on.
The middle sister, Anise, seemed to think she was perfect. He’d caught her preening in front of a mirror twice now, as if she couldn’t quite believe how pretty she was. He’d seen pretty women all his life. Time made them less pretty and so did their inner qualities. A grasping, cunning woman began to look like that after a few years. A pleasant disposition made a plain woman look prettier. But he doubted that Anise would pay any attention to thoughts of beauty from an older man, especially one who wasn’t fawning all over her.
He didn’t really like the older sister. Lara was Rhona’s stepdaughter, the product of Gavin’s first marriage. Marie, that’s what her name was. Graham had talked about her once, but only once, the moment fueled by good whiskey. He could still recall the tone of Graham’s voice and the longing in it, even though he’d already been married to Linda for two years. Evidently, there were some loves that never left you.
Lara hadn’t said more than two words to him the entire time they’d been there. Evidently, he wasn’t of sufficient rank to attract her interest. Most of the time, she stared off into the distance as if the current company couldn’t possibly meet her requirements for polite discourse.
The only person he’d ever seen her act remotely warm toward was Felix, and she doted on her husband.
He’d seen some strange pairings in his past: large women with tiny men, a handsome man with a plain woman, and the reverse—a nearly ugly man with a beautiful female. He would rank Felix and Lara up there among the strangest. She seemed to be personable enough, knowledge that came from overhearing her conversations with her husband. Felix, on the other hand, struck him as greedy and grasping.
He wasn’t an unattractive fellow, but his voice was grating and his recitation of his accomplishments nearly laughable. As far as he could see, Felix had no occupation other than shooting. If he had other hobbies, he didn’t brag of them. Nor did he do much in the way of adding to the conversation whenever they were together. Instead, he complained a lot.
They didn’t have time for complaints in Texas. If a section of fence was down, no kudos went to the man who pointed it out. Why hadn’t he fixed it?
Felix’s complaints were primarily about other people and how they perceived him. The maid wasn’t deferential enough. The footman smirked at him. On the whole, Sam preferred to ignore the couple when he could.
