Page 91 of Foes, Friends and Lovers
Gregory tapped a finger on the tablecloth, then asked, “Will he be able to track you?”
“Oh, aye—he’s not daft.” Hamish nodded across the table at Rory. “He’ll know to follow Rory and me, and that’ll be easy enough.”
“So he is likely to turn up here, breathing fire, at some point?” Gregory looked from one brother to the other.
“I don’t know about breathing fire,” Rory said, “but if he appears down here, he won’t be in any good mood.”
Caitlin was frowning. “Will he leave Morgan to manage alone, though?” She looked at her cousins. “He never would have when I was still there.”
“Things have changed, lass. Our Morgan’s grown and learned, and he’s not one anyone messes with. He might take after Daniel in looks and size, but the brains on that lad.” Rory shook his head. “He’s quick, clever, and knows just how to manage people, Da included.” Rory paused, then added, “Truth to tell, if Da does make his way down here, it’ll be because Morgan prodded him into it just to be quit of him for a while.”
“That, and Da never being able to let well alone.” Hamish drained his cup, then set it down. “He’ll have had my letter by now, telling him the three of us are well and happily going our own road, but it’s likely that will only make him even more determined to bring us to heel and have us following his road, not ours.”
Rory snorted. “Not only that. Morgan will have seen that letter, too, and if Da thinks to give our little brother any grief, Morgan will have Da heading south—with Da thinking it’s all his idea—faster than you can blink.”
Hamish nodded fatalistically. “Aye. That.”
Gregory looked from one brother to the other and inwardly sighed. “All right. At least I know where we stand.”
Caitlin smiled encouragingly at him and got to her feet.
Gregory and her cousins rose as well.
Caitlin reclaimed her painting and, clearly debating where to hang it, bustled out ahead of the men.
Gregory saw her take the corridor to the study. He parted from Rory and Hamish in the front hall and continued to the library.
He dropped into the chair behind his desk and stared into space while his mind retrod all he’d learned that morning.
Eventually, he refocused on his attempts at improving the financial stability of the Hall’s businesses, outlined in the papers spread over the desk’s surface. “Obviously,” he murmured to himself, “there’s more than one reason that I should get my financial affairs, including those of the Hall, in order.”
That was, indeed, the issue demanding his most immediate attention, but there was another that, increasingly, hovered in his mind.
He hadn’t yet formally asked Caitlin to marry him.
He would have, that night in the gallery, but she’d asked him to wait until the situation with her family clarified and settled, and—as per his habit of allowing anything requiring the slightest emotional effort to roll on in its own time—he’d acquiesced.
Yet over the past weeks, he’d changed. He was no longer so ready to shy from emotional issues as he had been—no longer willing to allow obstacles to deflect or delay him from reaching his goals.
He wanted to ask her—simply and straightforwardly—for her hand, but realistically, how far could they go without her guardian’s permission?
“Not all that far” was the answer.
On top of that, while her formally committing herself to him would reassure him on one front, having her acknowledged in any way as his fiancée might be a very bad idea on the Ecton front. There was something about the man that set Gregory’s teeth on edge. Put mildly, he sensed the man was almost certainly an outright cad. If Caitlin became known as Gregory’s fiancée, he wouldn’t put it past Ecton to try to use that in some way to pressure Gregory into selling the Hall.
The last thing he wanted was for Caitlin and their relationship to become some sort of pawn in whatever game Ecton was playing.
“Speaking of which.” Gregory glanced at the corner of his desk, but it appeared the mail hadn’t yet arrived. He frowned. “Someone better write soon.” His need to learn what was behind Ecton’s interest in the Hall was escalating by the day.
To Gregory’s great relief, replies to his queries about Ecton started rolling in the following day.
Unfortunately, those replies, although loaded with advice, brought little by way of factual information.
The first letter Gregory—ensconced behind his desk in the library—opened came from his father’s cousin, Gabriel Cynster, who wrote that he knew nothing of Ecton nor of any issue that, in his view, would materially increase the value of the Bellamy Hall land. However, he warned that an approach of the sort Ecton had made was definitely grounds for caution regarding what the man had in mind.
Montague replied saying much the same thing and that he would continue to pursue information on Ecton’s financial standing. While he had no firm evidence as yet in hand, what he’d gleaned from his contacts in the City was not favorable. “In short,” Montague wrote, “his lordship might very well be sailing overly close to the wind.”
Gregory read the careful phrasing a second time and snorted. “If the quality of the man’s horses is any guide, he doesn’t have the funds he wants people to believe he has.”
