Page 15 of Return of the Scot
That would be an easy enough task. The Gordons were filthy rich.
Jaime resisted the urge to let out the frustrated screech tickling the back of her throat. The past few weeks, Shanna and Gordie had finally been able to live the life they deserved. Now she was going to have to take it away. Of course, she’d buy them another residence, but the gossips would love this debacle. As it was, this morning’s society papers had been all about the duke’s return, and the miracle it was, and how wonderful, blah-blah-blah.
Was she the only one who’d burned the sheets in her hearth?
His return was the worst news.
There was no way about it.
“Miss…” Mr. MacDonald hedged. “While I’d love to continue conversing with ye, I do have another client waiting.”
Jaime snapped her attention away from the papers floating through her mind and back to her solicitor. “Of course. I’ll be in touch as soon as the duke asks for the deed to Dunrobin back. I do no’ plan to seek him out.”
“I will be at your service when the time comes.”
Jaime stalked from the offices of MacDonald & Sons and stepped outside into a day that was decidedly too cheery for the season and her mood.
A child ran up to her then, waving one of the society papers in his hand. “Buy theLady Edinburgh, miss, the Duke of Sutherland’s back.”
She wanted to turn away, to snub the duke in any way she could, but the poor lad only made money when he sold his papers, and she didn’t want to be the cause of him missing a meal. So she reached into her reticule and handed him a coin, taking the dreadful paper.
The headline made her nauseous. “Return of the Scot! A Duke Back from the Dead—Heads Will Roll.”
Oh, how she wished it were his head that was going to roll, not his poor brother. Jaime didn’t read further but walked briskly to her carriage, climbing the step laid out by her groom and sliding onto the plush, purple velvet seat.
“My office, please,” she said before shutting the door and staring down at the society paper.
The Duke of Sutherland has returned to Scottish shores after nearly a decade absent and two years thought dead. If he is standing here in the flesh, who is buried in the family plot? A better question might be, how could anyone have confused the strapping Duke of Sutherland with the poor sap six feet under?
“Och,” Jaime groaned. Whoever had written this wasn’t informed by Gille as she’d been of the conditions of the duke’s remains.
Except they weren’t his, were they?
She’d not known Gille well as he was much younger than Lorne, but when they’d discussed arrangements for the sale of Dunrobin, he’d been pleasant and kind. Sorrowful, even.
That was the one reason she’d been able to overlook his choice of solicitor. A little tickle started at the back of her head, and she pushed it away. She refused to believe that their transaction had been anything other than legitimate. Gille believed his brother dead, as did everyone else.
“Oh!” Jaime gripped the seat as the carriage made a hasty stop.
“Sorry, miss! Just a tramp who jumped in the road without paying attention.” Her groom shouted at whoever it was and then continued.
The men in his regiment had seen Lorne die. They’d taken on heavy cannon fire that obliterated much of their battlefield and their men. A body was recovered, Lorne’s ornamented coat slung over his chest. With his face unrecognizable, the men believed it to be their colonel, and he was pronounced dead.
Without a body, it could have taken years, a decade or more, for the title and all that went with it to be granted to Gille, but there had been a body…
Did Gille know that his brother had returned, and if he did, why had he not come to make amends right now? Obviously, Lorne had not seen his brother, or he wouldn’t have visited her demanding the deed.
Jaime’s head was spinning as she made her way through Edinburgh’s streets and pounding by the time she arrived at her office in Leith.
Inside the small office attached to her warehouse, Jaime’s clerk, Emilia, was busy with her head over the desk, scratching endless numbers into the columns of their books and pushing her spectacles back up the bridge of her nose from where they kept sliding.
“Good morning, Miss Andrewson,” Emilia said, insisting after all this time to address her formally. Jaime had made certain to hire a female to work with her daily for a number of reasons. One, she didn’t want to hear anyone balk about the impropriety of a woman sequestered alone in a room with a man all day, even if their primary job was running numbers while she oversaw the rest of the company. Most importantly, however, was that Jaime felt that women needed to be empowered by other women, and so she made a point to do so.
Women on the ships, however, was not a task she’d met yet. The dockhands and sailors were all too wary of a woman on board, and she needed them to stick around, or else her empire would crumble. As it was, she was certain there were plenty of them who had to cross themselves whenever she did an inspection.
“Emilia, I trust all has been smooth this morning.”
“Smooth for the books and docks, aye. Not so smooth for…” Her eyes lifted from the ledger she was writing in to study Jaime. “Perhaps the Andrewsons.”
