Unlaced by the Highland Duke

by Lara Temple

  Lady Theale sighed.

  ‘Bella meant to like your castle, boy. But Lochmore is a long way from London.’

  ‘Precisely.’

  ‘So. Do you have someone in mind?’

  ‘It might reassure you that I have Jamie’s welfare so much in mind that I am considering in one fell swoop to find him a mother and repair the rift between the Lochmores and McCrieffs.’

  ‘And they agree? I understood that there was always bad blood between the families.’

  ‘That is an understatement. We have a long and inglorious history of real and imagined causes for mutual resentment. Even the fact that my grandfather convinced old King George to grant him a dukedom and compounded that insult by keeping the clan name as title was another stick in that fire. I think the balance was partially redressed once my father’s rejection of a McCrieff bride was met with their rejection of my Aunt Morag as a suitable bride for Lord Aberwyld. But unlike his forebearers, McCrieff realises the contention between us affects the sheep and kelp trades in the area and, being substantially poorer, he can afford that far less than Lochmore. It is also interfering with other plans of mine and I cannot allow that, so now my father is dead I am testing the waters.’

  ‘One doesn’t test the waters with a man like McCrieff. If this is the case, no doubt he has already engaged lawyers to draw up the settlement papers.’

  Benneit shrugged. It was close enough to the truth.

  ‘So I see this trip is in the nature of a last escape, Lochmore. Still, even if you’ve marked your bride, it will take time, this wooing and wedding business. Why not allow Joane to go with Jamie until you make other arrangements, either for Jamie or for yourself. If at any time you find her presence de trop, send her back to me.’

  ‘You talk about her as if she was a book or a piece of furniture. Take her up to the Highlands, send her down when you are through with her.’

  ‘Well, it will do her good, too. My niece Celia has become a tad too dependent on Joane. The poor girl barely had time to mourn.’

  ‘What happened to him? To Langdale?’

  ‘He broke his neck in a fall from a horse. Most unfortunate. Died in debt and the house and everything was entailed. She has a competence, but no more.’

  ‘Langdale fell from a horse? I thought the man was born on one.’

  ‘We are at our most arrogant where we are most comfortable. I dare say he appreciated finding his end in such a manner since he cared more for his horses than anything else, possibly even more than for poor Joane. In a year or so I shall find her another husband, but for the moment it could suit both our purposes for her to see to Jamie until you wed again. She is very good with children.’

  ‘I don’t care if she is the St Francis of children, I... Oh, never mind. But this is the very last time you interfere with me or with Jamie. Am I clear?’

  ‘I could hardly misunderstand. Really, Benneit, you used to be so much more polished—these years in the freezing north have stripped you of your charming veneer. Go fetch Joane and your little boy. And do have him put on his shoes. A future Duke running about barefoot is most improper.’

  Chapter Two

  ‘Look!’ Jamie bounced up and down in front of the wall.

  Jo had to admit the map was magnificent. It was not a framed painting of a map, but painted directly on the wall, and it was, as Jamie had said, enormous.

  ‘My goodness! It is as big as the world itself!’ she concurred and Jamie laughed. He had his father’s laugh and it was strange to hear that deep rumble from the little child, but like his father’s it was infectious and she smiled. It was strange what one remembered, even after so long. Though the man in the drawing room hadn’t looked capable of laughter. Was he still in such pain over Bella’s death?

  ‘No, it isn’t, silly,’ Jamie replied, reaching up as high as he could. ‘It can’t be or there wouldn’t be room for everything that is, would there?’

  ‘That is most true! You are clever!’

  ‘I know. Papa says I’m cleverest of all the Lochmores, even him!’

  ‘Does he now? Though I suppose you have to be very clever to know someone is even cleverer than you.’

  He frowned.

  ‘So is Papa cleverer than me or me than him?’

  ‘Well, you are both cleverer than I, so I certainly won’t be able to answer that question.’

  Jamie stared up at her, his eyes surprisingly warm despite their dark colour. He had Bella’s eyes, thick lashed and slightly uptilted at the corner, but she could not tell yet if the rest of his face favoured his father’s sharper-cut lines and rough male appeal or Bella’s delicate beauty. Whatever the case, with two such impressive parents he would probably be a handsome young man.

  ‘I think you are very clever,’ he said seriously, as if still working through her answer. ‘You found Muck and I have been searching for days. I shall be an explorer, you know.’

  ‘You look like an explorer. You certainly have the feet of an explorer.’

  He glanced at his feet in wonder.

  ‘I do?’

  ‘Oh, yes. I am good at seeing what people really are. Will you explore Muck?’

  The wonder became a grin.

  ‘Papa says I explore muck too much. Mud muck, not this Muck.’ He pointed to the map. ‘You said we will find Foula.’

  ‘And so we shall. Shall we sail from Muck?’

  ‘No, from home. Do you know where my home is?’

  She turned to search the map, tracing the road from Inveraray.

  ‘Here?’

  ‘A little more, no...’ He was straining to reach upwards and she picked him up. He stiffened for a moment and then adjusted to settle on her hip and poked one still-plump finger to the tip of a tiny spit of green surrounded by blue. The colour was a little faded there, as if it had been touched often. By Jamie or by a younger Benneit Lochmore?

  ‘Here.’

  He was not very heavy, though he was taller than her four-year-old cousin, Philip. His arm curved around her neck as he leaned forward to show her the point of the map and his body was snug against hers. She often held her cousins’ children. It was part of what she did—Aunt Joane picked up and put down and fetched and fixed and...

  And this was different.

  She did not pick this boy up because he expected it of her, but because he didn’t expect it at all. She saw it the moment he was brought into the drawing room that morning by his elderly nurse and the scarred, red-haired giant. He was, like his father, an island, self-sufficient and inward-looking despite his cheerfulness. Six years ago she’d noticed the same quality in Benneit Lochmore—behind the smiling charm was something still and watchful and unreachable. It had made her uncomfortable around him, as if he could see past her own armour and read her secret, resentful thoughts.

  ‘You have pretty hair,’ Jamie said, his voice dreamy.

  She almost dropped him, but his legs tightened around her waist.

  ‘I do?’

  ‘It is like the colour of the desert in my new book. Papa bought it in the great big book store and it is my favourite book and Papa reads it to me, but I can find words, too. I will explore the desert when I am big. There are camels! Do you know what a camel is?’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It is like a horse because you ride it, but it has a hill on its back and it has a sad face like Flops. Flops is my dog.’

  ‘I like his name.’

  ‘His real name is Molach, which means hairy, but I call him Flops because he does—he comes into a room and flops. Like a rug. A hairy rug.’

  ‘This I must see.’ She laughed.

  ‘Apparently, you shall,’ a much deeper voice said behind them.

  Jo stiffened, but did not let go of Jamie as she turned to face the Duke.

  He stood in the doorway and there was such animosi
ty in his eyes she had to resist hugging Jamie’s body to her like a shield. The moment he entered the drawing room she noted how much he had changed in the years since she had last seen him, but the difference between this man, with the grey beginning to show at his temples, with his jaw tense and unshaven and his eyes narrowed with resentment, and the younger man she remembered was even more pronounced, as if he had aged again in the short moments that passed. He looked like the Duke of Lochmore might have looked two hundred years ago as he prepared to enter battle to defend his domain. Which was perhaps an accurate depiction of the state of affairs as he saw it.

  She lowered Jamie.

  ‘Am I? I admit to being surprised. I wagered my aunt you would dismiss her offer.’

  ‘Had it been an offer, believe me, I would have dismissed it. Jamie, come here.’

  ‘Are you angry, Papa?’

  She met the Duke’s dark green eyes, watching as fury was called back like troops from a failed attack. This expression of cold blankness was also new to her. She thought she had taken Lochmore’s measure six years ago in London when he had fallen under Bella’s prodigious spell, but perhaps not.

  ‘Yes, Jamie. But not with you,’ he answered, smiling at his son. There was nothing feigned about the smile and it surprised her. It was also new to her, despite having seen him smile often at Bella.

  ‘With Auntie Theale? Or Cousin Joane?’ Jamie asked, half-anxious, half-curious.

  ‘Mostly with myself, Jamie. Never mind. Come say your goodbyes to Lady Theale.’

  ‘But Auntie Theale does not like feet, Papa. Shall I fetch my shoes first?’

  Lochmore inspected Jamie’s stockinged feet before looking at Jo, his long eyelashes only half-veiling the mocking challenge in his eyes.

  ‘No. I think not.’

  Chapter Three

  ‘My pudding box hurts,’ Jamie moaned, shifting on the carriage seat.

  ‘Close your eyes and try to sleep, Jamie,’ Benneit replied without any real conviction even as he nudged the small basin out from under the carriage seat with his boot in readiness for the inevitable.

  He hated leaving Jamie alone in Scotland when he came to London, but the journey itself was purgatorial. After Jamie’s first excitement, bouncing around the carriage and watching the sights of London, he became steadily more ill and miserable, which made Benneit cantankerous and miserable, which made Nurse Moody morose and miserable.

  Adding Joane Langdale to the mix had so far not achieved his aunt’s desired effect. The past few miles had passed in silence, Jamie leafing through the little book of maps Benneit had bought him at Hatchard’s, Nurse Moody dozing and snorting occasionally, and Joane Langdale gazing absently out the window. Now that disaster was nigh, Benneit contemplated taking the coward’s way out and switching with Angus who rode a hired hack alongside the carriage.

  ‘It hurts, Papa...’ Jamie moaned again and Benneit straightened, but before he reached for the basin Joane Langdale took Jamie on to her lap, turning his face towards the window with a light sweep of her hand down his ashen cheek.

  ‘That’s because you have forgotten to feed it,’ she murmured.

  ‘I don’t want food,’ Jamie cried.

  ‘Not food, silly. Stories. Your poor belly knows there are dozens and dozens passing us by outside and you haven’t offered it even one. No wonder it is upset.’

  Jamie glanced out the window. They were cresting a rise and overlooking fields and a few houses tucked against a copse of old oaks. There was nothing but bland English countryside and as a distraction it was woefully inadequate. Benneit frowned at Joane, but she either didn’t notice or ignored him.

  ‘I don’t see any stories.’ Jamie said suspiciously and Joane’s brows rose, making her eyes look even larger.

  ‘Really? What about Farmer Scrumpett’s performing pig over there?’

  Jamie leaned towards the window, his small hand catching the frame.

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Well, you just missed it, but there are other stories everywhere. See that little house over there, the white one?’

  Jamie leaned his forehead against the window, both hands splayed on the frame now.

  ‘That one?’

  ‘Exactly. That is where Mrs Minerva Understone resides with her magical mice. That is why the house is painted white, you see. Because of the cats.’

  ‘Cats don’t like white?’

  ‘Oh, no, they love it. It makes them think of milk and they come by the score.’

  ‘But cats eat mice!’

  ‘Well, that is true, but not magical mice. You see, cats chase mice because they are each trying to find their one magical mouse and they become very cross when they don’t, which is why they eat them. Did you know that cats and mice were once best of friends? And that mice were once as big as cats and twice as clever? But then an evil sorcerer cast a spell over them and made them small and meek. Well, for one day each year, the spell is lifted and all the cats remember their friends and come to Mrs Minerva Understone’s cottage and they dance and play as they once did before the spell.’

  ‘I don’t see any cats.’

  ‘That is because they only come once a year, on Summer’s Solstice.’

  Jamie frowned.

  ‘That is a sad story.’

  ‘It is both sad and isn’t. It would be sadder still if they did not have that special day when they remembered they liked each other.’

  ‘But why does this happen at this Minderda’s cottage? Is she a wizard, too?’

  ‘Oh, yes. A very powerful one. Minerva taught me a spell once, would you like to hear it?’

  ‘A real spell?’

  ‘Well, no, it is more a song about a spell. This is how it goes.’ Joane Langdale cleared her throat, lowered her chin. ‘Boil and bubble, toil and trouble, you’d best put on your shoes or I’ll shave all your stubble.’

  Jamie burst into laughter.

  ‘That wasn’t Minerva, that was Auntie Theale!’

  ‘Goodness, was it? Well, perhaps they’re secret sisters.’

  ‘Minerva sounds far too benevolent to be related to Lady Theale,’ Benneit interjected and Joane Langdale looked over at him, her eyes warm with his son’s laughter, but Jamie tugged at her sleeve.

  ‘Tell me more stories, Cousin Joane.’

  ‘Very well, but you must call me Jo. Cousin Joane doesn’t tell stories, she finds shawls and hems handkerchiefs. It is Jo who tells stories.’

  ‘Which one are you?’ Jamie asked seriously.

  ‘Some days I am one and some days I am the other. Just like some days you are an explorer and some days you are Jamie who cannot find his shoes.’

  He grinned.

  ‘I always know where they are, but some days I don’t wish to find them.’

  ‘Exactly. So today I do not wish to find Cousin Joane and so I am Jo.’

  ‘Tell me another story, Jo. If you please,’ he amended, and she shifted him on her lap so that he was once again looking out the window.

  ‘Very well, tell me what you see and I shall tell you a story about it.’

  Jamie’s hand traced up and down the window frame as he searched the landscape.

  ‘That,’ he said finally, his voice hushed. ‘That big tree near the stream.’

  ‘Oh, that tree. You are a true explorer, Jamie. Not many would have seen how wondrous that tree is...’

  Benneit leaned back, half-listening to the story that unfolded, with foxes and rabbits and a goat who sounded amazingly like Godfrey, Bella’s brother, and a weasel who sounded even more impressively like Celia, Bella’s sister. There was also a little girl who had been taken captive by a blind but kindly old mole so she could help him search for a quizzing glass lost in one of a myriad of tunnels. It was both absurd and touching and, most importantly, it held Jamie captive, his eyes searching the la
ndscape for the places she mentioned—a little hut, a grizzled old man walking a pig, a shape in the clouds.

  Finally, Jamie’s fascinated questions began to flag. He yawned and leaned back against Mrs Langdale’s shoulder, his eyelids slipping. Her voice continued, sinking into dusk, but it was only when Jamie’s body gave the distinctive little shudder that spoke of deep sleep that she stopped, her breath shifting the dark curls by his temple.

  ‘Thank you.’ Benneit’s whisper sounded rough even to him, certainly not grateful, but she smiled. Against his son’s dark hair, her profile was a carved cameo, a gentle sweep of a line that accentuated the pucker of her lower lip and the sharp curve of her chin. Stubborn. Joane Langdale might be the Uxmores’ drudge, but Jo was another thing entirely, he thought.

  Perhaps it would not be so terrible for her to stay with them until he finalised his affairs with the McCrieffs. He would be busy with his own matters and the preparations for the feud ball and she could make herself useful; anyone who could talk his son out of a bout of illness in a carriage was worth keeping around.

  Chapter Four

  ‘England is now behind us, Mrs Langdale,’ Lochmore said, his voice low. ‘Welcome to the land of the green and grey, sheep, cows, swift weddings and whisky, of which I wish I had a flask about now.’

  Jo glanced out the window, but there was not much to see. The rain was alternately pouring and spattering on the window and, despite the hot bricks at their feet, it was chilly. The cloak Celia had given her after hers was ruined dragging one of the children out of the muddy millpond was of poor material and unlined and it was not much help against the cold penetrating the carriage in gusts as they lurched over a rutted stretch of road. She leaned her hand on the pane, its surface cold and slippery. Blurry cottages slunk by, tucked low into the green. Scotland.

  She untied and pulled down the curtain, blocking the view.

  ‘Don’t.’

  She jumped at the sharp word, turning.

  ‘Tie it back. The curtain.’