“You are quiet, Mrs. Maitland,” Max said, as the fiddlers started up in three-quarter time. “Thinking married thoughts, I hope?”
“Not only married thoughts,” Jeannie said. “Family thoughts.” Over by the buffet, Niall and Liam were arguing about whisky with Elias. The wives, Violet, Louise, Julie and Megan, were sitting in a circle at the foot of the stairs, while Dinty was in a rapt discussion with Cousin Declan about—from what Jeannie had overheard—hanging flower baskets.
Maura, who’d flown over with Elias and Violet, was sitting next to Hugh, getting a lesson on the rudiments of a bodhran. The current plan was for Maura to spend her winters in Scotland, and then return to Maryland to help Violet and Elias in their greenhouses.
“My people have become your people too,” Jeannie said.
“Your son has become my son.”
“Do you think Morgan and Maguire will see the ghosts?” Jeannie asked, snuggling closer.
“I think they have eyes only for each other. I know what that feels like.”
So did Jeannie. “I hope they see the ghosts, Max, and I hope they see them soon.”
“Not too soon.” Max sneaked a kiss to Jeannie’s temple. “As long as Morgan’s keeping Maguire pre-occupied, we can restore our castle in peace. I think we should advertise this place as the Highland Happily Ever After destination. What do you think?”
Elias would have fits to see his castle with that name. “We have time to work on it.”
“Years,” Max said, gathering her closer. “The rest of our lives, and possibly even beyond.”
Jeannie loved the sound of that, and loved the look in Max’s eyes when he said it. “The rest of our lives, and even beyond, but the Highland Happily Ever After destination has a nice ring to it.”
The fiddles lilted along, Morgan and Maguire strolled the parapets, Maura declared Hugh and Fergus her honorary cousins, and thus did Brodie Castle acquire a name of which even its famously romantic ghosts approved, (though Maguire took some convincing).
Greetings, reading’ buddies!
www.example.com
I hope you enjoyed Max and Jeannie’s happily ever after, because I certainly had fun writing and researching it. If you missed the earlier books in the series, we started off with Tartan Two-Step (my first romance set in Montana), followed by Elias In Love (a return to Damson Valley, of Sweetest Kisses fame).
If you’re wondering who all these other cousins are (Liam, Niall, Declan, Dunstan), I can suggest the Highland Holidays Holidays novella quartet, which is available as an ebook bundle from my graceburrowes.com website store (or as duets from the major platforms in both ebook and print). I’ve included a little excerpt from Kiss and Tell, the first story in that group, below.
As much as I adore all things Scottish, I know my readers also love a good historical romance. My next Regency will be A Truly Perfect Gentleman, book six in the True Gentleman series. Excerpt below.
The big news on my writing horizon, though, is the launch of my new Rogues to Riches series, which begins with My One and Only Duke, coming out in November (on Election Day, as it happens).
So many titles, so many happily ever afters! If you’d like to get word of the new releases, pre-orders, and deals, then I suggest following me on Bookbub. In my newsletter, I go into more detail about what’s coming up, what’s just come out, and any special events on my calendar.
Happy reading!
Grace Burrowes
* * *
Kiss and Tell (from Highland Holidays ebook bundle, also paired with Dunroamin’ Holiday in Two Wee Drams of Love)
Attorney Dunstan Cromarty’s back has gone out on him when the only person who can help is the very attorney opposing him in a nasty Damson Valley divorce. Jane Deluca drives him home, and drives him a bit barmy… or more than bit.
* * *
Please, Almighty Merciful God, Dunstan thought, do not let Wallace be playing turd hockey on the kitchen floor when I hobble in the door with Jane DeLuca at my side.
“You haven’t passed out on me, have you?” Jane asked as she shut the truck off. “Your eyes are closed.”
“I’m gathering my strength.” For any number of ordeals.
“Don’t you move until I’ve rappelled down the cliff side,” she said, scrambling out of the driver’s seat.
She was so petite, she had to more or less jump out of the truck, while Dunstan… He moved one leg, then the other. He paused to let the agony bounce around in his body, then used the handles to haul himself sideways, and so it went, one indignity, one torment at a time.
Jane shouldered their various bags, while Dunstan caught sight of Wallace sitting in the living room window, a marmalade ball of gloating feline.
“Oh, you have a kitty! What’s his name?”
“Fat Bastard. The door’s nae locked.”
She opened the door and stood back so Dunstan could totter past her, then she hauled their bags in and closed the door. “Is an unlocked door prudent? You’re fairly isolated here.”
“I’m hoping somebody will come by and steal the cat.” Who, in an unprecedented display of survival instinct, had neither recently used the litter box, nor undertaken any hockey games that Dunstan could see.
It being a hallmark of Wallace’s hockey seasons that cat litter was sprinkled from one end of the downstairs to the other.
“I love these old farm houses,” Jane said, shrugging out of her coat. “They have charm.”
Dunstan stretched out a casual hand and braced himself against the nearest wall, a compromise between his tattered dignity and the urge to crumple in a screaming fetal heap three steps inside the door.
“These old farm houses have heating bills. If you’d like to take my truck back to town, I can have one of the Knightleys give me a lift tomorrow.”
He didn’t attempt a smile, neither did he try to get to the sofa, a good five yards, three cursing fits, and four prayers off across the living room. Carpeted yards, though, which would make crawling ever so much more comfy.
“I’m not going anywhere,” Jane said, and damn the woman, she spoke with the patient amusement of a small female with a perfectly functional sacroiliac. “The first order of business should be to get you into a hot shower, if your bad back is anything like my grandpa’s. Is your bedroom upstairs?”
“I’ll be adorning the sofa for a wee bit before attempting anything so ambitious as a shower.” Though a shower…His muscles stopped pounding on his tailbone long enough to beg for that hot shower even before he opened his last bottle of twenty-five-year-old Glenmorangie single malt.
“So you can’t make it up the stairs. Does this level have a bathroom?”
He didn’t like this line of questioning one bit. “Aye.”
“Then what are you waiting for?”
Disaster for Scotland, to put the situation mildly. “I’m waiting for the floor to open up and swallow me whole. I’ll not allow you to undress me, Jane DeLuca.”
Not like this, please God. Not like this.
“So we’ll put you in the shower with your clothes on. Would you leave me to suffer when my back hurt so badly I couldn’t stand the thought of sneezing again?”
He crossed himself with the hand that wasn’t anchored to the wall. “You’re a cruel woman to mention such a thing. There’ll be no sneezing of any kind for the foreseeable future.”
And not to put too fine a point on it, his diet would be rich in fiber, once he could stand in the kitchen long enough to pour milk on cereal. Wallace chose then to strop himself across Dunstan’s legs.
“He knows I canna kick him.”
Jane inserted herself under Dunstan’s outstretched arm, which was about three seconds away from shaking. “Lean on me. Anybody who names a cat Fat Bastard has already abused the animal. I assume the facilities are down the hall?”
Miles away, of course. Why didn’t old farm houses have bathrooms in the foyer?
“Second door on the left.”
He tried n
ot to lean on her—and failed. Jane was surprisingly sturdy, though, and they covered the distance to the bathroom with only a bit more swearing. Then she abandoned him—abandoned him—with an admonition to get off as much of his clothing as he could while she retrieved sweats from his bedroom upstairs.
Sometimes, when his back went out, within twenty minutes, he could tell he was due for only a light penance. A dose of painkiller, time lying prone, a movie or two, and all could be forgiven, provided he took no chances for several days.
This was shaping up to be a less accommodating episode.
Dunstan undressed in the bathroom, his clothes piled into a heap at his feet, for he could not bend down to hang them up and couldn’t balance on one foot long enough to hook them with his toes—he knew all the tricks. He could manage to brush his teeth and tend to other standing rituals, and by the time he heard a tap on the door, he was sporting only a towel about his hips.
“It’s nae locked.”
“Good,” Jane said, pushing the door closed behind her. “I found sweats, but wouldn’t a kilt be easier? You don’t have to step into it.”
She brandished a black work kilt Dunstan wore when waging his endless war with the yard.
“That’s a fetching ensemble you’re wearing yourself, Ms. DeLuca.” For she’d changed into gray sweats and a green T-shirt that said If it takes three years to get there, it had better be one helluva bar.
“I always have gym clothes with me,” she said, turning on the bathtub taps and holding her hand under the gushing stream.
Maybe she frequently found herself sleeping in places other than her own bed? Not a cheering thought.
She fiddled with the taps, and soon, water streamed from the shower head in steamy abundance. The difficulty before Dunstan daunted him: He had to raise each foot high enough to step into the shower and shift his weight without falling.
“In you go,” Jane said, showing no indication of absenting herself. “If you think I’ll let you risk a slip-and-fall now, you’re dumber than I thought.” She stepped closer and put her arms around Dunstan’s bare torso. “Lean on me, and no heroic measures, because I’ll probably topple with you, and I will sue you if I injure anything other than my pride.”
He leaned, he tottered, he leaned some more, and finally, finally, found his way to the soothing, hot spray. Jane whisked his towel off and flipped the Royal Stewart plaid shower curtain closed in the same nanosecond, but the bliss of the hot water was so great, Dunstan almost didn’t care what she saw, or what she thought of what she saw.
Almost.
* * *
From Kiss and Tell in the Highland Holidays novella collection, available in e-book from the graceburrowes.com website store, as or novella duets (Two Wee Drams of Love, Must Love Scotland) in print and e-book from all major retail platforms.
* * *
Read on for an excerpt from my upcoming Regency, A Truly Perfect Gentleman (Sept. 25 2018)
Beatitude, Lady Canmore, has no intention of marrying again. Grey Birch Dorning, Earl of Casriel, must marry well and soon. Alas the course of true love sometimes does stumbling down a woodland path to end up with unlikely declarations from unsuitable parties…
* * *
The sun shone at the same angle as it had a moment ago, the water on the lake rippled beneath the same breeze, and yet, Grey’s world had endured a seismic shock.
“You would like to have an affair with me,” he said slowly. Then, to make sure he hadn’t indulged in wishful hearing, “An intimate affair?”
Lady Canmore glowered up at him. “Is there another kind?”
“I would not know.”
She stalked along at his side. “You’ve never enjoyed the company of a woman outside the bounds of wedlock?”
“By London standards, I am retiring when it comes to those sorts of amusements. I have reason to be.”
Lady Canmore took him by the hand and dragged him down a barely visible side trail. For a small woman, she was strong.
“The hermit’s folly is this way,” she said. “What do you mean, you have reason to be? To be a monk? I have been a monk for the past several years. Monkdom loses its charms. If you think that makes me fast or vulgar or unladylike, then I think such an opinion makes you a hypocrite. There’s not a man in Mayfair who doesn’t indulge his appetites to the limit of his means, and a few beyond their means. Roger told me swiving is all many men think about.”
“I most assuredly think about it.” That admission was not polite. Not gentlemanly. Not… what Grey had intended to say.
Her ladyship came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the trail. “You do? You think about it with me?”
Oh, how that smile became her, how that light of mischief transformed her gaze. “You have broached this topic, my lady, but are you certain you want to pursue it in present company?” A gentleman had to ask, for the discussion would soon pass the point where her overture could be dismissed as a jest or flirtation.
“You haunt me,” Lady Canmore replied, clearly not a disclosure that pleased her. “Men I’ve been dancing with for the past eight years now strike me as lacking stature, though I myself am short. When I arrive at a gathering, I look for you, even though all the way to the venue, I tell myself I must not do that. You and I are engaged in a semblance of a friendship, I remind myself, only a friendship. Which reminds me. Are there any new bets?”
She resumed walking. Grey fell in step beside her.
“Your strategy has been successful,” he said. “No new wagers, save for one that involves my brother Sycamore. His notoriety has made him Peacock in Residence at my town house, and he wasn’t a pattern card of humility to begin with.”
Lady Canmore took a turn off the path that Grey would have missed. She knew where she was going, while he was increasingly lost.
“I don’t want to be your mistress,” she said. “I want to be your lover.”
Grey almost sagged against the nearest oak. “Do you frequently make such announcements in the same tone of voice most people reserve for discussing the Corsican, long may he rot in memory?”
The way ahead opened into a clearing that held a small three-sided stone edifice on a slight rise. The surrounding woods had been carefully manicured to give the folly three views. One looked out over the lake, another toward Brantmore House. The third faced the woods sloping away to the east.
A circular portico framed the interior of the folly, where benches provided a private place to rest.
“I am not happy with myself for becoming interested in you,” Lady Canmore said. “But there it is. You are kind, gentlemanly, and a fine male specimen. Your flirtation is original without being prurient or presumptuous. You dance well. You humor Aunt Freddy. You love your siblings. You are not afraid of hard, physical work. In fact, I think you need it to thrive.”
She paced before the folly, listing attributes that made Grey’s heart ache. She saw him, saw him clearly, and appreciated who and what she saw.
“You are the comfort of your aunt’s declining years,” Grey said, “a ferociously loyal friend, a minister’s daughter who has learned how to manage polite society without being seen to do more than smile and chat. If I had to choose one word to describe you, that word would be courageous. I can’t help but watch you, even when you dance with others, because you have such inherent grace. I see you walking away, and I know I have nothing to offer you, but I want to call you back, every damned time.”
She came to a halt before him. “My lord, what are we to do?”
“My name is Grey, and as for what to do… I would like to kiss you.”
* * *
Order your copy of A Truly Perfect Gentleman!
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Scotland to the Max Page 29