by Deborah Hale
“Bravo, Claire!” cried Lady Lydiard. “I see your plan has worked perfectly!”
A bewildered silence greeted her words. One her ladyship wasted no time filling. “Claire recognized you as a fortune hunter the moment she laid eyes on you, Mr. Geddes.”
Ewan leaped to his feet. “Fortune hunter? What are ye blathering on about, woman?”
Had Lady Lydiard not heard Spencer’s revelation? Claire wondered. Or had she not understood what it meant? Whatever else Ewan Geddes might want from her, he had no use for her money.
Clearly her ladyship did not realize that, for she continued in a tone of contemptuous triumph. “Between us, we contrived that the two of you should come to Strathandrew by yourselves. Claire predicted you would pursue her, instead of Tessa, once you discovered her greater fortune. Now that my daughter is safely out of your clutches, Claire no longer needs to pretend to be taken in by your wiles.”
“I don’t believe it,” Ewan murmured, more to himself than to anyone else in the room. “I mean I do believe it. What I can’t believe is that I didn’t see it.”
He looked dazed, as if someone had clouted him hard on the head with a heavy object. Claire felt as if that had happened to her, too. His gaze fell upon her, a dark mirror that perfectly reflected her own hurt and anger.
Would he believe her if she tried to explain? Or should she salvage her pride by pretending her infatuation with him had all been a ruse?
Chapter Twenty
Claire had thought him a fortune hunter, had she? She’d strung him along to protect her sister from him?
As brutal truth battered down a cushioning wall of disbelief around his heart, Ewan felt the pressure of his temper rising, like a boiler with a stuck valve. Any minute it might explode, blowing his relations with the Talbot family to kingdom come.
And not a bad thing, either, if this was what they thought of him.
Lady Lydiard gave a haughty little sniff of triumph. “I suggest you pack your bags, Mr. Geddes, and quit this house at once. The sooner you return to America and leave this family in peace, the better it will be for all concerned.”
Perhaps it would be, for him. At last he might be able to put all this nonsense out of his mind and stop pining for things that could never be. He could turn his energy toward making a real life for himself in America, instead of just marking time by accumulating money. Before he left, though, he’d offer jobs to any of the Strathandrew staff who wanted to come and work for him.
Well, maybe not Mrs. A …
His gaze came to rest on Claire’s stricken face. Would it be better for her if he went away—the one man who’d been prepared to love her for more than her fortune?
Perhaps she read that question in his eyes, for she mustered her composure and rose to address her stepmother. “May I remind your ladyship that Mr. Geddes is here at my invitation. He will continue to be welcome at Strathandrew until I say otherwise.”
Was he hearing right? Ewan wondered. He told himself not to make too much of it. Like as not, Claire just wanted to put her toplofty stepmother in her place. Besides, why should he care whether she wanted him to go or to stay?
He’d swallowed his pride once already to confess his true feelings for her. He’d mounted a campaign to win her trust, like a new servant on approval, trying to win a permanent place in her affections. He wasn’t about to slink off across the ocean before he had a chance to thrash all this out with her. He deserved an apology, or at the very least an explanation.
“Go!” He pointed at Tessa, her mother and her fiancé, then motioned toward the door. “All of ye. Now! This is between Claire and me!”
Spencer Stanton puffed out his chest like a stag challenged by a rival. Unlike wild harts, who tended to mill about meekly while the stags fought, the two women squawked in outrage.
“He’s right.” Claire herded them toward the door. “Go, now, please!”
“I shall be waiting just outside,” Stanton assured Claire as he glared at Ewan. “If you need me, call out.”
Ewan glared back. What did the Englishman think he was going to do—sling her over his shoulder and make off with her out the window?
“That won’t be necessary,” Claire insisted. “I can take care of myself.”
For some reason those words stirred Ewan’s sympathy against his will.
“Well!” Lady Lydiard pulled a handkerchief from her reticule as she swept from the room. “To think I should live to hear myself spoken to in that tone.”
“Oh, Mother!” Tessa sounded thoroughly exasperated. She clutched Stanton’s arm as the two of them followed Lady Lydiard.
Claire closed the door behind them all with restrained but resolute force. Then, after a moment during which Ewan sensed her gathering her wits and mettle, she turned to face him.
“You know,” she said, “if you had told us all the truth about your fortune from the beginning, it would have saved everyone a great deal of bother.”
Ewan braced for battle, ready to give as good as he got. “Would it have made any difference, Claire? Or would ye just have suspected me of something worse?”
Seeing a flicker of doubt cross her face, he knew he had scored his point. Before she could rally, he strode toward her. “Is that all this week meant to you—a great deal of bother?”
When he saw the anguish in her eyes, he felt like the scoundrel and blackguard Stanton had called him.
“This has been the happiest week of my life, damn you!” She flew at him, giving the lapel of his coat a token pounding with her fist. “Don’t you dare make fun of it!”
“I’m not making fun, I swear.” His arms closed around her and held her against him. “This week has meant more to me than ye’ll ever know.”
He intended to release her if she tried to pull away. But he could not let her go without one last embrace, however fraught with conflicting feelings.
To his surprise, she made no effort to draw back.
“Be fair.” He nudged her chin with the knuckle of his forefinger. “Ye were the one who first said bother. What was I to think?”
“I don’t know, Ewan.” She shook her head. “What are either of us to think about any of this? I cannot blame you if you hate me for what I did … what I tried to do.”
Her obvious remorse and her passionate admission that this had been the happiest week of her life went a great way to appease his wounded pride and cool his hasty temper. He tried to imagine himself in her place.
“I don’t hate ye, Claire.” He pulled her back down to the chair where she’d been sitting, then sank onto the ottoman at her feet. “I know ye were only trying to protect yer sister. If I had been after her fortune, it was a good plan.”
He smiled, trying to ease the strain between them. But he could not coax an answering one from Claire.
“I know what it’s like,” he said, “when folks make up to ye just for yer money. That’s why I didn’t say anything about owning Liberty Marine. It may have been part of why I was so stuck on Tessa all over again—because she seemed to want me in spite of thinking I wasn’t well off. It never crossed my mind she might want me because she thought I wasn’t well off.”
He shook his head. “A bonny lass, yer sister, but a strange one.”
It wasn’t much of a jest, Ewan would have been the first to admit. Still, it troubled him that his words did not bring even a ghost of a smile to Claire’s lips. Had what he thought he’d found with her been so fragile that this foolish business was enough to shatter it beyond repair?
Ewan Geddes, pursued by female fortune hunters? Claire could scarcely believe it. Not that it was difficult to imagine women wanting him. But not for his money alone.
“I suppose I can see why you didn’t want to let people know the true extent of your wealth.”
Being able to understand and excuse his mild deception did not make her feel any better. Neither did the indications that he might be prepared to forgive what she had done. He was giving her credit for far more no
ble motives than she had truly acted upon. Much as she wished she could accept his pardon and move forward, she cared for Ewan too much to deceive him further.
“If your plan had occurred to me,” she admitted, “I might have been tempted to pay a visit to America in hopes of finding a man who could love me for myself alone.”
Ewan clasped her hands. He looked relieved, yet still vaguely worried. “I’ve saved ye all that trouble, haven’t I? I’ve got more money than I know what to do with, so I couldn’t possibly be after yer fortune.”
“Nor I after yours.” That was one thing she could offer him. But would it be enough?
“That’s right, eh?” His smile was so infectious, Claire could not help but return it—a wan imitation at least. “And I’m pretty sure ye didn’t take up with me just to vex her ladyship and shock all yer friends.”
“I don’t have many friends,” said Claire. Then, in case that should sound too much like pity-mongering, she quipped, “And vexing my stepmother is only a fortunate by-blow.”
Ewan laughed, though a shadow still lingered in his eyes. “Is it all settled between us, then, muirneach? I know we used to enjoy quarreling with one another when we were young. Now, I reckon we’re both wise enough to see there’s more fun to be had kissing and making up.”
He raised one hand and tapped his finger gently against her lips. “What do ye say?”
“Of course!” The words burst out of her, though not in the cheerful tone they called for. “There’s nothing I’d like better!”
“Then why do ye sound as though I’ve just tortured ye into a confession?”
“Because …” She might as well tell him the truth, before she lost her nerve or her remaining scrap of integrity. “… when I came up with that scheme to trick you into pursuing me instead of Tessa …”
“Aye? No wonder ye were so amazed when I jumped off the Marlet.”
“Yes … well, I see now that my plan was nothing but … an excuse to get you for myself.” She looked away, unable to face him.
“I reckon yer plan worked, didn’t it.” Ewan sounded more amused than anything. “Though not for quite the reasons ye intended.”
“Ewan, didn’t you hear me? I schemed to steal you away from my own sister, the way I stole that kiss you meant for her ten years ago!”
“So ye did. And I kissed ye—twice more—when I was supposed to be looking to marry yer sister. It seems to me we’ve both done wrong by poor Tessa, though I’m finding it hard to feel sorry for her. In the end, I think ye did her and me a favor by giving us some time to come to our senses.”
“You don’t think I’m quite despicable?”
“Oh, aye. Now and then. That business of flaunting yer jewelry.” Ewan clucked his tongue. “And suspecting me of being a fortune hunter in the first place—that was low.”
His teasing tone tempted Claire to smile, and to hope, in spite of herself. He angled himself around on the ottoman until she had no choice but to look him in the eye.
“Does it change how I feel about ye, though?” He pretended to weigh the matter, then flashed a roguish grin as he shook his head. “I’ve done my share of things I’m not proud of. I’ve misjudged folks. I’ve acted selfishly. I hope I’ve improved some with age, but I can’t swear to it.”
Ewan’s common sense words touched and comforted her. Whatever foolish things she might have done in the past, falling in love with him had not been one of them.
He gave a rueful shrug. “I can’t even promise I’ll become some kind of paragon once you and I are together. Though I reckon it won’t be so hard. Have ye ever noticed how much easier it is to be a better person when ye’re happy and content with yer own life?”
“And you think you could be happy and content … with me?”
“Aye. Don’t sound so doubtful about it. I reckon I could make ye happy and content with me, too, if ye’ll give me a few more weeks to court ye proper.”
“I will … on one condition.”
Ewan raised one full emphatic brow. “And what might that be?”
“Call off this ridiculous duel with Spencer?” Claire clutched his hand tighter. She could not take the chance of something so needless and foolish destroying the happiness that was finally within her grasp. “Apologize to him or whatever you have to do to make him withdraw the challenge!”
She could tell, even before she finished speaking, that her plea was falling on deaf ears.
Ewan’s forceful features clenched in a stubborn frown. “The challenge has already been thrown down and accepted. If either of us withdraws now, it means dishonor. Ye heard what names the man called me, Claire. I can’t just let that kind of thing pass. It’s a matter of—”
“I know! I know!” She jumped up and strode toward the window. “Your cursed pride. You said you have more of it than is good for you. Can’t you swallow it just this once—for me?”
She shouldn’t risk setting conditions, a part of her warned. Not when she stood on the verge of a whole new life and the kind of happiness she’d scarcely allowed herself to dream of. With a man—perhaps the one man in the world—who did not consider her too clever, too wealthy and too plain to love. The only man in the world she had ever wanted.
Ewan had already proved himself more forbearing than she deserved. She should not take any chance of frightening him off. But Ewan had also been the man who’d begun to convince her she deserved love and happiness. Even if she wasn’t perfect. Even if they disagreed or quarreled.
“Think what could happen.” Was she reminding Ewan—or herself? “If you hurt Spencer, or worse, you could go to prison. Not to mention what a catastrophe the whole thing could be for Brancasters!”
“Ah, that’s what it really all comes down to, isn’t it, Claire?” The harshness of his tone stung her. “In a choice between my pride and yer company, there’s no real contest, is there?”
She whirled about to face him. “What if it were my pride and your company? Would you throw away something you worked so hard to build, just to satisfy some dangerous whim of mine?”
“It’s more than a whim. Can ye not see that?”
She remembered the ring of pride in his voice when he’d told her about his ancestors and the history of Eilean Tioran. She recalled also the bitterness with which he’d told her of the clansmen being forced from their lands.
“I want to understand, Ewan—truly. It’s just …” Claire struggled to find words that might sway him.
He crossed the room and took her hands in his. “Will ye just trust me … please? It’ll be all right.”
“You’re certain?”
“I swear.”
Steeling herself, Claire clutched his hands tight and spoke the most difficult words she’d ever uttered to a man. “Do what you must, then. I trust you.”
“A duel!” grumbled Fergus Gowrie in the early hours of the next morning as he cleaned and polished an old pistol that had once belonged to Claire’s father. “What’s this place coming to, eh? Grown men wasting bullets on each other when there’s game in the hills that needs culled.”
In a corner of the keeper’s workshop, Ewan tried to ignore the dour litany as he practiced his grip on another pistol that Fergus had finished cleaning. He raised and lowered the weapon several times, getting his hand accustomed to its weight. Then he practiced taking aim at an imaginary target.
Finally, he sought out an uncluttered strip of floor, where he rehearsed the whole sequence of movements. So many paces, followed by a smooth turn while raising the pistol. Then aim and pretend to shoot.
“Lairds’ business, this,” Fergus muttered as he tamped a bit of oiled rag down the barrel of the pistol he was cleaning. “Ye reckon ye’re one of them, now, do ye?”
“I reckon I’m the same fellow who left here ten years ago, only with a sight more brass to his name.” Ewan lowered his pistol and turned to face the gamekeeper. “This duel wasn’t my idea, Fergus. I’d far rather shoot a grouse. Do ye think I should have backed down
when the Englishman challenged me? When he called me a scoundrel and a blackguard?”
Fergus made a vague rumbling noise deep in his throat. His scowl darkened further as he polished the pistol with fierce energy.
“It wasn’t my choice to leave Strathandrew ten years ago, either.” Ewan returned to his practicing … pace, stop, turn, aim, fire. All the while he continued speaking, as if to himself. “It was forced on me because I didn’t have the power to stand up to them. Now that I do, I won’t give it up.”
“Humph!” Fergus held out the second pistol to Ewan. “See which balance ye like the best. And mind how ye hold the thing when ye fire. It’ll buck like a bad-tempered pony.”
“It wasn’t my choice to go,” Ewan repeated. “But I’m not sorry I went, and I’m not sorry I made something of myself.”
The gamekeeper gave no sign he’d heard … or cared. But while Ewan compared the two pistols for balance and grip, he muttered, “I reckon ye’ll need somebody to see that this duel business is all done proper?”
“Aye. I hadn’t thought of that. A second it’s called. Are ye willing to be mine?”
Fergus gave a curt nod. “If ye’ll have me.”
“Oh, aye.” Ewan set down the pistols and extended his hand to the gamekeeper. “If I’m still here next week, do ye reckon we could scare up some grouse?”
Fergus mulled over the question, then nodded again.
A few hours later, on a level bit of ground overlooking the loch, Ewan faced Spencer Stanton, while the Talbot women watched from a distance.
Lady Lydiard looked altogether shocked and offended by the whole proceedings, for which she clearly blamed Ewan. Tessa appeared stirred by the drama of it all, with little regard for the possibility that one or both men might be injured. Pale and hollow-eyed, Claire looked worried enough for both of them.
“It’ll be all right.” Ewan nudged her cheek with his knuckle, trying to coax a smile from her. “Ye’ll see.”
“I know. I trust you.” She spoke in a flat tone, as if reciting a difficult passage of scripture she’d taken great pains to memorize.