Once Again, My Laird

by Angeline Fortin

  Implying what? Georgiana bit her lip to hide a smile. Well, if this earl were anything in temperament to the fellow who opened the door, she wouldn’t be surprised he didn’t have many visitors.

  The possibility of another surly welcome definitely didn’t make traveling an hour back the way they’d come seem worth the time or discomfort. In fact, she wouldn’t bother to mention it to Bernie. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

  Satisfied with her plan, Georgiana called for Baird again and was pleased when he returned with nothing more than his muzzle dampened. As a reward, she spent a few moments throwing a stick for him until Bernie emerged from the castle.

  With her outriders mounting up once more and their maids settling back into the second carriage, she took her coachman’s hand as he helped her back up into the ducal coach.

  “Where to next, your grace?” he asked.

  “Should we go on to Roseyth, Bernie?” she asked over her shoulder. “We might be able to catch a ferry and be in Edinburgh before dinner.”

  “Oh, no,” Bernie protested. “Angus, the delightful gentleman who answered the door, told me where we might find the earl. It’s not far at all.”

  Georgiana hung her head, biting back a resounding curse. “Delightful?”

  “He’s actually a rather charming chap once he gets to talking. Excellent news, the earl is unmarried so we needn’t worry about another awkward incident. And his manor is just an hour or so back up the road. ”

  “Do tell,” she sighed.

  It seemed there was just an hour or so worth of conversation to be made. She hoped the welcome was warm enough to offset the wasted effort.

  Chapter Ten

  Glen Cairn Manor

  Glenrothes, Scotland

  An hour or so later

  “The only duchess his lordship kent is Her Grace of Roxburghe, lass.”

  Georgiana rolled her eyes and stepped back from the front door. Given his similarly balding head and obtuse nature, the keeper of the entry at Glen Cairn Manor must be closely related to the one at Raven’s Craig Castle.

  Alas, no warm welcome.

  “Care to see if there’s any charm buried in this one as well?” she muttered under her breath to Bernie as she tucked her calling card back into her reticule for the second time that day. “Be my guest. I’m going to fetch Baird.”

  “I thought the dog was supposed to fetch for you. Not the other way around.”

  With a sharp nudge of her elbow to her friend’s side, Georgiana left Bernie to pry any further information regarding the elusive earl from the brusque butler. Not that it would be worth the bother. She felt certain they were on a wild goose chase at this point. Although the ancient castle on the Firth of Forth might have held enough romanticism to spawn a line or two of verse, this newer sprawling manor was too…well, too new and too aristocratic to house the Mal she remembered. He loved history, ancestry. The ambiance of ancient Scotland.

  She removed her bonnet and let it dangle from her fingertips as she strode down the drive.

  “Do you need assistance, your grace?” one of her outriders asked as she passed.

  “No, thank you, Paul,” she said. “I’m just looking for Baird.”

  “I’d be happy to fetch him for you.”

  She smiled. “That’s quite all right. Why don’t you have everyone head into town and secure some rooms at one of the inns we passed? Or all of them if need be to make space for us all. I’ve had enough traveling for one day and I’m sure they would appreciate an early stop.”

  The guard beamed. “Yes, your grace. We would.”

  With a nod, she waved him away. “Splendid. Go on then. William will see us there safely, I’m sure.”

  He bowed and left with a bounce in his step as he went to share the news. Amused, she walked along around the side of the manor and called for Baird. A streak of gray bounded between two outbuildings. Into the stable and out again, around the yard and back inside. His joy for a few more moments of freedom from the confines of the carriage was obvious.

  It’d been a long journey for all of them. She lifted her face to the afternoon sun and shut her eyes, absorbing the warmth. Perhaps they’d head back to England at a less rigorous pace, one her stomach might tolerate with more aplomb. They could travel at their leisure and stop to enjoy the parts of England she’d never visited before. York, Richmond. Or maybe, they might charter a ship to take them south more expeditiously.

  Or perchance, she might not return to Bath straightaway. Instead she might explore the Continent. She’d never been. With the war and unrest settled, it might be a fine time to go sightseeing. As Maisie argued, she had nothing to hold her down now that her children were old enough to—

  With a jubilant bark, Baird dashed out of the stables. Long fur rippled back from his face as he ran toward her, revealing his shining black eyes and lolling pink tongue. She laughed at the sight and bent to pet him.

  A man followed him out of the barn and her smile froze. As did her heart. Her breath.

  As did he. He stood as if carved from granite, tall and bronzed in the sun. His windswept mahogany hair glinted with strands of auburn in the afternoon light. The sight was at once so familiar and so unreal; she closed her eyes, blocking it away.

  “Georgie?”

  Just that single word. The hush of the G. The guttural roll of the brogue over the R. Soft. Husky. As familiar to her as if she’d heard it yesterday, tugged at her heartstrings. Her throat tightened involuntarily.

  She opened her eyes to find him striding toward her. The sleeves of his linen shirt were rolled up to his elbows, the collar open to bare his neck and a hint of his chest. The muted orange, brown, and green of his hunting plaid flapped against his thighs with each step. Georgiana absorbed every nuance as he neared. His hair was longer than he’d worn it before, and a few days’ growth of beard darkened his jaw. There was a fine threading of gray at his temples, a few lines fanning from the corners of his eyes. On one hand, he looked nothing like the young man she remembered.

  Yet she would have recognized him anywhere.

  He stopped a few paces away, his unfathomable amber gaze fixed beneath thick dark brows.

  “Georgie?”

  Her gaze fell to his full lips as he mouthed the word, and she swallowed painfully. “Yes.”

  His long step must have eaten the space remaining between them quickly since the next thing she knew, the radiant heat of his body warmed her. His breath caressed her cheek as he stared down at her. He seemed taller now, so close to her. Broader across the shoulders. Thicker through the chest. Overwhelming in the tightly leashed power he exuded.

  As he’d always been.

  Unwittingly, she swayed toward him, helpless to stop herself. Gads, his magnetism had not faded over time. Every facet of her yearned to be near him.

  As if he, too, sensed the pull, he closed the few inches left between them. The motion jerky and hesitant but undeniable. Like a tether drawing them together.

  He framed her face in his hands and Georgiana jolted at the touch, cool against her hot cheeks. His thumbs skimmed along her cheekbones. Trembling. Or was that her?

  His thumb stroked again, catching a tear she hadn’t realized she shed. She swayed toward him once more with a long, shuddering inhale and closed her eyes, savoring the scent of him. The longing for him in that moment was more poignant than the sum of the twenty years before.

  His lips brushed hers, the simplest, slightest kiss, and time froze. Fell back two decades. All the nerves and anxiety faded. The regret gone. All that remained was the flood of a thousand dreams. The rush of love. The longing of a thousand nights.

  Her blood pounded in her ears. His heart beat against hers. Stars burst behind her eyelids like fireworks and she realized she’d forgotten to breathe.

  Or he’d stolen her breath. Nothing had changed. “Mal,” she sighed, softening against him. “Oh, Mal.”

  He stiffened, then tore away and her eyes popped open. His rugg
ed features hardened as he stepped back, fisting his hands at his sides.

  “What are ye doing here?”

  No husky Georgie now or even lass. Georgiana swallowed the knot in her throat. If he’d had this reaction first, it wouldn’t have come as a surprise at all. This was what she’d expected. Anticipated. But after that kiss…

  Tears burned behind her eyes, though she refused to let them fall. She’d known this was never going to go well.

  “I wanted to…I came to see you.”

  Mal laughed. Not the sweet chuckle of affection she’d once known. Not the teasing laugh of camaraderie over a shared amusement or the husky pleasure of a sated lover.

  This laugh was harsh. Bitter. Much as the hard glint lighting his dark gaze.

  “And so ye have. Now ye can leave.”

  “Mal…”

  “Ye made yer choice long ago, Duchess,” he ground out with an implacable snarl. “Ye made it for us both. Now go.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Glen Cairn Manor

  August 1821

  Mal watched the carriage until it lumbered through the gated drive. The flash of sunlight against the gilded ducal arms flashed so brightly he saw the dark inverse of it emblazoned behind his lids each time he blinked. At least this time he recognized straightaway the ghost vision for what it was. Unlike his reaction when he’d first seen Georgie outside his stables with her vivid red hair bright in the sun, her brilliant smile and laughter at the antics of the huge mutt running toward her.

  For a moment, he’d thought it all an illusion, a figment of years past. And bugger it if he hadn’t reacted as if all the years between hadn’t passed. Just one glance at her and he’d stood motionless as time rewound and replayed in his mind. All the laughter and joy. Each kiss. Every time she sighed his name. He couldn’t have stopped himself from touching her, kissing her, if his life had depended on it. Then his name had fallen from her lips, an echo of days past to shatter the illusion, and it had all come rushing back with heartrending déjà vu.

  One kiss. One moment of having his soul torn from him and he’d been a callow, optimistic fool again.

  Bluidy hell.

  Mal kicked at the gravel drive, catching sight of the straw bonnet where she must’ve dropped it when…

  When what? He’d kissed her senseless? Barked at her like a snarling cur? She’d fled from him as if he were one of the hounds of hell?

  Bluidy, bluidy hell.

  “Was that who I think it was?”

  The question was accompanied by the crunch of gravel and shuffling step Mal should have heard coming if his mind weren’t numbed as it was. He spared his old friend the slightest acknowledgement. His gaze remained fixed on the vehicle as it shrunk to a speck in the distance.

  “My God, she hisnae changed at all, has she?”

  No, she hadn’t, he thought, though he didn’t yet trust his voice to speak. He bent and scooped up the bonnet, turning the frivolous thing over in his hands. Neither had her taste in millinery. Och, she might have a few more years on her. So did he. He hadn’t seen the signs when he first caught sight of her. When he’d thought her a fantasy, a vision from the past. Only now in reflection could he distinguish the differences. Even so, the lass he’d known hadn’t seemed changed at all by the two decades betwixt this and their last meeting.

  He hadn’t been so fortunate.

  Aye, and whose fault was that?

  The straw hat collapsed with a crisp, grassy crunch between his hands.

  “That was a quick visit.” Rabbie Lindsay was ever one for wry understatement. “Did she no’ want to stay for supper at least?”

  Mal said nothing, but his silence was answer enough.

  “Ye sent her off, dinnae ye?” Lindsay laughed mirthlessly. “Ye really are a complete dunderheid.”

  “Haud yer wheesht, ye skinny malinky longlegs.”

  Lindsay tapped his cane against the wooden peg extending below his knee-length kilt. “One leg, if ye’ll recall. And is that any way to talk to your superior officer?”

  “We’re no’ in the military any longer.” Mal flung the ruined hat aside and stomped back toward the stables, leaving his friend to limp behind.

  Mal returned to the mount he’d been about to unsaddle when Georgie’s sheepdog had charged into the stable and distracted him. He and Lindsay must have gotten back from their ride right before she’d arrived. He was surprised he hadn’t seen the coach approaching the manor. The grandiose carriage with its gilded trimming was hard to miss.

  “No’ that ye e’er listened to me when we were,” Lindsay reminded with a snort as he caught up with him, “or ye’d ne’er gotten yerself into this mess to begin wi’. And would ye be any happier for it?”

  Mal refused comment and reached below the gelding’s belly to release the cinch. His unyielding silence didn’t stop his friend from continuing. “What did she want here anyway?”

  “I dinnae ken,” he answered then shrugged, yanking the saddle off the horse’s back and flinging it over a nearby rack with more force than the task required. The blanket followed in short order. “She said she’d come to see me.”

  No, wanted. She’d said wanted. Why now? Why after all these years?

  “Dinnae ye ha’ yer own mount to be seeing to?” he snarled, in hopes of derailing any further questions.

  Lindsay snorted and spat on the hay in disgust. “And ye let her say nothing more, I suppose? What were ye thinking? Naught more than yer resentment, I’d wager. Och, mon, ye’ve been stewing in its juices for far too long. If ye were a hind of venison, ye’d be too tough to digest and so is this interminable bitterness. Bugger it, yer a rotted auld bastard. Ye should do what I ken yer longing to and go after the lass.”

  Mal bore the lecture stoically but couldn’t hold back a sour laugh at his final suggestion. “And what?” he asked as he commenced a brisk rubdown of his horse’s sweaty back. “Have her kick me a good one in the bollocks again?”

  His old friend tapped his cane against his false leg again, from habit more than a need to point out the missing limb. “Figuratively speaking? Aye, if that’s what it takes. At the verra least, failing means yer playing, Mal.”

  “Nay, thanks. I’ll spare myself the pain.”

  Lindsay said nothing and Mal couldn’t resist looking at him. “What is it?”

  “Do ye recall what ye told me aboot yer father’s funeral?”

  Rabbie hadn’t attended Mal’s father’s funeral four years before. He’d still been in the army at that point. Still had both legs. Nevertheless, he hadn’t missed much as practically no one else had been in attendance either. Not even Mal’s mother had come, only returning to Raven’s Craig after her estranged spouse was buried, well and good. Only Mal, his father’s solicitor, and the gravedigger to hear the preacher’s sermon about Fergus MacKintosh’s goodness in life.

  Not that there’d been much of that either.

  He’d been a wretched auld fook.

  It’d been a miserable affair.

  His friend again didn’t wait for a response before he went on. “Ye said ye dinnae want to end up like that. Alone and miserable.”

  Yet, he was well on his way. No one to love him. No one to mourn him. He was becoming just like his sire. A rotted auld bastard just as Lindsay had said.

  After his brothers had died and his mother called him home, his ill temper had only gotten worse. He’d spent too many years under the influence of the man who’d molded Mal in his image. Two churlish arses mourning what they’d lost without embracing what they did have.

  He didn’t need Lindsay to spell it out for him and his friend, bright enough to realize it, offered softly, “She’s a widow, ye ken? Available.”

  Mal shot him an incredulous stare. “How the hell do ye ken that?”

  He shrugged, tapping his cane again. “I keep in touch wi’ others, even if ye dinnae. Word gets around. Her husband died two years past, if it matters to ye.”

  The thought pleased him more th
an it should, which only made him feel a worse sort of bugger than he’d been a moment before. Deep down, he didn’t truly wish to revel in any pain Georgie might suffer. Revenge wasn’t what he sought, despite the fact that she might deserve a dram or too for her past actions. When he’d dismissed her moments before, it hadn’t been on his agenda at all. Despite how it might appear in retrospect.

  “It disnae matter.”

  “Of course it does.”

  “It disnae,” Mal ground out again.

  “Naught but a pigheaded eijit.” Lindsay shook his head. “Do ye think anything she might say now would make ye more of a crabbit than ye already are? Go after her, my friend.”

  Lindsay’s advice sent a sizzle of reckless impulsiveness through him. Urging him to do just that. To track her down, yank her from that flashy coach, and kiss her with all the frenzied passion and frustration that had been boiling in his blood since the second he’d touched her. To pour out two decades of resentment and anger. He wouldn’t give in to it though. He’d never been impulsive. Never given to rash action, not beyond that one period in his life.

  Aye, and look where that got him.

  Chapter Twelve

  Bath, England

  April 1800

  Mal left No. 3 of the Crescent in a high temper. He’d known dukes could be impossibly condescending and arrogant, but this was outrageous. He’d been tempted to draw his saber and poke a hundred holes in Wharton’s overinflated sense of self.

  In the weeks since he’d proposed to Georgie, a large portion of each day had been spent trying to gain her father’s approval, hoping to establish some acknowledgement that Mal was a satisfactory suitor, or at least a tolerable human being before attempting to beg for his daughter’s hand in marriage. Days of ingratiating himself. Weeks of kowtowing without acquiring the smallest shift of his goodwill.

  Frustrations running high, today Mal had come straight out and asked for permission to wed Georgie. Formally and with all the gentlemanly posturing he could muster.