Making himself pull in a breath, he put the firewood back in its stack and straightened. “See to the casks,” he ordered, and turned on his heel.
Boyd sat in the office, bills of lading, orders, invoices, and shipping schedules spread out before him on the desk. “The two new lads fled past the window a moment ago. They werenae on fire, though, so I reckoned…” The Kentucky Hills foreman trailed off as he looked up. As his gaze found Callum the half smile dropped from his face, and he stood. “What the devil’s happened?”
Did he look different? He felt different. He couldn’t even put a name to the thoughts rumbling through his mind, except that he wanted to hit something. Badly. “That letter from B something. Did ye burn it?”
“Nae. I’ll do it now if ye want, b—”
“Give it to me.”
Without another word Boyd dug it out from the desk and handed it over. His jaw clenched so hard he was surprised the bones didn’t crack, Callum looked down at it. Addressed to him, aye, from one Bartholomew Harvey, Esq. A solicitor. A very English one, from the name.
Slicing his finger through the wax seal, he unfolded it. “Dear sir,” he read to himself. “This is my fourth attempt at reaching you. As I noted in my previous correspondence, I have been charged with informing you of the unfortunate death of Ian MacCreath, Earl Geiry. I will not discuss matters of inheritance, etc., herein, but request that you contact me immediately so we may conclude this business. I shall make one more attempt hereafter, but be aware that if unsuccessful, I will be forced to report to the Crown that you also are deceased, and the Geiry title will pass to your cousin, James Sturgeon. Respectfully, Bartholomew Harvey, Esq.”
Every word pounded like a hammer into his soul. “‘Conclude this business,’” he growled. “Aye, we bloody well will.”
“Callum?” Boyd asked, his brow furrowed.
“Ye’ll see to the business, Rory,” he said, moving to shove the missive into his coat pocket and then remembering he’d left the garment in the barrel tent. He would need it, and a few other things he could throw into his saddlebags. A trunk or two could follow.
“Aye, of course I will. What’s afoot?”
“I’m going back to Scotland,” he returned, striding out of the room with Rory on his heels. “I swore an oath to kill a man. Time for me to see to it.” He’d known ten years ago, damn it all, and he’d fled. He’d followed his brother’s orders rather than stay put and keep an eye on damned Dunncraigh. And now somehow the duke had removed Ian from the equation. And so now the duke and anyone else involved would pay in blood, if he had to burn down the bloody Highlands to do it.
Chapter Two
“Ye,” Callum barked, jabbing a finger at the thin young man with the crisply starched cravat who stood on the dock. “Crosby and Hallifax?”
“I said to put another rope on that net!” the lad yelled up at the sailors who loaded heavy barrels into a net. “Nae a soul gets to drink any of that fine whisky if it spills all over the docks!” That dealt with, he faced Callum. “Can I help ye? I’m in the middle of someaught. These barrels need to get racked at the warehouse before they all turn to vinegar.”
“Are ye Crosby and Hallifax?”
The fellow frowned. “I am their representative, aye,” he replied, then took an abrupt step backward, nearly falling over a pile of buckets, as Waya loped down the gangplank to join them on the dock. “Sweet Mary! Is that a—”
“A wolf,” Callum interrupted. “Aye. Take me to yer offices.”
“I…” He cleared his throat. “I can point ye in the correct direction, but I’m to count whisky barrels and oversee their unloading. Kentucky Hills Distillery is our largest client, and I willnae—”
“Fuck the whisky,” Callum retorted, pushing against four damned weeks of nothing to do but pace the deck of The Rooster and decide whether a rifle ball or a knife would be better suited to end Dunncraigh. As eager as he was to bury the man, though, and as sure as he was that Ian MacCreath hadn’t drowned, he needed to be even more certain who, exactly, had murdered his brother. He could name at least four additional suspects even without having been in Britain for ten years. All of which meant that he needed information. Quickly and accurately. “Crosby and Hallifax. Now.”
The younger man blinked. “I’ve a duty, sir. Inventory figures, profits, and losses dunnae record themselves. I’ve nae missed an ounce in a shipment in two years, and I willnae do so now. So allow me to point ye on yer way, or go find the offices yer own self.”
Callum tilted his head. Most of his profits came from America these days, but the Highlands couldn’t get enough of his used barrels for him to keep them stocked. All that, however, remained beside the point. He had a task to see to. Nothing else mattered, up to and including Kentucky Hills Distillery and its shipment of whisky.
“Perhaps we need an introduction,” he said, taking a step closer and offering his hand. “Callum MacCreath. The man who pays a large portion of yer salary.”
“I … Oh. Oh, sweet Mary and Joseph.” The fellow fumbled and dropped his clipboard, bent to pick it up, then thought twice about that and straightened again to grab Callum’s hand and attempt to shake it off his arm. “Mr. MacCreath. I had nae idea ye were on yer way here.”
“I didnae expect to be,” Callum returned, retrieving his hand and whistling Waya back to heel when she began stalking a crowd of seagulls after a fish head. Beyond the wolf a woman screeched and fell into the arms of her companion. No one had seen a wolf in the Highlands for over half a century. He meant to make good use of that particular fact. “Now walk.”
“Of … of course. This way.” Handing the clipboard to The Rooster’s first mate, the young man headed off the crowded dock, weaving through the hordes of people and crates and animals that congregated at the harbor. “I’m Kimes. Dennis Kimes,” he said, looking back over his shoulder.
As they continued up the street a light rain began, the deepening mist obscuring the far side of the harbor and the tops of the masts behind them. Ah, Scotland. Icy pricks dug into his skin through his coat, but Callum refused to acknowledge the cold. Every Highlander knew the weather was as it was, and even after ten years away his blood hadn’t thinned enough for him to give in to the shivers.
“What brings ye back here, Mr. MacCreath, if ye dunnae mind me asking?” Kimes ventured, turning a corner to move directly away from the harbor and up the slight hill. A selection of houses and shops, but mostly shipping offices, lined either side of the street. Men hurrying about with shoulders hunched against the rain gave first Waya and then him second looks. A few of them crossed themselves. Good. He knew damned well the impression a big man with two-colored eyes and a black wolf at his heels would make here. Let them notice, and let them wonder if he was the devil himself. They’d all know soon enough who he was.
“Death brings me here,” he returned. “Death and mayhem.”
Silence. “I … I dunnae ken what to say to that,” Kimes stammered, nearly tripping over a small dog that took one look at the wolf and fled into an alley.
“There’s naught to say. Tell me about Crosby and Hallifax. Which do ye trust more?”
“They’re my employers, sir. I trust them both, as I wouldnae work for thieves or liars.”
Callum refrained from countering that everyone was a thief or a liar, or more likely, both. “Who’s kinder to widows and orphans, then?”
“That’s an odd question.”
“It’s my question. Answer it, if ye please.”
“Mr. Hallifax then, I suppose. He once gave his coat over to a shivering old lass, and he nearly always has pennies for beggars.” Kimes stopped before a door like every other door on the street, if perhaps slightly cleaner. The shutters of the windows just past it were open, but the curtains inside stood half drawn. “This is it, Mr. MacCreath. Shall I show ye in?”
“Aye. And introduce me to Crosby.”
The lad pushed open the door. “Aye. But—”
“Dennis, what a
re ye doing here?” a loud voice interrupted. “Ye’re to be counting Kentucky Hills barrels. The ship came into harbor this morning. Did it nae dock?”
Callum stepped inside to take in the sight of a short, rotund man with long wisps of hair above either ear, both sides trying to meet at the top of his otherwise bald head. A half-dozen other men sat at scattered desks or carried stacks of paper about, while two open doors at the back showed slightly better kept desks and lanterns.
These were the men he’d written after he’d acquired the property in Kentucky, the ones who’d answered him in the manner he cared to hear. They’d helped to make him a wealthy man in his own right, and he’d made them wealthy in return. And he’d never thought to set eyes on them.
“Aye, the ship docked, Mr. Crosby. With a passenger on board. He’s asked to see ye, so I’ve brought him.”
The fat man straightened from looking at rows of numbers over the shoulder of one of his clerks. “A passenger? Do I look like I have time to be gawked at by visitors on holiday? And … what in God’s name is that?”
He pointed a plump finger at Waya, who yawned, giving everyone in the office a very fine view of her canines.
“That would be a wolf,” Callum supplied. “Canis lupus, to be exact. And I’m nae a visitor.”
“Mr. Crosby, this is Callum MacCreath,” Kimes supplied.
“To be exact,” Callum followed.
The accountant smoothed the hair running up one side of his head, his pink face going a mottled red. “Mr. MacCreath! I had nae idea ye were set for a visit. Please! Come in and sit doon.” He walked forward, holding out his hand.
Waya growled, and he jerked it away again. “Down, girl,” Callum cautioned, and stuck out his own hand. “Crosby. We’ve some things to discuss in private.”
“Of course. This way.” He indicated the left room.
With a nod Callum and Waya moved past him. “And Mr. Kimes,” he added. “I reckon I’ll have some use for him.”
Kimes hesitated, but from his glance at Waya it was more about being closed in with a wolf than anything else. Then he edged inside the office with them and closed the door behind him. Michael Crosby sank into the wide, sagging chair behind the desk and steepled his hands, elbows resting on his gut. “What can we do for ye then, Mr. MacCreath? If ye’ve a yen to look at our books, I’m more than happy to have Mr. Kimes fetch them for ye. I assure ye, we’ve made every effort to—”
“What do ye know about the death of Lord Geiry?” Callum interrupted. The words continued to stick in his throat, even after he’d gone through them in his head a thousand times in the five weeks since he’d left the distillery. Murder, suicide, accident, mistake—all the possibilities ended with the same result. His brother was dead. And that couldn’t be allowed to lie. Not without him knowing every damned detail.
“Lord Geiry?” Crosby sat back. “He drowned a year or so ago, didn’t he? Someaught about driving a carriage in the rain and he slid down the bank of the loch. Why does…” His small eyes widened. “Ye’re that Callum MacCreath? Geiry’s brother?”
“That very same one.”
“But lad—ye need to see the magistrate. Now. Ye’ve an inheritance, and a title, and—”
“And first I want to know exactly what happened. Exactly.” Callum dipped his hand into the thick, rough fur of Waya’s back. Steady. He could be furious, aye, but action could wait until he knew where to aim it. “Old newspapers, witnesses, any rumors of what might have been afoot at the time. I want them all. And then ye can bring the magistrate here to see me.”
“It may take us a few hours, m’laird.”
“Then get to it. I’ve arranged to have my luggage brought here.” He narrowed his eyes, hesitating now to ask the question that had dragged at him the most. “The house here in Inverness. MacCreath House. Is it occupied still?”
“Aye,” Dennis supplied. “Lady Geiry spent her whole year of mourning here in town. I saw her just last week, finally put off her black crêpe. Poor lass, she’s had a bad patch, first with Geiry, then her own da’ pass—”
“Her da’?” Callum broke in. “George Sanderson is dead?”
A muscle in Crosby’s plump cheek jumped. “Lad, ye’ve been gone a time, aye? Ye might prefer asking these questions of yer own. Dennis said that Lady Geiry’s in town. She’ll have the answers ye want, I reck—”
“Nae,” Callum growled. He’d given up hoping this all might be a nightmare, but every additional bit of information he heard made things worse. And then there were the things he hadn’t wanted to consider, the question that if his brother’s death hadn’t been some idiotic accident, who else had been involved?
And Becca. The last time he’d set eyes on her she’d flayed him to the bone. Aye, he would go see her. After he’d acquired every bit of information available about her, his brother, Dunncraigh, and their business enterprise. Something tickled at his mind, and he edged forward again. “Ian—Lord Geiry—died before George Sanderson, ye said?”
“Aye,” Kimes supplied, jumping when Waya swiveled her head around to look at him. “Barely two weeks apart, it was. The talk was that Mr. Sanderson’s heart couldnae take the loss of his beloved son-in-law.” Keeping his hand close against his chest, he pointed one finger at the wolf. “She looks hungry.”
“She’s always hungry,” Callum said absently, scratching behind her ears. “If Ian died before George, then Rebecca’s the one holding the reins to the fleet.” If it had been the other way around, whatever she inherited would have belonged to Ian … and now, to him. But in this circumstance, her father’s holdings couldn’t go to a dead man. That happened to be very … coincidentally handy for her. Unless it hadn’t been a coincidence.
That thought dogged him, chewed at him, for the next three hours as he read through old newspapers Dennis Kimes had begged or borrowed or stolen from sources the lad wouldn’t even reveal. At least one of them smelled like lemon verbena, though, so he suspected the lad’s mother to be involved.
What he read didn’t leave him feeling any easier. Just the opposite. Ian had been driving a phaeton from the Geiry estate a few short miles from Inverness, past Loch Brenan and into town. He’d done it for no uncoverable reason, in the middle of a rainstorm and at night, according to his wife of nine years. The next morning a pair of shepherds found the unhitched phaeton ten yards into the loch, the harnessed horses grazing nearby with a broken tress hanging off them, and then they’d spied Ian floating facedown a foot or two beyond that.
He’d imagined it. For the week it took him to get to Boston, then for the duration of the four weeks across the Atlantic, he’d imagined what might have happened to his brother. Reading the account there in slightly melodramatic black-and-white, though, was worse. This wasn’t his imagination. This wasn’t one of the scenarios he’d had nightmares about back when he’d first sailed away from Scotland. Back then those possibilities for disaster had come with a sense of … smugness. He’d warned Ian, and he’d been right. But now Ian—his older brother, his friend, his conscience—was dead. And he didn’t feel smug or righteous. He felt fury.
When he’d gleaned everything he could from newspapers and rumors, he had Kimes go fetch both the magistrate and this Bartholomew Harvey, Esquire, fellow. For another hour he signed papers, learned Ian’s financial status, and handed all pertinent papers over to Crosby and Hallifax. Mr. Harvey, Esquire, looked like he’d swallowed a bug, but Callum wasn’t about to trust his new—and old—holdings to someone who hadn’t already proven themselves to him.
“You should be aware, sir—my lord, that is,” Mr. Harvey said, his voice as pinched and annoyed as his expression, “that I am exceedingly proud of the work I did for your predecessor.”
Callum lifted his gaze from signing yet another batch of papers. “And for the Duke of Dunncraigh, aye?”
“Of course. And for Mr. Sanderson. The fleet, the docks, it’s all very complicated.” The solicitor flicked his fingers toward Mr. Crosby. “Too much so t
o risk handing it all over to a glorified clerk, in my opinion.”
“I have the same letters after my name as ye do, Mr. Harvey,” the rotund accountant stated. “I simply choose nae to brag about them.”
“Well, I’m pleased then, Mr. Harvey,” Callum took up, “that ye managed to send off a letter in my direction, given how busy ye must have been with dividing up all those profits.”
“I sent you four letters, my lord. The last two over the objections of Lady Geiry, I might add.”
Every time one of the men here mentioned poor Lady Geiry the dear, unfortunate countess, Callum’s jaw clenched. He’d been there, that night. And he remembered every damned word they’d exchanged. Rebecca Sanderson had married for an empire, and now with the death of her husband and her father most of it had landed right in her lap. For the moment, anyway.
Of course she wouldn’t want him found. All the MacCreath properties, the MacCreath investments and money, and everything that her father had owned, were at this moment in her custody and care. The second Callum appeared, though, everything—all but her father’s share of the business—went straight to him.
“Why wouldn’t the lass want his lordship found?” Kimes piped up, his arms full of contracts and papers. “Someone would take the title, even if it didn’t happen to be Callum MacCreath. Ye’ve a handful of cousins, do ye nae, m’laird?”
“Three male cousins,” Callum supplied. If they all still lived. Odds were that at least one of them survived. The Sassenach solicitor had mentioned James Sturgeon in his last letter, anyway. “I’m curious to know her objections to me being found, Mr. Harvey. Indulge me, if ye would.”
The solicitor opened his mouth, arrogance and affront practically dripping from him, only to snap it shut again as Callum set aside the pen and straightened to send him a level-eyed gaze. Men did as he asked these days. Men who lived a much rougher life than did the solicitor.
“Lady Geiry said her late husband had written you several times over the years,” he offered stiffly, “and that you’d never responded. She considered you either uninterested, or more likely, dead. And in all honesty I would have acquiesced to her wishes, except I did not want to risk my reputation should my findings be challenged later in court.”
A Devil in Scotland Page 3