“Then I applaud yer diligence, Harvey. How fares the widow, these days?” He had every reason to ask, Callum reminded himself. The head of the family had the right—the obligation—to know the situation of those under his protection. Even if he suspected one of them might have aided another’s demise. Especially then.
“The past fourteen months have been quite trying for her, of course,” Bartholomew Harvey returned after a slight hesitation. Evidently he realized he had no claim of confidentiality when faced with the new earl. “First her husband, then her father passing on, the uncertainty of her own future, all that in addition to being an English lady surrounded by Scotsmen—and far away from the land of her birth … She’s quite admirable, really.”
“Dunnae be dramatic, Harvey,” Crosby took up. “The land of her birth is but three days to the south. I reckon she’s stayed on here because she’s a yen to be the future Duchess of Dunncraigh.”
And there it was. Callum used every ounce of his considerable self-control to remain seated, though he couldn’t have hidden his flinch even if he’d known the words were coming. Only a handful of questions remained, then. “Dunncraigh has a wife. Or he did, a decade ago. Mousy little thing, with a cunning gleam in her eyes.”
“He still does have a wife. I was referring to the present Marquis of Stapp. Dunncraigh’s oldest son.”
Callum swallowed back a curse, shoving it down into his chest. Donnach Maxwell. Of course. The self-centered pig had been drooling over Rebecca ten years ago. Evidently she’d given in to his charms—or more likely his wealth and title. He stood, pulling on his heavy buckskin gloves. Now he had but two questions. Had she helped murder Ian for money? Or to gain herself the loftiest title in the Highlands?
“Gentlemen,” he said evenly, “ye’ll find me at MacCreath House. Kimes, call on me tomorrow at ten o’clock. I reckon I’ll have some instructions for ye.”
“Aye, m’laird.”
Now he meant to claim what belonged to him—and to end anyone and everyone who’d had anything to do with gaining him this inheritance. Even if Rebecca Sanderson-MacCreath happened to be one of those anyones. Especially then.
Chapter Three
“M’lady,” Pogue the butler said, “ye’ve another bouquet of posies. I took the liberty of having ’em put in water.” He indicated the tall vase on the foyer table. The sprays of roses and long-stemmed lilies in yellows and reds looked like Hogmanay fireworks.
Rebecca MacCreath, Countess Geiry, paused at the bottom of the main staircase to smell the sweet spice of the flowers. A card accompanied them, of course, but she already knew who’d sent them. Donnach Maxwell had been sending flowers at least twice a week for the past two months.
She unfolded the card anyway. “May the pain of your grief be eased by the salve of my kind regards. Donnach.”
It wasn’t the most poetical thing she’d ever read, but then after nearly twenty notes in the same vein the Marquis of Stapp must have been running low on platitudes. “Put it in the morning room please, Pogue,” she said, and preceded him into the east-facing room at the front of the house as her Skye terrier, Reginald, sped down the straight staircase to join her. With his long white hair reaching to the floor, the snowy silk broken only by his dark ears, nose, and beard, he looked rather like a mobile footrest—not that she would ever tell him such a thing. “And let Agnes know I’ll be taking Maggie with me to the milliner’s in half an hour.”
The silver-haired Scot nodded. “I’ll see to it at once, m’lady.” Dipping his head again, he left the room, shutting the door behind him.
Rebecca picked up her calendar from the desk and walked to the window to read through it as Reginald sniffed at her, then jumped onto the nearest sunlit chair and curled up to begin snoring. Today remained hers except for finding a new chapeau. Tomorrow, though, she had Lady Polk’s luncheon, and then both an afternoon recital and an evening at the theater as Donnach’s guest.
She wrinkled her nose. That seemed too much; she’d been out of mourning for Ian for three months, and her father for two, and her life had never been a whirlwind of social engagements, anyway. Three events in one day might be unseemly. What, though, to cancel? Certainly the recital would be more trying, with a dozen mamas hovering about, anxious to see that their marriageable daughters showed well, and the rest of the guests being dissected for any telling yawn or muscle twitch. That sort of scrutiny would be nothing new, but over the past year her composure had developed more than a few cracks that hadn’t entirely healed.
With a sigh she sat at the small desk to write out her regrets to Mrs. Adair—Latharna was more likely to understand her absence than Donnach would be, anyway. At least the theatrical performance was A Midsummer Night’s Dream this time. Last month when the Marquis of Stapp had invited her to share his private box at the theater, it had been to see Everyman. At least he’d apologized afterward, though he’d lost a handkerchief to her weeping.
Everyone had been deferential to her, in fact. She knew why, of course; widowed and orphaned within a fortnight, she’d been the favorite tragedy of Inverness’s noble circle for the past year. Completely aside from her present position as the Countess Geiry she was worth well over twenty thousand a year thanks to her father’s estate, which made her the wealthiest widow in Scotland. Perhaps in all of Britain.
As she dusted sand over the fresh ink of her note, she caught sight of the half-dozen letters from Ian’s cousins. They hadn’t been quite as deferential, but then once the courts declared Callum unreachable or dead, James Sturgeon would take the Geiry title and the one-third ownership of Sanderson’s—and the entirety of this house—for himself and his family. Even so, they’d been mostly pleasant, suggesting they come visit, not so they could measure the curtains, but so she would have the familial support for which she no doubt yearned.
At the moment she mostly yearned not to be whispered about and stared at every time she ventured out of doors, for people to simply wish her good morning and chat about the weather or fashion as they used to do. She would undoubtedly find more anonymity in London, but Inverness had been her home for twenty years now. Her father’s business—her business, rather—had its headquarters here. She would garner suitors in both towns, but she knew the ones here.
She would have to leave MacCreath House sooner or later, but she liked the big, rambling house and the view from the front windows that overlooked a pretty stretch of the river Ness. Likewise her days of spending summers at Geiry Hall in the middle of the Highland countryside were numbered, as well. Thankfully her father had left her their old home closer by, but she preferred it here. She had since she’d set eyes on the house at age eight—but part of the attraction then might have been its two residents. Ian and Callum MacCreath, the two most handsome young men she’d ever seen, and they’d all become fast friends before she could even think that perhaps she should have been looking for companions of her own sex, that she should have been practicing her embroidery instead of learning to shoot a gun. The perils of being raised by an indulgent father, she supposed.
Well, she’d learned to embroider since then. She even played a fair pianoforte, if she said so herself. Ian had enjoyed culture, and so, she’d discovered, had she. Rebecca tucked the missives back into the rack where she kept them. Ian had wanted a proper, discerning, upward-reaching life for them, and he’d achieved it. She remained thankful for it every day.
As for his brother … She couldn’t even imagine her life if she’d allowed herself to be tied to that wild, ramshackle drunk of a boy. Disgraced, laughed at, pitied, poor—it would have been horrible. If once in a while she’d imagined it as anything else, well, that could be forgiven, she supposed. It was natural to be occasionally curious about the other paths of her life, the ones she hadn’t taken. The moment she began to wander too far down them, though, it meant she needed to find something else with which to occupy herself. Especially these days, when some of the paths had fallen out of sunlight’s reach.
Rebecca pushed to her feet as Pogue opened the front door to accept the day’s mail. “Pogue, hold the boy a moment,” she called. “I’ve a note to be delivered, if he’d care to make an extra shill…”
She rounded the door and stepped into the foyer. The butler stood there, but it wasn’t the mail boy at whom he stared. The man filling the entry stood a good three or four inches taller than Pogue, who was six feet himself. The brown caped greatcoat and black jacket beneath it with its wide lapel and silver buttons looked of fair quality but well-worn, as did the black leather calf-high boots and the buckskin breeches stuffed into them. The huge black dog standing at his heels, yellow, unblinking gaze on her, could have been some child’s nightmarish dream of a hellhound.
All that, though, she noted in passing, on the way up to the face she could only see in shadowed profile as he spoke to the butler. He wore his straight brown hair a little long but neatly trimmed, the windblown mahogany resting against a high cheekbone and a lean, tanned face with a faint scruff of beard, as if he hadn’t shaved today. Straight nose, a hard chin that set off his firm mouth, a handsome profile to be sure.
Then he turned his head, fixing her with his direct gaze. Beneath a double slash of dark eyebrows, his right eye was a cool blue, the left a grassy green. Rebecca’s fingers felt abruptly cold. Distantly she heard the tap and swoosh as the letter she’d held hit the floor and slid beneath the table beside her, noting the sound as the cold rushed from her hands and feet up her spine to her skull, freezing everything in between.
“Did ye think me dead as well, lass?” he asked in a low voice.
“Callum,” she said, and everything went white.
* * *
Callum snapped his mouth shut over the remainder of the cutting remark he’d been about to make. Instead he looked down at the twisted pile of pretty lavender silk and arms and legs and golden-blond hair that made up his sister-in-law. She’d never fainted in the entire ten years he’d known her, but then she wouldn’t have expected to be confronted by the brother of the man she’d likely helped murder.
“My lady!” Pogue said, sinking to his knees beside her prone body. The butler took her hand and began patting it urgently. “Lady Geiry!”
“Leave be,” Callum ordered, and stepped over Rebecca. A vase of posies sat by the window in the morning room, and he picked it up, tossed the flowers into the waste basket, then returned to the foyer and dumped the water over his sister-in-law’s head.
She sputtered, waving her arms over her face, and jerked upright. The perfect coil of thick blond hair atop her head sank to one side, dripping past her ear, but she didn’t seem to notice it as she caught sight of him again. “What—”
“Ye fainted,” he supplied, handing the glass vase to the butler.
“I do not faint!” she protested, running a hand across her face and then belatedly pushing at the stack of her hair.
“I dunnae care what ye do,” he returned, facing her again. “Stand up. I’ll nae speak to ye while ye’re on the floor.”
For one thing, it made her look vulnerable, and he didn’t like that. And he didn’t like the twist he’d felt in his gut when he’d heard her voice, or that he’d had to take a breath before he looked at her. She’d had Ian in her life for nine years that he hadn’t, and she had the spleen to look … regal when she’d walked into the foyer. Regal. Not at all broken or torn by grief.
She reached up a hand, and with a sideways glance at him Pogue stepped in to take it when Callum didn’t move. Callum didn’t want to touch her. This woman had flayed him alive the last time they’d conversed. And aside from everything else, he could blame the last ten years on her. He’d been blaming her for them, rather, and what he’d learned earlier today hadn’t given him any cause to change his mind.
A white mop with black ears tore around the corner of the morning room door in a frenzy of high-pitched yowling and barking, launching directly at him. In the same instant black flashed in front of him. Waya lifted the wee thing up in her jaws, and Rebecca shrieked as it began squealing.
“Release, Waya,” he ordered. “Put it down. It’s nae yers.”
Turning her yellow eyes on him, the wolf opened her jaws, and the now disheveled mop thudded to the floor. It rolled upright, then with another screech tore up the stairs and vanished.
Evidently the wee beast wasn’t alone, though, because as it fled another form hurtled down the stairs at him. Shrieking in some sort of childlike fury it jumped at him, and he reflexively caught it by the waist in midair. “You leave my mama and my dog alone!” it yelled, pummeling him with two wee fists.
It was female, judging from the dress and the long, dark-colored hair twisting out of a half-finished braid. Callum lifted it higher, to look it in the eyes—and his heart wrenched with a sensation he couldn’t even put to words. One green and one blue eye looked back at him, fierceness in every line of her scrunched-up, angry face. God, she looked like Ian, even down to the dimples in her cheeks.
“Who are ye?” he asked, surprised at the effort it took to keep his voice steady. He tilted his head, still holding her at eye level.
“I am Lady Margaret,” she stated in a very proper English tone as she abruptly stopped trying to hit him, though she continued gazing at him suspiciously. “Who are you, sir?”
Rebecca stirred. “Maggie, this is y—”
“I’m Callum,” he broke in. For God’s sake, he’d just found the one soul he knew to be innocent of … everything. No one else would do the introductions, put her own prejudices into the mix. “Yer uncle, I reckon.”
Her face eased a little, though she kept her blue eye narrowed. “You have eyes like me.”
“Aye. How old are ye?”
“I turned six nearly four weeks ago. I’m almost six and a half,” she returned. “How old are you?”
“I turned thirty about ten weeks ago,” he returned, though he honestly couldn’t remember how long ago it had been. A lifetime had passed in the space of the past few weeks.
She nodded, her braid unraveling further. “Did you hurt my dog?”
“Nae. He came at me, and Waya pointed oot that that wasnae a good idea.”
“Who is Waya?”
He angled her slim torso so she could see the wolf below her. Sweet Saint Michael, she felt as delicate and light as blown glass. How did such creatures manage to come into the world at all, much less survive it? “That’s Waya,” he said aloud.
“Oh, my heavens. What is it?”
“It’s a wolf. A she-wolf.”
Her two-colored eyes widened. “A wolf? Is she yours?”
“Nae. We’re partners.”
She studied the wolf for another moment, then looked back at him. “Will she eat me? I don’t wish to be eaten.”
Callum shook his head, conscious that he wanted to wrap this wee lass in his arms and flee with her back to Kentucky, where he knew he could keep her safe. Until Ian had justice and he had his revenge, though, neither of them was going anywhere. “Waya will protect ye, lass. She’d nae—never—hurt ye. Both of us are here to protect ye.” That might not have been so ten minutes ago, but now, and from now on, it was the truth.
“Well, I’m very brave all on my own, but thank you. May I pet her?”
“Maggie, I don’t think—”
“Aye. Just dunnae ever do it when she’s asleep. Call her name first so ye dunnae startle her.”
With surprising reluctance he let her go, setting her feet onto the floor, then squatted down beside her to wrap an arm about Waya’s shoulders. The wolf had likely scented the bairn and his relationship to her before he’d even been aware of Margaret’s existence, but he wanted to be certain the wolf understood. “Waya, this is Margaret,” he said, taking the lass’s absurdly wee hand in his free one and guiding her fingers down to brush along the wolf’s throat, her most vulnerable place.
“Hello, Waya,” the lass said softly, then unexpectedly hugged the wolf full around the neck. “You’re so lovely!”
Callum tensed his arm, ready to intervene. The big wolf, though, edged her head around and licked Margaret solidly on the ear, then gave a happy whumph sound.
That had been simple. Hiding his deep breath, he straightened again to find another pair of eyes glaring at him. These were a light blue, and it didn’t take much effort to interpret their expression. Becca didn’t want him there—which gave him yet another reason to stay.
“When did you return to Scotland?” she asked, making another effort to straighten her wet hair and then giving up.
“This morning,” he returned, not bothering to ask how she’d known he had been away from Scotland. Ian, at least, had sent letters to Kentucky, and she’d urged the solicitor not to send the last one. This wasn’t the conversation he wanted to have—intended to have—with her, but with the bairn present it would have to do. He would get his answers from her, just not at this moment. The past ten years had taught him patience. Patience and how to apply just enough force to get what he wanted or needed for his business.
“Ian thought you in Kentucky,” she went on, her voice hesitating a little over her husband’s name as she confirmed his suspicions. Or perhaps he’d just wanted to hear it do so. He couldn’t be certain. “Were you?”
“Aye.” If she wanted to have a civil conversation, she could carry it.
“How did—”
“That prissy solicitor of yers. Bartholomew Harvey. He said ye didnae want me found, but I reckon he values his reputation over yer … whatever it is ye wanted. Me not being here, I assume.”
She nodded tightly. Even with ten years being gone from here, he still would have recognized her in a crowd. Her face had rounded a little, adding a softness to her countenance that she hadn’t had at eighteen. Given the amount of time he’d spent studying her bosom when he’d been twenty, now at thirty he would have been prepared to swear on a stack of Bibles that she’d made some improvements there, as well.
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