Birds broke from the trees with panicked, percussive wing beats. The mangy Highland cattle started, and then trotted forward with renewed vigor, deciding the wee sheepdog was less of a danger than whatever had created such an explosive sound.
Gavin’s own heart stopped beating and his lungs froze.
Had she just … shot his dog?
Trixie gave one astonished yip, then jumped around and barreled back toward him.
A gray horse plunged from the trees. Astride it, a lanky man with a tam-o’-shanter cap covering his mostly bald pate rode for the errant beasts. Calybrid cut them off from their certain demise and steered them back toward the herd.
Gavin cursed every god he could name as shorter, stockier Locryn also emerged from beneath the grasping elms, and joined Calybrid, whooping and hollering as he drove the cattle east toward the makeshift corral.
His fucking corral. The one he’d fucking built with his own fucking hands.
The number of cattle had to be in the twenties now, Gavin marveled as he thundered closer.
Nay. The word repeated through his thoughts in rapid-fire bursts of denial. She couldna possibly have—
All life-giving breath deserted his lungs in a painful whoosh as Alison broke from the tree line.
Astride an impressive dark thoroughbred, she loped behind the jostling herd, pacing back and forth and creating the strangest ruckus he’d ever heard, presumably to keep the stupid beasts moving forward.
Gavin’s brain processed the vision before him with stupefied sluggishness. One detail filled his recently evacuated lungs with thick, sea-salted air as he sucked in an uncharacteristic gasp.
She rode astride. And clad in incredibly strange, incredibly tight blue trousers.
His own trousers tightened, as with each distinctive detail he processed, Gavin marked a lamentable redirection of blood from his head.
By the time his gaze traversed her surprisingly shapely calves, to the intriguing way she seemed to be maintaining her mount with her knees, and along the astonishing length of her slim thigh, his mouth was devoid of moisture.
Jesus kilt-lifting Christ. She might not have made the most pleasant of first impressions upon him, but astride a horse?
She was, in a word, magnificent.
Never in his life could Gavin say he’d witnessed such grace. Alison Ross moved like woman and beast were one. Bent low over her horse, her long dark braid matching the mane she’d clutched in her fingers, she veered from the herd and gave chase after Trixie, who sprinted straight for him, her master.
Och, right. She’d just shot at his dog. If he’d not been so entranced, he’d be furious. Calybrid also cantered toward them, as though he’d only just noticed Alison hadn’t quite holstered her gun.
Bewildered, Gavin slowed as she approached. This was certainly not the wilted lass he’d expected to find. This was … someone else entirely.
Eyes blazing like a Baltic tempest, she let her mount dance beneath her as she drew up in front of him, upsetting Demetrius.
Calybrid approached them, placing his steed between Gavin’s and Alison’s like an intercepting arbiter.
“Whit like, Lord Thorne?” he hailed. “What brings ye to Erradale? Are ye after Callum? He’s in the trees somewhere, helping gather a pregnant heifer.”
Gavin struggled to maintain his nonchalant expression. How in the name of King bloody James had this prickly lass managed to recruit Callum Monahan of all people to do ranch labor?
“Nay,” he replied with a friendly smile. “I’m here to check on my new neighbor.”
From a not-too-distant rise, Callum appeared astride his own black steed, and ambled toward them, tapping at a cow’s rump with a long swish of a willow’s tail.
“She has us well in hand.” Calybrid’s smile revealed several missing teeth as he tapped the wee ball of fluff atop his cap. “Woke us up well and early with fish, potatoes, and leeks torn from the ground over there, and told us she’d give us each a ha’penny for every head of her cattle we help her to scavenge.”
“Did she now?” Gavin lifted a brow that he was pretty certain conveyed that he was impressed rather than surprised. At least, he hoped he did.
She regarded him stonily, allowing the prancing of her horse to convey her tumultuous opinion of him.
The mist had gathered in her lashes, and they clung together in dark spikes. The chill painted her cheeks with color beneath the dim frosting of freckles. Her mouth, tightened into a furious line, quivered slightly, though from chill or temper, it was impossible to tell.
With tendrils of her dark hair escaping the braid and wildly floating about her fierce expression, she could have been the Celtic Queen Bouddica facing General Suetonius.
Gavin had never tried harder in his life not to be impressed.
The sight of her limbs, all but exposed, created a strange, tingling burn behind his eyes that spread to his skull, his neck, trickled down his spine, and landed in his cock.
A drop of sweat beaded from her hairline and trickled down her jaw and neck, running into the open collar of the button-down shirt she’d tucked into those incomprehensively tight trousers.
Gavin swallowed as moisture flooded his mouth.
Adjusting himself in the saddle, he decided her pistol was the safest point of focus, and the smartest, come to think of it.
Finally, she opened that distracting mouth to, no doubt, deliver a scathing censure. But Gavin knew it was prudent to not only have the last word, but to gain the first whenever possible.
“I’d take it as a kindness, Miss Ross, if ye didna shoot at my dog.” He forced all the possible teasing levity he could into his smile, so as to crowd out the ire.
He’d had to learn how to smile, so many years ago. He’d never quite been able to manage it until he realized he could use it as a weapon.
As currency.
Then smiles had come easy, followed by charm, and finally the powers of temptation.
Her blueberry eyes narrowed. “I’d take it as a kindness if you and your mutt would get the fuck off my land.”
The profanity should have shocked him. The disrespect should have angered him. But all he could think was that this had to be the first time he’d ever heard that word from a woman he was not, himself, about to mount. Also, the word seemed to have the same effect on his cock out here on the wintry moors as it did in the bedchamber.
He covered his heart, as though she’d wounded him gravely. “And to think I’d come here with peace offerings to keep ye fed and warm. I suppose I should just count myself lucky that yer shot missed. Are ye hungry, bonny?”
“I neither want nor need a damn thing from you.” Her cool expression turned decidedly arctic, her eyes like chips of ice. “I rarely miss. I didn’t shoot at your dog, I shot over her. While we’re on the subject, you should be glad this isn’t America … I could shoot you for trespassing.”
“Ye can do that here, too,” Calybrid supplied helpfully, the wrinkles branching from his eyes crinkling further with mischief.
She grinned and nodded to him. “Good to know, Cal.”
Cal? Gavin made a face.
Alison pulled back the hammer of her pistol, and aimed it dead center of Gavin’s chest. “I’ve always wondered, do you lordlings bleed as blue as you think?”
Fighting equal measures of arousal and antipathy, he summoned his most charming smirk. “I yield, lass, I yield.” He chuckled. “Since we’re to be neighbors, I come bearing a white flag of … surrender.” He let that insinuation sink in, and noted that her eyes flickered over him for the briefest of moments. She’d caught the seductive double entendre.
And was not immune to it.
Excellent.
“Maybe I can be recruited to help ye gather yer herd.” My herd, he added silently. “And after we’ll share a drink and repast by a fire.”
“What do you know about herding cattle?” she scoffed.
Now that he thought about it … not much. But if she could do it
, how hard could it be?
“It would behoove us to get to know each other better, bonny.”
“You’ll call me Miss Ross, or nothing at all,” she spat. “And make no mistake; I know all I need to know about you, Lord Thorne.” The scorn she injected into the word was unmistakable.
Gavin had to fight to keep from squirming. He did have a certain … reputation where women were concerned that certainly wouldn’t help ingratiate him to her. Though how she could have gleaned that information out here in the wilderness was beyond him. It wasn’t like Calybrid and Locryn kept up on gossip, and Callum would never repeat an ill word against him.
“Do ye?” he challenged.
“Sure do. You’re a famously unscrupulous man. A notorious womanizer. A rake who thinks nothing of seducing other men’s wives.”
Gavin surmised this woman was no fool, and to deny it would be folly. Instead, he chose to own his reputation, adopting a look of mischievous contrition. “Well, someone has to, do they not? I doona know many men who seduce their own wives.”
A momentary bleakness crossed her features, a reaction he catalogued and stored for later analysis.
She continued as though he hadn’t spoken. “A jealous second son who’s forced to work at his elder brother’s distillery in order to keep his castle from crumbling around his ears.”
Gavin had to actually stop himself from flinching, as her barb hit a little too close to the mark. He remained studiously impassive. “Ye forgot to mention all the virgins I’ve debauched,” he supplied helpfully.
“Don’t think I don’t know exactly why you want my land,” she forged on, unamused. “But you’re not going to get it. So you can fuck away off any time.”
Her unflinching use of vulgarity struck a chord of endless hilarity in their audience. Gavin had to fight the tremor of amusement that toyed with his own mouth once he recovered from the initial shock.
“Why do ye believe that is, lass?”
“You’re a Mackenzie. They’ve wanted to take this land from the Ross family for generations.”
“What if I told ye I’m no Mackenzie.”
She snorted. “I know better. Everyone knows better.”
“I mean, my father was one,” he admitted. “The Mackenzie Laird, as ye say, and so is my brother, Liam. But I’m in the process of officially emancipating myself from the Mackenzie clan, if that means anything to ye.”
She cast him a wary, bewildered look, her pistol finally wavering beneath the weight of her obvious curiosity. “Why would you do that?”
“The reasons are numerous, and they remain my own, but know that the death of yer father is among them.”
“Oh.” She concealed a flicker of doubt with a blink, but it was the sign of weakness Gavin had been waiting for. And he pounced.
“And so ye see, Miss Ross, selling me Erradale wouldna be giving it over to a foe, but to the enemy of yer enemy … and doesna that make us friends?”
He knew he’d made an error in judgment even before she pointed the pistol in his direction and pulled the trigger.
Calybrid, the old coot, lost control of his mare and she leaped away from them, bolting and bucking a little before he subdued her.
Again, the gunshot shocked everyone. Even Callum, who galloped toward them.
Gavin froze for an unerringly tense moment, searching his body for pain, for a trickle of blood. Remembering to breathe when he encountered neither.
The woman was daft. Mad. A trigger-happy harpy without a lick of sense.
“That time I missed.” She pulled back the hammer. “It won’t happen twice. Now get. The fuck. Off. My. Land.”
Gavin had never heard the voice of a woman carry such hard, caustic gravity. “Careful, lass,” he said over the sound of a pulse thundering with the fury that chased away the initial astonishment. “I’m not an enemy ye want to make.”
“I’ve had enemies before.” Her pistol remained locked level with his heart. “And you know what I’ve learned, Lord Thorne?”
He was beginning to hate the way she said his name.
“That it’s those closest to you that you have to beware of,” she continued. “Along with those looking to be your friend when they have no cause but their own.”
Gavin’s eyes met hers and they held. Never once did she look away. Her breath was steady and her gaze clear as Loch Lomond and just as cold.
For once in his life, he had no comeback. No witty retort.
Because the lass was right. He’d learned that selfsame lesson in the most terrible ways possible.
Who’d taught it to her? he wondered. The same person who’d conjured the pain beneath the chill in her glare.
Callum sidled up to them, strategically placing himself in front of her pistol. Beneath his beard, it was hard to tell if he smiled or frowned, but his eerie eyes crinkled a bit at the corners. “’Tis wicked work digging a grave in the Highlands after the night frosts have already set in,” he said mildly, his voice heavy with a disarming Irish lilt.
“Good point,” Alison agreed without inflection. “We’ll just toss him into the sea, then.”
This time, Gavin recognized his oldest friend’s amusement, and his own eyes narrowed.
Callum pretended to weigh the idea. “While your logic is sound, you forget the man is an earl. He’ll be missed.”
“You sure about that?” She cocked a brow.
“Well, by his mother, anyway. She lives with him in yon Inverthorne Castle where my father is stable master.” Callum rolled his broad shoulders hidden beneath an ancient cloak made of sealskin.
She wrinkled her nose and lowered the brow. “You still live with your ma?”
“She resides with me,” Gavin snarled. “In my castle.” Why was he explaining himself to this scrawny, loony, altogether vicious wench? He couldn’t remember the last time anyone had angered him like this since …
Well, since his brother.
“Why don’t you let me conduct him back to Inverthorne?” Callum suggested.
“Let ye?” Gavin repeated, aghast.
The Mac Tíre shrugged again. “I’ve been meaning to pay a call to my father.”
Nodding, Alison returned her pistol to its holster. “I catch you on my land again, Thorne, even your mother won’t recognize your corpse.”
She rode away before Gavin’s usually glib, biting wit could summon a retort.
“Ill-tempered wench,” he spat, though he knew the retreating woman couldn’t hear him. Turning, he rode abreast of the Mac Tíre, his mind spinning with new calculations. Never before had he met someone like Alison Ross.
“She’s all right.” His friend waved him off.
“Et tu, Callum?” he admonished.
The enigmatic hermit shrugged. “She made me breakfast,” he said by way of explanation. Gavin studied his friend for a moment, noting the way his golden gaze avoided him. There was something the Mac Tíre wasn’t telling him, and he was certain it had to do with the disagreeable Alison Ross.
“One way or another, Erradale will be mine,” he vowed, spurring Demetrius into a gallop. Now was not the time to act rashly, which is what Miss Ross seemed to goad him to do. He needed to think, to scheme, to bide his time because, though bonny Alison Ross had learned to keep both friends and enemies at bay, she’d likely not lived long enough to learn an even more valuable lesson.
To never underestimate the long-suffering fury of a patient man.
CHAPTER FIVE
Dear Alison,
Enclosed are the documents from your solicitor required for your appearance in front of the magistrate. According to them, you must maintain residence at Erradale for no less than one year. I hope that is agreeable to you. I’ve heard tell that the place has become a bit ramshackle in the absence of a Ross caretaker, but I daresay it’s better than the American alternative at this point. Most especially since what they have come to refer to as “the Masters Massacre.”
Since you’ve been away from Scotland for so long, I
thought I’d remind you a little of your family’s history, so you might use it against our adversaries. Though Highlanders are notoriously a clannish people, the name of the Mackenzie family of Wester Ross was tainted by the previous Laird, Hamish Mackenzie. You know, of course, that he defeated your father in a duel. Unlike the American West, dueling has been illegal in England some forty years, but Highlanders tend to keep to their own traditions.
Gavin St. James, Lord Thorne, was born Gavin Mackenzie. He is the son of Laird Hamish Mackenzie’s second wife, Eleanor. He didn’t come by his earldom through the Mackenzie line, but through his mother’s family, the St. Jameses, as his great-uncle died childless and Inverthorne passed through Eleanor to her firstborn son. It is widely known that Hamish Mackenzie married Eleanor to gain control of Inverthorne, and then he turned his eye to Erradale.
Lord Thorne isn’t known for violence or cruelty like his father, but he’s a notoriously unscrupulous rake. After a poorly concealed affair with his elder brother Liam Mackenzie’s first wife ended in her suicide, Lord Thorne philandered his way across most of the empire, and some of the Continent, in a hedonistic frenzy unrivaled since the days of Caligula. Though he and Laird Mackenzie—also known as the Marquess Ravencroft—are infamously at odds, he works as the Ravencroft Distillery foreman, as barely less than half of the operation was left to him upon their father’s mysterious death. This is why, I think, he shares his father’s lust for Erradale.
Your presence on the land should render his claim moot altogether, so stay at Erradale as long as you like. Indefinitely, if you wish. We can write to each other, you and I, though I very much doubt you’ll ever see me set foot in the Highlands. I hope you understand. Do with it what you wish. Should you turn enough profit to buy the land, I am open to your offer above all others.
Laird Mackenzie has recently retired from a long military career, whereupon he gained his moniker, the Demon Highlander, through unparalleled brutality. In the few short years since he’s reclaimed his seat as Laird of Wester Ross, he hasn’t shown any interest in Inverthorne or Erradale so I don’t think you are in danger from him on that score.
The Scot Beds His Wife Page 6