Questions for a Highlander

by Angeline Fortin

  “Judge Fulmont?” she questioned, sitting straighter.

  “Why, yes. How did you know?”

  “He used to come out and summer with us from time to time,” Kitty told him with a smile. “He was like a grandfather to Eve and I. He quite reminded me of St. Nicholas.”

  “That explains it, then,” Jensen nodded. “Fulmont came to me about a week ago, saying he had a message from your father while he was away on business. Note said he needed a favor, a big one, and hoped Fulmont might be able to help. I explained to him that it was in regards to you, and he has agreed to take on the duty still, if it involved one of his girls.”

  “Then he’ll do it?”

  “He said he wanted the answer to one question before he would proceed.” Jensen shifted uncomfortably. “He wanted to know if the grounds, that is, adultery on your behalf, were valid.”

  “I can make them so, if he requires them to be.”

  For the first time all afternoon, the lawyer sat back and chuckled. “Madam, you are your father’s daughter, are you not?”

  “Indeed, I am,” she laughed lightly in agreement, absorbing the warmth that came with a comparison to Lelan Preston. “I know Judge Fulmont would not accept money for this. He and my father respected one another too much. But please tell him that while that is not the case, I am asking him simply to allow me my freedom. Please.”

  “I will see to it, madam, this very afternoon,” he told her. “All that is wanted for the proceedings to be complete is his signature. Another day or so will see the finalization complete.”

  Just the thought made her head swim.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jensen. I am so thankful that I have you to count on,” she gushed just a bit, since men seemed to appreciate a helpless female every now and then.

  “Thank you, madam.” They both drank their coffee for a moment in silence before Mr. Jensen settled his cup back in the saucer. “There is one other thing that I would like to add, if I might be so bold. I did not want to share it earlier while Mr. Hayes was in the room but…”

  “What is it, Mr. Jensen?” she asked curiously.

  “Given Lord Haddington’s rather marked attentions to you…” Jensen cleared his throat, adjusting his spectacles once again uncomfortably. “I don’t mean to suggest anything untoward, of course, but if I might offer this? If you should choose to wed again in the future, there was a codicil made, after your sister’s recent marriage, with your father’s instructions regarding such an event.”

  “There was?” Kitty’s brow furrowed. “What does it say?”

  “That you or your sister may deem your spouse – or future spouse, as the case may be – fit to be an equal claimant of your inheritance,” he explained. “The condition being that your decision must be made without duress or coercion, and contracted as such before witnesses.”

  “Meaning Lord Glenrothes might share in Eve’s fortune, should she so choose?” she asked.

  “Yes, or Lord Had– rather, you might allow a future husband that right as well.” He flushed from his bold assumption. “It does not change the instructions regarding your current husband at all though.”

  Kitty’s head spun. There was, of course, no chance she would agree to let Freddie have control over her life or funds without coercion, even if she wanted, but if Jack knew? A picture dashed through her mind of Haddington on bent knee, proposing to her. Her heart clenched in pleasure at the thought of becoming his wife. Surely if he knew…but wait, her heart cried. She didn’t want him marrying her for her money. She wanted him to marry her because he loved her as she loved him, because he couldn’t imagine spending the rest of his life without her. That wasn’t going to happen, she was certain. Kitty decided to keep this bit of information from Jack for now. If anything were going to happen between them, it wouldn’t be because of her bank account.

  “Thank you, Mr. Jensen,” Kitty offered at length. “I will be sure to let Eve know, should she choose to speak with you on that subject.”

  The lawyer cleared his throat once more. “You mentioned earlier there was another matter you wanted to speak about?”

  “Well, Mr. Jensen, that issue might be a bit more complicated.”

  Jack stretched out his long frame in the small chair provided in the reception area of the lawyer’s office. Though the offices were well and richly appointed, the furnishings gave nothing in the way of comfort, despite their lush appearance. Crossing his legs at the ankle before him, he folded his hands behind his head and steadily regarded the man seated across from him.

  So this was Kitty’s husband, Frederick Hayes. Not really what he expected. The picture he had developed in his mind had been of a rotund, butcher type with beady eyes and ham-like fists. Hayes was surprisingly tall, if somewhat slender of build, with fair coloring and even features most women would probably describe as angelic. Most who meet him probably assumed he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Nothing about him proclaimed him a violent offender.

  But there were minute signs of his abuse of alcohol in his puffy face, the tired bags under his eyes and veins on the nose. His bloodshot eyes might not have been beady but they had a bit of fervency about them that bespoke a rash nature. He was probably impulsive about everything he did, which might explain his bad track record with his investments and business practices.

  Haddington continued to stare at the man, putting just enough ridicule in his look to provoke. This was his point, after all. He longed for an excuse, any reason, to beat this man into a pulp for each time those fists had touched Kitty. Remembering her tearful confessions to him, his hands clenched involuntarily with the urge to provide vengeance for all this man had dealt. If the chap didn’t give him one soon, he was going to make the opportunity himself.

  His prolonged appraisal seemed to have finally worn on the man. “What are you looking at?” Hayes snapped. It had taken almost twenty minutes to needle Hayes into speaking. A measure of self-control from a man who seemed to have very little. Surprising.

  Jack took his time answering, assessing him up and down slowly with calculated arrogance, simply to aggravate the man even more. “So you are Kitty’s husband?”

  “Yes? And who are you again?” he sneered, like a bully in the schoolyard ready to fight.

  “Haddington. I believe I mentioned that previously,” Jack drawled unrevealingly, with studied nonchalance.

  “I know that! Who are you to my wife?” Hayes’ manner was aggressive. His possessive tone when saying ‘my wife’ bordered on the maniacal to Jack’s mind.

  “A friend,” he answered, goading the man along. “A very good friend.” Hayes growled audibly, rousing a satisfied smirk from Jack. “I hear you do not like your wife to have good friends, do you?”

  “She is my wife!” Hayes spat out, his face now crimson in his barely suppressed anger. “It is her duty to focus her attentions on me alone.”

  “Quite a conceited view of the world, my good man.” Jack studied his nails for a moment as if he were bored with the conversation. “Just because a man flirts with a woman, even if she flirts with him in return, it doesn’t really mean anything…most of the time. Why couldn’t you ever let it go? Ah, but woman like Kitty requires a bit more challenge from the world to be happy, don’t you think?”

  “She was very happy!” Hayes protested. “We were happy together!”

  “Is that why she left you?” he taunted.

  “She did not leave me! She merely went on holiday!”

  “Without telling you where she was going?” Jack shook his head with a little sneer. “Perhaps she wasn’t as fond of you as you think.”

  “She is my wife, my lord. Mine!” Hayes pushed out of his chair just as Jack did his, until they were nose to nose in the middle of the room. “She is mine and I will do whatever it takes to keep her! Anything!”

  Haddington lifted the man by the lapels and stared him straight in the eye. His brogue was dark and threatening when he spoke. “She isn’t yours any longer, Hayes, and I am warning you
right now, if you so much as lay one finger on her again, I will take an extraordinary amount of pleasure in killing you myself.”

  “We’ll see about–”

  “What is going on here?” The men broke apart to find Kitty glaring at them, both of them, in clear disapproval. “Well?”

  Jack set Hayes back on his heels and released him, brushing down his crumpled lapels. “Nothing, my love, all is well.”

  Kitty sniffed inwardly, amused by his casually bored tone. “Obviously.”

  “Katherine, my darling,” Hayes’ voice was fervent as he approached her and reached out to take her arm, when her frosty gaze stopped him momentarily, “I have waited to escort you home…to our home,” he emphasized for Jack’s benefit. “Come, let us leave. We have so much to talk about.”

  Taking a breath deep with resolve, Kitty glanced back at Mr. Jensen. “Sir, might I have use of your office for a moment, for a private word with Mr. Hayes?”

  “Of course.” He bowed slightly and gestured to the room. Kitty made to reenter the room when she felt Jack’s restrained response. “Just for a moment,” she assured him, knowing he wouldn’t want her to be alone with Hayes.

  She watched Freddie enter the room and close the door behind them. She faced him for the first time without fear. The end was near for her. Her divorce would be complete very soon. When he found out what she had done, there was no saying how he would react. But she was becoming her own woman now and was feeling strong and confident. She stared him right in the eyes and held her focus there, without hesitation, for perhaps the first time in their married lives.

  “Where have you been, Katherine?” he asked plaintively, trying to ignore the obvious irritation in her gaze. The cold fire in her green eyes fascinated him. Her color was high. She was lovely in her ire. “I came back from my business trip to California and you were gone. Not a word of where you were! Your parents didn’t seem to know anything about it. No one in Boston either. I have had a private investigator looking for you for almost a month. You were nowhere to be found. Where did you go?”

  She shuddered to know he had been searching so extensively for her. She felt a bit hunted. But, of course she could tell him now. It didn’t matter anymore, now that they had been forced to return. “I went to Scotland…to Eve.”

  “Why?”

  Kitty stared at him with incredulity, for he truly seemed puzzled by her departure. “I have filed for a divorce, Freddie. Mr. Jensen is representing me.”

  Hayes was startled by her words, but recovered quickly and predictably with overblown anger. “Never! I won’t allow it! You cannot just tell me you have filed for a divorce and think it will pass without words?”

  “I had hoped that we might both approach this as adults, Freddie,” she argued reasonably, but could not help but shift back from him just a step.

  “Adults?” he sputtered, as he gripped her fingers with an iron fist until she tried to wrench them free with a whimper of pain. “Who do you think you are? I was prepared to overlook your disgraceful behavior, your abandonment, without reprisal, out of my love for you! And this is how you thank me? You disappear without word of where you are…”

  “To get away from you, Freddie,” she informed him, trying to pry her hands away. “To leave you!”

  “Leave me? I own you. It is my right as your husband under the law. You cannot leave me! Why would you leave me?”

  Kitty took a deep breath, finally wrenching her fingers free. She flexed them to renew the circulation. “I did leave you, Freddie. I left you because I could bear your jealousy and abuses no longer.”

  “My jealousy is all your fault, Katherine!” he blamed her viciously, before dropping to his knees, wrapping his arms around her hips and pressing his cheek against her as she tried to squirm away. “If you had just kept your attention where it was meant to be, I would never have any need to become jealous. To remind you of your duties. I love you, Katherine. I have always loved you. You are mine! My wife!”

  His fanatical behavior astounded Kitty in its madness. There had always been an unnatural intensity in his declarations of love, but this was simply insane. How did one deal with insanity? “If you love me, Freddie, just allow me to go.”

  “To that man out there? Your good friend?” he sneered, standing while trying to keep her in his arms. “Is he your lover? He wants to be, I can tell. He is, isn’t he?

  “No, Freddie, he is not.” Not physically, anyway, but he was her lover at heart and some of that truth must have spoken in her eyes, because his narrowed viciously.

  “I think, perhaps, it is time we reassert just whom you belong to.” Hayes pulled her to him and ground his mouth down on her. Stunned, since Freddie usually started with violence before moving on to lust, Kitty tore herself away from him and turned away. He reached for her again. Running across the room, she sought refuge, putting a small chair between them as he approached. Hayes shoved the chair out of the way and caught her sharply across the cheek with the back of his hand.

  His fist was returning for another strike when it was caught in mid air.

  Chapter 26

  The most part of all princes have more delight

  in warlike manners and feats of chivalry than in the good feats of peace.

  - Thomas More

  Jack glared down into Hayes’ startled blue eyes and drawled, with cool arrogance, “Hayes, old chap, I believe we discussed this very thing not a moment ago, did we not? Perhaps I did not make myself entirely clear on the matter.”

  Jack shoved Hayes away from Kitty, sending him spinning and caught him with a left hook to the stomach followed by a hard right to the jaw that set the offender back on his buttocks on the floor. Scrambling up, Hayes charged Merrill low, catching him in the midsection and throwing them both to the ground. Easily flipping him around, Jack gained the upper hand, landing a hard blow to the stomach and another to the jaw again as he straddled the smaller man, pinning him down. Hayes returned with a glancing blow to the brow.

  Trying to get between them, grabbing at Jack’s arm, Kitty screamed, “Stop! Stop! Stop!”

  The men pushed her aside to continue their battle, passing shots as they regained their footing and began sparring in earnest. Jack was clearly the more accomplished boxer of the two, throwing practiced combinations that soon had blood trickling from Freddie’s nose and brow. His muscular physique packed more force than her husband’s slighter frame. Hayes, however, fought with the tenacity of a bulldog after a bone, throwing his punches low or at the neck. It was clear after several minutes, though, that there was no chance he could defeat Jack as he took blow after blow to the face and midsection, leaving him bent over like an old man.

  Finally, the earl pinned Hayes flat against the top of Jensen’s desk and drew back his fist for a wallop that would certainly render the other man unconscious.

  “Jack!”

  Merrill turned away from his opponent with some aggravation. “What?!”

  “Clearly Freddie is done in! So please, sto– Jack, watch out!” she cried, as her husband raised a letter opener and plunged it into the earl as he turned. Instead of catching him in the back as he had so clearly planned, he caught Haddington deep in the shoulder. “Jack!” She ran to him as he pulled the dagger-sharp opener from his shoulder and turned to stare in amazement at Hayes.

  “How could you?” she screamed at Freddie, pushing him away as she ran to help Jack.

  Jensen ran to the door and called for the secretary. “Jones! Jones! Summon the police at once!”

  “Police?” The lawyer’s words shook Hayes from his fascination with the damage he had caused. “Yes, I want him arrested!”

  “Not him, you fool!” Kitty bit out as Jack leaned against her. “You! You have attacked an earl!”

  “He hit me first!” he responded in outrage at her accusation.

  “You stabbed him!”

  “Assault with a deadly weapon,” Jensen agreed calmly, with a nod. “Two, perhaps three years if convic
ted.”

  “I’ve got witnesses,” Jack quipped faintly, before slumping to the side with a dazed look upon his face. Kitty and Jensen caught him, lowering him to the ground.

  “Perhaps you should call for a doctor as well, Mr. Jensen.”

  “Indeed.” He rose and they realized Hayes had fled the room.

  “Could he truly have been arrested for assault, Mr. Jensen?” she asked after Jensen called for the doctor.

  “Unlikely,” he admitted. “My lord Haddington did strike first.”

  “Did he? I don’t think I saw it that way at all.” She rolled her eyes and gave her attention to her semi-lucid earl, stopping the blood flow the best she could.

  Kitty’s voice brought him slowly back to consciousness. “Jack! Wake up, please? Please, wake up!” She slapped his cheeks sharply, causing him to hiss in his breath.

  “A kiss might do the job a bit better, Kitty,” he whispered hoarsely.

  “Jack, you’re alive!”

  “There’s no accounting for the devil’s luck.” He raised himself up on his elbows and rubbed the back of his head. He had been moved to a settee and his chest was throbbing. “I can’t believe that idiot stabbed me.”

  “Slowly, Jack.” Kitty jumped in to help him sit up. “You’re hurt.”

  “Just a scratch.” he replied, as she pulled at his clothes to find the wound. “That eager to get me naked, my love?”

  Kitty punched him in the stomach hard enough to earn a grunt and a chuckle. “Some savior I turned out to be. Knifed with an envelope opener.”

  “Good thing you’re built like a brick wall, isn’t it?” she teased, though she was worried by the amount of blood seeping from the wound.

  “Keep running your hands all over me like that and there will only be one part of me built like a brick wall.” Jack reached up and drew her face down to his, kissing her soundly and leaving her breathless. “Are you all right?”