“All right,” she said, “but I will tell you again, Colin, and you really should believe me. Douglas is dangerous and smart; he could be anywhere waiting for you. He conducted all sorts of dangerous missions against the French. I tell you, we should wed immediately and—”
“That is, we will ride to Vere Castle unless you’re too sore to ride. Then I will prop you up in the carriage.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“I’m talking about taking you—our wedding night—until you’re raw with it.”
“You’re being purposefully crude, Colin, purposefully nasty and unkind.”
“Perhaps, but you’re in Scotland now, and you will soon be my wife, and you will learn that you owe me your loyalty and your obedience.”
“You were one way when we first met. Then, when you were ill, you were really quite nice, albeit irritable because you hate weakness. Now you’re just being a fool. I will marry you and every time you’re a fool in the future, I’ll do something to you to make you regret it.” There, she thought, that was setting things straight. She loved him to distraction—a fact she knew well that he knew, and thus his outlandish behavior toward her—but she wouldn’t allow his character flaws or his outmoded notions of husbands and wives to interfere with what she insisted that he be.
He laughed. It was a strong, deep laugh, a laugh of a man who knew his own worth and knew it to be above that of the girl who rode beside him. He was well again and strong of body and ready to take on the world—with her groats. “I look forward to your attempts. But be warned, Joan, Scottish men are masters in their own homes, and they beat their wives, just as your honorable and kind Englishmen occasionally do.”
“That is absurd! No man I know would ever raise a finger against his wife.”
“You have been protected. You will learn.” He started to tell her that he could easily lock her in a musty room in his castle, but he kept quiet. They weren’t yet married. He gave her a look, then a salute, and kicked his horse in its sides to gallop ahead of her.
They arrived at the Kinross house on Abbotsford Crescent at three o’clock the following afternoon. It had been drizzling lightly for the past hour, but Sinjun was too excited to be bothered about the trickles of water down her neck. They’d ridden the Royal Mile, as fine as Bond Street, Sinjun gawking all the way at the fine gentlemen and ladies who looked just as they did in London, and at all the equally fine shops. Then they turned off to the left onto Abbotsford Crescent. Kinross House was in the middle of the crescent, a tall, skinny house of red aged brick, quite lovely really, with its three chimney stacks and its gray slate roof. There were small windows, each leaded, and she guessed the house to be at least two hundred years old. “It’s beautiful, Colin,” she said as she slipped off her mare’s back. “Is there a stable for our horses?”
They cared for their own mounts, then paid the driver and removed their trunks and valises. Sinjun couldn’t stop talking she was so excited. She kept tossing her head toward the castle that stood atop its hill, exclaiming that she’d seen paintings of it, but to actually see it all shrouded in gray mist, the power of it, how substantial and lasting it was, left her nearly speechless. And Colin only smiled at her, amused at her enthusiasm, for he was tired, the rain was dismal—something he’d grown up with, and the castle, indeed, was a fortress to be reckoned with, but it was just there, brooding over the city, and who really thought about it?
The door was opened by Angus, an old retainer who had been a servant to the Kinross family his entire life. “My lord,” he said. “Dear me and dear all of us. Oh Gawd. Aye, the young lassie is wi’ ye, I see. More’s the pity, aye, sech a pity.”
Colin grew very still. He was afraid to know, but he asked nonetheless, “How do you know about my young lassie, Angus?”
“Och, dear and begorra,” said Angus, pulling on the long straight strands of white hair that fell on each side of his round face.
“I hope you don’t mind that I invited myself in. Your man here didn’t want to let me over the threshold, but I insisted,” Douglas said as he came up behind Angus. He was smiling through his teeth. “You damned bastard, do come in. As for you, Sinjun, you will feel the flat of my hand soon enough.”
Sinjun looked at her furious brother and smiled. It was difficult, but she managed it, for she wasn’t at all surprised to see him. Ah, but Colin was, she saw. She’d warned him, damn his stubborn hide. She stepped forward. “Hello, Douglas, do forgive me for giving you such a worry but I was afraid you would be intractable. You have that tendency, you know. Welcome to our home. Yes, Douglas, I’m a married lady, married in all ways, I might add, so you can forget any notions about annulment. I would appreciate your not trying to kill him, for I’m too young to be a widow.”
“Blessed hell! The damned devil you say!” And there was her brother Ryder, standing at Douglas’s elbow, and he looked fit to kill, flushed to his eyebrows, unlike Douglas, who never stirred when his anger was deep and burning, just remained cold-stone still and yelled. “Is this the fortune-hunting bastard who stole you from Douglas?”
“Yes, that’s him,” Douglas said through still-gritted teeth. “Blessed hell, your husband! Damn you, Sinjun, there’s been no time. Ryder and I have ridden like the very devil. You’re lying, Sinjun, tell me you’re lying, and we will leave right now, right this instant, and return to London.”
Colin stepped into his own house and raised his hands. “Be quiet, all of you! Joan, step aside. If your brothers want to kill me, they will, regardless of your trying to protect me by flapping your petticoats at them. Angus, go see to some refreshment. My wife is thirsty, as am I. Gentlemen, either kill me now or come into the drawing room.”
This all seemed very familiar, and Sinjun was forced to smile. “There are no umbrella stands about,” she said, but Douglas wasn’t to be drawn. He was stiff and cold and looked severe as an executioner.
“Ryder, this is my husband, Colin Kinross. As you can see, he shouts as loudly as you and Douglas do, and he looks a bit like Douglas, only he’s more handsome, much wittier, and of a more reasonable nature.”
“Bosh!”
“How do you know, Ryder? This is the first time you’ve ever met him. Colin, this is my brother Ryder.”
“It’s certainly going to be interesting,” Colin said.
Ryder studied him closely, all the while yelling, “I can tell by the look of him that he’s none of those things. He’s about as reasonable as Douglas here, no more, certainly. Damnation, Sinjun, you’ve been a perfect idiot, my girl. Let me tell you—”
“Go into the drawing room, Ryder. You can tell me all you wish to there.” Sinjun turned to Colin and raised a brow.
“This way,” he said, and led them across the narrow entrance hall, which smelled musty and clogged the nostrils with dust, through a single door into a room that could kindly be called elegantly shabby.
“Oh dear,” Sinjun said, eyeing the room. “It’s proportions are quite nice, Colin, but we must get a new carpet, new draperies—goodness, those must be eighty years old! And just look at those chairs—the fabric is rotting right off them.”
“Be quiet!”
“Oh, Douglas, I’m sorry. You aren’t interested in all my housewifely plans, are you? Please sit down. As I said, welcome to my new home. Colin tells me the house is all of two hundred years old.”
Douglas looked at Colin. “Are you well yet?”
“Yes.”
“You swear you’re fully and completely healed and back to your strength?”
“Yes.”
“Good, damn you!” Douglas leaped on him, his hands going for his throat. Colin, no fool, was ready for him. They went down to the floor, dust billowing up from the faded carpet, and rolled, Douglas on top, then Colin, each kicking the other with his legs, each rolling the other over.
Sinjun looked at Ryder, whose lovely blue eyes were narrowed and filled with fury. “We must stop this. It happened before. It would
be a very bad melodrama were it not so dangerous. Will you help me? It is absurd. You’re all supposed to be civilized gentlemen.”
“Forget civilization. If by any wild chance your husband just happens to knock Douglas out, it’s my turn.”
Sinjun shouted, “Blessed hell! Stop it!”
There was no discernible effect.
She looked wildly around for a weapon. No blessed umbrella stand or any other piece of dilapidated furniture she could use to bash Douglas’s head.
Then she saw just the thing. She calmly picked up a small hassock nearly hidden behind a sofa and swung it with all her might, striking Douglas’s back. He roared, jerking about and staring at his sister, who now had the hassock raised over her head.
“Get off him, Douglas, or I swear I’ll break your stubborn head.”
“Ryder, take care of our idiot sister whilst I kill this mangy bastard.”
But it wasn’t to be. The panting, the cursing, the grunts were all abruptly stopped by the obscenely loud report of a gun. In the closed room it sounded like a cannon.
Angus stood in the open doorway, an old blunderbuss smoking in his hands. There was a huge hole in the ceiling of the drawing room.
Sinjun dropped the hassock with a loud thud. She looked at that hole, smoking and blackening the ceiling all around it, and said to Douglas, “Is my dowry large enough to repair even that?”
CHAPTER
6
ANGUS STOOD QUIETLY in the corner of the drawing room, holding the blunderbuss close, eyes still watchful, even after he’d announced, “Forgive me, my lords, but her ladyship here bain’t much of a Kinross yet, and thus if someone must have his neck shot through, it will be one of ye even though yer her brothers. Ye also be Sassenach toffs, an’ that makes me finger itch like th’ divil.”
And that was that, Ryder thought, after he’d figured out the essence, which wasn’t at all good as far as he and Douglas were concerned.
Now Colin and Sinjun sat side by side on the worn pale blue brocade sofa, Ryder and Douglas on equally worn chairs facing them. There was no rug between them. Silence was the news of the day.
“We were married in Gretna Green,” Sinjun announced.
“The devil you were,” Douglas said. “Even you, Sinjun, wouldn’t be that stupid. You would think that I would go there immediately, and thus you would go elsewhere.”
“No, you’re wrong. After I thought that, I realized that you wouldn’t go there, that you would come to Edinburgh instead and quickly find Colin’s house. You see, I know you very well, Douglas.”
“This has nothing to do with anything,” Ryder said. “You’re coming home with us, brat.”
Colin raised a black eyebrow. “Brat? You’re calling her brat and she’s Lady Ashburnham, my wife?”
Sinjun said to him as she patted his hand in what she hoped was a wifely gesture, “It takes my brothers time to change and adapt to things. Ryder will come about, just give him a year or so.”
“I am not amused, Sinjun!”
“No, neither am I. I am married. Colin is my husband. It was doubtless the damned MacPhersons who wrote the anonymous letter to Douglas claiming Colin killed his wife. They’re cowards and liars and they’re out to destroy him, and what better way to go about it than to begin by ruining his nuptials with me?”
Colin stared at her. She was frightening. He’d mentioned the MacPhersons but one time, yet she’d put it all together. Of course, he hadn’t really spoken to her for nearly three days. She’d had a lot of hours to think and sort through things. Thank God she didn’t know the full extent of it—yet.
A very fat woman came into the room. She was wearing a huge red apron that went from right beneath the massive bosom of her black gown to her knees. She was smiling widely. “Och, ye’re here, me lord. It’s home ye be at last. And this sweet little lassie be yer wife?” She curtsied, using her apron.
“Hello. What is your name?”
“Agnes, me lady. I’m here wi’ Angus. I do what he doesn’t, which be most of everything. Look at the hole in the ceiling! My Angus always was excellent at his work. Be any of ye hungry?”
There was a chorus of yeas and Agnes took herself off. Angus hadn’t moved from his spot in the corner, blunderbuss still held firmly against his chest.
It was at that moment Colin realized that he’d been silent as the grave. He cleared his throat. It was his home, after all. “Gentlemen, would you care for a brandy?”
Ryder nodded and Douglas clenched his fists again and said, “Yes. Good smuggled French brandy?”
“Naturally.”
Well, that was something, Sinjun thought, relaxing just a bit. Men who drank together couldn’t smash each other, not with brandy snifters in their hands. Of course, they could throw the snifters, but she’d never seen either Ryder or Douglas do that.
“How are Sophie and all my nephews, and the children?”
“They’re all well except for Amy and Teddy, who were fighting in the hayloft and a bale of hay rolled off its stack and knocked both of them out and down to the ground. No broken bones, thank God.”
“I expect Jane lambasted them but good.” Jane was the directress of Brandon House, or Bedlam House, as Sinjun called the lovely large three-story house that lay but one hundred yards from Chadwyck House, the residence of Ryder, Sophie, and their young son, Grayson.
“Oh yes, Jane had a rare fit, threatened to pull ears and dish out bread and water after they recovered from all their bruises. I think that’s what she did do, adding just a dollop of jam to their bread. Then Sophie kissed them both and yelled at them as well.”
“And then what did you do, Ryder?”
“I just hugged them and said if they were ever so stupid again, I would be very upset with them.”
“A dire threat,” Sinjun said, and laughed. She rose and walked to Ryder, leaned down, and hugged him close. “I’ve missed you so very much.”
“Blessed hell, brat, I’m exhausted. Douglas dragged me out of bed—and Sophie was so warm, it was damned difficult to leave her—and he forced me to ride like the devil himself were snapping at our heels. He said he would outfox you, bragged, he did, but you won, didn’t you?”
“Here is your brandy, my lord.”
“I’m not a lord, Kinross. I’m a second son. I’m only an honorable, and that strikes me as a mite ridiculous. Just call me Ryder. You are my brother-in-law, at least until Douglas decides whether or not he will kill you. Take heart, though. Not many years ago Douglas gave a good deal of thought to killing our cousin Tony Parrish—called him a rotten sod—but in the end he gave it up.”
Angus relaxed a bit.
“That situation is nothing like this one, Ryder.”
Angus snapped back to attention.
“True, but Sinjun is married to the fellow, Douglas, no way around that. You know she’s never one to do things half-measure.”
Douglas cursed foully.
Angus relaxed a mite, for curses were a wise man’s way to relieve his spleen.
Colin strolled to Douglas and handed him a brandy. “How long do the two of you plan to stay? Don’t get me wrong. You’re welcome as my brothers-in-law to remain as long as you wish, but there are few furnishings here and thus it wouldn’t be very comfortable for you.”
“Who are the MacPhersons?” Douglas asked.
Colin said calmly enough, “They are a clan who have feuded with my clan for several generations. Indeed it all started around 1748, after the Battle of Culloden. There was bad blood there because the laird of the MacPhersons stole my grandfather’s favorite stallion. The feuding finally stopped when I married the current laird’s daughter, Fiona Dahling MacPherson. When she died so mysteriously some six months ago, her father seemed not to blame me. However, the eldest brother, Robert, is vicious, unreasonable, greedy, and utterly unscrupulous. When my cousin visited me in London, he told me the MacPhersons, led by that bastard Robert MacPherson, had already raided my lands and killed two of my people.
Joan is correct. It is very likely one of them penned that letter. The only thing is, I can’t imagine how they knew where I was or how any of the sniveling cowards had the cunning to come up with such a plot.”
“Why the hell do you call her Joan?” Ryder said.
Colin blinked. “It’s her name.”
“Hasn’t been for years. Her name is Sinjun.”
“It’s a man’s nickname. I don’t like it. She is Joan.”
“Dear God, Douglas, he sounds just like Mother.”
“True,” Douglas said. “Sinjun will bring him around. Back to the MacPhersons. I don’t want my sister in any danger. I won’t allow it.”
“She may be your sister,” Colin said very quietly, “but she is my wife. She will go where I go and she will do as I bid her. I will keep her from harm, you needn’t worry.” He turned to Sinjun. His eyes glinted in the soft afternoon light but his expression remained utterly impassive, as did his voice. “Isn’t that right, my dear?”
“Yes,” she said without hesitation. “Shortly, we will travel northward to Vere Castle. I will take very good care of Colin, neither of you need worry.”
“It isn’t that poaching bastard I’m worried about,” Douglas yelled at her. “I’m worried about you, dammit.”
“That’s very nice of you, Douglas, and understandable, since you’re fond of me.”
“I’d like to take a strap to your bottom.”
“Only I will take straps to her in the future,” Colin said firmly. “She doesn’t believe that now, but she will learn.”
“Sounds to me,” Ryder said very slowly, looking back and forth between the two of them, “yes, it does seem that you just might have met your match, Sinjun.”
“Oh yes,” she said, purposefully misunderstanding her brother. “He is my match, my mate for life. I was waiting for him and at last he found me.” She walked over to her soon-to-be-husband, who was standing by the mantel holding a brandy snifter. She put her arms around his chest, leaned up, and kissed his mouth. Douglas growled and Ryder, dear blessed Ryder, laughed.
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