“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.
“Where will you be staying?” she continued.
“Here.”
Her eyebrows dove together, her soft-looking lips compressed tightly. “You most certainly cannot think to reside here with me and Maggie.”
“I most certainly can,” he returned.
“Waya should stay with us,” the bairn put in, giving the black wolf a vigorous scratch between the ears. “Her fur is very rough.”
Rebecca’s fair skin paled further. “I am not—”
“Office?” He pointed toward the room where Ian had once kept his books and correspondence.
“Yes, b—”
“In there,” he cut in. “Pogue, my bags will be arriving shortly. I’ll take the master bedchamber and connecting rooms.” Deliberately he glanced back at Rebecca, very much doubting that she’d moved out of those rooms in the past year.
“I … Of course, Master Call—I mean, Lord Geiry.”
“Hold a moment, Pogue,” Rebecca countered, and with a damp swoosh of her lavender skirts led the way into the office.
“Waya. Guard,” Callum murmured, and the wolf extricated herself from the bairn’s clutches to go sit staring at the front door. He’d been reining in his temper, his words, his desire to lash out so tightly that his muscles practically groaned as he followed her. If she still thought of him as the short-tempered, adventurous boy she’d once known, she’d just made a very large mistake. He looked forward to pointing that out to her.
The office had always been neat, and as he walked inside all the books were still lined up precisely on the shelves, while an open ledger lay parallel to the edge of the desk, a pencil perpendicular to that atop the pages. It almost seemed as if Ian was still there, and had only left the room a moment ago. He shook off the sensation. Rebecca seated herself behind the desk as he closed the door, shutting them in. So she wanted the position of power; she could take it, as far as he was concerned. He had the power.
“You cannot stay here,” she said abruptly, slamming the ledger closed. “It’s not proper.”
Callum leaned back against the door. “That’s how ye greet a dear friend ye havenae seen in ten years?” He gazed at her until she glanced away. “Ye look proper, still dressed in half-mourning colors even, but I’m beginning to have my doubts about yer sincerity.”
“You may have been my dearest friend a decade ago. You are not any longer. And don’t you dare blame me for that.” She smacked the flat of her hand against the desk, likely wishing it was his face. “I have no greeting for you. Leave, Callum. No one wants you here.”
“I want me here, and I reckon that’s what matters. I’m the Earl Geiry now, lass, whatever ye thought might happen.”
“Whatever I thought might happen?” she echoed. “I thought it would be your cousin James and his family taking the house, but I would hope they would have given more than two minutes’ notice before they threw my things out of the bedchamber where I’ve been laying my head for the past ten years.”
He folded his arms across his chest, lowering his head to gaze at her directly. “I’d suggest ye nae go complaining to me about being thrown out of a room without notice. I left the fucking country with what I bore on my back and naught else.”
“Language, sir!”
Aye, he’d have to mind his language, and his temper. Kentucky had been a bit more rugged than Inverness. Aside from that, he had a task to accomplish, and he’d do well to remember that bellowing and punching might not be the best way to accomplish it. Not at the beginning, anyway. Not until he knew the name of every man—and woman—who’d had a hand in killing Ian. “Do ye have any more children?” he asked brusquely. Margaret had changed things, in ways he couldn’t even begin yet to foresee. The angel of death he’d meant to become had someone to protect, now.
“No, we—I—don’t have any more children. Ian sent you letters. Did you not receive them? He spent a great deal of money to track you down.”
“I dunnae ken why he would, being that he issued an order and I followed it. But aye, I received his letters. I didnae read them. I used ’em for kindling.” The first letter had been a shock when it had arrived, a little better than five years ago. As far was Callum was concerned, he’d moved himself as far across the world as he possibly could from the Highlands, and once there, as deep into the woods and hills as the terrain and the natives would allow. And then Ian had somehow found him. Now he wondered if his brother had written to announce the birth of his daughter. It didn’t matter, of course; until five minutes ago he hadn’t wanted anything to do with bairns from his brother’s happy marriage. Until he’d set eyes on the delicate, defenseless sprite.
“You never read any of them? Any of them?”
She looked at him, her gaze traveling from his worn boots and breeches up to his jacket with one button missing, before she met his gaze again. He knew the appearance he presented, and he didn’t much care what she might think of him. This wasn’t about him, and it was only about her if she’d had something to do with Ian’s death.
Callum narrowed his eyes. “I dunnae reckon what I did out in Kentucky has any bearing on anything. Though I did miss seeing any letters ye might have written me. I had a yen to burn some of those, as well, but they nae did arrive.”
“I never wrote you.”
If he hadn’t hated her for ten years, that might have wounded him. As it was, he shrugged. “Just as well. I’ve more interest in what ye might be up to today, anyway. A wee bird told me, for example, that ye’ve had Donnach Maxwell calling on ye. The Duke of Dunncraigh’s firstborn, no less.”
“Who is this wee bird?” she demanded, clearly exasperated. Good; that made two of them. “You said you only returned to Inverness this morning.”
“Aye, I did. Dunnae dodge the question, Lady Geiry. Do ye mean to wed the Marquis of Stapp? Has he been whispering to ye about how easy it’ll make managing yer fleet if he marries ye, since ye’ve had all yer businesses entwined for ten years now?”
She lifted her chin, which would have been haughty if she didn’t still have hair and water running down one side of her head. “I am a widow. I believe whom I choose to see is my own business, and none of yours.”
He nodded. “So it is. Unless he’s been having that conversation with ye for longer than a year.”
“You go too far, sir,” she snapped, her fingers beginning to shake before she folded them into her lap. “Your brother and I were perfectly happy. I will not lower myself to answer your asinine, ill-meant accusations.”
She hadn’t forgotten how to hold her own in a conversation, for damned certain. He refused to admire her spleen. “Then dunnae. But Donnach Maxwell willnae be calling on ye here. Nae any longer. I’ll nae have him in this house.”
“You cannot—”
“My house,” he interrupted. “My rules.”
“Then you may have this house,” she snapped, pushing to her feet. “I have Edgley House by the harbor, and that belongs to me. You stomp about this house as long as you wish. You’ll do it alone.”
She strode up to him, clearly expecting him to move out of her way. Callum remained where he was, wondering if she had any idea how very patient he was being. He could make her tell him what she knew about Ian’s death, and just how close she’d become to Donnach Maxwell; of that he was certain. But blunt didn’t suit him. Not today, anyway, when his memories were nearly thick enough to walk upon. And not after meeting the little one. And the wee lass had changed more than that. He couldn’t sit alone in his fortress and plot his vengeance against the world while Margaret MacCreath and her two-colored eyes smiled innocently at him.
“Go if ye like,” he said, keeping his voice low and level. “Lady Margaret stays here.”
All the color left her face. “What?”
“I’m Lord Geiry. She is my brother’s daughter, and therefore my ward. She goes where I say. And I say she stays with me.”
“You devil!” Rebecca swung her open hand at him.
He knew it was coming, and lifted his arm to block the blow. Then he caught her wrist in his fingers. “I’m being very kind at the moment,” he said, releasing her the second she pulled away. The touch seared him, and not with the anger and disgust he’d expected. “I’m allowing ye to stay if ye wish. Ye might consider that before ye begin slapping and kicking.” The Rebecca he remembered had never been much for slapping, but she’d had a hell of a kick. That likely wasn’t proper enough for her any longer, but he didn’t care to find out for certain.
She tromped to the desk and back again. “Why did you come back?” she finally snapped, pacing again. “Why? Because with Ian gone you would finally have his money? Because you would do anything to make a stand against Dunncraigh? It’s been ten years, Callum. The duke has been nothing but kind for all that time, and especially since Ian died. I don’t know how I would have managed to sort through my father’s business or keep Ian’s going without his or Donnach’s expertise on the matter. So keep your stupid, petty grudges to yourself, and do not ruin my life, or Maggie’s, because of them. Take the title, take the money, take the house, but leave us alone.”
He tilted his head. Was that the man he’d been? It sounded familiar, in an uncomfortable, far-off way. “I’m nae here for any damned money,” he stated, grinding out the last word. “And in Kentucky we’ve nae use for earls or dukes. I own a business that I began, one that I reckon earns me more income than Geiry ever could.”
She looked him up and down again, color returning to her cheeks. “You don’t look it.”
“I didnae dress to impress ye, Rebecca.”
Lady Geiry sniffed. “If you have your own money, then why are you here? You’ll ruin everything!”
Callum had become accustomed to keeping his own counsel, to knowing the hows and whys of a thing and simply expecting his employees to do as he ordered. He hunted alone but for Waya, and after his exit from Scotland ten years earlier, he’d found that he preferred it that way. And he fully meant to ask his own questions in his own time to discover what, exactly, had happened to his brother. Still, all he had now was a vast, smooth surface of unknowns. If he stirred the pot, however, a morsel or two might emerge.
“I was stacking kindling,” he began, pushing away from the door and walking to the window when the memory made him restless, “and found a bit of newspaper that said Lord Geiry was dead. Then I found the last letter I’d received before anyone could burn it, and read it. Half an hour later I was on my way back to Scotland. As for the why, it was one word I read. One word I keep hearing. Do ye ken what the word was?”
She’d pivoted to keep him in view. “I’m … I’m sorry you had to learn about Ian’s death that way, Callum. I truly am. But this has been difficult enough. Please go away, and don’t muck about in what we’re just managing to get straightened out. We’re trying to move forward again.”
“‘Drowned,’” he said, ignoring her protest. Well, not ignoring, but memorizing every word for future study and reference. “Ian drove off the bank of Loch Brenan and drowned. Didn’t break his neck, didn’t get crushed beneath the wheels, but drowned. Ian. The lad who caught fish with a spear from under the water. The lad who’d go swimming with us, but wouldnae go shooting or riding because he couldnae bear to look the fool.”
“What? I…” She took a deep breath. “Accidents happen, Callum. He took the phaeton out in a storm, and a terrible thing happened. Don’t try to make it worse than it was.”
“Ye’ll have to excuse me if I choose nae to take yer word for anything, lass. Especially when ye’re being courted by Donnach Maxwell and practically calling Dunncraigh yer da’ a year after losing yer true papa.” Returning to the door, he pulled it open. “I’ll be sleeping in the master bedchamber. Unless ye and I are sharing it, ye’d best have yer things out by midnight.”
She stalked past him. “Don’t you dare speak a word about this drowning nonsense to Margaret,” she hissed. “I think sometimes she still expects her papa to come walking back through the front door.” Her voice caught. “If you’ve come only to look for conspiracies, look well. You won’t find any. And then go away. Or at the least, let me leave with my daughter.”
Callum watched her return to the foyer to collect young Margaret and then head upstairs, calling for servants to help her move her things to the yellow room, wherever the devil that was. He wanted to walk the house, to familiarize himself with it all over again, but he would do that tonight, after everyone else had gone to bed.
As for Rebecca, when he’d gone over this plan in his mind, he’d forced her out of the house. He didn’t trust her; she’d stood against him once, and so she could go to the devil with the rest of clan Maxwell. Margaret’s existence had altered that. The one person he knew to be innocent in Ian’s demise was going nowhere. The closer she remained, the better he could protect her. If that meant Rebecca had to remain beneath his roof as well, then so be it. The truth, as Shakespeare had written, would out. And God help Becca if she was involved.