The two days Rebecca asked for turned into five. She was ready to storm Maxwell Hall all on her own and demand the return of any stolen property, or at the least risk looking desperate by sending another note to the Duchess of Dunncraigh asking to go to luncheon. Just as she sat down to write it, though, the reply arrived via special messenger and Pogue brought it to her in the morning room.
“Oh, thank goodness,” she said, relieved that she hadn’t somehow single-handedly ruined their—her—plans for a more peaceful resolution, until she recalled that if Eithne Stewart Maxwell, the Duchess of Dunncraigh, accepted her luncheon invitation then Callum would immediately put himself in more danger.
Then again, Callum had just that morning declared that he was finished with patience and meant to visit Maxwell Hall before sunrise tomorrow, regardless of who might be in residence. Now, at least the duchess would be away.
Standing, she broke the wax seal and unfolded the note. “Oh.” As she read the half-dozen lines her relief dropped into a tight, twisting dread. Rebecca closed her eyes. Callum would like it as little as she did, but she could do it. She would do it, because this would actually make things easier for him.
“Where’s Lord Geiry?” she asked, preceding the butler to the doorway.
“In his office, my lady. With that skinny ginger man, again.”
“That skinny ginger man is Dennis Kimes,” she informed him, “as you know. He is Callum’s … business adviser.” Actually she didn’t think Mr. Kimes had a title, but Callum clearly trusted him—which made him at least half an ally, as far as she was concerned.
“Och, he’s a new face. New faces are naught but trouble, if ye ask me, my lady.”
“Old faces can be trouble, as well.” Lifting an eyebrow at the servant, she curled her fingers and rapped on the closed office door.
“Enter,” Callum said, and she pushed down on the handle and stepped inside.
He stood behind his desk, the ginger-haired accounting clerk beside him, both of them looking over what appeared to be building plans. Hopefully it wasn’t Maxwell Hall—since including a “new face,” as Pogue termed Mr. Kimes, in something that Callum tended to call “vengeance” or “revenge” seemed exceedingly risky.
“I have a note,” she said as he looked up at her.
His mouth curved in a grim half smile. “Do ye now? Might I have a look at it?”
Mr. Kimes cleared his throat. “I’ll have a breath of air, I reckon,” he said, and bowing like a frightened bird, brushed past her out the door.
“He seems terrified of me,” she noted, nudging the door closed with her hip. “What in the world did you tell him?”
Callum shrugged. “I said he could disagree with me about whatever he chose, unless it was someaught involving seeing ye and the bug kept safe and comfortable. And that the last lad to threaten yer safety got tossed out my window.”
“Ah. I’m flattered then, I suppose. But I’m hardly that delicate.”
He took the note from her outstretched fingers. “Ye’re precious to me.” In his mind that seemed to answer everything, because without another word he unfolded the missive and read through it. Abruptly he looked up again, his brows diving together in a deep frown. “Nae.”
“It’s perfect, Callum. You will very nearly have the run of Maxwell Hall.”
Moving around the desk, he stopped so close to her she had to tilt her chin up to look him in the eyes. “Do ye think for a minute that I’ll allow ye to go to a luncheon with the duchess and Dunncraigh? Nae. Ye write ’em back and tell ’em I forbid it.”
“I seem to recall that your concern was for Margaret, and that I could do as I liked.”
“Ye mean to hold me to that? That was nearly a month ago, when I’d nae sorted things out.” He caught hold of her arm, not gently. “Ye may have spent time with the Maxwell and his bonny wife before I came back here, but I’m here now. Ye cannae.“He turned around to swear vehemently at the papers on his desk, as if they’d personally offended him. “Nae, Rebecca. It’s too dangerous.”
She resisted the urge to rub her arm, and instead put her palm on his back. “I have dined with them before. No, I don’t like the idea of sitting across a table from that … man. But this is our plan. Isn’t it? Let them have enough hope to continue, and see to it they’re worried enough that they rush their plans and make mistakes? Set them off balance and give us time to find what we need? That’s precisely what they’ve done. They’ve just given you time and opportunity to break into their blasted house and find those ledgers.”
“Ye—”
“Don’t you dare tell me what I’m not permitted to do, Callum MacCreath. I won’t stand for it. I was naïve. I was never stupid. We will have luncheon at Alba Gàrradh, a respectable restaurant, in front of other people. I will take my own carriage there and back again. And I will bring a driver and a groom with me to watch the doors and make certain I won’t be going anywhere against my will.”
His jaw clenched, he stalked away from her. She had no doubt in the world that he could physically prevent her from doing any of the things she’d just said. If she admitted to thinking that by taking more of a risk herself, she would enable him to take a little less, he’d likely lock her in her bedchamber. At this moment, before the Maxwell realized she would not be convinced to marry Lord Stapp, she had a certain immunity. Dunncraigh wouldn’t murder her, not while she literally owned the keys to his kingdom.
“I dunnae like it.”
“I know you don’t. I don’t like it, either. But it’s necessary.”
Callum walked back up to her. She opened her mouth, ready to protest that she wasn’t a child and would not be locked away like one, but he took her hand and placed her palm over his chest. Beneath her fingers his heart beat hard and fast. “I should be the one taking risks. It shouldnae be ye.”
“I think I’ve left plenty of risks for you, Callum. I’m eating a meal. You’re breaking into the home of the chief of clan Maxwell.”
From his short breath, he wasn’t convinced. “If ye hear anything—anything—that makes ye nervous, ye’re to stand up and go to the maître d’ and tell him ye need some air. Is that clear?”
“What’s the maître d’ to do about that?”
“Considering that the moment we finish here I’m riding out to the Alba Gàrradh and paying him two hundred quid to see ye kept safe, I imagine he can do a great deal.”
Goodness. He’d agreed. Attempting to hide her surprise, she leaned up and kissed him on the cheek. “I’ll be fine. I’m much more worried about you.”
Covering her hand with his, he kissed her back on the mouth. “Stubborn woman. Dunnae try to get them to admit to someaught, and for the devil’s sake, dunnae agree to anything. It’s just a luncheon, and ye’re looking for advice because ye dunnae want to be parted from Mags.”
So now he thought she would suddenly become an idiot and end up married over tea. Rebecca tried to tug her hand free, but he held her there with his. “I know what it is,” she stated.
“Are ye angry?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Good. Ye hold on to that.” With that he let her go and left the office.
Yes, parts of the man resembled the boy she’d known ten years ago, but not many of them. She did recall how angry he could make her, but that had generally been because he was drunk or just back from bedding some silly young thing who thought she could tame him. Now he’d done it to give her strength. The boy no longer existed. The man knew what he wanted and went after it.
The man still remained fierce and stubborn, but at least he listened. And he’d just proven that he could bend. As for taming him, she rather enjoyed the wildness in his soul. It made her feel warm and protected and wanted. After fourteen months of being alone, and nine years of … not coldness, but moderation, she supposed it was, the heat of Callum MacCreath intoxicated her.
If she’d gone away with him ten years ago, he likely would have destroyed her along with himself. She wouldn’t have been strong enough, wise enough, to stand against him. They’d both learned a great deal since then. And painful as the lessons had been for both of them, without those experiences they would never have been able to find this moment.
Wandering over to the desk, she looked down at the papers spread across the surface. They were floor plans, but not of Maxwell Hall. One of them looked like the warehouse Callum was constructing down by the port, a place to house the barrels of whisky coming in from Kentucky while they finished aging. She picked up the other paper. This one was more complicated. A distillery?
A shiver ran down her spine. Was he building here? Did he mean, then, to stay? Had he begun looking to the future as she’d urged? But why not say anything? Of course not an ounce of Kentucky Hills Distillery belonged to her, but if they were going to be together, he should have said something about it. That was how Dunncraigh and Donnach had worked, seeing to all aspects of Sanderson’s because she was, well, a woman. Making it seem as if they were being kind by not troubling her with a business of which she owned a third.
“Och, my lady,” Mr. Kimes said, leaning into the room. “Have ye seen Laird Geiry?”
She jumped. “He went out for a moment.” She tapped her finger against the floor plans. “A distillery?”
“Aye. He’s been looking at property that might suit.” He sent her a cautious smile. “It seems he wants to stay in the Highlands.”
“So it does.” And if it hurt a little because he’d chosen to show that by moving his business rather than by simply telling her that she’d been correct and that he needed to look for ways to live rather than to die, she supposed it didn’t signify. Except that it did. He’d begun with his business, and not with her.
* * *
The rain had held off today, but it still looked like a close thing as Callum stood in the shadows of a stand of birch trees at the end of the street. Just down the way the Duke of Dunncraigh emerged from his large, rectangular house and stepped into his coach, the red coat of arms emblazoned on the door panel. The duchess appeared a moment later, looking even more skeletal than she had the last time he’d seen her.
She climbed in, as well, and the coach rolled into the street toward the less fashionable houses and more fashionable eateries closer to the water. From her appearance anyone would think Her Grace a kindly old lass, but on the half a dozen occasions he’d spoken with her, he’d found her to be hard and claws-deep into anything that affected clan Maxwell. If she hadn’t had a hand in the deaths of Ian and George, she’d at least known about them. And she’d still pretended to be a surrogate mama to Rebecca, a shoulder to cry on all the while her husband and son went about finding a way to take everything Becca owned.
He waited another five minutes or so, giving the duke and duchess time to realize they’d forgotten a parasol or a coat, then made his way past the usual strings of orange girls, rag-and-bone men, milk peddlers, and everyone else out walking for the afternoon. When a cart of cabbage spilled, he took advantage of the momentary chaos and hopped the fence that circled Maxwell Hall.
With the lord and lady gone, the servants would likely all be headed below stairs for luncheon themselves. Even so, he moved around to the back of the house. Some of the upper-floor windows stood open, taking in the day’s cool breeze. Hopefully some of the ground-floor windows would be unlatched, as well. Days without rain were rare enough that they had to be utilized.
Crouching, he made his way to the glass double doors of the orangery and pushed down on the handle. The door opened, and with a grim smile he slipped inside. Potted citrus trees too delicate for Highlands winters stood scattered on the tile floor, birdcages and benches among them. The duke evidently liked his oranges, because he’d sacrificed part of his garden to make the glass-enclosed room.
Gripping the door handle to the main part of the house, Callum pushed it down slowly, allowing the door to open an inch or so as he peeked through. A maid hurried through the room, and he held still as she continued on in the direction of the servants’ stairs. Once she’d gone he moved into the back of the house, pausing just short of each doorway to listen.
Rebecca had said that the duchess rarely left home these days, so the servants would likely be giddy with the idea of having a long luncheon to themselves. They’d linger, hopefully, and give him enough time to find what he needed.
He’d been here once, when Dunncraigh and the duchess had held a soiree. He remembered it mostly because he’d found a very fine decanter of brandy in the duke’s office and liberated it for his own use. Callum grinned again as he swept through a downstairs sitting room to the door at one side. The idea that his misspent youth would ever come in handy would never have occurred to him, but he knew where Dunncraigh’s office was because of precisely that.
The handle didn’t give; of course Dunncraigh locked his private office. He glanced over his shoulder again. Picking the lock would take time, but he could manage it. On the other hand, breaking it down would be much simpler. If he broke open the door, though, the duke would know someone had been inside.
Rebecca wanted evidence, a chance for justice rather than revenge. She knew he wanted something more immediate. And yet she’d trusted him to come here alone and do as they’d agreed, while she encouraged the Maxwells to keep up their pursuit of her. Well, perhaps he could do a little flustering and still keep his word to her. Hm. “In for a penny,” he muttered under his breath. Holding his shoulder close against the door, he shoved. Hard.
With a muffled crack the door frame splintered, and he half fell into the room. There. A little deliberate destruction to make him feel better—and to let Dunncraigh know someone had broken into his private sanctuary even with all his servants in the house.
Righting himself, he pushed the door shut, but it wouldn’t stay closed. A lead horse statue propped against the door held it in place, and he moved on to the desk. The window behind him overlooked the back of the stable yard and part of the small garden, but he wasn’t interested in the view. He sat in the duke’s chair behind the desk, feeling distinctly smug as he did so. Lucifer knew the damned Duke of Dunncraigh didn’t deserve a fine seat in a fine house. Not when it had been built on murder and the burned-out homes of his own clansmen and cotters.
The three drawers on the right were locked, an ornate, scrolled bar holding them all shut. The shallow one across the top was open, but all he found there was pages of blank writing paper, additional quill tips, a half-eaten biscuit hard enough that it had been there for months, and a cheroot.
Pulling the knife from his boot, he dug into the expensive mahogany on the face of the top locked drawer. A minute later he pried off the catch and drew the metal bar from its posts. Every bit of destruction felt … good, but he didn’t want to be reckless about it. He didn’t want Dunncraigh thinking his office had been ransacked by some random hoodlum.
He’d practically been one of those, a decade ago. Only a titled brother and his choice to self-destruct kept him apart from the common law-breaking rabble. No wonder Rebecca had turned down his proposal for marriage. And thank God she had. However much it had hurt, she’d had a good life without him there. If Dunncraigh hadn’t acted against Ian, he likely would never have returned to the Highlands.
As he pulled several ledger books, more paper, two journals, a bottle of whisky, and a short stack of signed contracts from the drawers, he paused. He would never have chosen for Ian to die. His brother’s absence from the world left a hole in him that he didn’t think would ever heal. A very odd series of events had led him to where he now sat, and while he hated most of them, for a select few he was exceedingly grateful.
He wanted Rebecca in his life, for the rest of his life. He’d had ten years to decipher where she fit, what he’d thought he’d lost forever before he’d even opened his eyes to it. Now that his world had shifted to include her in it again, he refused to let her go. Ever. And that was how he would continue to think of it—an awful thing had happened, and he’d found her again. Reconciling it any other way was simply … impossible, and so he didn’t make the attempt.
None of that would matter, though, if he couldn’t find a way to put a stop to Dunncraigh. Shaking himself, he opened the first of the ledgers. Ten years ago he’d had only the dimmest idea of how accounts worked; Ian had been the earl, and those duties had fallen to him. Once he’d begun Kentucky Hills, though, he’d had to learn, and he’d become proficient at it. And what he saw in Dunncraigh’s accounts was a great deal more money going out than coming in.
Aside from the expected purchases—sheep, drovers, household repairs, servants’ salaries, and the like—the duke had purchased the land and properties he’d already learned about from Kimes’s research. There was even more to it than that, though. Seven ships, built in Southampton and presently on their way up to Inverness, ships for which the company had paid—and about which his partners clearly hadn’t been informed, and whose profits would no doubt go straight into Dunncraigh’s pockets. Shares purchased in Caribbean tobacco farms, which would explain the additional ships.
Balancing all the purchases were taxes he collected from cotters on his land, and the tithes paid him by his chieftains, the fee for the Maxwell keeping his clan safe and protected. Except none of the incoming funds had gone back into the clan. They’d gone to Domhnall Maxwell’s private plan to make himself even more wealthy.
How would the clans’ fifteen chieftains feel about that? Callum found a satchel beneath the desk and shoved the accounts book into it. The contracts were mostly for the properties about which he already knew, but they were additional proof in case someone thought he’d altered the ledgers. They went into the satchel, as well. Then, trying to keep his heart steady and remember the time, he mentally sent up a prayer and opened the first of the journals.
It had been written by Dunncraigh, and after four pages of spitting about the Duke of MacLawry and his ludicrous progressive ways, the journal ended. With a curse Callum flipped through it, but the rest of the pages were blank. He dropped it back into a drawer and grabbed the second one. Dunncraigh making business deals without the knowledge of his partners was one thing, and evidence that he’d defrauded his clan was another. But neither of them were proof that the duke had either murdered Ian and George, or that he’d ordered it done.
The second journal was much older, with the initials of Dunncraigh’s late father embossed on the hard leather cover. Pulling out his pocket watch and deciding he still had plenty of time, Callum checked through it. Other than a great deal of ranting about the Sassenach in Scotland and the Jacobites ruining the Highlands, he couldn’t find anything of interest. That one went back into the drawer, as well.
“Damnation,” he murmured, standing to go through the bookcase on the opposite wall. Shakespeare, Robert Burns, Walter Scott, and a first edition of Robinson Crusoe by Defoe made him wonder whether Dunncraigh read or simply wanted to give that impression. The rest of the tomes were almanacs, treatises on the different breeds of sheep, grain supplies during the Peninsular War, and a few others where even the title made him sleepy. He shook them out just to be certain, but found nothing.
Where, then, would a duke keep information he didn’t want anyone else to have? He wouldn’t have given a ledger or journal to Stapp, because he would have wanted to control them. The items could be back at Dunncraigh, he supposed, the duke’s fifteen-thousand-acre estate just north and west of Fort William, but they’d been taken from Inverness. It didn’t make sense that he would transport them.
Aye, he might have burned them, but as he took over the business shares of two men who’d been involved for longer than he had, Dunncraigh might have found a use for accounts and private thoughts, completely aside from anything incriminating.
Where would they be, though? The office would be the most protected spot, but also the most obvious. The master bedchamber? Servants would have the run of most of it. Still, though, he wouldn’t get another chance to look.
Hefting the satchel, he shifted the horse statue and slipped back out into the hallway, reaching back in to lean the equine against the door so it would fall over and leave it shut. He wanted Dunncraigh to know someone had been inside, but he didn’t relish being found out by some footman while he was still upstairs.
Someone coughed close by, and he ducked into the shadows beneath the main staircase as the butler passed through, collected a tray from the hall table, and continued on his way. After tracking down deer in thick brush, moving silently up the stairs felt fairly simple, and he reached the top before the butler returned to take his station in the foyer.
Well, he wouldn’t be leaving that way, then. Callum had never been upstairs in Maxwell Hall, and it took trying five doors before he found what had to be the master bedchamber. Two large stag heads faced each other across the room, the larger one with its antlers reaching nearly to the ceiling directly over the large bed, and the other over the fireplace on the opposite wall.
More striking was the large brown and gray bear head above the door. If the animal had come from Scotland it would have to be over four hundred years old, so it seemed more likely Dunncraigh had purchased the trophy from someone who’d been to America. Either way, he hadn’t killed the beastie.
The head above the far window, though, made him pause. A white wolf, lips curled back to show sharp fangs, yellow glass eyes snarling at him.
Like the bear, wolves had long ago been killed off in Scotland, though there remained rumors from time to time that some drover or shepherd had seen one high up in the Cairngorms. This specimen had likely come from the same place as the bear, but the fact that Dunncraigh had of all things a wolf up on his wall, seemed … prophetic.
Hell, he’d killed wolves himself when they’d gone after the cows in their compound’s small herd, but he’d never made a fucking trophy out of an animal. And he’d damned well never display an animal he hadn’t even killed. But that was Dunncraigh, he supposed, taking credit where he’d earned none.
The complete masculinity of the room surprised him a little, perhaps because it made him realize that his own bedchamber looked nothing like this one. The lighter curtains and wallpaper, paintings of heather and thistle, the carved wooden rabbits and foxes on the shelves—that had to have been Rebecca’s influence, because he couldn’t imagine Ian bothering with any of it. Clearly the Duchess of Dunncraigh held no sway in this room. He was rather glad to say that Rebecca’s touch was everywhere in his.
Pulling his mind back to his task, Callum rifled through the single bed stand and then the trunk at the foot of the bed. Nothing. The short bookcase beside the fireplace held nothing of interest, either. These were all places, though, the servants could reach. Someone as cautious as Dunncraigh wouldn’t put anything possibly damaging where anyone else could see it.
He made his way into the dressing room, filled mostly with hats and boots, and drawers with fresh cravats, shirts, and kilts. The valet would likely know more about the room than the duke, but he rifled through everything, anyway. After this, Dunncraigh would likely have men stationed every ten feet inside the house and around its perimeter. Callum wouldn’t be getting in here again.
And still, nothing. Swearing, he shoved the drawer holding the kilts closed, ready to slam the large wardrobe doors closed over it, but something shifted. Opening it again, he pulled everything out. Just heavy wool in the black, green, and red of Maxwell. Frowning, he pushed the drawer hard again. Something distinctly slid from back to front, but the velvet-lined box was empty.
Pulling the drawer out completely, he put it on the floor and crouched in front of it. As he looked at it from the side, the inside seemed more shallow than it should have been, but only by an inch or so. Unless he was imagining it because he wanted it to be so.
With a deep breath he pushed his forefinger down on the front right corner of the bottom piece. Nothing. The same with the back right corner. Then he pushed down on the front left corner, and it gave. The opposite corner lifted. He dug his fingers into the small space, caught hold of the bottom piece, and pulled it up.
An accounts ledger and a smaller journal lay side by side in the shallow, velvet-lined space beneath. For a half-dozen heartbeats Callum simply stared at them. Then he scooped them up, opened the ledger to see Ian’s neat handwriting, and shoved them both into the satchel. “I’ve got ye now, ye bastard,” he growled. “We’ve got ye.”
Moving quickly, he left the master bedchamber for the back of the house, looking for one of those open windows and a convenient trellis. He might have what he wanted from here, but Dunncraigh still had Rebecca far too close to him. And however much he’d paid the maître d’, he trusted himself more. He might not be able to perform a rescue without her punching him or chewing his ear off, but he could damned well watch over her until she was home safe.
And then he—they had some plans to make.