Page 2 of The Devil Wears Kilts
“Well, this should cheer ye up.” Arran walked up and handed their sister a small, cloth-wrapped parcel.
“Let me guess,” Rowena commented, wiping at her cheek. “It’s a compass, so I willnae get lost when I go riding on the new saddle from Bear, in the new boots from Lachlan.”
Arran frowned. “No. It’s a wee clock, on a pin. Very clever, it is. I had it shipped all the way from Geneva after I saw an advertisement inAckermann’s Repository.”
“That’s very nice, then. Thank ye, Arran.”
Munro took back his claymore from Lachlan and jabbed it none too gently into the scarred wooden floor. It wasn’t the first weapon to rest there, and likely wouldn’t be the last. The pipers and half a dozen of his servants were crowded back into the hallway again, and Ranulf gave them a sterner look and a dismissing wave. Clearly his sister wasn’t in the mood for a damned parade—even one of well-wishers.
“So Arran gets thanks, and all the rest of us have is tears and being called idiots?” Munro retorted.
Instead of answering, Rowena set down her pin clock and slowly walked up to Ranulf. The dogs shoved their heads against her palms as she approached, but she ignored the obvious request for scratches. That didn’t bode well. She hadn’t calledhiman idiot, but it did seem to be implied. And Ranulf didn’t much care for that. His sister had asked for an emerald-green gown, after all, and he’d seen to it that she had one. A very pretty, and very expensive one. From Paris, damn it all.
When she pulled him to his feet, he didn’t resist. But when Rowena kept both of his hands in her small, delicate fingers, he frowned. “Ye wanted something else, then,” he rumbled, wishing, and not for the first time, that he’d brought another female into the house. Then someone, at least, would have a chance of understanding the youngest MacLawry. It had been a simple matter when she was a bairn, but lately she more and more often seemed an entirely foreign creature. “What is it? Ye know if it’s in my power, I’ll get it for ye, Rowena.”
“Ye—you—know what I want, Ranulf. I’m eighteen years old today. I want my Season. In London. That’s w—”
“Nae,” he cut in, scowling as much at the way she altered her speech as at the notion itself. “We’ve set on Friday to celebrate yer birthday. The whole clan is coming. All the bonny lads’ll be here, fighting to dance with ye. That’s finer than any London soiree.”
With a poorly hidden sigh she glanced over her shoulder toward the other three men in the room. “Would ye fight for a waltz with me, Lachlan MacTier?”
“And get my feet flattened for my trouble?” The viscount laughed again. “I see ye all the time. Let the other bonny lads fight for a dance.”
“No bonny lads will brawl for a dance with me, because they’re all afraid of my brothers,” Rowena retorted.
“Well, so am I, then.”
“Ye are not.”
Ranulf stirred, unwilling to listen to why a man should or should not fear him. A man should. And that was that. “Ye’ll nae want for a partner, Rowena. It’ll be a grand party.”
Finally she faced him again. “I don’t want a stupid party with people I’ve known all my life, and who all think a dance is an excuse for a fight. I want my Season. In London. Mama had one.”
“Mama was English,” he snapped, snarling over the word. “Ye know who lives in London, Winnie. Fops and dandies and weak-hearted Sasannach. Ye have a fine party here to look forward to. And if a man cannae abide the notion of standing toe-to-toe with the chief of his clan, he doesnae deserve to dance with ye.”
She put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. “Ye want me to prefer Glengask to everywhere else in the world, Ran, but ye won’t let me see anywhere else. I’ve nothing to compare it to except my own imagination, and in my mind, London is very wondrous, indeed.”
“For the last damned time, London is full of useless bootlickers who couldn’t lift their own saddles. Go upstairs and try on yer dress. This discussion is finished.”
“Ranulf, y—”
“Finished,” he repeated, and crossed his arms over his chest. Rowena was a wee, delicate thing, far more resembling their mother than made him comfortable. To her credit she didn’t back away from him, but even so she knew as well as he did that he’d won the argument. She was not going to London. Ever.
With a last damp glare she turned and fled through the door. A moment later he heard her door upstairs slam closed. The other three men in the room looked at him, but none of them said a word. They wouldn’t, though; his brothers, at least, knew the rest of the argument he hadn’t bothered to level at Rowena—that London was also full of aristocrats who claimed Scottish land while they denied Scottish blood and ancestry, men who lived as far from the Highlands as they could manage while driving their own tenants from their homes in order to turn their lands over to sheep. That London was also full of traitors. Traitors and killers.
“I’m going for a ride. Fergus, Una,” he said, and left the room without a backward glance, the dogs on his heels.
Debny, the head groom, must have seen him coming, because by the time he reached the stable yard Stirling was waiting for him. Swinging into the saddle, he kneed the big, rangy bay and set off down the pathway that wound to the east, crossing a portion of the windswept hillside and then twisting down into a tree-lined gorge, the dogs flanking him on either side. The river Dee roared down the center of the canyon, descending into the valley and then the lowlands far beyond over a series of granite cliffs that looked liked the stairs of a giant.
Every time he rode this trail the beauty of it struck him all over again, but today he barely took a moment to notice that one of the old trees had come down in the last storm. Rowena onlythoughtshe wanted to go to London, and that was only because she’d taken to reading their mother’s journals and the damned Society pages from the newspaper. For the last month he’d had Cooper burn them the moment they arrived, but clearly it hadn’t made a bit of difference.
Slowing to a walk to round the deadfall, he continued upstream. Down below where the river spilled out into the valley lay the village of An Soadh—his village, full of his cotters and herdsmen and pottery makers and shopkeepers. This morning he didn’t care to hear any of them praise his graces or bless his dear family or thank him for the invitation to Glengask Hall for the party on Friday.
A light mist hung in the tops of the trees this morning, the wan sunlight falling in visible streams to the mossy, sharp-edged rocks and low, weather-beaten shrubs tucked in between them. How in God’s name anyone could prefer soft, spoiled London to this, he had no idea. A deer darted out from behind a cluster of boulders and sprang up one of the narrow ravines toward the heather-blanketed moors above. The deerhounds roared and sprinted after her, and Ranulf reached for his rifle—then realized belatedly that he hadn’t brought it along. With a curse he whistled Fergus and Una back to his side.
Forgetting his rifle had been foolish. As solitary as the Highlands felt, as empty of people as most of the nooks and crannies were becoming, there were always places a fellow who meant no good could hide. For a moment he considered turning around and heading back to Glengask for a weapon, but today he was more likely to be ambushed by his sister at home than he was by any ill-wishers out in the wilderness.
Or so he thought. At the faint, moss-muffled sound of hoofbeats behind him, Ranulf edged Stirling into the trees. An attack in broad daylight in the middle of his own lands would be bold indeed, but he was the one who’d neglected to arm himself against such a thing. Bending, he pulled the long, narrow blade from the sheath in his boot. The damned turncoats would find that he wasn’t helpless. If they meant to spill his blood, he would see to it that they lost a quantity of theirs, as well. “Fergus, Una, guard,” he murmured, and the big deerhounds’ hackles rose.
