Page 20 of The Devil Wears Kilts
Christ.Attempting not to dump her over backward, he set her onto the sidesaddle. The way he felt abruptly singed—the way his gut reacted to touching her—it did feel almost like witchcraft. He stepped back, wiping his hands on his thighs. “There. All proper now, I hope?” he grumbled, and turned his back to swing onto Stirling. Beside him Rowena was grinning excitedly, up in the saddle of a pretty gray mare and no doubt pleased to be having her way once more. “And who put ye into the saddle?” he asked.
“I did, m’laird,” Debny said, before she could respond. “One o’ them Hanover grooms near tried it, but I knocked ’im back.”
“Oh, dear,” Charlotte muttered from Ranulf’s left, but he pretended not to hear. No one was bloodied, so as far as he was concerned it had all been handled amicably.
The sedate walk they settled into hardly seemed worthy to be called a ride. Admittedly the mid-morning crowd of vendors, carts, hacks, shoppers, and other people meandering about aimlessly as they were, made anything above a trot near lethal, but that hardly made it more tolerable. By the time they turned up Park Lane and the grand park came into view on the left, even the dogs had their tails tucked.
Another breath of uneasiness ran through him. They’d never manage more than a walk there, either. Just in his limited view through the trees an endless sea of carriages and horses and parasols and hats spread before them. Somewhere behind him he caught Owen’s muffled curse, and he silently agreed. Not only would it be nearly impossible to make an escape, but they’d likely never see any trouble coming until it was far too late.
He cocked his head. Much as he hated to admit it, any attackers would have precisely the same difficulty. And a hundred witnesses on top of it. The Campbells might risk it anyway, but luckily they were more likely to call him out to his face than stab at his kin behind his back. Clan Gerdens concerned him more, but mainly because he had nothing more than suspicions and third-hand rumors about what they might have been up to.
“It’s fairly well ordered once you join the throng,” Charlotte commented on the tail end of his thoughts. He seemed to have drawn even with her sometime during the ride to the park, though he couldn’t consciously remember doing so.
“Dunnae any of ye have anything better to do?”
Well, that seemed unfair, Charlotte thought, though she had to admit that Hyde Park was quite crowded for this early in the day. Unusually so. Generally, visiting didn’t begin in earnest until after luncheon. “There’s no Parliament today,” she said, remembering her father packing up his fishing gear this morning. “And I believe there are to be races on the Thames this afternoon.”
They bypassed Rotten Row, as the morning was quite warm and none of the ladies—or she, at least—wanted to bother with the canter. Charlotte did point the riding trail out to Glengask, as he looked like a man who required exercise. In fact, as she sent another sideways glance at the marquis, she decided he was quite fit. He must have spent a great deal of his time in the Highlands out of doors.
As they joined the line of riders and carriages along the path, she realized she wasn’t the only one noticing Lord Glengask, either. From the fluttering eyelashes and batting fans, half the female populace was either flirting, or fighting off a horde of midges.
Ranulf kept up the slow pace, ostensibly more interested in seeking out likely shrubbery-shrouded hiding places than in all the pretty eyes cast in his direction. Was this single-minded enemy-hunting of his why he remained unmarried? By her calculations he was somewhere in his late twenties or early thirties, he had wealth, land, and a great deal of power—and yet there was no Lady Glengask. Not that she cared about that, of course; she was merely curious.
Jane and Winnie had somehow managed to put a barouche and a phaeton between them. Ranulf gave a subtle wave of his fingers, and his two outriders pressed ahead to join them. The dogs evidently knew their duty as well, because they kept pace on either side of his big bay as if they’d all done it a hundred times before. An elderly woman, Lady Gavenly, she thought, passed by in a barouche, a small yapping dog struggling in her arms. The bigger deerhound, Fergus, swiveled his head around to look at the little thing, then returned to his walk. Evidently small yapping dogs were below notice in the Highlands. Either that, or the hounds had already eaten their daily meal, and weren’t hungry.
“Speaking theoretically,” she said, wondering if she was about to begin another disagreement, “aren’t you, as the chief of your clan, the one who should be the most protected?” What she wanted to ask was whether all of this was truly necessary. Especially in the middle of Mayfair, in the middle of the morning, in the middle of the Season.
“I know aboot trouble,” he returned in a thoughtful tone. “Rowena, for the most part, doesnae. At home it didnae so much matter, because she always had clan around her. Here, I’m beginning to wish I’d encouraged her to take it all a wee bit more seriously.”
“How do you know about trouble? I’m not questioning that you do; just about what’s happened to make you so cautious.”
He glanced sideways at her. “That’s very carefully worded, lass. Am I so fierce?”
Charlotte couldn’t help her smile, though it was a fairly apt description. “I’m attempting to be diplomatic.”
“Ah.” To her surprise, he chuckled. “The clansmen called my father Seann Monadh—Old Mountain. That man was tough as winter and strong as a draft horse.” Obvious affection in his voice, he smiled a little, then briefly lowered his head. “They say he drooned.”
It took her a moment to decipher what he’d said, partly because it was so unexpected. “He drowned?” she repeated, to be certain. “I’m so sorry.”
“Aye. Drowned,” he said, this time exaggerating the vowel sounds. “Though I imagine having his hands bound and his head held under the water makes it closer to murder.”
Good heavens.Charlotte put a hand over her chest, though she wasn’t certain why. His words, the ill-hidden pain and anger in them, had already dug into her heart. “I take it not everyone agreed with your assessment?” she asked after a moment.
Blue eyes met hers. “Nae, they didnae. I was fifteen when it happened, but I think that’s old enough to ken what rope burns around a man’s wrists look like whether or not they were bound when we found him, and to realize what torn sleeves and scratched arms mean.” He took a slow breath. “None o’ that signifies, I suppose, except to answer ye when ye ask why I’m so cautious.”
She couldn’t even imagine what he must have felt, toknowsomething even more foul had been done on top of what was already a tragedy. Just the image in her mind of someone binding and drowning her own mild, jovial father made her fight back tears. “I have no words,” she whispered.
Ranulf shrugged. “’Twas sixteen years ago.”
“Do you know who did it?”
This time his grim smile chilled her to her bones. “That’s a tale for another time—when ye and I are better acquainted.”
“You mean, when you’ve decided you can trust me.”
The expression on his face eased a little. “Ye’ve a way of cutting to the heart of a matter, lass.”
That made her smile, though she wasn’t entirely certain it was a compliment. “I’ve found there are fewer misunderstandings that way.”
