Page 25 of The Devil Wears Kilts
“And ye, m’laird?” the older, grizzled servant asked.
“I’ll have Fergus with me.”
His sister reached a hand out toward him. “Ranulf, the Evanstone soiree is tonight. Are ye—”
“I’ll be there,” he interrupted, sparing Charlotte a glance that both chilled her and started a spark of flame deep in her chest.
With that he and the big bay and the big gray deerhound moved off through the crowd, traveling at far too fast a pace to be civilized. But then, Ranulf MacLawry wasn’t at all civilized.
For a moment she worried that she’d also offended Winnie, but the marquis’s sister drew even with her on one side, while Janie came up on the other. “Are you acquainted with Lord Berling?” Charlotte asked their houseguest.
“Nae—no. I mean, I’ve seen him from a distance once or twice, but no one’s ever introduced us. I wouldn’t want to be introduced to the likes of him.”
Out of her brother’s presence Winnie had been attempting to “improve” her speech, as she termed it. Charlotte liked the brogue, herself, especially when spoken by a deep-voiced, mountainous male, but she understood Rowena’s reasoning. If she spoke like a Highlander no one would ever see her as a proper Englishwoman, and that—more than anything else—seemed to be what she wanted for her short Season. To not be Scottish.
“Is it true that he shot your brother Munro?” Jane asked, her color still wan. Public displays of male aggression were not something with which either of the Hanover sisters had much experience, thank heavens.
Winnie nodded. “Someone began burning down the schoolhouses Ran had been building. Bear went to look in on one and rode up to see it on fire. He came back with his shoulder covered in blood and said he tried to go in and make certain everyone was safe, and then some bloody coward shot him from behind.”
“Winnie,” Jane gasped, putting a hand over her own mouth. “Ladies don’t say that word.”
“Which word? ‘Bloody’?”
“Winn—yes, that word.”
“Oh. It’s Bear’s favorite word, though, and that’s what he said.”
“If they shot him from behind, how does he know it was Lord Berling?” Charlotte pressed, more interested in the facts than the language used to present it.
“Because Berling is allies with the Campbells and the Donnellys, and Uncle Myles gave the Donnellys the map and told them about the schoolhouses.”
Well, that explained the tension between Ranulf and his uncle, even if the logic of it all was abysmal. Charlotte wondered briefly if the marquis had broken Lord Swansley’s nose, as well. “That makes it possible, then, but it doesn’t make it proof.”
Rowena sent her a bemused look. “That’s what Uncle Myles said. And then Ranulf said that a Highlander knows in his gut when a man’s violated his trust, and that only someone who’d turned his back on his own people like Berling did would fear a schoolhouse.”
That might have passed for facts in Scotland, but Charlotte could see why Ranulf hadn’t bothered to take his grievances before a court of law. Supposition, superstition, and hate—that’s what it had been. No wonder Scotsmen were no longer permitted to govern themselves.
It was only after she returned home and settled into the library with the latestAckermann’s Repositorythat the rest of the conversation sank into her. Ranulf had been building schoolhouses—several of them, apparently—on his land. For his cotters.
While there was certainly a line of thought that educating peasants only served to enlighten them as to how miserable their own conditions were and to encourage them to rise up against their so-called betters, she didn’t agree with that. Giving anyone an opportunity for an improved life had to be a good thing. And part of her had to admire a man who offered that to those dependent on him, especially when it meant going against the wishes of his own peers. It took courage and conviction, both of which Ranulf MacLawry seemed to possess in great quantity.
It was quite aggravating of him, really. He gave the appearance of being the exact opposite of enlightened. He even seemed to perversely enjoy being seen as a devil Highlander and nothing more. His contempt for the English—or the Sasannach, as he called her kind—couldn’t be more obvious. And yet he’d kissed her, and that had felt anything but contemptuous. Molten and savage, perhaps, but she had no complaints about it. At all.
Shaking herself, Charlotte set aside theAckermann’sand stood. Her father was a great reader, and he had quite an extensive collection of biographies, plays, and novels. She perused the library shelves until she found the collection of titles that most interested her. Slowly she pulled the first one from the shelf.Waverley,written by an anonymous author everyone now knew to be Walter Scott, the Scottish poet.
She’d read the account of young Edward Waverley and how he was seduced by the fiery Highlander Flora MacIvor with her Jacobite leanings, but that reading had been about the romance of it all, and how she’d hoped Edward would return to the mild, steadfast Lowlander Rose Bradwardine—which he had. This time as she sat down and opened the book, she wanted to read about the Highlands. And the Highlanders.
After an hour or so of trying to sink into the story, however, Charlotte had to set the book aside in favor of standing and walking about the large room. Why had Ranulf been so angry and skeptical when she’d mentioned James? All she’d said was that when Ran had kissed her it had made her think of… Oh.Oh.
But she hadn’t meant it that way at all. She’d only meant that no one had kissed her since James had done so, the evening before he’d gone off to get himself shot in the heart. And so naturally when Ran had given her that rather spectacular kiss, she’d then thought back to both the kiss and the rest of the nonsense and pain her hotheaded betrothed had caused. She certainly hadn’t been thinking of James at the moment Ranulf kissed her, because her mind had stopped working altogether.
Well, if he’d misinterpreted what she’d said, what did it matter, anyway? She’d explained it, perhaps inadvertently, but he had to have realized what she meant. And he’d seemed far more interested in looking for an excuse to beat Lord Berling than in defending his own bloodthirsty ways, anyway.
How odd, that she hadn’t even known that Donald Gerdens was Scottish. She’d danced with the earl, and on several occasions. They’d chatted about the weather, and the latest plays being performed at Drury Lane Theater, and even if now she remembered that he’d several times flattened hisa’s, she hadn’t noticed it then. Ranulf had said she didn’t understand what it was to be Scottish, and evidently he was correct. None of this hate and conflict and hiding accents made any sense to her at all.
Nor did it make any sense that a man so different from her in outlook and temperament could be so… intriguing. Now Charlotte slowly reached up and ran a finger across her lips. The taste of him had faded with ices and luncheon and arguments, but she remembered it. That kiss had positively curled her toes and weakened her knees, and sent a keen excitement over… something, crashing through her entire being.
Not that that mattered, either, since her parting words to him had been a suggestion that he stop trying so hard to be Scottish, or some such thing. She likely could have conjured a worse insult, but it would take some time and effort. “Fribble,” she muttered.
