Page 48 of The Devil Wears Kilts
“I willnae. Keep Una in yer room with ye tonight, just to ease my mind. Good night,piuthar.”
“Good night,bràthair.”
The moment the coach left the drive, he stalked back to the smoldering stable. The grooms would have to keep watch all night, to be certain flames didn’t erupt again. The five horses he’d kept inside the building were safe and likely still jittery at the Duke of Greaves’s house on the next street over.
“You’re not going to attempt anything mad are you, Ranulf?” his uncle asked from several feet behind him.
“I happen to know a man with a reputation fer setting fires, Myles,” he said, his shoulders aching from keeping such a tight leash on his temper.
He wanted to hurt someone—Berling—for this. The man had put his household, his family, in danger. He might well have burned a dozen more houses along the street if the wind had been wilder, or their response slower. And beneath all that, buried beneath a ton of smoldering embers, lay the thing that troubled him the most—the idea that Charlotte had been out in the middle of the chaos and that she might have been hurt.
When he’d found her at the well she’d been white-faced and clearly exhausted, her hands clenching the crank so hard she’d needed his help to let go. Seeing her there standing firm amid the chaos had been… It had been a revelation. She was proper, aye, and she had no stomach for bloodshed, but she was not timid and she was not weak.
And with all his prejudice against the English, it was English servants and their masters who’d helped him put out the fire. It was an English duke who’d offered to stable his horses. And unless he was greatly mistaken, it had been a Scotsman masquerading as an Englishman who’d set this fire.
“Ranulf, we don’t know for certain that Berling is to blame,” Myles said, as if reading his thoughts. “We don’t even know if it was he who burned the schools or shot Bear. It was the Donnellys I told, after all.”
Ranulf rounded on his uncle. “Iknow,” he hissed. “I should have seen to him when I had the chance. Breaking his nose clearly wasnae enough.”
“Perhaps you should have. In the Highlands you would have had a fair chance of getting away with it. But this is London, and he has more friends and allies here than you do.”
“Then they can be allies to a dead man.” With a last look at the smoking rubble, he turned back for the house.
Myles grabbed his shoulder. “At least wait until morning,” he said tightly.
When Ranulf looked from him to his hand, his uncle released him again. “He’ll be waiting for me tonight. Tomorrow’s soon enough.”
“Thank God. Come stay at Wilkie House tonight.”
“Nae. I’ll help keep watch over the stable till the smoke stops rising.” In addition he had some thinking to do, and this setting fit his mood far better than a comfortable bed at his uncle’s residence.
“Well, get some sleep. I may only barely be a part of the family, but I do worry about you, lad.”
With a grimace, Ranulf stopped and turned around. “I was wrong,” he said evenly. “Ye’re my uncle. Ye’re part of my clan, and I do love ye. I give ye my word I willnae go after Berling tonight.”
Myles looked away for a moment, then wiped a hand across his face as he turned back again. “I must have smoke in my eyes,” he grumbled, his voice not quite steady as he blinked and rubbed at his eyes again. “Thank you, Ranulf. Going up to Glengask gave me a family, you know. Losing you…”
Ranulf clapped a hand on his uncle’s shoulder. “Ye willnae lose us again. I cannae guarantee peace, but family stays together.”
That, at least, he could see to. Berling would be more complicated. He wanted nothing more than to remove from this life a man he knew to be a threat before anything else could happen. But Myles was correct; this wasn’t the Highlands. Little as he liked it, he would have to tread carefully. But he would see to Donald Gerdens. That, he swore.
Chapter Nine
Ranulf woke to the sound of raised male voices and a loudly barking dog. Every muscle felt stiff, which made sense once he realized he’d fallen asleep sitting at his desk. A page of the English law book he’d been reading was stuck to his cheek, and he scratched at his scraggle of beard as he lifted his head. Groaning, he pushed to his feet.
“Damnation,” a familiar brogue came from the doorway. “Ye look like hell spat ye out into a fireplace.”
Sharp relief hit him at the sight of the tall, black-haired man standing there. “I told ye to stay at Glengask, Arran,” he returned, rounding a chair and walking up to his brother. Abruptly he didn’t feel quite so outnumbered—by enemies, by English, or by females.
“Aye. I decided against it.”
Ranulf pulled him into a hard embrace. “I’m glad to see ye.”
“Certainly ye are. Ye need someone to help ye clean up that mess ootside.” Arran patted him on the back, then stepped out of the embrace. “Owen said ye got the horses oot, and no one was more than singed. He also tried to wager me ten quid that it was Donald Gerdens who did it.”
“Dunnae take that bet. Ye’d lose.”
Together they walked down the hallway to the breakfast room, where the sideboard had been set with a simple breakfast of rewarmed haggis, toasted bread, and hard-boiled eggs. Fergus danced around them, alternating between shoving his head beneath Arran’s hand and Ranulf’s.
