Page 74 of Rogue with a Brogue
“No, Charles, I’m not. I’m suggesting we tell everyone he chose to flee to America when we cornered him. And then the MacLawrys remain the aggressors, and the Campbells look both honorable and reasonable.”
“Will Mary keep her mouth shut about it?”
“You’ll be her husband. She couldn’t say anything against you even if she chose to. Which she won’t. That would make her responsible for ending the truce. Mary’s too proper to want blood on her hands.”
“You’ve been thinking about this quite a bit, haven’t you, Uncle?”
“Since we broke Crawford out of that inn, yes, I have.”
This was not her father. This was not the man who’d purchased her hats, who’d danced the quadrille with her at Almack’s, who’d said he was relieved that Glengask and her second cousin George Gerdens-Daily had arranged for a truce between their clans.
Whoever this man was, he’d speculated about whether or not she was injured only in terms of strategy. He promised again to give her to a man he knew to be nothing more than a social-climbing killer. And he spoke about murdering a man—the man she loved enough to flee her old, safe life—as if the only inconvenience was the fact that they would have to hide the body.
“Turn over the mattress, Charles. I wouldn’t put it past them to hide under the bed.”
Still chatting about the best way they could do away with Arran and get her to a church with the fewest people possible knowing anything had gone amiss, the voices faded toward the master bedchamber. Other than the sheer cold-bloodedness of the conversation, she was struck by their supreme confidence in the fact that they would catch her and Arran.
“Was that bastard your father, Lady Mary?” Howard muttered in his gravel-rough voice.
“Silence,” Arran whispered in response, so quietly the word almost seemed to drift on the air. “They’re nae alone.”
Did he mean there were more men in the house? Or that there were men waiting silently in the room, listening for them? Mary shivered, her muscles already tight and aching. What if her father decided to stay the night? What if he slept in the room a dozen feet away from where they were hiding? They could be trapped there in the dark, unable to move for fear of making a sound, for days.
Warm lips brushed her ear. “When they dunnae find us, they’ll have to move on,” Arran breathed. “Your father has to catch us before we reach the border.”
Evidently Arran MacLawry could read her thoughts. Not daring to speak herself, she settled for a silent nod. What he said made sense. If her father didn’t find them here, he would have to assume they’d slipped away north again.
After what felt like another hour but must have been ten or fifteen minutes, the chair in which Arran had spent the night shifted and creaked, and booted feet left the room for the stairs at the front of the hallway.Goodness.How had Arran known? Had he heard an extra set of footfalls when the men first entered the room? Was there someone else still inside?
Farther away male voices mingled, her aunt Sarah’s higher-pitched response cutting in every so often. Glass broke, but the conversation continued. How odd, that a woman Mary had met only fifteen hours earlier could hide and defend her when her own father couldn’t be bothered to do so. And how surprising that a man she’d known only a few weeks had become more precious to her than her own clan. Than her own family.
A door downstairs shut soundly. Shortly after that, she was certain she heard hooves pounding down the hard-packed front drive. Was it over, then? Or had her father left someone behind to keep watch?Oh, dear. That was what she would have done.
“How long do we wait?” Peter asked, in the quietest voice she’d ever heard the footman use.
“Mòrag and Sean’ll come tell us when they’ve well and gone,” Arran answered.
“I hope it’s soon,” Howard put in. “I need to piss. Begging your pardon, my lady.”
“Well, now I need to piss too, ye halfwit,” Peter grumbled.
“Churchmice.” Arran’s chest shook a little, and Mary realized he was chuckling silently.
After all this, after hearing men say they meant to kill him, after being in a brawl and then being struck on the head by a falling coach, he was amused. And just that thought liftedherheart, as well. Because if Arran could laugh, then she could certainly manage to muddle her way through beside him.
“I love you, Arran MacLawry,” she murmured.
His arm around her shoulders jumped. “I may still be delirious, lass,” he returned in the same tone, “because I think I heard someaught.”
“You did, you rogue,” she said, smiling in the darkness.
“Say it again, will ye, Mary?”
“I love you.”
“And I love ye, my bonny lass. Ye’ve seized my heart, and I’ll nae have it back from ye.”
She reached over to find his face with her free hand, then leaned up to kiss him. Without him she’d been alone in the dark for a very long time. Arran had drawn her into the light. She felt it around her even now, light and warm and freeing. And with him in her life, she would never be in darkness again. Not even here and now.
