The Scot Beds His Wife Page 5

  Well. Shit. Not two minutes off the train and she’d already stepped in a steaming pile of sedition.

  She decided to blame Lord Thorne-in-her-side.

  Samantha had never really considered the consequences of relocating from a democratic republic to a monarchy. No Constitution. No Bill of Rights. She’d do well to remember that.

  “Understood.” She gave a noncommittal shrug, not willing to either excuse or apologize for her behavior to self-important men. “I’m also given to understand that you English folks pride yourselves on custom, tradition, and upholding a certain code of gentlemanly conduct.”

  “Aye, that we do, lass.” The solicitor nodded congenially.

  “Wouldn’t an agreed-upon appointment in an office or my home be considered more appropriate for business dealings such as this? Rather than an ambush on a train platform, I mean.”

  The two businessmen glanced at each other uneasily, while Lord Thorne concealed an increasingly malevolent expression behind a charming one. “Well, it’s the Highlands, lass, we’re only barely less barbaric than the Americans, all told.”

  That had to be the first honest statement he’d uttered thus far.

  “Well, since we’re being forthright and all, we Americans are also notorious for fighting to keep what’s ours.”

  “Not to mention violently taking what isn’t,” he muttered.

  “Let’s not measure the sins of our respective empires on that score.”

  Though his features remained impassive, Samantha recognized the familiar set of his perfect jaw, and the corresponding tic at his temple.

  Her husband had been afflicted with the selfsame expression when they were about to row. This time, she realized with relish, she didn’t have to stick around for the event. She didn’t have to deal with the aftermath. Gavin St. James wasn’t her man, which meant his displeasure wasn’t her problem.

  And didn’t she have enough of those? Problems. Not men. Thank the Almighty.

  “Erradale Estate is mine,” she said firmly. “And I plan to keep it.”

  “To do what, exactly?” Thorne asked mockingly. “Ye’ll find Erradale neither properly staffed, secured, nor well kept. The cattle have spread for miles with hardly anyone to herd them, and it hasn’t turned a profit or annuity in nearly a decade. No one in yer family has much bothered with it for twice that long. So I’ll ask ye again, lass. Why now?”

  She stepped up to him, uncomfortably close. Face tilted to meet the jade fire in his eyes, simmering behind his deceptively relaxed façade. Nose to perfect, aquiline nose. “Because, Gavin St. James, Lord Thorne. No matter what you call yourself, I know you’re still a Mackenzie. Which means your father killed my father, and I’ll see you in hell before I let anyone in your family have what is rightly mine.”

  She turned and did her best to stalk away, painfully aware how ridiculous she looked in her tottering heels.

  A low growl drifted from behind her and she thought she heard, “I’m no Mackenzie.”

  She didn’t look back as she silently answered, And I’m no fool.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  If Alison Ross planned to stand in his way, then Gavin decided he’d do whatever it took to get her on her back. Beneath him.

  In his infamously extensive experience with women, he’d found that denial of desire, more often than not, increased the pleasure of the final effect.

  Not, however, in this fucking case.

  Acquiring Erradale wasn’t merely his pleasure, nor was it a flippant desire, it was a necessity.

  Which was why he didn’t consider himself above orchestrating what should have been a simple gambit on a persistent interloper. He and his footman had planned Miss Ross’s arrival and immediate departure over a shared snifter of brandy, drunkenly naming their maneuver “the swoon and scoop.”

  Had everything gone according to plan, the spoiled socialite would have arrived at the tiny station on what must seem to her the edge of the civilized world—a place she’d previously insisted she had no desire to visit—and she’d instantly be robbed. The little scamp would grab a bit of her hand, along with the bag or valise or whatever she used for her feminine incidentals, and tug hard enough to topple her into Gavin’s strong, waiting arms.

  Thus terrorized, the poor lass would decide the Highlands were too desolate and too dangerous for a young, lonely city dweller such as herself, and she’d be a great deal more susceptible to her handsome white knight’s tremendously generous offer.

  He’d rescue her from a millstone property, and she’d be the grateful damsel.

  Well, he was certainly paying the price for one gigantic assumption.

  The lass was no damsel.

  He’d prepared himself for a hard sell, one that might require a few extra knee-weakening smiles, perhaps so much as a seduction, but he’d never in a million years expected the disaster that landed his arms.

  The disaster named Alison Ross. Light as a feather, she was, and devastating as a tornado. All long limbs and electric eyes.

  The moment his arms surrounded her, his body had responded in a way completely antithetical to his purpose. And suddenly, all his hands could do was find ways to keep themselves attached to her.

  He was supposed to be seducing her with all the practiced calculation he’d garnered over decades. So … why in the name of all the bloody Scottish saints had he been the one with the unsteady knees?

  Because he wanted her—no, Erradale—he wanted Erradale. So fucking much.

  That had to be it.

  Once, whilst traveling in the Orient, Gavin had supped with a monk who’d told him that desire was at the root of all suffering.

  Gavin had scoffed at the idea at the time.

  Now, with his every desire within reach, yet thwarted by a smart-mouthed American chit, he was beginning to believe the monk had the right of it.

  After the infuriating encounter at Strathcarron Station, it had taken him only two minutes of exasperated calculation to concoct a stratagem as to how, exactly, he’d approach his erstwhile neighbor to the north.

  The two days in which he’d deemed it essential to wait passed with all the alacrity of eternity.

  But certainly not because he wanted to see her again.

  Miss Ross, tiny as she was tempestuous, would be hungry by now, he surmised as he allowed Demetrius, his shire steed, to pick his own lazy way along the Alt Bàn-ghorm, the river separating Inverthorne lands from Erradale. The shallow tributary’s name literally translated to Light Blue River, thus deemed for the uniquely colored stones beneath the crystal stream.

  Gavin found himself appreciating the shade in a way he’d not done before, as it conjured to mind the singular hue of Alison Ross’s clear, impertinent gaze.

  An unbidden smile touched his lips as he pictured the brash American heiress losing a great deal of her self-assurance once she’d crested Gresham Peak, as he did now, and truly beheld her legacy.

  He’d have given his eyeteeth to carry the treasured memory of her distress.

  Erradale Estate was little more than an aged, one-story manor home amid a gathering of crofter’s cottages and a lone, dilapidated stable. The buildings were scattered like chaotic white marbles on a lush carpet of wintry, amber-green grass. Aside from Gresham Peak, only very gentle hills interrupted the wide swaths of open moors stretching west and north until black stone cliffs abruptly crumbled into the sea. Ominous clouds, pregnant with a looming storm, huddled together over the distant Hebrides, and made their leisurely way toward the mainland on a biting breeze.

  To a spoiled American raised in the garish and gold-rich city of San Francisco, California, it must have seemed like the loneliest, chilliest corner of perdition.

  To Gavin, it was paradise.

  It was home.

  However, the only places to find markets or supplies were at the Rua Reidh fishing village to the north, or Gairloch to the south. No fishmongers or butchers lined this abandoned stretch of coast, and there was no staff to send o
n supply errands. Alison would have found the fireplaces cold and the woodstores and larders long empty.

  She’d not been to Gairloch to collect supplies—he’d have heard about it—and he highly doubted she could navigate Rua Reidh, as the people of that village held fast to their ancient Pictish ways and were still famous for summarily refusing to speak English.

  Even Callum—widely considered a local despite his Irish father—rarely ventured there.

  As far as Gavin knew, two old ranch hands named Calybrid and Locryn occupied one of the dilapidated cottages. Then there was Callum, who tended to lurk by the Dubh Gorm Caves, where the cliffs gave way to a very narrow beach carved by the crystalline river.

  These notably reclusive men made up the sum of society for miles in any direction. They hunted, trapped, or fished their food, and it wasn’t bloody likely the lass was equipped for any such deed.

  Wee Alison Ross didn’t have an extra store of healthy weight anywhere on her scrawny frame. She’d waste away if she missed so much as a meal. Lord, he remembered thinking he’d not seen a lass so thin since he’d been to London. So delicate. Nay, maybe not delicate, but he’d spent more time than he’d like to admit wondering how such a large force of will could be contained by such a weak frame.

  He’d had the ridiculous urge to measure the circumference of her arm against his wrist. One angry Highland sea gale and she’d be tossed into the ocean like a leaf torn free of its branch.

  Were all her limbs so long and delicate as her arms and swanlike neck? As she’d stood against him, casting aspersions in front of God and all Highland travelers, he’d realized his one hand could completely span that elegant throat.

  Meeting her at the train station dressed in his finery and accompanied by those who could facilitate their trade had been considered a courtesy on his part.

  One extended at great expense.

  Apparently, what the lass lacked in brawn she more than made up for in pluck. That, added to the ax her family had to grind with his, made for a shocking failure of negotiation.

  Gavin had long since given up cursing his father. The man had been dead nigh as long as hers. Besides, he’d learned long ago that if he took his hatred out to examine it, it wanted to smother every façade Gavin had worked so hard to construct.

  And that just wouldn’t do.

  Not when he was so close to getting what he wanted.

  As he descended into Erradale, Gavin murmured a line from Shakespeare that had stayed with him since the dark winter days he’d spent hiding from his father in the library. “’Tis best to weight the enemy more mighty than he seems.”

  Or she, as was this particular case.

  He’d underestimated Alison Ross. Though she’d been draped very well, he’d noted her dress had been premade and altered, rather than sewn for her distinctive measurements. Tall, she was. And slim, but not without the distinctive curves branding her a woman.

  He might be a Scot, but he was no philistine.

  Perhaps she hadn’t the wealth he’d been led to believe. He’d have to look into that. Fiscal desperation could be a weapon added to his arsenal.

  Also, he’d not been too astonished by her uncouth vitriol to notice the dark smudges painted by exhaustion beneath her startlingly large eyes. Or the pallor of her skin beneath golden freckles. When she’d not been angrily squaring off with him, her shoulders tended to curl forward, as though burdened beneath a Sisyphean weight.

  That had to be why she’d seemed inured to his charm. Hadn’t it? Every woman from eight to eighty, even the happily married ones, took a very obvious moment to simply appreciate his pulchritude in one way or another. They’d cast him furtive glances beneath coy lashes when they didn’t think he’d notice. Or they’d stare outright, their appreciative gazes roving from his lush hair and sculpted features, to every one of his thick bones upon which the famous Mackenzie brawn bunched and bulged in ways that sent their fans to fluttering.

  Alison Ross … She only ever looked him in the eyes. Like he was more than his uncommonly well-made parts.

  Like she considered him as a man, not merely a conquest or lover.

  Had he been mistaken when he’d interpreted a spark of appreciation beneath her scorn?

  When the uncouth lady had all but stumbled away from him, Gavin calculated that he’d have to use a completely different advance to achieve his aspiration.

  As a slight and fragile woman, her tattered condition certainly wouldn’t improve upon her arrival at Erradale. He’d warned her that she’d be afforded no staff, servants, or creature comforts to speak of in her father’s abandoned home.

  According to Callum, to whom he’d spoken yesterday, she’d barely left the manor for nigh on two days, and had made no move to acquire aid.

  She had to be starving and desperate, subsisting on whatever tins she might find in a cupboard, or the dubious survival skills of two harmless but essentially useless old goats.

  Which is where he came in.

  Instead of the illustrious Earl of Thorne, handsome, charming, and intimidating in both stature and symmetry, he’d approach Miss Ross as simply Gavin. Handsome, charming, and solicitous neighbor, paying a call to deliver both contrition and sustenance.

  He’d eschewed a waistcoat or cravat, deciding instead to dress informally in only trousers, riding boots, his shirtsleeves—purposely left open a few rebellious buttons—and a vest beneath his long wool coat.

  He’d brought Trixie along as an emissary, his adorable and endlessly friendly—if a bit daft—sheepdog, and a basket of perishables that would keep the starving woman fed.

  But not for long enough to stay.

  “Och, poor lass,” he’d say upon finding her listless, cold, and beleaguered.

  The scent of Cook’s fresh bread and flaky sausage boxties would tantalize her into allowing him in—as he couldn’t very well rely on any well-bred manners where she was concerned—and once he’d crossed the threshold …

  She didn’t stand a chance.

  He almost felt sorry for her. Almost.

  Like most Highlanders, Gavin had tended to admire and bed lasses with feminine curves and soft, secret places. Alison Ross seemed all bones and bawd. Though he couldn’t deny a passing curiosity about kissing a tall woman he wouldn’t have to bend in half to reach.

  And, if he recalled correctly, her lips might have been soft, if she’d not been pursing them with distaste at him.

  Nay, she was not his typical mistress, but neither could he say that any part of her was unattractive.

  So, he could fuck her if he had to.

  He’d do what it took to get the papers signed.

  He’d be whatever she needed, savior, father, brother, friend, or, hopefully, lover.

  Nothing would get in the way of what he wanted.

  Not that revealing her intriguing daintiness would be much of a chore. Gavin had bedded every different sort of woman he could think of in his six and thirty years. A few of them had been slender, or tall, or brash. But none had been her particular blend of all three. Somehow, that particular blend had kept him up the past few nights, riddled with curious heat.

  Better to work that out of his system with a good tup before he charmed her into doing what he wanted and sent her on her merry way.

  As he ventured closer to Erradale, Gavin surreptitiously checked the fences and corrals he’d mended over the summer in anticipation of their belonging to him. Once he gathered the cattle against the harsh winter, they’d need a place to be kept. Inverthorne, his land on the south of the peninsula, was covered in a lush forest interrupted by celestial meadows. To call Erradale’s single copse of trees to the immediate north of the estate grounds a forest would be kind. The rest was prime grazing land as far as the scope of a lens could capture.

  Gavin scanned the planes of lush greenery, carefully schooling the hunger from his gaze. Perhaps out of practiced habit. Or perhaps because, even when alone, he dare not allow his desire to show, lest someone see it, and
know how to punish him.

  All was quiet in Erradale, though smoke did drift from the south chimney of the manor, which meant Calybrid or Locryn must have put down their pipes long enough to light her a fire.

  No matter, he thought. Firelight was ultimately flattering, and daylight had begun to fade. All the better to seduce her by.

  At the sight of movement from the northern tree line, Gavin kicked Demetrius into a canter as more than a dozen rangy, red, long-haired beasts spilled onto the Erradale grounds.

  Trixie went mad at the sight, streaking across the lawns in a ball of black and brown frenzy. She vaulted through two corral fences, and barked up to what must have been, to the dog, a congregation of very strange creatures.

  Gavin tried to call her back, but she’d never really been smart enough to train.

  A confusion of whistles and yells filtered through the trunks of the ancient oaks as startled, hesitant cattle began to balk at the noisy dog, and turn back toward the trees.

  Not all of the irate voices were male.

  What the devil?

  “Hey!” The screamed censure whipped from inside the tree line. “Quit that racket, mongrel!”

  If the voice hadn’t identified her, the American accent certainly would have.

  Alison?

  Stymied, Gavin spurred his horse faster. He’d never heard a woman’s voice so loud and demanding before.

  Not outside his bedroom, in any case.

  “I said, shut it!” The earsplitting volume intensified as two of the cattle broke from the rest, veering to the west toward the sea cliff. “I’m warning you.”

  The ruckus seemed to spur Trixie on, and she made chase after the two wayward cattle, driving them faster in the direction of the cliffs.

  The gunshot startled every living creature in Erradale.