Hero in the Highlands (3 page)

“He has died, but he has not left you any debt. Rather, you have something of an inheritance coming to you.”

For a moment the look in Wellington's steely blue eyes was almost sympathetic, and Gabriel's gut tightened. Whatever could make a battle-hardened general feel pity couldn't be good. He wanted to look at the missive, but Wellington had made it clear that he wanted to deliver the news, himself. Since he'd already disobeyed his general once today, doing so again seemed ill-advised. “My lord,” he finally said, when the earl seemed content to allow the moment to draw out to the horizon, “first the offer of dinner and now this … reluctance of yours to deliver me the information you possess is rather alarming.”

“Yes, I would imagine it is.” Wellington paused. “You've proven yourself a damned fine, ferocious officer, Gabriel Forrester, and not just by your actions today. I—and the British army—shall miss your service.” Finally he sat forward and tapped the paper Gabriel held clenched in one hand. “Your distant uncle was the Duke of Lattimer, owner of several small estates in England and one exceedingly large one in Scotland. They, and the title, are now yours, Your Grace.”

 

Chapter One

“For God's sake!” Gabriel exploded, momentarily mollified at seeing the quartet of wig-wearing fellows seated across from him jump. “Stop talking!”

“But Your Grace, this is all necess—”

Jabbing a finger at the one still making sounds, Gabriel stood, sending the ornate chair behind him over backward. “Stop talking,” he repeated. Once the man subsided, Gabriel turned to his one ally, seated in the far corner of the room. “Kelgrove, what do you make of all this claptrap?”

The sergeant cleared his throat. “It's like walking through briars, but I make out that you've three estates, Major. Your Grace. The one in Devon, Langley Park, is being overseen by a Mr. Martin Graves, who's a fine and honest fellow. The one in Cornwall, Hawthorne, is just as well taken care of, by a Mr. George Pointer, who's also a fine and honest fellow.”

“And the third one, Sergeant?” Gabriel urged, grateful all over again for his aide-de-camp, who after eight years in his company practically knew his thoughts before he had them and who also stood ready to assist with thrashing foes as necessary. Today, Kelgrove was very close to deciding that events definitely called for some thrashing.

“That would be Lattimer Castle, Your Grace. Your seat, I believe they call it, being that you're the Duke of Lattimer.”

Gabriel pinned the lead solicitor with his gaze. “You were the one charged with keeping my uncle's affairs in order during his illness.” Never mind that referring to the late duke as his uncle still felt odd on his tongue, much less in his mind. These were his circumstances, and he would deal with them as they stood—doing anything else would be pointless, no matter what he preferred.

“I … Yes, I was, Your Grace. Lattimer, though, is—well, it's in Scotland. In the Highlands.”

Evidently that one word explained everything, though Gabriel couldn't see what difference it made. He knew Scottish soldiers, and they were damned fine warriors. “Yes, I saw it on the map, Mr. Blething. With the other estates you've told me the annual income, expenses, number of servants and livestock. You've said nothing about Lattimer, and have altered the subject every time I asked you about it. That makes me suspicious, and no amount of your prattling will make me forget it. The problem can't merely be that it's in the Highlands.”

The paper man exchanged a look with his fellows, and Gabriel mentally leaned forward. For the devil's sake, he'd practically made a profession out of hearing all the words that went unsaid. Those carefully not-uttered words frequently ended up saving both his life and the lives of his men.

“I'm waiting,” he prompted after another moment of silence.

“Well, some of it is pure nonsense, of course.” Blething cleared his throat, his Adam's apple bobbing like a bird trying to swallow a worm. “The Lattimer estate used to be known as MacKittrick Castle, up until about a hundred years ago. That was when King George—the first one—tired of the Earl of MacKittrick and his family's very vocal Jacobite leanings. He had the patriarch hanged and handed the castle and property over to an ally he wished to promote. The first Duke of Lattimer.”

Gabriel waited for more, but that seemed to be the end of the story. “That's well and good, but what makes it nonsense?”

Another of the paper men grimaced. “There's a legend, or a rumor, that when MacKittrick stepped up onto the gallows, he cursed the newly minted Lattimer title and everything that went with it.”

“What's the curse?” Gabriel asked, folding his arms over his chest. If it was something about contented soldiers being pulled away from their duties for no good reason other than to listen to scrawny men who refused to give straight answers about anything, it was time for a drink.

“It's the nonsense of which I was speaking, Your Grace. The curse is merely an excuse for the steward to use every time something goes wrong.”

“Mr. Blething, the four of you have been throwing figures and papers at me for three days with the relentlessness of an invading army. In that time you have regaled me with every useless bit of inane information at your disposal.” Gabriel took a slow breath, trying to keep hold of his temper. “Tell me something useful.”

In all likelihood the Lattimer curse
was
a basketful of idiocy, but the reluctance of the solicitors to discuss it made it more interesting than anything else he'd heard since he'd left Spain, and far more intriguing than deciding whether to sell Ronald Leeds's collection of rooster portraits or use them for target practice.

The second paper man found an old, stained piece of vellum. “Evidently while frothing at the mouth in either madness or fury, Malcolm MacKittrick declared that in English hands the land would turn to ruin, that any who allied with the English usurper would perish, and that the Lattimer line would fail.”

“Considering it took you and the Crown better than six months to find an heir for Ronald Leeds,” Kelgrove noted, “it seems like part of that might've come true.”

“Nonsense,” Blething stated again. It seemed to be the solicitor's favorite word. That and “income.” “The new Duke of Lattimer is here. The line hasn't ended.”

“The line took a ball through the arm the day your letter reached him.”

“What about the rest of it?” Gabriel asked, figuring Kelgrove had won that argument. “The ruined land and the dead allies?”

“I'm certain no one's perished because of a curse, Your Grace.”

“You're certain, are you? And the ruin?”

“Your Grace, you must understand that—”

“I understand that I'm beginning to lose my sense of humor.”

The solicitor grimaced. “It is a complicated matter. I have, over the past eight or nine months, since the duke's—the former duke's—illness, sent correspondence to Mr. Kieran Blackstock, Lattimer's steward. The first four letters went unanswered. The fifth letter, which I couched in sterner language because of His Grace's death, was returned to me five months ago. Inside, over my writing, I found scrawled the words ‘Threaten me again and you'll find a dirk through your gizzard, English.'” He cleared his throat.

Ah, battle.
Gabriel didn't bother hiding his amusement. “Let's see it.”

“Beg pardon?”

“You said the letter was returned five months ago. Show it to me.”

These men thought him an idiot best suited to shooting and punching, he knew, but they still did what he ordered them to do. Not out of respect or a sense of duty, but because he now controlled that flimsy thing known as purse strings. These paper men clung to those like a babe to its mother's teat.

As the solicitor on the far left nodded at his fellows and then bent down to dig through a file of papers, Gabriel clenched his jaw. He knew all about paper men. Paper men far away from war decided how many deaths were an “acceptable” loss and whether ten or a dozen lead balls would be sufficient per soldier to win a battle. They saw numbers and profit, not sweat and death. Generally he stayed as far away from accountants and solicitors as he could manage, and now here four of them were bowing to him and employed by him—four being, he assumed, the correct number required to tell him what he now owned.

Finally the missive appeared. He grabbed it out of the paper man's soft hand before any of them could decide he was incapable of reading all the words himself. The solicitor's letter was of course many-syllabic and fairly threatening, with words like “legal action,” “required by law,” and “easily replaceable” sprinkled throughout. Crossways over the neat lines of words, and written in a large, bold script, sprawled the gizzard threat in heavy black ink.

“Kieran Blackstock, you said?” he commented, handing the letter over his shoulder to Kelgrove. A large part of him wished he'd made that same response when they'd sent the letter naming him a duke.

“Yes, Your Grace. A Scotsman, who inherited the position from his father, I believe.” Blething's tone implied that the fellow's employment hadn't been his doing.

Gabriel stood. “Then we have our orders, don't we, Sergeant?”

“That we do, Major. Your Grace.”

The paper men all scrambled to their feet. “I assure you, Your Grace, we have been overseeing the Lattimer finances for decades. This Blackstock barbarian will be replaced, as soon as we receive your approval, by someone more reasonable and duty-minded. We will have a report on the financial status of the estate by … by the end of the month.”

“No.”

“I … No?”

“No,” Gabriel repeated. “You go on putting your numbers in columns and rows.
I
will see to Lattimer Castle, Mr. Blackstock, and to finding a replacement steward who better knows his duty. And it won't take me a damned month.” He settled his officer's shako over his head. “Good day, gentlemen.”

“But we haven't yet settled on your monthly allowance, or where you wish to set up residence, the hiring of new staff—a valet, for goodness' sake—or—”

“I've given you three days already. If you fling another figure at me, I will suffer an apoplexy. And then you'll lose Lattimer and your income from it to the Crown, after all. Send whatever else you think I require today to the Regimental Tavern in Knightsbridge. I'm leaving for the Highlands in the morning. You know that address, I assume.”

“But as we told you three days ago, you have an estate here in London. Leeds H—”

“Leeds House. Yes, you did mention that. Several times. I'll be at the Regimental.” Stuffing Blething's letter and its response into his glove, he made for the door. Now that a path had revealed itself, not a damned thing was going to keep him in this tastefully appointed room for another bloody minute. He had a destination, a task, and from the numbers being flung at him by the paper men, the monetary means with which to accomplish it.

Kelgrove pulled open the door as he reached it, then followed him down the short hallway and out to the noisy, dirty streets of London. Gabriel collected Union Jack, then headed southwest toward Knightsbridge where he'd taken a room above the Regimental Tavern. Whatever title they'd thrown at him, he felt far more comfortable seeing it as words—endless words—on paper. If he walked into Leeds House in Mayfair, all this insanity became real. Aside from that, moving his two trunks there for one night would be pointless. That, at least, sounded completely plausible and not at all like he was worried he'd piss himself if he thought hard enough about what had been laid before his scuffed boots.

“So you have a grand home in Mayfair and you don't even want to gaze upon it before you leave London?” the sergeant asked, interrupting his mental calisthenics.

With a sigh, Gabriel slowed Jack to a walk. “I'm hoping it'll go away. Along with all the solicitors, the estates, and the ache in my skull.”

“No disrespect, but I imagine there are multitudes all around us at this moment who would give a limb for what you've had thrown at you, Your Grace.”

And they could have it. Unfortunately, it remained his cross to bear. “So I sound ungrateful,” he said, guiding his bay around a hay cart.

“Some would say so. Not me, of course.”

“I'm fairly certain you're meant to be more respectful.”

The sergeant snorted. “You do recall when they assigned me to your service? You ordered me to always give you an honest opinion, because firstly doing otherwise could get one of us killed, and secondly any flattery was wasted because you had no rich relations who could reward my bootlicking. You are the rich relation now, Your Grace, but I'm assuming your previous orders still stand.”

After the sycophants of this morning, that seemed refreshing. “For God's sake, yes. And ‘Major' will do. I don't intend to be ‘Your Graced' enough to become accustomed to it.”

“I know you said you meant to return to duty after you have this mess straightened out, but…” Kelgrove said, then let the sentence trail off. “You should do as you wish, of course.”

“I've put a lifetime of sweat and blood into the army, Adam. I'm good at it. I'm too old and too stubborn to take on something this grand, and too plainspoken to want anything this frivolous. As you said, it was thrown at me. I should have ducked.”

“I'll second that. As I am four-and-thirty and four years your senior, however, I'm willing to go a few rounds arguing that you're old.”

Despite the quick change of subject, Gabriel heard the hesitation in his aide's voice, and he damned well knew from whence it came. A duke in combat would be nearly unprecedented, at least in this century. But he would find a way. He couldn't imagine any other alternative. “Damnation,” he muttered aloud. Every damned man who had a duke for a father should be obligated to marry and procreate well before he inherited, just to be certain the title had an heir. Otherwise, dirt-beneath-their-nails men like him found their own lives ruined for no damned bloody reason but that wealth needed an owner.