The Devil Wears Kilts
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Contents
Preview:
The Rogue with a Brogue
Prologue
“Why would ye do that, Bear?” Rowena MacLawry looked at the scattering of white and red rose petals all over the morning room floor.
Her brother Munro looked up from running a cloth along the edge of his two-handed greatsword. “How else was I to show how sharp the blade is, Winnie?”
“But ye took the tops off
all
the roses!” Rowena shook the vase with its bare stems at her brother. “Wouldn’t one have done ye?”
“Nae. Not nearly as impressive. And they came off with one cut.”
“They were my birthday flowers, Bear, ye stupid lunk. From Uncle Myles.” She glared from him to her oldest brother, who was reading a newspaper and pretending not to notice any of the chaos going on in front of him. “Ranulf, do something.”
“The flowers are gone, lass,” Ranulf MacLawry, the Marquis of Glengask, commented, glancing up from the paper. “Should I have Munro glue the petals back on?”
“You can stop him from swinging a sword in the morning room. All the way from London, they were,” she said, sighing.
“Who wants posies for a birthday, anyway?” the third male in the room, Lachlan MacTier, Viscount Gray, asked, taking the claymore from Munro and experimentally slashing it through the air. “Now this is a gift. Did Roderick forge it for ye, Bear?”
“Aye,” Munro answered. “Cost me a keg and four bottles.”
“I’d pay twice that.”
“If ye’re tryin’ to say ye bought me a claymore for my birthday, Lach,” Rowena broke in, clearly displeased at being ignored in favor of a broadsword, “ye can turn around and take it right back home.”
Lachlan eyed her, light green eyes narrowing. “A lass has no business with a sword, Winnie.”
“Hence me not wanting one. So what did ye get for me?”
With a half grin, Lachlan produced a paper-wrapped lump from behind a chair. “I reckon ye’ll get more use from this than ye would a broadsword. Happy birthday, Winnie.”
From his seat in the deep windowsill, Ranulf finally lowered the newspaper he was reading. The information it carried was a week old, at best, but he didn’t like what it said. In fact, he would have enjoyed giving the damned thing a few whacks with his brother’s sword.
He couldn’t actually remember when he had last liked any news from London, in fact. More rules and regulations that did him no good, but cost him in ever-rising taxes. If the Sasannach couldn’t breed the Highlanders away or kill them all, they’d surely found the way to defeat them once and for all—by bankrupting them. As he shifted, the two Scottish deerhounds at his feet uncoiled and sat up, likely already wondering why they hadn’t yet left for their morning run.
The delay was entirely due to the young lady standing beside her morning room chair. Any time Rowena’s birthday came around the clan turned itself inside out to celebrate, but this one was special. So his ride, and the dogs’ run, could wait until his sister opened her gifts.
An excited grin on her face, Rowena tore the paper from the misshapen gift Lachlan handed over. With the same swiftness, though, her expression dropped again. “Boots,” she said aloud, looking up at their nearest neighbor. “Ye bought me boots.”
Lachlan nodded, a strand of brown hair falling across one eye. “Ridin’ boots. Because ye ruined yers in the mud last month.” His own smile faded at her glare. “What? I know they fit; I had Mitchell give me yer shoe size.”
“I’m a lady now, Lachlan. Ye might have brought me flowers, or a fine bonnet. Or at least shoes fit for dancing.”
He snorted. “I’ve known ye since ye were born, Winnie. The boots’ll do ye better.”
Ranulf set the newspaper aside entirely, motioning the two pipers standing in the hallway, out of sight of the occupants of the morning room, to withdraw. His sister and youngest sibling was a fine, good-humored lass, but he’d seen this storm lurking on the horizon for days. And bagpipes weren’t likely to improve anyone’s mood.
“But I’m nae a girl who rides hell-bent across the countryside any longer, Lachlan,” Rowena said, her expression a mix of annoyance and sorrow. “Dunnae ye see that?”
Lord Gray laughed. “That was yesterday, then? Today ye cannae ride any longer? Dunnae be daft, Winnie.”
Wordlessly Rowena turned to face Ranulf. “Ye’re my last hope then, big brother,” she said, her voice faltering a little. “What’s my gift?”
For a moment her eldest brother eyed her, the unsettled feeling of approaching thunderstorms flitting again along his skin. “Ye said ye wanted a new gown,” he finally returned. “A green one. Mitchell has it laid out for ye upstairs, so ye can wear it for dinner. Unlike the boots, it’s fit for dancing.”
As he watched, a large tear formed and ran down one of Rowena’s fair cheeks.
Bloody Saint Andrew.
He’d erred, then. How, he wasn’t entirely certain, but clearly something had gone awry.
“Winnie, why are ye weeping?” another male voice asked from the sitting room doorway, as Arran MacLawry, the fourth sibling and the one closest in age to Ranulf, strolled into the room. “Do Lach’s boots pinch ye, then?”
“She didnae start weeping till Ran told her aboot the dress,” Munro returned. “I reckon she wanted a blue one, after all.”
“Well, this should cheer ye up.” Arran walked up and handed their sister a small, cloth-wrapped parcel.
“Let me guess,” Rowena commented, wiping at her cheek. “It’s a compass, so I willnae get lost when I go riding on the new saddle from Bear, in the new boots from Lachlan.”
Arran frowned. “No. It’s a wee clock, on a pin. Very clever, it is. I had it shipped all the way from Geneva after I saw an advertisement in
Ackermann’s Repository
.”
“That’s very nice, then. Thank ye, Arran.”
Munro took back his claymore from Lachlan and jabbed it none too gently into the scarred wooden floor. It wasn’t the first weapon to rest there, and likely wouldn’t be the last. The pipers and half a dozen of his servants were crowded back into the hallway again, and Ranulf gave them a sterner look and a dismissing wave. Clearly his sister wasn’t in the mood for a damned parade—even one of well-wishers.
“So Arran gets thanks, and all the rest of us have is tears and being called idiots?” Munro retorted.
Instead of answering, Rowena set down her pin clock and slowly walked up to Ranulf. The dogs shoved their heads against her palms as she approached, but she ignored the obvious request for scratches. That didn’t bode well. She hadn’t called
him
an idiot, but it did seem to be implied. And Ranulf didn’t much care for that. His sister had asked for an emerald-green gown, after all, and he’d seen to it that she had one. A very pretty, and very expensive one. From Paris, damn it all.
When she pulled him to his feet, he didn’t resist. But when Rowena kept both of his hands in her small, delicate fingers, he frowned. “Ye wanted something else, then,” he rumbled, wishing, and not for the first time, that he’d brought another female into the house. Then someone, at least, would have a chance of understanding the youngest MacLawry. It had been a simple matter when she was a bairn, but lately she more and more often seemed an entirely foreign creature. “What is it? Ye know if it’s in my power, I’ll get it for ye, Rowena.”
“Ye—you—know what I want, Ranulf. I’m eighteen years old today. I want my Season. In London. That’s w—”
“Nae,” he cut in, scowling as much at the way she altered her speech as at the notion itself. “We’ve set on Friday to celebrate yer birthday. The whole clan is coming. All the bonny lads’ll be here, fighting to dance with ye. That’s finer than any London soiree.”
With a poorly hidden sigh she glanced over her shoulder toward the other three men in the room. “Would ye fight for a waltz with me, Lachlan MacTier?”
“And get my feet flattened for my trouble?” The viscount laughed again. “I see ye all the time. Let the other bonny lads fight for a dance.”
“No bonny lads will brawl for a dance with me, because they’re all afraid of my brothers,” Rowena retorted.
“Well, so am I, then.”
“Ye are not.”
Ranulf stirred, unwilling to listen to why a man should or should not fear him. A man should. And that was that. “Ye’ll nae want for a partner, Rowena. It’ll be a grand party.”
Finally she faced him again. “I don’t want a stupid party with people I’ve known all my life, and who all think a dance is an excuse for a fight. I want my Season. In London. Mama had one.”
“Mama was English,” he snapped, snarling over the word. “Ye know who lives in London, Winnie. Fops and dandies and weak-hearted Sasannach. Ye have a fine party here to look forward to. And if a man cannae abide the notion of standing toe-to-toe with the chief of his clan, he doesnae deserve to dance with ye.”
She put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. “Ye want me to prefer Glengask to everywhere else in the world, Ran, but ye won’t let me see anywhere else. I’ve nothing to compare it to except my own imagination, and in my mind, London is very wondrous, indeed.”
“For the last damned time, London is full of useless bootlickers who couldn’t lift their own saddles. Go upstairs and try on yer dress. This discussion is finished.”
“Ranulf, y—”
“Finished,” he repeated, and crossed his arms over his chest. Rowena was a wee, delicate thing, far more resembling their mother than made him comfortable. To her credit she didn’t back away from him, but even so she knew as well as he did that he’d won the argument. She was not going to London. Ever.
With a last damp glare she turned and fled through the door. A moment later he heard her door upstairs slam closed. The other three men in the room looked at him, but none of them said a word. They wouldn’t, though; his brothers, at least, knew the rest of the argument he hadn’t bothered to level at Rowena—that London was also full of aristocrats who claimed Scottish land while they denied Scottish blood and ancestry, men who lived as far from the Highlands as they could manage while driving their own tenants from their homes in order to turn their lands over to sheep. That London was also full of traitors. Traitors and killers.
“I’m going for a ride. Fergus, Una,” he said, and left the room without a backward glance, the dogs on his heels.
Debny, the head groom, must have seen him coming, because by the time he reached the stable yard Stirling was waiting for him. Swinging into the saddle, he kneed the big, rangy bay and set off down the pathway that wound to the east, crossing a portion of the windswept hillside and then twisting down into a tree-lined gorge, the dogs flanking him on either side. The river Dee roared down the center of the canyon, descending into the valley and then the lowlands far beyond over a series of granite cliffs that looked liked the stairs of a giant.
Every time he rode this trail the beauty of it struck him all over again, but today he barely took a moment to notice that one of the old trees had come down in the last storm. Rowena only
thought
she wanted to go to London, and that was only because she’d taken to reading their mother’s journals and the damned Society pages from the newspaper. For the last month he’d had Cooper burn them the moment they arrived, but clearly it hadn’t made a bit of difference.
