Sinful Scottish Laird

But as the days progressed, Ellis looked more and more disheartened. He and his tutor wandered about looking a bit lost. Ellis was curious to inspect their surroundings, but Daisy would not allow them to venture far from the lodge...the Scotsman’s warnings of others had made her a bit fearful.

She tried to engage Ellis with the lodge itself, but the boy, like any nine-year-old, did not want to beat carpets. So Daisy urged him to continue his star charting. That occupied him until they had charted all that they could. She then commanded him to help her clean windows, but he tired easily.

When Daisy wasn’t struggling to please her son, she toiled from morning to sundown in a manner she’d never experienced in her life.

At first Rowley, Uncle Alfonso and Belinda had tried to dissuade her from it. Great ladies did not beat carpets, they said. Great ladies did not scrub floors. But Daisy ignored their protests—she found the work oddly soothing. There were too many thoughts that plagued her when she was left idle, such as whom she’d be forced to marry, and how the days of her freedom were relentlessly ticking away. Whether or not Rob would reach her in time, what was wrong with her son that he was so fragile, and how cake-headed she’d been to think a journey to the northern part of Scotland could possibly be a good idea, and, of course, what a terrible thing she’d done, dragging her family here.

Yes, she preferred the labor to her thoughts. At the end of each day, she ached with the physical exertion, but the ache was not unpleasant.

But there were times, when she couldn’t keep her thoughts from her head, that Daisy felt a gnawing anger with her late husband. Clive had forced her into this untenable situation, and her feelings about it had not changed with time. She felt betrayed by the man she had respected and revered and tried to love. She’d been a dutiful wife—how could he have had so little regard for her? How could he believe she would jeopardize her own son’s future for her own pleasure?

Sadly, the answers to these questions were buried with Clive.

By the end of their first fortnight at Auchenard, Daisy could see that the old lodge was beginning to emerge, and she was proud of the work they’d done. She began to notice less the repairs that had yet to be made and more of the vistas that surrounded the lodge. It was possible to gaze out at the lake and the hills beyond and forget her worries.

When she was satisfied with the work on the interior, Daisy turned her attention to the garden. Or what she assumed had been a garden at some point. Whatever it might have been, it was overgrown. Vines as thick as her arm crawled up walls and a fountain, and weeds had invaded what surely once had been a manicured lawn. She’d donned a leather apron and old straw hat she’d found in the stables. She’d cut vines and pulled weeds until her hands were rough. She crawled into bed at the end of those days and slept like the dead.

Belinda complained that the sun was freckling her skin and turning her color. Daisy didn’t care.

Each morning she rose with the dawn light, pulled a shawl around her shoulders and sat at the bank of windows that overlooked the lake from the master bedchamber. She’d open them to the cool morning mist, withdraw her diary from a drawer in the desk and make note of the previous day.

She pressed flowers into the book, as well as the leaves of a tree she’d never seen before, and had sketched the tree beside it. She’d drawn pictures of boats sliding by on the lake, of a red stag she saw one morning standing just beyond the walls, staring at the lodge.

Yesterday, Daisy had uncovered an arch in the stone wall that bordered the garden. She dipped her quill into the inkwell to record it—but a movement outside her window caught her eye.

The mist was settling in over the top of the garden, yet she could plainly see a dog sniffing about in a space she’d cleared. Not just any dog, either—it was enormous, at least twice as tall as any dog she’d ever seen, with wiry, coarse fur. She wondered if it was wild. She stood up, pulled her Kashmir shawl tightly around her and leaned across the desk to have a better look. “Where did you come from?” she murmured.

The dog put its snout to the ground and inched toward the one rosebush she’d managed to save.

Daisy hurried out of her room, down the stairs and the wide corridor that led to the great room and outside.

When she reached the garden, she slowed, tiptoeing through the gate, her bare feet on cool, wet earth that slipped in between her toes.

The dog’s head snapped up as Daisy moved deeper into the garden. It lifted its snout in the air, nostrils working to catch her scent. Daisy froze. The dog didn’t seem afraid of her, only curious.

She took another step, and the dog crouched down, as if it meant to flee. “Don’t go,” she whispered, slowly squatting down and holding out her hand. “Come.”

The dog stood alert, its tail high, watching her warily.

She looked around for something to entice it. There was nothing but a battered rose, and she reached for it, breaking it off at the stem and wincing when a thorn pierced her thumb. She crushed the petals in her hand and held them out. “Come,” she said again.

This time the dog slunk forward, its nose working, every muscle taut. It kept slinking forward until it could touch Daisy, its nose to her hand. A bitch, Daisy noticed. She uncurled her fingers and revealed the crushed petals in her palm.

The bitch sniffed at the flowers, licked them, and then allowed Daisy to scratch behind her ears. But when she’d inspected the petals and found them wanting, she touched her snout to Daisy’s arm, then loped away, disappearing through a patch in the hedge...through what Daisy had believed was a stone wall until this very moment.

She followed the dog’s path, pushing back against the overgrowth of vegetation, and discovered a crumbling crack in the wall. The stones had fallen away, leaving a gap of about a foot. She stepped over the pile of stones, pushed away the leggy and tangled vines of the clematis and squeezed through the opening, popping out the other side into a meadow.

She steadied herself and looked around. She caught sight of the dog loping lazily away...toward a man on an enormous horse. Daisy’s heart leaped with fear when she saw him, and in her head all of Belinda’s warnings about dangerous Scotsmen began to sound. She unthinkingly took a step backward, bumping into the wall. Just as she meant to squeeze through the hole and flee to the lodge, she realized that the man was familiar.

He suddenly reined his horse about and started toward her, the long strides of his mount eating up the ground with ease.

Perhaps she would prove all of Belinda’s fears true in the next few moments, but Daisy didn’t flee; she pulled her shawl more tightly around her as the man slowed his horse and pulled to a sharp halt before her. His horse jumped around a bit, wanting to carry on. Daisy’s heart raced with fear that she would be trampled by the horse, until she realized that the man kept a steady hand on the beast, and the horse would come no nearer to her. She looked up at the rider, her heart pounding.

The Scotsman’s gaze was locked on her, and Daisy’s heart began to flutter so badly that she could not recall his name. Oh dear, what was it? Avondale?

His inspection slowly moved over her, studying her, his expression one of mild surprise. That was the moment Daisy remembered that she was wearing bedclothes, and her hair, uncombed, was draped over her shoulders. She felt the heat of self-consciousness rise up in her cheeks.

“Madainn mhath.”

He towered above her in sinewy masculinity, and Daisy’s mind emptied of all rational thought other than how much she wanted to touch him. “Good morning, Lord Avondale.”

He shifted in his saddle. “Arrandale.”

Ah, yes. That was it. She winced apologetically and thought the better of explaining that her heart was pounding so hard in her chest that she couldn’t think of his name. “I beg your pardon,” she said and curtsied. “My lord Arrandale.” She rose up, drew her breath and released her hard grip on the shawl. It would not do to seem timid in the presence of a man like him.

God in heaven, he was even more dazzling than she’d recalled. He wore the plaid today, and his bare knees and a bit of his powerful thigh were exposed to her. She imagined touching that thigh, and how hard it would feel...and a salacious little shiver ran down her spine.

He was frowning at her, as if he knew what she was thinking.

“I saw your dog,” she blurted, trying to explain herself, and nodded in the canine’s direction. “She was in my garden.”

Arrandale glanced briefly at the dog, who had come loping back to them, her nose to the ground. But his gaze quickly moved over Daisy again. He looked at her as if he’d never seen a woman in her bedclothes and bare feet. He cocked his head. “Has something happened, then? Has the lodge burned? Have you been raided?”

Had something happened? Her heart had been invigorated and hammered in her chest—that was all. “No.”

“No?” He lifted his gaze to her eyes. “It’s no’ often one sees the lady of the house standing in a meadow in her bedclothes, aye?” He arched a brow as if he expected her to disagree.

“You think I’m a bit mad.”

“No’ a bit. Completely. And a wee bit daft, as you might recall.”

He said it so calmly, his manner so matter-of-fact, that Daisy laughed with surprise. “Do you find my appearance so scandalous?” she asked, her smile deepening as she brazenly opened her shawl to reveal her nightgown.

His horse jerked at the tight hold Arrandale had on him, and he adjusted his grip, giving the horse a bit more of his head but still holding him back. “You want me to find it scandalous, aye?”

She laughed with incredulity, the way a girl laughs when she finds a boy attractive. The gentlemen she sparred with in London never seemed to understand her motives, but she rather thought this Scotsman understood her motives very well.

“You enjoy trifling with gentlemen,” he remarked, as if to agree with her thoughts.

“Trifling! I am not trifling with you, my lord—I chased your dog out of my garden.”

A corner of his mouth tipped up in a vaguely droll smile. “Ah yes, the garden,” he said. “No need to deny it. I’m no’ offended.”

Daisy’s laughter was inexplicable, but it was spilling uncontrollably out of her now. “You are a very disagreeable man, sir,” she said cheerfully.

“Me?”

“You’re certainly the first gentleman to complain of flirting. But do you honestly believe that I rushed out here into the meadow just after dawn on the slim hope that you might be riding by? Do you think I came out in here in my bedclothes merely to trifle with you?”

He leaned over the neck of his horse and looked her directly in the eye. “I donna think you came out here with that intention. But I think you leave no opportunity for it untouched.”

He might have hoped to offend her with that remark, but it really only spurred her to trifle with him more. “Indeed? And what precisely do you see that leads you to such an outrageous conclusion?”

“The color in your cheeks,” he said, gesturing to her face. “The light in your eye.”

“Perhaps the color in my cheek comes from the sun. And the light in my eye is a result of the mist lifting.”

“Aye, and perhaps you leave your shoulder bare because the air is warm,” he suggested.

Daisy looked down. She hadn’t realized her nightgown had slid off her shoulder. She very slowly and deliberately pulled it up. “That was inadvertent.”

Arrandale snorted. “Donna mistake me for naive,” he said, as if speaking to a child. “I am well acquainted with women, aye?”

Goodness, but he seemed quite proud of that. “Ah, you are acquainted with women,” she repeated as if this were a revelation to her. “You grace me with your superior knowledge of them,” she said and curtsied daintily, holding out one corner of her nightgown as she dipped, aware that he was probably being treated to a view of the swell of her breasts. Frankly, the thought of it gave her a thrill. She was so unlike herself! She’d never flaunted her figure like this. As she rose up, she liked that his blue eyes had turned a bit stormy, as if something was brewing in him. “But as you know women, so do I know men. You said I would never see you again, and yet here you are. I know that when a man appears in a meadow beside a lady’s abode, riding about when he clearly has no destination in mind, he means to encounter her one way or the other.” She smiled pertly.

Arrandale’s smile was so slow and so wolfish that she felt it trickle down to her toes. “You speak like a man.”

“Why should it be only the provenance of men to speak directly? Must women speak only when addressed, and never flirt, and only agree with everything you say?”

He arched a brow. “How cynical of you, Lady Chatwick. I didna say I disapproved of it, did I? As it happens, I donna care for the demure wee English flowers. I prefer women who lust for life. Nonetheless... I have no interest in engaging you in a flirtation.”

Daisy’s eyes widened with surprise. No one had ever said such a thing to her, especially not since Clive died. “I beg your pardon,” she said flatly, suddenly annoyed with his lack of decorum and his dismissal.

Arrandale’s smile deepened at her irritation. “I suspect it comes as a great shock that you are no’ roundly esteemed by all members of the male sex. But you are no’.” He tipped his hat to her. “Latha math, Lady Chatwick. I’ll leave you to return to your rooms to dress.” He reined his horse about and, with a whistle for his dog, galloped away.

Daisy stared at his departing back as he and his massive horse and massive dog bounded across the meadow.

There went a man who wasn’t afraid to offend her. Who refused to flatter her. Who did not feign infatuation so that might lust after her purse. And as annoyed as she was with him at the moment for rebuffing her, Daisy couldn’t help but admire him a very tiny bit.

Damn Scotsman.

She returned to her rooms and resumed her seat at the window, where she recorded her encounter with Lord Arrandale in her diary, biting back a smile as she recalled what he’d said: I suspect it comes as a great shock...

He was right. It did.

She pressed one of the rose petals she’d held out to his dog into her diary.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE WIND HAD shifted from the north, bringing with it cool air that gave hope the long summer would soon be over. The freshness of it invigorated Cailean; he rode with gusto on his favorite horse, Odin, galloping down the glen on the road to Balhaire, the sprawling coastal fortress where he’d been born. It looked almost mythical when the mist rolled in from the sea and shrouded its walls and crenulated parapets. The village just outside the walls was bustling with Mackenzies, and today was no exception. This place was as familiar to him as his own head. He’d been raised here, had learned to fight here, had learned to sail here. Had learned to be a Highlander.

He and Odin trotted in through the gates of the fortress; Cailean leaped off his horse and handed the reins to Sweeney the Younger, who, like his father had before him, captained the house guards.

A gust of wind scudded across the courtyard, lifting the hem of Cailean’s plaid. He strode inside, into the din of voices coming from the great hall. It would be full of Mackenzies as it was most days, a sea of first and second cousins having their fill of ale.

Cailean marched into the room and through the throng like a crown prince—he was the heir to this seat, the future laird of this clan. He responded enthusiastically to those who greeted him and scattered lazy dogs in his wake.

He jogged up the steps of the dais to where his parents were sitting. His father, Arran Mackenzie, the laird of Balhaire, smiled with delight at the sight of his firstborn. “Cailean, lad,” he said, reaching his hand for his on. “What brings you?”

“It’s a bonny day to ride, Athair,” Cailean said, leaning over his father and kissing the top of his head. “How is the leg?”

“Och, it’s still attached to my body,” he said with a shrug.

His father’s leg was concerning. A few years ago, he’d broken it while attempting to train a mount. It had healed, but it had never been the same again. And now it pained him more often than not. Nothing seemed to ease him—he’d seen doctors in England and in Scotland, and even the old healing woman who still treated some of the clan with herbs. Nothing worked—short of a daily dose of laudanum, which the laird refused to take.

Earlier this summer, he’d told Cailean it was time to prepare to lead the clan. “My mind is too much on this leg, aye?” he’d said, rubbing it.

“You donna need me yet,” Cailean had protested. He was in the midst of building Arrandale, his own seat, on the lands his father had given him. He was sailing frequently with Aulay. He wasn’t ready to take over the responsibilities of the Mackenzie clan.

“Aye, but I do,” his father had said. “I’d no’ ask you were I not certain of it, lad. I canna go on as I have. I’m no’ a young man, and the pain wears on me. We’ll be slow about it, we will. A wee bit more each month, then.”

So it had been settled. Cailean would assume his father’s responsibilities at the end of the year. Most weeks he came to sit with his father, to receive clan members and hear their complaints and their requests, to receive their news. He reviewed the accounts with his father, learning just how much was required to maintain Balhaire and their trade. The responsibility would require his full attention, every day, when the time came.

His mother was seated beside his father. She was still the most regal woman he knew, even more so now that her hair was more silver than blond. “Where have you been, darling?” she asked Cailean, her voice still very British even after all these years.

He leaned down to kiss her cheek. “At work, Màthair. An estate doesna build itself, aye?”

“What of the cargo?” his father asked.

There was no shame among the Mackenzies of Balhaire when it came to their “free trade.” Since the union of Scotland and England, the burden of taxation had been increasing to such an extent that many of their clan struggled. Arran Mackenzie’s goal had always been to keep their clan close to Balhaire by giving them means to earn a living and reason to stay in the glen. They believed that good wine, good tobacco and good tea, sold at reasonable prices without usurious taxes were reasons to stay, and they were determined to see that they had those things.

Cailean filled his father in on the cargo and the progress he’d made on his estate since he’d last seen them a fortnight ago. It was not finished...but it had come along well enough that Cailean had taken up residence in a room with his best stalking dog, Fabienne. It was a meaner living than he was accustomed to, but he didn’t mind it. He rather liked being alone, the only man for miles about. He liked surviving by his ability to hunt and fish.

“Cailean! Do you mean to ignore us?”

He glanced over his shoulder at his sister, Vivienne, as she waddled toward the vacant chair beside him. She was round with her fourth child, and sat heavily, sprawling her legs before her, her hand protectively on her belly. Vivienne was the second oldest sibling, eighteen months younger than Cailean. Then came Aulay, the sea captain who was away just now, and then his brother Rabbie. He took a seat beside Vivienne. The youngest of them all, Catriona, joined them as well, fidgeting with a string in her hands and propping herself on the arm of her father’s chair.

“So you’ve met her, aye?” Vivienne asked, catching his hand. “The lady of Auchenard?”

Cailean shrugged. It was no surprise to him that word about her had spread quickly through the glen. It had been a week since he’d last seen her in that curious morning meeting outside the walls of Auchenard.

Vivienne’s eyes fired with delight at his silence. “Did you find her bonny, then?”

“I—”

“She means to bag a husband!” Catriona eagerly interjected.

Cailean laughed at that.

“Aye, it’s true!” Vivienne insisted.

“Why in heaven would a woman of her means and connections seek a husband in the Highlands of Scotland? Where do you hear these barmy tales?”

“MacNally,” Rabbie said matter-of-factly. “She released him from service and he’s had quite a lot to say. He’s told anyone who will give him half an ear that the lady must marry in a year’s time or forfeit her fortune.”

“Aye, it’s true,” Catriona insisted as she shouldered in beside Cailean. “It was so said in her husband’s last testament. She must marry within three years of his death or lose her entire fortune. It’s quite large, aye? I’ve heard as much as fifty thousand a year.”

“Who has said this?” their father asked.

“Mr. MacNally and Auntie Griselda. She’s heard it all the way from London.”

One of Arran Mackenzie’s salt-and-pepper brows rose. “Zelda has said?”

“She said it was so large a fortune that any man in Scotland who had as much as half a head on his shoulders would be climbing the walls to have a look at her, then. Her husband has been gone more than two years now, and she’s less than a year left to settle on a match and marry. That’s why she’s come to Scotland. To settle on a match!” she announced, sounding triumphant, as if she’d solved a mystery.

“Diah, are there no’ men enough in England?” Rabbie scoffed.

“No’ the sort a lass would want to marry,” Vivienne said, and the Mackenzies laughed.

“There are men enough in England,” Cailean said. “It’s nonsense.”

“Unless...” his mother said thoughtfully.

“Unless?” Vivienne asked.

“It is possible that she seeks a Scot for a husband. She might think to install him at Auchenard for an annual stipend, then return to London and live as she pleases.”

Lady Mackenzie’s children and her husband stared at her.

“Mamma, how clever you are!” Catriona gasped. “That’s precisely what she means to do! And she’s bonny,” she added in a singsong voice. “You saw her, Rabbie. You could put her fortune to good use, aye?”

“And what would Seona have to say about that?” he responded, referring to the young woman to whom he’d been attracted of late. “The lady is a Sassenach, Cat. There is no fortune great enough to tempt me to tie my lot with the English.”

“Mind your tongue!” Vivienne scolded her younger brother. “Your mother is English!”

“My mother is no Sassenach. She merely happens to have come from England,” Rabbie said, inclining his head toward his mother.

Margot Mackenzie shook her head at her youngest son. “You’ve been too much in the company of Jacobites, Rabbie,” she warned him, to which Rabbie shrugged. “I should like all of my sons to marry and give me the grandchildren I deserve, but I’d rather none of them become entangled with a woman whose motives are not true.”

She didn’t look at Cailean, but he knew she was thinking of Poppy Beauly...a woman whose motives had not been true.

Poppy was the other Englishwoman Cailean had known who was as adept at flirtation as Lady Chatwick. She had destroyed any notion that he might have had about complicating his life with a wife and children.

Aye, his world had narrowed considerably since that wound was opened.

He’d only just reached his majority when he met her. He’d spent that unusually cool summer in England, at Norwood Park, his mother’s familial estate, under the less-than-watchful eye of his uncle Knox. The winsome, beautiful Poppy Beauly was the daughter of his mother’s very dear friend, and Cailean had been truly and utterly smitten.

Over the course of that summer, he’d wooed Poppy and professed his esteem to her more than once. For that, he’d received her warm encouragement. He’d been so green that he’d even dreamed of the house he would build for her, of the children they would bring into this world.