“Dogs, off.” Only then did Ranulf notice how large the circle of onlookers had become. “Be off with ye,” he growled, and guided Stirling back to where the three white-faced lasses waited. On one side of them Debny faced into the sea of English gadabouts, while on the other Owen had one hand inside his coat, likely resting on the butt of his pistol.
“Ranulf?” Rowena said tightly.
“All’s well,” he returned, forcing the anger that had been pushing to escape back into his chest. “Finish yer ices, and we’ll—”
“We’ll be returning home now,” Charlotte interrupted. “And you will go … elsewhere, my lord. Your sister does not need this tiff attached to her reputation.”
“‘This tiff’?” he repeated, wheeling his bay to fall in with her.
“You were an inch away from brawling with Lord Berling, sir,” she stated. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”
“I wasnae pretending anything. I was merely questioning why ye’d call it a tiff. It wasn’t as wee as all that.”
“And don’t attempt your quaint colloquialisms on me. I don’t find them amusing.”
He narrowed one eye. “And to think, I was looking fer a way to apologize to ye fer insulting yer Mr. Appleton.”
“Stop that. I am furious with you. We do not threaten each other on the streets here. And certainly not over clan rivalries or some such thing.”
For a moment he thought he might suffer an apoplexy, right there in the middle of Hyde Park. “Some such thing,” he repeated. Hadn’t he just told her that clan was everything to a Highlander? “It was a warning I gave Berling; not a threat.”
“Semantics,” she retorted.
“Aye, perhaps,” Ranulf conceded, admitting to himself that as … frustrated as he was with this woman at the moment, he was still allowing her to take him to task in a way that no one had ever been permitted before. Ever. “Three years ago he or one of his men put a musket ball through my brother Munro’s shoulder. And then last year he tried to buy my land for his bloody Cheviots. I’ll threaten him every time I set eyes on him. And if he ever takes another step toward me or mine, he’s done.”
She glanced sideways at him then quickly away, as if she didn’t even care to acknowledge that he was there. And he still wanted to kiss her again, damn it all. “Have him arrested, then,” she said.
“I’ve no proof yer Sasannach courts would listen to. And as the coward likely won’t set foot back in the Highlands, there’s naught I can do. Legally.” If she wanted to hear him say that English courts favored men who’d taken English titles and lived on English estates, he would do so, but she likely already knew it. Not that she’d agree with him; that wouldn’t be ladylike, or some such thing.
“Perhaps you should stop trying so hard not to fit in, then, Ranulf.”
The moment she spoke Charlotte wished she hadn’t. Yes, he troubled her ears and her thoughts no end, but she already knew that making him angry was not a wise thing to do. Glengask’s sensuous lips flattened, his deep blue eyes flashing. Then he whistled, a short, shrill sound that made her jump and brought the dogs and the pair of servants instantly to his side.
“Una. Guard Rowena,” he said, his tone clipped and precise. “Lads, see ’em safely home, then back to Tall House with ye.”
“And ye, m’laird?” the older, grizzled servant asked.
“I’ll have Fergus with me.”
His sister reached a hand out toward him. “Ranulf, the Evanstone soiree is tonight. Are ye—”
“I’ll be there,” he interrupted, sparing Charlotte a glance that both chilled her and started a spark of flame deep in her chest.
With that he and the big bay and the big gray deerhound moved off through the crowd, traveling at far too fast a pace to be civilized. But then, Ranulf MacLawry wasn’t at all civilized.
For a moment she worried that she’d also offended Winnie, but the marquis’s sister drew even with her on one side, while Janie came up on the other. “Are you acquainted with Lord Berling?” Charlotte asked their houseguest.
“Nae—no. I mean, I’ve seen him from a distance once or twice, but no one’s ever introduced us. I wouldn’t want to be introduced to the likes of him.”
Out of her brother’s presence Winnie had been attempting to “improve” her speech, as she termed it. Charlotte liked the brogue, herself, especially when spoken by a deep-voiced, mountainous male, but she understood Rowena’s reasoning. If she spoke like a Highlander no one would ever see her as a proper Englishwoman, and that—more than anything else—seemed to be what she wanted for her short Season. To not be Scottish.
“Is it true that he shot your brother Munro?” Jane asked, her color still wan. Public displays of male aggression were not something with which either of the Hanover sisters had much experience, thank heavens.
Winnie nodded. “Someone began burning down the schoolhouses Ran had been building. Bear went to look in on one and rode up to see it on fire. He came back with his shoulder covered in blood and said he tried to go in and make certain everyone was safe, and then some bloody coward shot him from behind.”
“Winnie,” Jane gasped, putting a hand over her own mouth. “Ladies don’t say that word.”
“Which word? ‘Bloody’?”
“Winn—yes, that word.”
“Oh. It’s Bear’s favorite word, though, and that’s what he said.”
“If they shot him from behind, how does he know it was Lord Berling?” Charlotte pressed, more interested in the facts than the language used to present it.
“Because Berling is allies with the Campbells and the Donnellys, and Uncle Myles gave the Donnellys the map and told them about the schoolhouses.”
Well, that explained the tension between Ranulf and his uncle, even if the logic of it all was abysmal. Charlotte wondered briefly if the marquis had broken Lord Swansley’s nose, as well. “That makes it possible, then, but it doesn’t make it proof.”
Rowena sent her a bemused look. “That’s what Uncle Myles said. And then Ranulf said that a Highlander knows in his gut when a man’s violated his trust, and that only someone who’d turned his back on his own people like Berling did would fear a schoolhouse.”
That might have passed for facts in Scotland, but Charlotte could see why Ranulf hadn’t bothered to take his grievances before a court of law. Supposition, superstition, and hate—that’s what it had been. No wonder Scotsmen were no longer permitted to govern themselves.
It was only after she returned home and settled into the library with the latest
Ackermann’s Repository
that the rest of the conversation sank into her. Ranulf had been building schoolhouses—several of them, apparently—on his land. For his cotters.
While there was certainly a line of thought that educating peasants only served to enlighten them as to how miserable their own conditions were and to encourage them to rise up against their so-called betters, she didn’t agree with that. Giving anyone an opportunity for an improved life had to be a good thing. And part of her had to admire a man who offered that to those dependent on him, especially when it meant going against the wishes of his own peers. It took courage and conviction, both of which Ranulf MacLawry seemed to possess in great quantity.
It was quite aggravating of him, really. He gave the appearance of being the exact opposite of enlightened. He even seemed to perversely enjoy being seen as a devil Highlander and nothing more. His contempt for the English—or the Sasannach, as he called her kind—couldn’t be more obvious. And yet he’d kissed her, and that had felt anything but contemptuous. Molten and savage, perhaps, but she had no complaints about it. At all.
Shaking herself, Charlotte set aside the
Ackermann’s
and stood. Her father was a great reader, and he had quite an extensive collection of biographies, plays, and novels. She perused the library shelves until she found the collection of titles that most interested her. Slowly she pulled the first one from the shelf.
Waverley,
written by an anonymous author everyone now knew to be Walter Scott, the Scottish poet.
She’d read the account of young Edward Waverley and how he was seduced by the fiery Highlander Flora MacIvor with her Jacobite leanings, but that reading had been about the romance of it all, and how she’d hoped Edward would return to the mild, steadfast Lowlander Rose Bradwardine—which he had. This time as she sat down and opened the book, she wanted to read about the Highlands. And the Highlanders.
After an hour or so of trying to sink into the story, however, Charlotte had to set the book aside in favor of standing and walking about the large room. Why had Ranulf been so angry and skeptical when she’d mentioned James? All she’d said was that when Ran had kissed her it had made her think of … Oh.
Oh.
But she hadn’t meant it that way at all. She’d only meant that no one had kissed her since James had done so, the evening before he’d gone off to get himself shot in the heart. And so naturally when Ran had given her that rather spectacular kiss, she’d then thought back to both the kiss and the rest of the nonsense and pain her hotheaded betrothed had caused. She certainly hadn’t been thinking of James at the moment Ranulf kissed her, because her mind had stopped working altogether.
Well, if he’d misinterpreted what she’d said, what did it matter, anyway? She’d explained it, perhaps inadvertently, but he had to have realized what she meant. And he’d seemed far more interested in looking for an excuse to beat Lord Berling than in defending his own bloodthirsty ways, anyway.
How odd, that she hadn’t even known that Donald Gerdens was Scottish. She’d danced with the earl, and on several occasions. They’d chatted about the weather, and the latest plays being performed at Drury Lane Theater, and even if now she remembered that he’d several times flattened his
a
’s, she hadn’t noticed it then. Ranulf had said she didn’t understand what it was to be Scottish, and evidently he was correct. None of this hate and conflict and hiding accents made any sense to her at all.
Nor did it make any sense that a man so different from her in outlook and temperament could be so … intriguing. Now Charlotte slowly reached up and ran a finger across her lips. The taste of him had faded with ices and luncheon and arguments, but she remembered it. That kiss had positively curled her toes and weakened her knees, and sent a keen excitement over … something, crashing through her entire being.
Not that that mattered, either, since her parting words to him had been a suggestion that he stop trying so hard to be Scottish, or some such thing. She likely could have conjured a worse insult, but it would take some time and effort. “Fribble,” she muttered.
“Charlotte?”
At the sound of her father’s voice she stopped pacing and left the library. “Up here, Papa,” she called, leaning over the banister and thankful for the distraction, whatever it was.
He looked up from the foyer. “Meet me in my office, will you, darling?”
“Certainly.”
She arrived before he did, and wandered to the window overlooking the carriage drive. The sky had gone gray with the afternoon; they would be lucky if it didn’t begin raining before they arrived at the Evanstone ball. There was nothing worse than trying to walk through mud and horse excrement in dancing slippers.
“Where are the girls?” Lord Hest asked, walking into the small office and closing the door behind him. His nose and ears were red from being out in the wind; even if she hadn’t seen the string of fish in his hand earlier, she would have known what he’d been up to.
“Trying on gowns for tonight. The excitement is positively making my teeth ache.”
He chuckled. “Ah, you were insufferable once, too. I remember it well.”
“Perhaps, but there are two of them.”
“Too true.” Sobering, he gestured her to take one of the pair of seats facing his desk. “I heard about a row today, in Hyde Park.”
Oh, dear.
“It wasn’t a row, precisely. Lord Glengask and Lord Berling caught sight of each other and had words. Nothing came of it.”
“That’s something, anyway,” he returned, looking relieved. “From the way Kenney explained it, I thought they’d been at it with broadswords.”
“No. I do recommend that we never invite the two of them to the same dinner party, however.”
Her father looked at her for a moment. “What was it about? Do you know?”
“Well, evidently Lord Glengask has refused to graze sheep on his lands, and is instead building schoolhouses. And Lord Berling didn’t like that. According to rumor Berling or one of his men shot one of Winnie’s brothers in the shoulder, and then the last time they encountered each other in Scotland, Glengask broke Berling’s nose.” She frowned at that. It was all so stupid, and so senseless. Why couldn’t men simply sit down and discuss things?
“So Glengask doesn’t like Englishmen
or
his fellow Scots, eh?”
She sighed. “Apparently not. I told him that he needed to make a better attempt to behave, but he didn’t take that well.”
The earl’s lips twitched. “You told him what?”
“Yes, it was stupid, but after two hours of blasted England this and damned English that, I’d had enough.” And that was as much of the story as she would ever tell him. Because no one at all was ever allowed to know that Ranulf had kissed her. Or that she’d kissed him back.
“Yes, I’m already taking a ribbing from some of the fellows at the Society Club over having a Highlander lurking about. I have to admit, I’ll be somewhat relieved when this fortnight is over.”
Charlotte frowned. Ranulf hadn’t precisely said he would allow Winnie to remain longer, but he had hinted at it. Of course that had been before she and he had argued. “Don’t plan a farewell dinner yet, Papa,” she said anyway. Lord Hest should know what was afoot in his own household.
“What?” His frown likely matched hers. “What happened?”
She shrugged. “He adores his sister, and she wants to stay.”
“Well.” Slowly the earl blew out his breath. “Then I suppose we’ll make do. I have to admit, your mother couldn’t be more pleased. Having two young things to introduce about is her idea of paradise. I just wish they were both English.”
That was precisely the sort of thing Ranulf likely thought people said behind his back at every opportunity, so she refrained from agreeing, instead offering her father another smile. “Don’t forget to save a dance for me tonight, Papa,” she said, standing and giving a twirl.