MAD, BAD & DANGEROUS TO MARRY (The Highland Brides Book 4)

by Elizabeth Essex

  “Good to see you too, Alasdair, auld man.” She could hear the smile in Ewan’s voice. “Archie.”

  Arms were thrown around each other and backs thumped, and introductions made. “You remember my wife, Quince, my Lady Cairn.”

  “Of course. Lady Cairn.” Ewan kissed his friend’s wife on the hand and each cheek, but then he came back to hold Greer’s hand in a firm, supportive clasp.

  “I’m Shee,” her papa introduced himself. “It’s been quite some time. And I must say it’s grand to have you back my boy.” He extended his hand. “Grand.”

  “Very good to be back, my lord,” Ewan said as they shook hands. “It has been a very long time. I am glad to find you so well.”

  Papa beamed his pleasure. He introduced Mama, “My lady wife, Flora, Countess of Shee.”

  “My Lady Shee.” Ewan bowed over her hand. “A vast pleasure.”

  “Dear lad,” Mama said, while she also reached for Greer’s free hand and brought it to her lips to kiss in love and gratitude for her safe delivery home. “We are all together, at last.”

  Indeed. Almost all of the people important to Ewan were in the same room.

  Only one was missing.

  But if the jangling of harness and scratch of gravel on the drive was any indication, the missing miscreant was about to arrive.

  A cry came from the drive. “I must see Lady Greer, at once!”

  She must have stiffened because Ewan asked, “Who comes?”

  “Your cousin, who I fear is the author of all this malice.” Greer’s fingers tightened on his hand. “I’m torn between wanting to hide you away from him and wanting to prove to him that you are not, in fact, dead, or an impostor, or a madman raving in the glens.”

  “I’m done with hiding,” Ewan said. “I am among friends. Let him come. We will know the truth.”

  Would they? Greer herself was buffeted by contrary doubts—every time she thought she had discerned the truth, she learned something else to contradict her theories.

  “Perhaps it were best,” Alasdair said to Ewan, “if we stood back, to give Mr. Cameron some room to speak. The door to the music room might provide some concealment, perhaps?”

  Ewan nodded and complied, moving to the open doorway to the music room with Alasdair, as rapid footfalls echoed in the reception hall and sounded at the door of the drawing room, which was flung open by Malcolm Cameron, who all but staggered into the room.

  “I came as soon as I heard the news that Lord Shee had been shot!” He came straight toward Greer, with his hands outstretched, as if he meant to comfort her. “Is he dead?”

  “Pray do not alarm yourself so, Your Grace.” Beside her, Mama was all gracious composure. “My lord is recovering, as you see.”

  “Indeed,” Papa agreed stepping forward into Cameron’s line of vision to offer himself as evidence. “It is the young ghillie for whom we are most concerned.”

  “A ghillie?” Malcolm Cameron managed to look interested and baffled at the same time.

  “Yes, the son of our moorkeeper, Jock Keith—a boy named Leslie,” Papa clarified. “He has been seen by a reputable local man, but I’ve sent to both Edinburgh and Inverness for the best surgeon available to see to the lad.”

  “That is very good of you, I’m sure, to go to such expense.” Cameron took up Greer’s hand, as if you would kiss it. “My dear Lady Greer, how frightened you must have been.”

  “Indeed,” she agreed, though she took her hand from his possession. “It is never pleasant thing to find one’s father being shot at.” She could barely contain her contempt for the man. “But what were you doing up on Glas Maol so close to the time of the shooting?”

  “Me?” He laid his hand to his chest in that well-remembered, and perhaps well-rehearsed, show of innocence. “You must be mistaken—though it is hardly to be wondered at after your ordeal. I heard the most alarming report that you had been kidnapped—taken away on the moor.”

  “Not taken away,” her mama insisted. “But here, safe and sound with us.”

  “Well, I must say.” Cameron paused for breath. “Taken alongside the reports that there is a man—a mad impostor—roaming wild on Crieff land, you can see why I was doubly concerned.”

  “An impostor?” Greer tried hard to keep her emotions—her distrust and anger and fear—from showing in her voice. She would be as serene as a swan, even if beneath her surface was all determined paddling. “Posing as whom?”

  “I hate to say, as I know it will upset you to hear, Lady Greer.” Cameron was the picture of reticent concern. “He’s already vandalized a bothy, broken into Crieff and stolen a long gun, as well as a valuable horse. I fear it likely that he is the man who tried to kill you.”

  Greer firmed her voice. “Posing as whom?” she asked again, though she already knew the answer.

  “Forgive me.” Cameron tried to justify himself while at the same time not answering. “I only say that because I fear for my moorkeeper as well—that old fellow Dewar. I sent him up to track this impostor—this madman saying he is my dead cousin—and now he’s disappeared as well, Dewar has. I fear this madman may have murdered him as well.”

  “Murder is not a charge to bruit about a drawing room like gossip, Your Grace.” Alasdair spoke quietly from the music room doorway. “Based on what factual evidence?”

  “I’m sorry.” Cameron’s tone was sarcastic as turned to this new inquisitor. “Am I now in a court of law, my lord?”

  “Alas.” Alasdair made the vaguest impression of a leg. “Force of habit, I’m afraid as I serve as Home Secretary for His Majesty’s Government. Alasdair Colquhoun, Marquess of Cairn, at your service. But it is always a good thing to have one’s facts straight. Wouldn’t you agree, Carrington?”

  “Aye.” Archie raised his chin in greeting instead of lowering it, in a show of indifference to Cameron’s elevated rank.

  “We were all very great friends—” Alasdair began smoothly.

  “Lifelong friends,” Archie added.

  “—of your late cousin. We were all very close.”

  “In each other’s pockets,” Quince, Lady Cairn chimed in.

  “And we’d know him anywhere,” Archie said.

  “Even on the top of a moor,” Alasdair followed, never once raising his voice.

  “While getting shot at.” Archie smiled like a fox—all keen eyes and keener teeth.

  Oh, they were marvelous, fierce friends, these people. She envied Ewan their devotion. But then again, she shared that devotion—ten years’ worth of steady adoration. Because no matter what Malcolm Cameron had said, Ewan was worthy of adoration.

  Malcolm Cameron stared at the three in horrified surprise. “You don’t say.”

  “I do,” Alasdair answered. “And as a magistrate and a member of His Majesty’s government, I should caution you to be very careful to have evidence before you start talking murder. Someone might take you seriously.”

  Lord Ewan Cameron

  Castle Crieff

  Perthshire Scotland

  28 May, 1791

  Dearest Ewan,

  I write from glorious Florence! We have the lease of a splendid villa in the hills overlooking the city from which to make out expeditions into both the city and the countryside. I myself am most taken with the Renaissance delights you once described to me.

  The Baptistry! The Duomo! We climbed to the very top this morning to see the city laid out like a patchwork quilt, the roofs and piazzas all burnt orange and gold, beneath us. The Monastery of San Marco! The frescoes of the Annunciation! Such sublime art. Such extravagant architecture. Every day is a revelation. I exist in a constant state of wonder, astonishment and curiosity. And we have but just begun our trip! How on Earth did you survive nearly two years of such sumptuous living? Such food! Such flavors! It is as if the very air leaves me intoxicated!

  I must go, for Papa and our trusty guide, a Jesuit priest who does not object to educating females about such art and architecture (although he accep
ted the commission, Papa tells me with a laugh, only after being told I am a ‘great heiress’ who will one day be a duchess), are calling me to the carriage to make our studies for the day.

  I will write again soonest, but remain yours, always, G

  Chapter 25

  You mistake me, my lord,” Malcolm immediately contradicted Alasdair.

  His cousin’s voice was so familiar, memories stacked up in Ewan’s mind’s eye like cordwood—Malcolm, as a child, standing in the library next to Grandfather. Malcolm walking beside him in a wood. Malcolm hailing him on the street in some city.

  “But I am glad to find everyone is, thus far, unhurt,” Malcolm went on. “Especially Lady Greer, who must of course be suffering from her ordeal. And being out all night. Alone.”

  Rage was an unfamiliar rush in Ewan’s blood, but he wanted nothing more than to wrap his hands around his damn insinuating cousin’s neck and choke the snide implied slur to Greer right out of his mouth. There was nothing his lass could say that would not call her character into question.

  Or was his cousin angling for answers? How could he know that she had not been home with the others? Unless he had been watching?

  Ewan’s recollections of his cousin were becoming clearer by the moment—there had always been snide insinuations and accusations. There had always been lies and debts of honor. There had always been spying.

  “Now see here,” Greer’s father began.

  “She was not alone.” Ewan stepped out from behind Alasdair. “I was with my betrothed.”

  Malcolm Cameron looked exactly as Ewan would have expected him to be—tall and handsome, with their grandfather’s almost white-blond hair. “Malcolm.” He made himself smile at his cousin. Made himself control the rage and fear seething within him. Made himself remember Malcolm was his family.

  Malcolm’s reaction was everything controlled, though his skin went so pale it almost matched his hair. His face lit in a perfect show of amazement, and his eyes went shiny with unshed tears. “Ewan.” Malcolm looked down at the hand Ewan had stretched out as if he didn’t know what to do with it. “You’re alive.”

  “Aye.” Ewan kept his own smile firmly in place, like armor. “I assure you, I’m not a ghost.”

  “It’s a miracle,” Malcolm stammered over his smile. “I don’t—”

  “Aye, I don’t quite know what to say myself.” Ewan remembered enough of his cousin not to let him direct the conversation to his advantage. His grandfather’s sage advice echoed in his ears—When he uses words as weapons, flattery is the most effective shield. “Except thank you, for seeing to Crieff in my absence.”

  “Well, of course.” Twin spots of color rose on Malcolm’s cheeks.

  “And so we may at least solve the mystery of this mad impostor.” Alasdair’s gaze leveled on Malcolm Cameron. “For clearly he is no impostor, but himself, our good friend Ewan Cameron, Duke of Crieff.”

  All eyes were on Malcolm Cameron, but it was Ewan who spoke. “I fear this must be partly my fault, for so glad was I to see my horse, Cat Sìth, when I discovered him in the stables, that I rode him off straightaway, all the way to the Inn at the Bridge over the Shee Water.” He very carefully did not mention the allegedly stolen Jäger rifle—that was a piece of the puzzle he wanted to keep hidden until he could learn more.

  “Oh, then it was you?” Malcolm shook his head in chagrin. “That was my mistake then, of course. Because how—” He broke off as if his feelings prevented any further speech and seized Ewan up in a rough embrace. “How did you survive? They told us you were dead.”

  Ewan turned to his lass and clasped her hand. “Greer saved me.” Let Malcolm see that they were united, though they were not yet wed. Let him see that she was protected.

  “Lord, yes,” Lord Shee rejoined before Greer could make any response. “Saved by her persistence, I should think. You were right all along, my dear,” he told her. “Quite right at that.”

  “Then I must thank you for finding my cousin.” Malcolm said to her with seeming emotion—his eyes were still glassy with unshed tears. “And returning him to Crieff. But why did you never tell me this whole time?”

  “I did, actually.” Greer kept her gaze level with Malcolm—the way one kept an eye on a snake. “That very first day—that awful day—when we came to Crieff for the wedding. We talked out on the forecourt. Don’t you remember?” she asked Malcolm. “I asked Dewar after the injured fellow that we had found, for his presence in the road seemed too much of a coincidence to me.”

  “Dewar?” Cameron was all curious astonishment. “But he said the lad was dead.”

  While Dewar’s subterfuge was news to Ewan—and explained some of Greer’s surprise at finding him at the bothy—it did not surprise him. Dewar was a canny, crafty auld coot—how better to make sure that Ewan was left alone to heal than to tell people he was dead.

  “Yes, he did,” Greer acknowledged. “But happily, he was wrong, and Ewan recovered.”

  “My thick skull at last came in handy,” Ewan joked, mostly for Alasdair and Archie’s benefit. Yet while they laughed and patted his back, unease slid down the back of his neck like a cold raindrop. “But what has happened to Dewar?” he asked his cousin. “Where is he now?”

  “He is gone.” Malcolm shook his head in bafflement. “Nowhere to be found. I had thought that whomever was stealing horses and making an impostor of themselves might have gotten ahold of him.” He held out his hands, all open astonishment. “But since we now know it was you, not an impostor, I am more confused and concerned than ever. I sent Dewar into the hills to track whoever it was who attempted to kill my cousin and shot at the earl, so I wonder what could have become of him? Though he did say these moorland glens were wild and dangerous—one misstep could kill a man.”

  “Not Dewar.” Of this Ewan was confident. For a man who looked half as old as the hills, Dewar was as canny and spry as a young spaniel. The man was ageless.

  “But now,” Cameron went on, “it makes me wonder why Dewar should tell me my cousin was dead? Why he should want to keep Ewan apart from his family?”

  “I asked him to.” Ewan gave way to a small falsehood to defend Dewar, who had been nothing by loyal. “As I could not remember how I came to be injured. But you said I was attacked? How did you know that?”

  “I inferred it, of course.” Malcolm held out his empty hands again, as if to show he had no cards up his sleeves. “And you look, if I may say so, not entirely yourself.”

  Ewan felt himself forced to more honesty than he might like in dealing with his cousin. “I did suffer a grievous injury—a brain commotion, Dewar called it. And though Dewar knew me, he feared for me. Feared what might happen to me if my murderers found out I was alive.”

  This admission was met by shocked silence—the Earl and Countess looked to each other, and then to their daughter, while Alasdair and Archie exchanged a worried look.

  Beside Ewan, Greer gripped his hand in a clasp that would have done a gunner proud. But he was not afraid of the truth, however vulnerable it might make him seem. The real vulnerability was in not acknowledging what had happened to him. In pretending and blustering his way forward instead of making haste very slowly indeed.

  “But in your injured, confused state, can you really be sure about Dewar?” Cameron put his own hand on Ewan’s shoulder to ask. “If he was so concerned for you, where is he now? Why is he not with you, protecting you now?”

  “I have not asked him to do so.” He mirrored Malcolm’s concerned smile and asked his own question. “But why should I need protection among my friends and family.”

  “I wonder,” Malcolm suggested with a thoughtful frown. “Now that he knows you are returned to your family, I think it more likely—and a proof of his guilt—that the man has absconded.”

  “No.” Ewan was quietly adamant. “Dewar is my man—loyal to Crieff. Loyal to his core. It cannot be.”

  “I agree,” Greer said, before she asked Malcolm. “But why did you thin
k that Dewar had been murdered? And that Ewan had murdered him?”

  “No, no. You misunderstand and draw the wrong conclusion.” Malcolm waved the suggestion aside. “I was only acting on what I knew of Dewar—that he hasn’t been seen in some time.”

  “But you said that you sent him up onto the moor to track this mad impostor.” Quince Cairn asked quietly. “Is it not safe to assume he’s doing just that? Because someone did attack His Grace and shoot the earl.”

  Pray God that was what Dewar was doing—calmly and competently going about his own business while the rest of them wore out Dalshee’s carpets with their talk.

  “Well, then let me take you home, so we can find out.” Cameron was all familial bonhomie. “I pray we will find him safe and sound at Crieff. But as it is, we will kill the fatted calf to have our prodigal son returned to us”

  The memory came, so swift and disorienting, Ewan half-thought he must be making it up. But there was the image of his grandfather standing at his desk in the comfortable, walnut-paneled library, looking down at a pile of markers—notes that Malcolm had written to cover his debts in the belief that his grandfather would pay them.

  “But I am not the prodigal,” Ewan said with quiet conviction, “am I, Malcolm?”

  “Of course not, of course, you misunderstand me.” Malcolm was all happy, smiling confusion. “You have no idea what kind of a relief it is going to be for me to turn the reins back over to you.”

  “Then I am sorry that I shall have to postpone your relief.” Ewan felt himself poised on a precipice—balancing between his past and his future. Balancing his suspicions and instinct against his better hopes. Against his conviction that the best way forward was to make haste slowly, methodically, with surety and proof.

  And as his mind would not yet reveal either the truth or the proof, what he needed was time. “For as I said, my memory is not what it once was, or what it should be, to have the full responsibility of an estate like Crieff. Might I impose upon you to continue on as you are?”