by Karen Ranney
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Author’s Notes
About the Author
Romances by Karen Ranney
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter 1
Scottish Highlands
January, 1869
Connor McCraight was half tempted to stop the carriage, release one of the horses, and ride bareback to Bealadair.
He’d rather be on horseback for twelve hours than just sitting here doing nothing. He refused to allow himself to consult his father’s watch tucked into the inner pocket of his vest. He didn’t want to know how many hours he’d wasted so far today.
At home, the setting sun—an explosion of orange and red in the direction of the Western Division—was accompanied by a feeling that he’d accomplished something. Either he’d ridden the fences, met with some of his foremen, inspected the newest outbuildings, or even sat himself down at his desk and forced himself to handle the never-ending paperwork.
Here? The end of the day didn’t mean a damn thing other than that he couldn’t see any more snow.
It snowed in Texas. It snowed a lot in certain parts of Texas, but there was something about a winter day in Scotland that buffaloed him. It was a colder kind of cold, seeping past his coat and into his bones. If he hadn’t been trapped in this carriage, he could have moved around and pushed past the discomfort.
He was used to being out in near-blizzard conditions, the ice freezing his eyebrows and lashes, his cheeks feeling so stiff they’d never thaw. But this Scottish wind came out of the north like a newly stropped razor. The Scottish snow was glaringly white and almost angry looking as it clung to vertical shapes and scraggly trees.
Why did one place have to have so damn many hills? They weren’t called hills, either. They called them Ben something or other, each name more unpronounceable. They weren’t like the mountains in West Texas. They didn’t soar majestically into the sky, making a man think of the Creator and other weighty subjects. No, they stuck out of the ground like fat black thorns with jagged edges now covered in ice and snow.
“It’s flat,” his father had often said, staring out over their land. “You can almost see from one side to another.”
That wouldn’t have been possible, but he now understood why there’d been a sense of wonder in Graham McCraight’s voice. Here you couldn’t see past the next snowflake for some damn hill or deep gorge.
He hoped this Bealadair place had enough fireplaces to heat him through. By the time they reached their destination—he’d been promised it would be soon, that word bandied about a little too often lately—he would probably be frozen from his boots to his hat.
When he’d said something about the weather to Augustine Glassey, the solicitor had only given Connor that thin-lipped smile of his. He didn’t know if the man was just naturally bilious or so damn cautious that each word was weighed and measured and weighed again before he uttered it.
Most of the time Glassey sat in the corner of a room like a crow, watching the proceedings with beady eyes.
At least he wasn’t in the carriage now.
Sam, wedged into the corner on the opposite side of the vehicle, opened one eye, closed it, and finally spoke in a tired voice.
“We’re almost there. Might as well hold on for a little longer.”
“I’ve been holding on for a damn sight too long,” Connor said. “I feel like I’m in a coffin.” A cold coffin. The heater down by his feet might keep the side of one booted foot warm, but that was about it.
“It’s better than the train,” Sam said, keeping his eyes shut.
He didn’t have any argument with that. The journey from London had been an orchestrated disaster. They’d had to change trains twice, moving all their possessions from one railroad company to another. What genius had decided to make different gauge tracks in the same country?
Glassey had made a point of telling him that they’d be traveling first class from London. He hadn’t been impressed then and he wasn’t now. The windows in the back of the car hadn’t closed all the way. But at least the cold of the snow had been offset by the warm soot from the engine.
They’d finally made it to the north of Scotland which didn’t mean that things got easier. They’d had to stop more than once, connect with another line, lose cars, pick up cars, and generally make the distance in a pace slower than he could have on a good horse.
But he probably would have frozen to death.
At least, at the last station, Glassey had done something right. The solicitor had prepared ahead and they’d had two carriages and drivers waiting for them. To his relief, the solicitor had chosen to ride in the vehicle behind them. It was the first time in weeks that Connor had been spared the Scotsman’s company. He wouldn’t have to listen to Glassey’s opinions, of which the man had many, uttered in an accent that was beginning to grate on him.
The man didn’t talk right.
Every word sounded like it had an edge and was sharp like glass. He didn’t just state his opinion—something Sam did often enough—Glassey pontificated. The man reminded Connor of their cook back home. Cookie had a point to make about a dozen things every day. It wasn’t enough that he had to salt you with his thoughts. He wanted to convince you that he was right and have you come out and say it.
The solicitor wouldn’t like being compared to a cook. He’d probably get that pursed-up look, the one that made Connor think the man smelled a dead cow.
Glassey had a long face, one that looked as if someone had grabbed his chin at birth and pulled it toward his feet. Age had given him lines that traveled the length of his cheeks, from the corners of his eyes to the corners of his mouth. He dressed in somber black like the undertaker in Austin. The worst thing about his appearance was that Glassey favored a bowler hat. It rounded off the top of his head and looked wrong with the rest of his angular appearance.
The only thing the man did that was a relief was melt into the background when Connor gave him a look. It was the McCraight glance, the one that said he’d just about had enough of this nonsense and wanted it to stop immediately.
His mother told him that he’d had it since birth. As the youngest of six children, the previous five having been girls, he’d been the spitting image of his father, down to imitating his mannerisms before he could walk.
“You just don’t sound like your papa,” his mother said. “Not that anyone could.”
Nope. He was a Texan. His father had sounded like a Scot. There were times when Connor couldn’t understand him, especially when he started talking Gaelic.
Connor countered by talking Mexican, which made Graham give him the McCraight glance.
He missed his father. He’d missed his father in one way or another since he’d come home that day two years ago, tire
d of war. At the tearful reunion with his family, he’d been given the news that his father had unexpectedly died in a line shack after a day of inspecting the fence line. The cause? He’d been cleaning his gun.
That hadn’t made sense then and it didn’t now.
Until Glassey showed up on his doorstep a few weeks ago, Connor had no idea that there was a family in Scotland. He hadn’t known about his aunt and three cousins—all girls—or that he had an uncle who’d died. He sure as hell hadn’t known about any estate or that he was the heir.
He had no business freezing in a strange country. He should be home where he was needed.
“Your father would have wanted you to go.”
Those words, uttered in a soft voice by his mother, had been the reason he’d agreed to accompany Glassey back to Scotland.
Now he wished he could have refused his mother. However, in the history of the XIV Ranch he doubted anyone had been able to say no to Linda McCraight.
She stared at you with those big brown eyes of hers—eyes that were replicated in all her children—standing there tall and proud, her hands folded in front of her. She was a statue of stillness, her bright red hair tucked into a braid coiled into a pattern his sisters called by a French name.
“It’s your obligation as a McCraight,” she continued. “The last male McCraight.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he’d said, despite the fact he was no longer in his boyhood and had been running XIV for the past two years on his own. All he could do was nod his head, bite back every objection that came instantly to mind, and make arrangements to have Joe Pike, his soon-to-be brother-in-law and one of his division managers, take over in his absence.
He couldn’t disrespect his mother, but damn, he wished he’d been able to say something, anything, to keep from being here in Scotland, of all places.
Sam unfolded himself from his scrunched position in the corner, grabbed his hat from his chest and planted it on his head, shivered, made a face, then shook his booted feet one by one.
Sam didn’t say much, but his expression left you with no doubt about what he was thinking. Right now it looked like he was wondering why the hell he’d agreed to accompany Connor to Scotland.
Sam Kirby had been his father’s friend. Tall, rangy, with a bald head and face that bearded up despite how often he shaved, he reminded Connor of a picture of a Jesuit priest he’d once seen. The man wasn’t a monk, however. Tales of Sam’s conquests had been legendary throughout the XIV Ranch.
Sam and Graham had been friends ever since Graham McCraight had come to Texas. Connor didn’t know how it had been done, but somehow his father and Sam had not only funded the syndicate that had built the state capitol, but they’d overseen the architecture and the construction. In return, the legislature had awarded them the land to begin the ranch.
Sam wasn’t an entrepreneur. He wasn’t even much of a rancher. Graham had called him a mental tumbleweed. If something interested Sam, he got involved in it, whether it was gold mining or some business venture with a man from back east who wanted to build a series of stores. But he always came back to the XIV Ranch as if it were home. Because of that, Connor considered Sam almost like an uncle. Not like the stranger whose death was the reason he was here now.
Before they left Texas, he’d asked Sam about the man.
“Did my father ever talk to you about his brother?”
“Once in a while,” Sam said. “When we were drinking.”
“I can’t remember him ever mentioning him to me.”
He should have asked his mother before he left Texas, but he tried not to mention his father any more than necessary. Every time he did, or when one of his sisters said something, his mother would get that look in her eyes. The one that made it seem like she held all the world’s sorrow in her heart.
She still cried every night.
He’d even broken down and asked Glassey, just before they boarded their ship. The solicitor had no idea why Graham had spent the past forty years in Texas.
Except for that, there wasn’t much about his father that had been secret. Graham was an open, boisterous, giant of a man who had a sense of wonder about everything, from the birth of a calf to the expanse of stars over their heads. He was given to philosophical discussions at strange times, often over a campfire or after bathing in the river.
When Connor came home from college, his father had tested his knowledge about a great many things. He’d found himself defending his beliefs, being forced to think long and deep about a subject before responding. Up until then he’d never considered his father an educated man, not like his professors. He soon realized that it was his own knowledge that was lacking and that Graham McCraight was the equal of any learned man he knew.
What would his father think about this journey, done so reluctantly? Graham was all for a man doing what he thought was right in his own mind. He’d instilled that thought in Connor along with another one: he had to accept the consequences of his actions. He couldn’t blame anyone else for the choices he made if he’d done so freely.
The problem was he hadn’t in this case.
Nor was he prepared to be the 14th Duke of Lothian and Laird of Clan McCraight.
Chapter 2
What were they going to do? Something had to be done, that was certain. Ruin faced them. The new duke was about to arrive any minute according to one of the stableboys who’d been positioned at the entrance to the road. Five of them, tucked into heavy coats and woolen hats, had been dispersed to various places around Bealadair in order to report on the first sighting of the new duke from America.
No one in the parlor looked remotely upset. Perhaps they were following Her Grace’s often-expressed adage: anxiety does nothing but bring wrinkles. The Duchess of Lothian looked at least a decade younger than the age she was reputed to be.
Yet didn’t the circumstances call for a little panic? Elsbeth certainly felt it. How could you not?
The room was filled with people yet none of them were talking.
Lara sat on the sofa with her husband, Felix. Anise sat on a nearby chair looking bored. Muira, Elsbeth’s favorite of the three sisters, was delicately nibbling on one of cook’s tarts. Rhona, the Duchess of Lothian, was sitting in a chair in front of the fire, pretending that it was just another evening at Bealadair.
Muira took another tart.
In any other situation, Rhona would have chastised her daughter for marring the perfection of the tray of delicacies already set out for the new duke. Maybe she wasn’t looking. Or maybe she was a little anxious after all.
There was plenty of food in the kitchen. They’d been baking for a good ten days, preparing for this moment. Ever since word had come that the new duke was in London and making his way north.
Two hours ago, Her Grace had given orders for several of the best bottles of wine to be brought up from the cellar. All the decanters were filled with McCraight whiskey. No one was imbibing because of strict orders from the duchess.
Meanwhile, Muira stole another tart.
“It’s time,” Rhona said, suddenly standing and facing them all.
A chorus of moans greeted her words.
“It’s snowing,” Elsbeth said, her comment earning her a sharp look from Rhona.
“It doesn’t matter,” the duchess said. “It’s tradition. It’s something the McCraights have always done.” Implicit in her tone was the rebuke: You wouldn’t understand. You’re not one of us.
Even if she wasn’t technically a McCraight, she was still expected to appear in front of Bealadair to welcome the new duke.
They stood and followed the duchess to the front of the house, the staff following like starched ducklings behind them.
Surely tradition allowed them to don coats and cloaks before venturing outside? Or were their frozen bodies supposed to show some measure of respect? The snow was coming down so thick that she wondered if the stableboy had actually seen an approaching carriage or simply wished it to appear. They formed a long
line in front of Bealadair, the weather keeping all of them silent. If they made the mistake of speaking, no doubt the frigid temperature would freeze their lips to their teeth.
Elsbeth couldn’t help but wonder if everyone was as cold as she was. According to the duchess, they were to stand there without coats or cloaks or hats or scarves, guaranteeing to the new duke that they posed no harm or risk. Nothing was concealed in their garments. No claymores, dirks, or shields.
She could only assume that this idiotic tradition had begun before there was any civilization in the Highlands.
She couldn’t help but think that the McCraight ancestors were laughing uproariously at the sight of all their descendants shivering in the snow and nearly turning blue, like the early Picts. Perhaps they didn’t paint themselves blue. Maybe the color came from experiencing a Highland winter.
If the 13th duke had been alive, Gavin wouldn’t have agreed to such a foolhardy gesture. A foolish thought, since if he had been alive they wouldn’t be standing out here praying that the carriage reached Bealadair quickly.
Night was almost upon them and in welcome or maybe to offer the frozen McCraights a touch of warmth, torches had been lit behind them, illuminating the curved approach to Bealadair.
The home of the clan had begun as a medieval keep in the fifteenth century on lands that had been acquired by the McCraights a hundred years earlier. The original castle with its stone walls still perched on a steep hill overlooking Dornoch Firth and was used in several McCraight celebrations including the Welcoming of the Laird. Thankfully, Rhona had decided to break with tradition in this instance. Otherwise, they would have had to trudge all that way in the freezing cold. The blizzard that had arrived this afternoon, lowering the sky until it felt like it pressed down on them, would have made the trek to the old castle suicidal.
Instead, they assembled on the east side of Bealadair below the Hammond Tower, named for the architect who’d designed the renovations of Bealadair in the past century. The house may not have been built for protection, but there were hints of fortifications in the elaborate surrounds of the roof, the oversized turrets, and the statues of clan members carved in stone, standing ready on the parapet to defend the laird and his family. In better weather the new duke would have been able to see the pennants flying, the McCraight colors of red and black distinctive against the backdrop of the white stone of Bealadair.
