by Karen Ranney
She glanced up at him, surprised. “Is that why you did it?”
“That, and to shut him up.”
They smiled at each other.
“You used your left arm,” she said.
He nodded. “After I was wounded in the war, I was put right back into combat. It was either learn to shoot with my left arm or be defenseless.”
She reached up and patted his lapel again, needing to touch him.
“Was she being ridiculous, Elsbeth?”
“Does it matter?”
“More than you know.”
She didn’t say anything. Her mind would not work. She couldn’t think of a thing to say to him. No quip, or rejoinder. Nothing witty came to mind.
“If there was no one here,” he said, “I would kiss you again.”
Now she most definitely couldn’t think. But her imagination wouldn’t cease. She would take a step forward, place her hands flat on his coated chest, and look up at him with her heart in her eyes. He would bend his head and gently place his mouth on hers.
She blinked, banishing that image with difficulty.
She forced herself to take a step away, heading back to Mrs. Ferguson so quickly that her departure might be categorized as an escape.
Connor watched as Felix gave instructions to the footmen, handed someone else the guns, and proceeded to bask in the glory of being the winner of their match.
The longer he was at Bealadair, the more Connor was certain he’d made the right decision. The sooner the house and the land were sold, the better.
He wasn’t sure he wanted to have anything to do with the Scottish McCraights in the future. Ordinarily, he would’ve invited them back to Texas, proud to show this branch of the family the success Graham had achieved. However, he hadn’t issued the invitation, and he wasn’t certain he was going to.
“Good match. Sorry about beating you.”
Connor turned to face Felix. “Never be sorry for winning,” he said.
The man evidently took great pride in his victory because he couldn’t hide his gloating smile.
He didn’t give a flying fig that he had lost to Felix. Let the man boast. Let him brag about his accomplishments. It didn’t matter.
“Surprised to see you shoot with your left arm, though,” Felix said.
“It was a skill I learned in the war. Of course, I was shooting at live targets, then. Men, not glass balls.”
There, that wiped the smile off the man’s face.
“Did you shoot me, Felix?”
He hadn’t given the man any hint of his question and he watched Felix’s face closely. Surprise bloomed in the other man’s eyes for a moment, and then was quickly gone.
“Of course I didn’t shoot you.”
“I warn you I’m not that easy to kill.”
“Why would you think it was me?”
He ignored Felix’s question for one of his own. “Do you think if I’m dead things will change? I’ve given instructions that the sale of Bealadair is to go through, regardless of what happens to me.”
Felix didn’t respond to that information.
Connor had never had the experience of being actively disliked simply because of who he was or the fact that he’d been born. No, not simply born. Born a McCraight.
He turned and, without another word to Felix, walked away.
Chapter 27
“He’s going to be unbearable,” the duchess said, turning from the window. “I do wish His Grace had trounced him.”
“Connor isn’t into competition shooting much,” Sam said, offering the duchess a plate of cookies.
He liked the way she took one delicately between thumb and forefinger. He liked most of the things she did, from her way of speaking in that Scottish brogue of hers to her quick smile.
He was smitten and well aware of it. Normally, his attraction to a woman took a little time in forming. He’d had some good relationships and some long relationships. He’d rarely had good, long relationships. Therefore, he was getting a little more cautious as he grew older, which made the situation with the duchess even more surprising.
The woman was a paradox. He recognized in her something he knew about himself. What people saw on the exterior was not truly how he felt inside. He knew, all too well, that he had a reputation for hard drinking, hard loving, and carousing from time to time. The people who willingly passed along such stories never saw him with a book, however, or at the opera, which he truly enjoyed.
Rhona worked hard at creating the perfect image of the Duchess of Lothian, of arranging her family around her almost like a protective wall. Her position was very important to her, as if it defined the woman she was. Inside, however, he suspected she was lonely and now terrified by Connor’s decision. Everything she knew to be true, everything she had carefully erected for all these years, was about to crumble.
She was not unlike a hermit crab in the process of changing its house.
For all her flaws and faults, however, Rhona McCraight had a delightful sense of humor. She was, surprisingly, able to laugh at herself, although he doubted that she shared her wry observations with many people.
He suspected that her marriage with Gavin hadn’t been all that pleasant, but she would probably deny it until her death. Evidently, aristocrats were not allowed to admit they were unhappy.
She got a look in her eyes from time to time, one that he thought of as farseeing. He imagined he had that look himself, staring out over the Texas prairie, wondering what the hell he was doing chasing cows with Graham when he would much rather have been in Austin or Dallas. Friendship exacted a toll on a person. It had never been more so than in his friendship with Graham. Graham was all work and little play, and it looked like Connor was following in his footsteps.
“The man will be unbearable,” Rhona said again. “He will do nothing but boast of today for weeks or months or however long we have here.”
She sent a sideways glance in his direction, and he bit back his smile.
She kept hinting that he might be able to change Connor’s mind. He never responded or gave her any inkling that he knew what she was doing. She wasn’t the least bit subtle, but then he suspected Rhona had never had a reason to engage in subterfuge. After all, she was the Duchess of Lothian and her wishes were normally fulfilled the moment she uttered them. It must be galling to know that there was nothing she could do in this situation.
Connor wasn’t going to change his mind. In that way, he was just like his father. Once Graham had set on a course of action, it would have taken an act of God to get him to change. It made him wonder if Gavin had been the same, a question he wouldn’t ask his widow.
“A banty rooster,” he said.
“I beg your pardon?”
He really did like how her eyebrows went up like that.
“Felix is like a banty rooster in a henhouse,” he said, smiling at her. “Some men are like that. They feel the necessity to preen and strut.”
“Do they?” she asked, nibbling at her cookie. “Are you like that, Sam?”
“Do you think so, Rhona?”
She tilted her head slightly and studied him. “I think, perhaps, that no one truly knows who you are, Sam Kirby. That you reveal only parts of yourself to one person and maybe different parts to the next.”
That was so close to the mark he was surprised. Uncomfortable, he wasn’t sure how to answer. Thankfully, she took command of the moment in a demonstration of her greatest talent: that of graciousness.
She moved back to where the McCraight daughters were sitting, took a place at the end of the settee and encouraged him to sit beside her with a welcoming smile.
He had the strangest feeling that his past was repeating itself. The moment reminded him of days spent with Graham’s family. The difference was that Connor wasn’t in the room. And he had never had more than a brotherly feeling for Linda, Connor’s mother.
These women, for all their familial resemblance, were different from the Texas McCraights.
They had a reserve about them, which was probably due to being a duke’s daughters, being Lady this or Lady that. Or it could have been Rhona’s influence. She seemed a mite too fixated on propriety. He’d heard the word proper from her at least a dozen times in the past few days. It seemed to matter a great deal to her whether or not people were behaving correctly.
He’d met enough of those types of women in Dallas and Austin. They seemed to have their corsets tied a little too tight. They looked down at others, peering through their lorgnettes, raising their thin bridged noses as if trying to avoid an unpleasant smell.
But Rhona wasn’t like that. There was a core of sweetness and softness to her, evident from the way she laughed at his foolish jests, or looked at him from time to time.
She’d let him kiss her, too, on more than one occasion.
He’d never attempted to be anything but the hoi polloi. He liked working around the ranch hands as much as he occasionally liked taking a cigar and a brandy with one of the state representatives.
Money was the great equalizer. It brought greedy people to your level, and it camouflaged you when you ascended to theirs. He could be as rude and as roughneck as any drover, but the minute people knew how rich he was, they forgave him all his assumed bad habits.
Being in Scotland was an unusual experience for him in that he didn’t have to pretend to be anybody but who he was. He wasn’t as uncouth as certain people thought him, or as polished as some believed him to be. He was simply Sam, a man from Texas. More than that, nobody seemed to want to know. And that was fine with him.
He sat and smiled at the girls.
He liked Muira because she had an open way about her. She smiled a lot and she said nice things about other people. Granted, she was a little too fond of sweets, but everybody had something they needed to work on.
The middle sister, Anise, seemed to think she was perfect. He’d caught her preening in front of a mirror twice now, as if she couldn’t quite believe how pretty she was. He’d seen pretty women all his life. Time made them less pretty and so did their inner qualities. A grasping, cunning woman began to look like that after a few years. A pleasant disposition made a plain woman look prettier. But he doubted that Anise would pay any attention to thoughts of beauty from an older man, especially one who wasn’t fawning all over her.
He didn’t really like the older sister. Lara was Rhona’s stepdaughter, the product of Gavin’s first marriage. Marie, that’s what her name was. Graham had talked about her once, but only once, the moment fueled by good whiskey. He could still recall the tone of Graham’s voice and the longing in it, even though he’d already been married to Linda for two years. Evidently, there were some loves that never left you.
Lara hadn’t said more than two words to him the entire time they’d been there. Evidently, he wasn’t of sufficient rank to attract her interest. Most of the time, she stared off into the distance as if the current company couldn’t possibly meet her requirements for polite discourse.
The only person he’d ever seen her act remotely warm toward was Felix, and she doted on her husband.
He’d seen some strange pairings in his past: large women with tiny men, a handsome man with a plain woman, and the reverse—a nearly ugly man with a beautiful female. He would rank Felix and Lara up there among the strangest. She seemed to be personable enough, knowledge that came from overhearing her conversations with her husband. Felix, on the other hand, struck him as greedy and grasping.
He wasn’t an unattractive fellow, but his voice was grating and his recitation of his accomplishments nearly laughable. As far as he could see, Felix had no occupation other than shooting. If he had other hobbies, he didn’t brag of them. Nor did he do much in the way of adding to the conversation whenever they were together. Instead, he complained a lot.
They didn’t have time for complaints in Texas. If a section of fence was down, no kudos went to the man who pointed it out. Why hadn’t he fixed it?
Felix’s complaints were primarily about other people and how they perceived him. The maid wasn’t deferential enough. The footman smirked at him. On the whole, Sam preferred to ignore the couple when he could.
Rhona, now, was a different story.
He smiled at her and wondered when he could get her alone.
Elsbeth made her way to the kitchen, hoping to get an early dinner and retire to her sitting room. She knew she was running out of time. She couldn’t avoid the family any longer. She had to talk to Rhona. Hopefully, however, not until after her trip to Inverness tomorrow.
The weather was holding. The days were so cold that the air felt like you could snap it in two, but wrapped up in her cloak with an added scarf and her leather gloves, she was very comfortable on her rounds.
The cattle were doing well. So were the crofters she visited.
The McCraights were very proud. They didn’t ask for handouts or help, normally. You had to be very cagey in how you asked if they needed assistance. She had always found that if she spoke about the children, the parents allowed as how maybe they could use a bit more flour or some help with cutting wood.
There was one family, so far away that she could only visit them every few weeks, where the husband had finally succumbed to a large growth on his throat. Patty was alone with their three children, and she worried about the woman enough to offer her a position at the house. Unlike other great houses, the children lived with their parents in small cottages on the edge of the estate. The children could go to the school they devised, half day while their mother was working. In such a way, Gavin had planned to educate all of Bealadair’s staff, making it possible for them to go on to other positions if they wished. Some of the children were slated to go on to higher education, one of his longtime goals.
How much of that would remain once the house was sold?
If she genuinely believed that seduction would have any kind of impact on Connor’s decision, she might’ve given it some thought and consideration.
Or perhaps she could hold herself out as a trade, of sorts. The good of the people of Bealadair for her virginity. She doubted she would marry. What good would a maidenhead do her when she could trade it for the benefit of so many other people?
She was not given to lying to herself. The sacrifice wouldn’t be all that unpleasant. She wanted to kiss Connor again. Without thought of anyone’s survival, but for her own sake.
Earlier, she’d patted his coat and she wanted to do more. She wanted to wrap her arms around his neck and pull his head down for a kiss and be lost in it for moments and moments.
What had the duchess said? Something about seduction being instinctive. Was she right? Was that true? Did you simply get within touching range of a male who attracted you and something took over? You knew how to act and what went where and how?
She couldn’t imagine something like that happening, especially around Connor. She would be inept and silly. He was so overpoweringly male. More of a man than anyone she’d ever met.
She’d never considered men in degrees of their maleness before, but she found herself ranking them as she made her way to the kitchen. She would definitely place Connor at the very top slot, and then, perhaps in third or fourth position his friend, Mr. Kirby. One or two of the crofters might be in the top ten. Gavin, bless him, was a very studious man and an enormously kind one, but she couldn’t say that he was exceptionally male. Had his brother been different?
Gavin had evidently felt his brother’s absence keenly, enough to remark on it more than once as he grew more and more ill.
“You will like Graham,” he said once. “He’s always had a better sense of humor than I. He’s got this roaring laugh that used to embarrass Mother. She said that he called attention to himself, and I suppose he did, in a way.”
She was curious about Graham. Had he been as studious as Gavin? Or had he developed his own character once away from Scotland? Perhaps she could ask Connor.
No, it wouldn’t be a good idea to be a
round him any more than she absolutely had to. Although she had to see the family eventually, she was going to take precautions not to be alone with Connor.
She really did want to kiss the man again. Or even worse, test whether she was capable of seduction after all.
Chapter 28
For some reason, Connor thought Elsbeth would be at dinner. Especially since she’d come up to him at the shooting contest. Had she just felt sorry for him? Is that why she’d helped him on with his coat and been so sweet?
That thought was annoying, almost as irritating as her absence.
He was about to do something incredibly foolish. If pressed, he’d admit that he knew that his actions were also improper, but he needed to solve a mystery.
Exactly why was Elsbeth avoiding him?
Dinner had been the same as it had been for the past week, with the added fillip of Felix receiving kudos from the rest of the family while graciously admitting that Connor’s injury might have had something to do with his loss.
He hadn’t lied to Elsbeth; he didn’t care about the contest. Nor had he told Felix a falsehood. When it had counted, when he’d needed to survive, he had shot well enough. He hadn’t practiced on a bunch of glass balls.
But people like Felix—and unfortunately, Texas had a share of them, too—were all bluster and pomposity.
He and Sam exchanged a look across the table, one that was intercepted by the duchess. She only smiled, which made him wonder how well Sam’s roping and culling was going.
After dinner he excused himself, heading for where he thought Elsbeth’s suite was located, not with the rest of the family rooms, but in one of the older sections of the house.
The maid who’d given him that information had been a cheeky little thing with a saucy smile, twinkling eyes, and bright red hair. She reminded him, oddly enough, of his youngest sister and a surge of longing for his home nearly prevented him from thanking her.
The wing was connected to the main part of Bealadair by a bridge on the third floor. Arches made up both walls on either side. He wondered if, at one time, they’d been open to the elements. Now the arches were covered in a clear sparkling glass that brought the winter night close to him.
