A Dangerous Damsel (The Countess Scandals)

by Kimberly Bell

  “No?”

  She shook her head. “Ye asked me to marry ye out on this cliff. Do ye remember?”

  “I do. I remember ye called me a clod head and turned me down.”

  “Ye were a clod head. Ye were practically my brother.”

  “I was four,” Ewan defended. “If ye remember, I’d also asked my mother to marry me that same day.”

  His mother. Remembering her sent pain through his gut like fire. He pushed it down and pushed her out of his mind.

  “Ye did, dinnae ye.” Rose smiled down at her hands. They tangled in her skirts as she came to the reason she’d wanted Tristan away. “Are ye certain this smuggling business is the best idea?”

  “Certain? No, but it’s nae a bad one.”

  “Couldnae ye just . . . restore the farms? Get the tenants back?” She sounded hopeful.

  It was a nice idea, but not a realistic one. “It would take years before the land would yield crops we could sell for a profit. And tenants need a lord to manage them.”

  “But yer back now. I’m sure ye could—”

  Ewan cringed. This wasn’t the place or time he would have chosen for this conversation, but he couldn’t lie to her. “I’m nae staying, Rose.”

  “Oh.”

  He rushed to reassure her. “I’ll nae leave ye behind. Ye’ll come with me. Ye can stay at Dalreoch or we can find ye a husband.”

  Her laugh rippled out over the rocks. “A husband. I’m two and thirty, Ewan. Even if I were younger, I’m nae exactly—”

  “Nonsense. There’s plenty of men would have ye.”

  She shook her head. “No. Besides, this is my home.”

  “It’s nae place for a woman, Rose. Ye cannae stay here.”

  “Mr. Darrow isnae so bad. He pretends to be some famous criminal, but Iona wouldnae have brought him here if he was a danger.”

  “I’m nae about to lay bets on my grandmother’s judge of character,” Ewan spat. “And neither should ye. Nae when it’s yer life being used as the stakes.”

  Rose flinched at his tone, but she didn’t back down. “Miss Morgan is staying. I heard them talking about it.”

  He cursed under his breath. “That’s nae a certainty.”

  “But she might. Ye would let her.”

  “Deidre is . . .” He kept finding himself in this same spot, trying to explain who and what Deidre was to him.

  Rose covered his forearm with her hand. “She’s yer mistress. It’s all right, Ewan.”

  “That’s nae—”

  “I may nae have married, but I’m nae blind, Ewan. I saw ye.”

  “Aye. I willnae deny what ye saw. But it’s . . . complicated.”

  They sat in awkward silence for a long moment, the ocean air ruffling the edges of their clothing.

  “She’s very beautiful,” Rose said eventually. “Stunning, actually. I dinnae think I’ve ever seen a woman so pretty.”

  What the hell was he supposed to say to that? He and Rose had been raised like brother and sister, but he wasn’t in the habit of discussing his bed partners with anyone, never mind family he hadn’t seen in nearly twenty-five years. Still, after leaving her behind, he owed her far more than an uncomfortable conversation. If she wanted to talk about Deidre, the least he could do was try.

  “Aye,” Ewan said. It was the only response he could manage.

  “Ye seemed to be . . . enjoying her company, when I saw ye.”

  Ewan pondered the distance to the beach. It couldn’t be more than a few hundred feet. He might make it if he jumped. “Aye.”

  Rose fidgeted. “What I mean to say . . . I don’t judge ye for it. Ye dinnae need to be ashamed, Ewan. I ken men have needs.”

  “What kind of a thing is that to say!” Ewan jumped up and started pacing the cliff’s edge. It wasn’t something a woman in Rose’s position should be familiar with. He was right to want her to leave Broch Murdo. Darrow and his men weren’t proper company for a lady.

  “Ewan, calm down.”

  “Have ye—did someone . . .” Whoever had introduced her to the needs of men, Ewan would murder the bastard. He would rip him limb from limb. He should never have left her behind. This was entirely his fault. How many ways would he discover he’d failed her?

  “Ewan, stop! Yer frightening me.”

  He realized he had grabbed Rose’s arm. He let it go instantly. “I’m sorry. Ye should go back to the castle.”

  She nodded, picking up her bucket and fleeing back toward safety.

  Ewan waited for her to disappear from view. Once he was certain she couldn’t hear him, he turned to the ocean and yelled until he had no voice left. It wasn’t enough. He could still feel the rage that reminded him exactly where he came from. Exactly who his father was. Exactly the sort of monster he struggled not to become.

  ***

  “Dee?”

  “Hmm?” Deidre didn’t look up from the maps she was comparing. One was from the castle’s library. The other she’d had a local fisherman sketch for her. There were some very interesting discrepancies.

  “Dee.”

  “What do you need, Tris?” This time she did look.

  Her brother was standing in the doorway. Rose was standing with him. Oh.

  Rose fidgeted. “I’m sorry to bother ye, I just—”

  “I didn’t realize you were—” Deidre started to say.

  They both stopped.

  “Why don’t you go first?” Deidre suggested.

  The other woman stepped into Deidre’s bedroom, looking around with curiosity. “I havnae been in here since . . .”

  Deidre realized she wasn’t going to finish the sentence on her own. “Since?”

  The prompt seemed to startle Rose. “In a long time.”

  Was she being deliberately coy? Deidre didn’t have time for whatever game this was. “Is there something wrong with this room?”

  “No. Of course nae.”

  Well, that was comforting. And utterly unconvincing.

  Deidre would have to get to the bottom of that later, but she’d be damned if it would be with Ewan’s childhood crush. Not that Ewan’s earlier actions were Rose’s fault. Ewan was responsible for his own idiotic behavior. Deidre resolved to remember that, and not let it affect how she treated the other woman.

  “Did you need me for something?” she asked as nicely as she was able.

  “Oh.” Rose straightened her skirts. “I was wondering . . . if ye’ve seen Ewan.”

  Deidre didn’t expect to have her resolution tested quite so immediately. “No, I haven’t.”

  “Oh.”

  Silence filled the room. Deidre waited. For the love of— “Should I have?”

  “I just thought . . .”

  This was going to take forever. “Miss Lambert. I’m happy to help you however I can, but—”

  “We fought. I made him angry,” Rose confessed in a rush.

  “You fought?” Deidre had difficulty believing the well-mannered Rose had ever raised her voice, or that Ewan would do anything other than apologize profusely if she did. “What did you fight about?”

  The other woman’s gaze dropped to the carpet. Her cheeks flushed scarlet. “It was a personal matter.”

  Interesting. And they’d argued about it? This day was full of mysteries to be solved. “Did you ask Angus?”

  “Him? Oh no. I couldnae.”

  Why the devil not?

  “But no one saw him come back from the cliff, and he’s nae in his room,” Rose finished.

  That was concerning. Cliffsides weren’t notorious for their safety, and it had been dark for an hour or more. Ewan was probably holed up somewhere composing a sonnet to Rose’s flawless virginity, but it was worth looking into. If the big idiot went and got himself killed, Deidre’s whole plan was ruined.


  “Tris,” she called.

  Her brother popped his head around the door frame. She knew he hadn’t gone far. Tris could never resist the opportunity to overhear something he shouldn’t.

  “Find Angus,” she ordered. “And quit eavesdropping!”

  His response—undoubtedly vulgar—was lost as he loped off down the hall.

  “I should go,” Rose said, trying to follow him.

  “Stay. If Ewan is actually missing, Angus will need to talk to you.”

  “Oh,” Rose said. “All right.”

  Deidre tried to return to her maps, but the other woman was just standing in place, looking thoroughly uncomfortable. Eventually, Deidre took pity on her. “I’m sure Ewan feels badly for whatever happened between you.”

  Rose nodded. “It wasnae his fault. He cannae help it.”

  Can’t help what? There were far too many questions here. Attraction and gratitude had sent Deidre rushing into a situation she knew nothing about—a lesson she thought she’d learned once already with Alastair. Clearly, getting the lay of the land would have to move to the top of her list of priorities.

  Deidre leaned against the table. “I’m surprised Ewan’s grandmother let Darrow take over the castle. She doesn’t seem the type.”

  Rose nodded. “She was desperate. I dinnae think she would have if Tom wasnae . . . so easy to manage.”

  “He is that.” Far more so than the real Lord Broch Murdo. “How is the dowager handling her grandson’s return?”

  “She is . . . unsettled.” Rose chose her words carefully. “Ewan looks a great deal like his father, and Iona cared very deeply for her son.”

  “I imagine that could be quite a shock, especially since she wasn’t expecting him.”

  “Aye.”

  Deidre followed a hunch that had been developing since Rose first appeared in Ewan’s room. “It’s odd that whoever wrote Ewan didn’t tell the dowager they were contacting him.”

  Rose’s expression froze momentarily. Her fingers buried themselves in the folds of her skirt. “Aye.”

  It was fortunate Rose would never need to support herself at a card table—if she hadn’t written the letter herself, she knew who had. Deidre would leave that discovery to Ewan, though. It would take all of two seconds for him to discover the identity of his anonymous author if his wits were about him. A rather large if, if his behavior when Rose interrupted them was any indication.

  The appearance of Angus kept Deidre from taking further advantage of Rose’s abysmal poker face.

  “I told yer brother, and I’ll tell ye—I’m nae at yer beck and call.”

  “Miss Lambert thinks Ewan threw himself off the cliff in a fit of pique.”

  Rose paled. “I said no such thing.”

  “They argued. He’s missing. Suicide seems a more charitable assumption than murder.”

  A choked sound escaped Rose. The remaining color drained from her.

  Angus’s flat stare alternated between the two of them.

  It was too much for Rose. She fled from the room in a flurry of skirts.

  Deidre and Angus watched her exit with confused interest.

  “What do you suppose that was about?”

  “No idea.” Angus’s ability to lie was infinitely better than Rose’s, but still not as good as Deidre’s instincts. Yet another secret to unravel. “The lad’s really missing?”

  “Apparently. I haven’t seen him, but I’ve been contemplating coast lines all evening.”

  Angus nodded thoughtfully. “There’s nae many places he’d go. If he’s under his own power, he’s outside. Ye start on the cliffs. I’ve a few places in the castle to look.”

  How did Deidre end up getting roped into this? “If he’s under his own power, shouldn’t we leave him be?”

  “Ye sent for me. I came. If ye wanted to leave him be, ye should have left me be.”

  “I—” Damn it all. It served her right. Nothing good ever came of helping people. She should have minded her own business and let Rose solve her own problems.

  Deidre didn’t want to see Ewan. She needed to find a way to ignore the attraction that flared up between them first.

  “Come on then,” Angus said at the door.

  Damn it all.

  Chapter 11

  A few hundred feet below him, waves crashed violently against the rocks. The sound soothed Ewan, who lay flat on his back watching the stars peek between stretches of fog. The breeze played over his sweat-soaked clothes, chilling him. He ignored it.

  He’d hacked at the cliff side until his arms could no longer hold the pick. After that, he’d dragged himself back to the top and had lain in the grass ever since. The sun had gone down and the stars had come out, and still he hadn’t moved. There was something deeply satisfying about being tired all the way to his bones—about knowing he couldn’t hurt someone even if he wanted to. For the first time since he’d left Dalreoch on this cursed endeavor, he let himself relax.

  It was due to the crashing waves and the wind that he didn’t hear Deidre until she almost tripped over him.

  “Ewan?” She dropped to her knees, touching his face in the dark.

  “Aye.” It was all he could muster. Deidre was a maelstrom of complications all on her own, and he’d been enjoying his solitude.

  Her fist struck his chest. “You big idiot. I thought you were dead. I thought I’d found your body.”

  “Ye have. I just happen to still be in it.”

  She hit him again.

  “If ye mean to finish the job, it’ll go faster if ye just shove me over the edge.”

  “As if I could. You might as well be made of stone.” She sat down next to him. “What are you doing out here?”

  “Watching the stars. What are ye doing out here?”

  “Looking for you. Rose was worried when you didn’t come back.”

  Remorse, along with responsibility and the rest of his usual concerns, tugged at the edges of his mind. As they crept back in, so did the tension he’d managed to escape for the last few hours. “I dinnae mean to worry her.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.” There was an edge to her voice.

  More tension. Deidre was angry with him. He hadn’t handled things very well at all.

  “Deidre—”

  “Do you know their names?” Her abrupt change in conversation confused him.

  Know whose names? What was she talking about?”

  “The stars you’re watching.” She stretched out next to him in the grass. “That’s Polaris.”

  “Everyone kens Polaris.”

  “Not everyone. And just there, above it—” Her arm stretched out above them.

  “Is the plough.”

  “And below is Cassiopeia,” she finished. Her arm dropped back between their bodies.

  The warmth of it beckoned to him. “Deidre. This thing that’s between us—”

  “Is just business,” she said. “That’s all.”

  Just business. It didn’t feel businesslike. It felt like she’d snuck into his veins and filled them with fire. He burned for her. A sane man would try to put out the flames, but all he could seem to do was stoke the blaze. “If that’s what ye want.”

  “It is.”

  It hadn’t been what she’d wanted in his room, or back in the forest by the stream. Or had it been? Everything was so turned around when she was near him, he couldn’t tell up from down. Instincts told him she was lying—that she cared for him—but how could he trust anything when he couldn’t even trust himself? He’d scared Rose half to death without even realizing what he was doing. Maybe just business was for the best.

  “What did you and Rose fight about?”

  Ewan sighed. He was used to everyone knowing his business at Dalreoch, but he had foolishly hoped to have at least a little privacy at Broch
Murdo. “She wants to stay.”

  “And.”

  “And I told her it’s no place for a woman.” He braced himself for her anger.

  “You’re not wrong. If she doesn’t know how to handle herself, I certainly don’t need her underfoot.” She turned on her side, facing him. “Does she have somewhere to go?”

  “I meant to take her back to Dalreoch with me, but she says she willnae go.”

  “She’ll go.”

  “Ye dinnae—”

  “If you make her, she’ll go,” Deidre said with certainty.

  “I cannae be cruel to her, Deidre.”

  “She’ll forgive you.” Deidre rolled back to look at the sky. “She might even thank you for it, eventually.”

  “And ye? If I made ye go, would ye forgive me?” Ewan asked, turning to look at her.

  Her smile was wry. “Is there much criminal enterprise to be had at Dalreoch?”

  Ewan laughed. “Nae really, no.”

  “Then no.” Her hair whispered on the grass as her face turned to his. “But first you’d have to make me leave.”

  “Ye dinnae think I can?”

  “I think the day you try will be a very interesting one, indeed.”

  Ewan wasn’t confident he could make Deidre do anything, but the challenge and the way she said it made his nerves tingle with anticipation. He fought it down, reminding himself that he had enough trouble to keep occupied for the rest of his days.

  “I said ye could try yer luck with this lot. I’ll nae forswear myself.”

  Next to him, she relaxed. Ewan hadn’t realized she’d tensed until he saw it leave her.

  “Ye could still go to Dalreoch,” he said. “I’ll nae make ye, but . . . ye could go of yer own will.”

  Where had that come from? He meant it, but—Lord, if he thought his life was complicated now . . . Bringing both women back to Dalreoch was asking for an early grave.

  “Why would I do that?”

  “Have ye never wanted an easier life?”

  She laughed. It was a full-throated laugh from deep in her belly. “Every day.”

  “So have one. It’s yers if ye want it.”

  “I’m not meant to live in a cage, Ewan.” She sat up, brushing grass and dirt from her hair. “Besides, it wouldn’t be easier. Just a different kind of hard.”