He felt as if she had betrayed him all over again. A string of Gaelic curses poured from his lips, echoing about the massive hall. It would have been an impressive thing to hear… if it had not been the dowager duchess and his cousin, Cora, just arriving in the cavernous space and heard the tail end of it.
“Oh,” the dowager said weakly, thin hands going to her nonexistent bosom. She stared at Iain as if he had grown a tail. And horns. And perhaps cloven hooves to go along with it all.
Cora, blessedly, was made of sterner stuff—though not by much. While she initially appeared just as horrified as the duchess, she quickly managed to adopt her typical cool expression. Even so, her knuckles were white from her fingers gripping so tightly to one another, and he could quite literally see her throat working as she swallowed hard.
“Is something amiss, Cousin?” she queried, her voice without emotion.
Iain pressed his back molars tightly together. Cora always talked thus to him, as if he were a pebble in her path, something to be dealt with but given no more energy than what was strictly required.
“Nothing of import,” he replied evasively, even as his hand closed tighter around Mrs. Campbell’s letter.
But Cora, suspicious of him from the moment he’d stepped foot inside Balgair six months ago, narrowed her eyes and looked to the massive front door. “I thought I heard a carriage.”
“Aye,” he responded, his tone clipped. “A girl came with a letter. I called a carriage for her so she might nae be forced to walk back in the snow. If that is all right with you?”
“It is your home, your carriage,” Cora replied tightly. “It matters not what I think.”
The dowager, who was watching the back-and-forth with wide, anxious eyes, spoke up then in an obvious effort to ease the tension that never failed to crop up between Iain and Cora.
“That was very kind of you, Iain,” she said with a too-bright smile. “But where are you off to now?”
“To my study. Unless you have need of me, madam?”
Her expression gentled. “I thought I told you to call me ‘Gran.’”
Gran.Yes, she was his late father’s mother. Yes, she was kin, his family, his clan.
But after more than three decades of believing himself to be alone, being looked down on, having no one—all but for that brief time with Seraphina—it was much too late for him to ever accept these women as family. How many years had Iain spent hating himself for his origins, clawing his way out of the literal gutter, using every ounce of cunning and luck and pure spite to turn his life around and lay claim to everything he had been lacking in life. And the whole time he’d had family, family who had never once looked for him in more than thirty years, never made an effort tocontact him. Only when the old duke was dead and they needed to locate someone to take his place did they even bother to search out him or his father. No, they had been living a life of luxury and ease while he had been alone and struggling in near poverty, wondering where his next meal might come from.
“Yes,” he replied evenly, though his anger burned hot as ever, “you have told me that.”
Her features paled, and she seemed to shrink into herself. But he would not feel pity for her.
The dowager turned to Cora, still at her side. “Dearest, have I told you that the latest issue of theGaia Review and Repositoryhas arrived? Mayhap we might go fetch it and have a read.”
“That sounds lovely, Gran,” Cora replied quietly, even as her eyes blazed into Iain’s. “But I need to grab my reading glasses. Why don’t I meet you in your sitting room?”
The dowager nodded and, without a glance Iain’s way, shuffled off. She was barely out of earshot before Cora turned on him.
“You don’t have to be so cruel to her,” she hissed.
But he would not rise to her bait. “I have work to get to. Is there anything else you needed?”
She blew out a frustrated breath, and for a moment he thought she would not let it go.
But in the end she merely said, “It is getting increasingly close to the season. I am fully aware that you have no plans to search for a bride, but I do hope you reconsider. For the sake of the dukedom.”
With that, she turned and stalked from the great hall.
Another string of curses escaped his lips, this time much quieter so he might not have to deal with her judgmentalstare again. As if he gave a damn about the dukedom, a title he had never wanted. He had no emotional connection to it, and he certainly didn’t give a damn that he was last of the line. He’d had every intention of finding a wife… eventually. Though it was not to save the dukedom. With all he had amassed over the past decade, all the properties he had taken back from the sniveling English, all the bastard Sassenach he had bankrupted, he wanted an heir, someone to pass it on to. Someone who would not have to suffer and struggle as he had.
But he had not counted on the fact that his dead wife was not, in fact, dead.
Pressing his lips tight, he opened his fist and glared at the crumpled letter. “Well, I cannae verra well go off and marry another when I’m already wed, can I?” he muttered. He would find Seraphina, he decided. And when he did, he would divorce his devious wife and finally get her out of his life for good.
Chapter 2
Isle of Synne
