And this damn court case had him doing nothingbutcontemplating it.
The whisky nearly glowed in its decanter, taunting him with the promise of blessed oblivion and relief.
Worst of all, the day was uncommonly warm, leaving his third-floor library feeling like Madras in June. But opening the windows merely crystallized the commotion outside the castle.
The shouting and yelling had not subsided. It wasn’t that the laborers weren’t working—they were—but it seemed difficult for them to occupy the same ground without tempers flaring.
Blasted Scots.
Every few minutes, another epithet or insult sailed up to bounce through the open windows and disrupt Fox’s concentration, further challenging his determination not to reach for the decanter.
He blamed the noise for the taut frustration banding his lungs. But given how often his gaze strayed to the whisky, he wasn’t quite sure the hubbub outside was entirely to blame.
Leah’s quick dismissal of him lingered.
No, he decided. It stung.
She had given no indication that his help was even wanted.
Did she think him some sort of invalid? A drunkard? A broken husk of a man who required quiet, whisky, and his library in order to function?
The truth embedded in the questions only stoked his frustrations higher.
Hecouldhelp.
He had been a captain in His Majesty’s army, as well as an officer in the Presidential Army of India. Organizing men was his forte.
Yes, but that was before your injuries, before the endless nights of agony that you medicated into silence, a quiet voice pointed out to him.Before . . . everything.
This did nothing to help settle his mood.
A particularly loud bout of shouting, followed by the rise of a voice that could only be Leah’s, sent Fox shooting to his feet and down the staircase.
Now the men were lambasting his wife.
Enough.
He drew the line at others maligning Leah, for heaven’s sake. She may think him helpless, but blast it all, he wasnot.
Round and round the stairs he went, down the hallway, through the great hall, down another flight of stairs, and out the wide-open front door of the castle. His leg protested the entire way, as if he required yet another reminder that he was not the man he used to be.
Fox didn’t know what he expected to see in the courtyard, but his wife going toe-to-toe with the tall red-haired Scot he had noted earlier wasnotit. Leah was a solid seven inches shorter than the man, but she held her ground, staring up at him.
“I willnae have ye speaking so, Tam!” She propped her hands on her hips, her hair slipping from the chignon at the nape of her neck, a lock trailing alongside her temple. “Yes, I need the roof slates repaired, but ye must keep a civil tongue in your head.”
Tam scowled, leaning forward. “George Jamieson is a burr in ma side. He’s making a muckle out of a mickle, and I willnae stand for it.”
Several workmen sat in the courtyard beyond Leah, each with a wrapped square of slate in his lap. One man used a chisel to expertly knap the side of the block, causing a clean square of slate to cleave off. He then set to knapping the new slate, forming it into the correct shape.
None of the men had realized Fox was there.
“Ye tell her, Wee Tam!” someone shouted from the left.
WeeTam? The red-headed man had at least an inch on Fox himself, and Fox was not a small man.
Leah didn’t so much as blink at the yelled words. She continued to glare up at Tam. “If ye be wanting my employ, ye will listen tae what I’m saying.”
“Youremploy? If no’ myself, who else will be slating your roof then? McRae from over in Cortachy? He doesnae have the time—”
