Only three things needled her normally level-headed brother to the point of rage:
Mention of their deceased mother,
Any interaction with the Balfour family,
And even a whiff of scandal touching the Kinsey family name.
Unfortunately, encountering Tavish Balfour encompassed the last two and had faint echoes of the first.
In short, Gray was furious.
“How dare that . . . thatmanapproach and speak with you!” He swung his walking stick in an arc, slashing through a patch of nettle. “The brazen nerve of those Balfours never ceases.”
Isla declined to point out the obvious: She and Grayhadbeen trespassing on Balfour land. Propriety demanded that Tavish acknowledge and greet her.
Seeing her husband after an absence of seven years had been . . .
Isla hardly knew where to start. The Tavish of her memories was barely eighteen years old, untried and untested. A youth on the final cusp before manhood.
But the man she had encountered atop Cairnfell just now . . .
He is huge.
That had been her first thought. Had he always been so tall, so broad of shoulder?
Her Tavish had worn his heart on his sleeve, his gaze open and warm. It was one of the things she had loved best—the easy way he loved others.
But Captain Balfour had been armor-wrapped steel for all the emotion he showed.
No.
The body of Tavish Balfour had come home, but Isla was rather certain thatherTavish had died right along with their love.
“Balfour’s return will bring difficulties, of course,” Gray was saying, cane still slashing about.
Difficulties?Hah!
Her brother, in his ignorance of her marriage, didn’t quite grasp the understatement of that.
“I had almost convinced Northcairn to sell Cairnfell to me, but who knows now?” Gray continued. “One word from the conquering hero, and I’m sure the old Scot will choose to hold to his pride and his poverty.”
To hear Gray talk, only Northcairn’s status as a Peer of the Realm kept him from debtor’s prison. The earldom was on the verge of bankruptcy. And as the Northcairn estate was currently unentailed, the present earl—Tavish’s father—could sell off chunks to pay his debts.
It was no secret Gray wished to buy Cairnfell. To avenge the “Infamous Jack of Hearts” card game and bring their ancestral lands back under his own control.
And he didn’t care who he trampled in the process.
Isla had learned that bitter truth more than once over the years.
It was the primary reason she hadn’t told Gray about her marriage. The knowledge that, when the topic of the Balfours reared up, her ducal brother could be cruel.
Isla and Gray reached the carriage, a coachman and two footmen standing at attention. Gray handed her inside before stepping in himself. They hadn’t intended to stop here today, but a visit with local acquaintances had been cut short, and Gray wanted to have a “tramp” around Cairnfell before returning to Dunmore.
Return.
That word again.
Synonyms chased it—reemerged, come back, resurfaced.
