“And does Sir Hamish often inform you when he has a letter from the Duke of Dunncraigh?”
She frowned. “I dunnae see how that’s any of yer affair. And if I’m to sit, then ye sit, as well. I dunnae like ye glaring doon at me like a great gargoyle.”
Never in a hundred, hundred years would she have dared to speak to Dunncraigh so rudely. This duke, though, gave her a half smile and sat down opposite her. “Do you actually mean to guide me through the distillery, or was that an excuse to interrupt my argument with dear Uncle Hamish?”
“Uncle Hamish would flop aboot like a landed fish if he heard ye calling him ‘dear’ anything.”
“Noted. Are you going to answer my question? Or if you prefer, I could ask what you were worried he might say, and you could answer that one.”
“I came to take ye to the distillery,” she stated, meeting his gaze and daring him to contradict her.
He continued to look at her, leaving her with the unsettling feeling that he could hear both what she said and what she didn’t say. She, however, was not some captured Frenchman in fear for her life and ready to begin spilling secrets just because he wanted her to.
“Kelgrove, find me some paper, will you?”
Wordlessly the door behind her opened and closed again. Finally the duke lowered his gaze to the ledger and flipped a page. “And you may as well go see to your duties, Miss Blackstock. If you’re going to lie to me, I’ve no use for you.”
And now he sounded like a duke, when she’d half thought he’d banished Kelgrove so he could kiss her again. Not for a rebuke. She shoved back to her feet, angry despite the fact that his assessment happened to be correct. “Ye need yer aide to tell ye if my figures are correct or nae, so dunnae ye climb up on yer high horse to me, Lattimer.”
He looked up at her, but stayed seated. “Back to figures again, are we?” His gaze lowered, taking her in from the hips, lingering on her chest, and then lifting to her face again. “Yours looks very fine to me.”
Her cheeks heated, damn it all. Maddening, arrogant Sassanach. Didn’t he know the difference between her doing her duty, and creating more, unnecessary problems for her—his—tenants? And why did some stupid, unreasonable part of her like the way he looked at her as if he wanted to eat her? With a growl at her own reaction as much as at his unexpected high-handedness, she turned on her heel and stalked through the doorway. “Insufferable,” she muttered.
Steel clamped down on her shoulder and wrenched her around. Off balance, Fiona struck out with her fist, only to have her wrist caught by the same steel grip. Her nose came up against the middle of Lattimer’s chest as he dragged her up against him.
“What the devil are ye—”
“Let me make something clear,” he said in a low voice, the sound sinking into her with a swirl of ice and fire. “I’m not a man to be trifled with. Nor am I an idiot. A few weeks ago I was fighting Frenchmen in Spain. I had no idea that I had a duke for a great-uncle once removed, or that I was his only heir. But I was, and here I am. Lattimer is both my property and my responsibility. It now has my protection, and my attention. I will see to it that it’s running properly, and I don’t particularly care if some neighboring landowner thinks he has a say in what I do.”
Fiona lifted her chin. He might loom over her, but she bloody well wasn’t afraid of him. “I can see it has yer attention, Lattimer. We dunnae require that, or yer protection, or yer stomping aboot bellowing orders. We didnae have the old duke’s attention fer two decades, and ye can see all the walls still standing. Ye—”
“Stop talking.”
Oh, that was enough of that. “I willnae! Just because ye dunnae want to hear someaught doesnae mean it isnae true.”
Light gray eyes narrowed. “And you are annoyingly defiant for a woman who stole her brother’s job.”
“I didnae steal it!” she retorted. “Kieran… was here one day, and the next he wasnae. Nae letter, nae good-bye, nae clothes taken from his wardrobe. His horse came back withoot him. And aye, we searched for him, too. He either fell into a bog and drowned, or he abandoned me. I prefer to believe the former. But either way, I inherited this position. I didnae steal a damned thing.”
“And I inheritedthisposition. I didn’t steal it from you, or anyone else. Don’t assume, though, that I have no interest here, or that I have nothing to offer, simply because I’m unexpected.”
“Well, that’s very clever,” she snapped, and jabbed a finger into his hard chest. “I’m supposed to see that we’re alike now, aye? I’ll tell ye straight, Sassenach. Ye and I arenae anything alike. And ye can stop kiss—”
His mouth lowered over hers, hard and hot and tasting of strong American coffee. Hunger, want, lust—she could taste those, too, feel them in the way his mouth molded against hers. Fiona put her hands on his shoulders, pretending that if she kept her fingers clenched into fists it didn’t count as holding on to him. She was angry with him, after all, even if this didn’t feel as much like anger as it did mutual need. The heat of him surrounded her, making her want to lean up along his chest and put her hands on his bare skin. God, he was so… male, sure of himself, confident that she felt attracted to him, and every time he kissed her she wanted… Blast it, she didn’t know what she wanted any longer. But it had everything to do with him.
Abruptly he lifted her off her feet, backed her a half-dozen steps, and set her down again. “If you won’t answer my questions, you force me to find another way to proceed. Consider that, Fiona.” A heartbeat later the library door closed in her face.
Fiona stood there in the middle of the hallway. She wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find her mouth hanging open.Well. He’d certainly shut her up, if that had truly been his intention. Arrogant Sassenach soldier, now she couldn’t decide if she wanted to throw herself on him again, or punch him in the nose.
At least no one else had seen them groping each other. Fiona couldn’t imagine any excuse clever enough to explain why she’d permitted a Sassenach to kiss her, much less why she’d halfway thrown her arms around him. And why she continued to stand there gawping like a beached fish.
Smoothing her skirt, she marched for the stairs. Lattimer could bloody well threaten whatever he wished, because she had other things to see to. Actual things that benefited the estate and its tenants. Well, mostly they benefited the tenants, but if nothing else broke or went missing this year he’d see some profit, too. Hopefully. She hadn’t managed that for any of the past four years, what with the sheep thefts and the grain sacks getting wet, and the grinding stone in the mill cracking. Aye, she could blame it on the curse, but there was no column for curse-caused misfortune in the ledger books. Only for profit and loss. And Lattimer Castle had seen increasing numbers in the loss column for years.
“Miss Fiona,” Fleming the butler said, as she descended to the foyer, “Niall Garretson at the mill says the new grindstone won’t turn. I didnae understand it all, but the runner stone’s too flat, or someaught.”
She swore under her breath. Having the blasted thing shipped from Derbyshire had cost a fortune. If it hadn’t been carved correctly, it could take another week to pull it off and regrind it—if Tormod the blacksmith had the tools for the job. “I’ll ride doon and take a look,” she said aloud.
“Blasted MacKittrick curse,” Fleming grunted, crossing his fingers. At least he didn’t spit over his shoulder; she frowned on that when they were inside the house. “The laird might’ve settled fer cursing the English, and nae the property where his own kin were settled.”
