Could she confide in this man? That, she didn’t know. But she could certainly find pleasure and solace with him. If she dared. “How do ye know I even like ye?” she asked aloud.
For the second time today that rare, fleeting grin touched his mouth. Without a noticeable motion from him, his bay accelerated into a smooth canter. “You do. You would have told me otherwise.”
***
“Ye’re devoting a great many men to this, Gabriel,” Fiona noted, as she wrote out a ledger page to be devoted solely to a daily sheep count.
“I have a great many men at my disposal, thanks to your liberal hiring,” he returned, pacing to the door, leaning out into the hallway, and returning to her side again.
“If a man’s employed, he’s nae oot poaching or thieving.” That had been the theory, anyway. The estate still suffered from both, but it would have been much, much worse.
“Is that how you fight the curse?” he asked, finally taking a seat opposite her.
Technically this was his office, but no one had bothered to tell him that. She liked the view over the gardens and the morning sun through the window, so she wouldn’t be volunteering that information, either. “It’s how I look after my kin,” Fiona corrected.
“I want you to know, if I had someone taking a sheep or two, here and there, I’d let it go. But we aren’t missing a dozen head this year, are we?”
She didn’t need to look at the ledger to know the answer to that question. “Nae.”
“Three hundred seventy-one sheep, Fiona. That’s not some poacher trying to feed his family. And I’m not going to spit over my shoulder and blame it on some curse. This needs to stop, and I will stop it. And I don’t particularly care who I might anger in the process. They aren’tmykin.”
“And ye willnae be here fer the consequences, anyway.” A week ago the idea of him leaving the Highlands would have delighted her. It would still definitely make things easier to have him gone. Most things, certainly. Fiona forced a shrug. “That’s bonny. The thieves’ kin can curse ye, but since it wasnaemydoing, I can blame the damned interfering Sassenach and go on with my day.”
“As you should.”
He’d actually considered that, she realized. And it didn’t give her as much comfort as it was likely supposed to. “Does that mean ye arenae going to leave Sergeant Kelgrove here to take my place?”
“I have one goal at Lattimer—to see that this estate is managed profitably and that nothing underhanded is taking place. And the concern over profit isn’t on my own behalf, so stop wrinkling your nose.”
Fiona reached up to touch her face. Shedidseem to be wrinkling her nose. Until he’d said something, she thought her disapproval had been internal. “Ye’re a duke,” she returned aloud. “How are ye to attend all the grand soirees in London if ye dunnae make a profit on yer lands?”
“I won’t be in London.” Reaching forward, he closed the ledger and pushed it aside. “And I have other properties. I also have a younger sister. Have I mentioned that?”
“Nae, ye havenae.” And something about the information surprised her. The image of the solitary commander felt such a part of him that it almost seemed he should have sprung from the ground fully formed and armed, like Athena from Zeus’s skull.
“I could have gone into business and provided her with a better life, but I didn’t. I chose to fight, which left her both alone and with considerably fewer choices in her own life. She… spent the last few years as a lady’s companion, and I didn’t even know—not that that would have made any difference. Once I got the news about the Lattimer inheritance, I gave her the old duke’s house in London, and I mean to see to it that she never has to worry about money or a damned roof over her head for the rest of her life.”
It sounded noble, a man making amends to his family for something that actually hadn’t been his fault. Fiona had spent a great deal of the past few days studying this man, though. She’d spent too much time thinking about him, really, but hehadstated, several times, that he meant to bed her. Even with all the sheep-centered activity she’d scarcely been able to think of anything else. She needed to keep in mind, though, that his original plans hadn’t altered a whit. “Ye’re still Major Gabriel Forrester after all, aren’t ye?” she said aloud.
His brows dove together. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
“What I mean is that this—Lattimer Castle—is just another passing duty fer ye. Wellington says to go win a battle over there,” she said, gesturing vaguely southeast, “and so ye do. Then ye move on to the next fight. Ye realized yer sister wasnae happy, so ye fixed it. I didnae answer yer Sassenach solicitors, so ye came to sort me oot and replace me with someone more reliable. Now ye’re fighting the battle of the sheep. When ye finish with that, ye’ll go on and find the next fight, and the next one.”
His light gray eyes cooled. “Considering that I’m solving a sheep problem you’ve been failing at for nearly two years, and that I seem to be ranking lust over practicality in allowing you to stay on here, what, precisely, is your complaint?”
She could see it, clear as daylight. When the next battle came he would leave this one behind, forgotten. Finished with. He’d do the same with her, most likely.
“Little by little this place, this land, has been failing,” she offered. “Everyone blames it on the MacKittrick curse. Myathair—my father—pushed against the fall, then Kieran, and now me, but it’s been like trying to stop water from running downstream.” Her brother had actually begun well, better than her father, even, but she could understand the slide back into chaos; there were days when she very nearly decided to simply let the dam burst, herself.
“That isn’t the story you told me when I arrived.”
“I reckoned we’d be better off with ye elsewhere.” Fiona met his gaze. “So ye solve our sheep troubles and go. We’ll nae have another difficulty here once ye stop the thievery.”
“That’s sarcasm,” he announced. “What have I done to merit that?”
“Ha. It’s what ye havenae done. But yer uncle didnae care what happened up here, so I dunnae see why ye should. Leave it to us. Wehaveto be here.” With that she stood, heading around his chair and out the hallway door.
She advanced three steps toward the stairs, and then something snagged her gown, stopping her in her tracks. Then she began sliding backward, bunching up the carpet runner against her feet.
