“It’s not about that.” He scowled. “I wasn’t supposed to go. I should have sent a runner to order Lieutenant Humphreys to slow his advance and look for French cavalry on his flank. The runner would have taken too long, between receiving the message and delivering it, if he’d even survived the run through the middle of the battle, but that’s what I should have done. Dukes don’t lead from the front. They advise, or fund, or supervise drills and formations in their unblemished dress uniform.”
“Ye’re a duke. I imagine ye could do as ye like.”
He shook his head, his expression becoming rueful. “I could, yes. And I’d be forced to surround myself with soldiers whose only duty was to protect me. I could charge into a fight, and they would all die. Because of me. For me. Not in order to win a battle for Britain.”
That made sense. She’d been surprised to hear that he meant to return to the war in the first place, but he’d been so certain of it that she hadn’t questioned. “Ye’ve been too close to the trees to see the forest, I suppose,” she mused.
“I didn’t see the trees, either. God, what a fool I am.”
She frowned. “Ye’re a great many things, Gabriel, and I’ve called ye most of them, but I dunnae think ye’re a fool.” Fiona shook his sleeve. “Is that what Dunncraigh said to ye? That ye were a duke and didnae want to be saddled with Lattimer?”
“That’s precisely what he said. No one told me, you know. Those damned solicitors spent hours detailing how much money I had at my disposal, the artworks I now owned, how many estates I’d inherited. Not one of them could say what owning propertymeant.” He slammed a fist into the base of the window.
Given the force of the blow, she was surprised the stone didn’t give way. “Gabriel.”
“These people here,” he went on, ignoring her protest. “You look after them. You bring them apples, change their dirty bedding, employ them at the house when they wouldn’t be able to find food or a roof elsewhere. That’s what a duke—a laird—is supposed to do.”
“Aye, it is.”
“Is this it?” he returned, more forcefully. “A fight… a fight that can’t ever be won? Tilting at the same bloody windmill on the same bloody patch of land for the rest of your bloody life? What—”
“Then sell it,” she interrupted, matching his volume. “If Lattimer is nothing but a chain holding ye doon, then sell it. Put it oot of yer mind.”
Gabriel clamped his jaw closed. “Dunncraigh said I’m the curse. My ancestors and I. That we’re the reason for this mess.”
Later Fiona would have to give herself a stern talking-to over why she felt the need to be so damned honest with this man, when it might be easier, and it would certainly be much simpler, to let him think what he chose and keep her blasted mouth shut. “It isnaeyou,” she said, emphasizing the word. “Or them. It’s that there’s been nae a man to see anythingbutthat windmill. This place isnae a windmill, Gabriel. It’s nae some broken princely manor, and it’s nae a pile of muck withoot a speck of value. It’s nae a burden. But to know that, ye have to see it differently.”
“See it how?”
She pursed her lips. Her clan chief wanted this property. For that to happen, Gabriel would have to sell it. Given that, she had no business encouraging him about anything. But he wasn’t only asking her about Lattimer. He was asking how he was supposed to live the rest of his life.
Loyalty, kinship, clan—yesterday the Duke of Dunncraigh had admitted that he hadn’t stepped in to help stop the sheep thefts. He said he’d stayed away because he was in the middle of arguing with the English government over whether he could purchase Lattimer outright. Strategically it made sense, given that the less profitable the property was the more eager the Crown would be to dispose of it. But this place wasn’t just property. It was people. Her people, and even more directly, the Maxwell’s people. As far as she was concerned, people should not be a strategy. And her clan chief should have known that.
“Come with me,” she said, wrapping her fingers around Gabriel’s and pulling.
If he hadn’t wanted to go with her she would have had better luck pulling a boulder up a hill, but after two or three hard tugs his hand tightened around hers and he stood. He truly wanted an answer, then. And she would give him one, because in the last eleven days he’d done more for Lattimer than any Maxwell laird. What she didn’t know was whether the answer she gave him would be the one he wanted to hear. Or what it would mean for her.
They left the church behind and headed down the slope toward the heart of the village. As they neared Ailios’s cottage, though, Gabriel pulled his hand free of hers and stopped. “I don’t want to see Ailios and be reminded that she hates Englishmen,” he said. “I’m not in the mood for torture today.” He turned, looking back in the direction of the castle. “What Iamin the mood for is liquor. A large quantity of it.”
“Eyes open and mouth closed,” she said crisply. “And ye need a change of clothes, now that I look at ye, ye redcoat.”
“Fiona, I—”
“Nae.” She stepped around in front of him to make certain she had his attention. “Ye asked me a question. I think the answer is someaught ye have to see, and nae words I can say to ye. And if ye think I’m nae risking anything by being seen holding hands with ye, especially while ye’re in that uniform, think again.”
His shoulders lowered, though she wasn’t certain if it was acquiescence to her argument, or overall defeat. “Then find me a blanket I can put over my shoulders.”
“Mm-hm. This way.”
She led him to the smithy. Tormod MacDorry was the only man in the village of a size with Gabriel, though convincing him to lend out his clothes to a Sassenach, especially with the Maxwell wandering about, could be problematic. Luckily, though, Tormod didn’t seem to be home.
Fiona knocked at the door of the cottage that backed up against the smithy, waited a moment, then knocked again. When no one answered she pushed open the door, tightening her grip on Gabriel’s hand to pull him in after her.
“I’m not stealing another man’s clothes,” he stated.
Putting her hands on her hips, Fiona whirled around to face him. “Stop being a petulant boy and make a decision, then. Ye cannae stop being a duke, and that means ye cannae live yer life as ye intended. So ye can weep and stomp yer feet, or ye can choose a new life. Do ye have any idea how many people never get that chance?”
For a hard beat of her heart she thought he might strike her. And that would alter everything. His light gray eyes were ice and fury, and his right hand coiled into a fist. Abruptly he grabbed a pot off the small table and hurled it into the wall so hard it chipped the stone.
