“I’m flattered,” Gabriel lied, deciding the shite was deep enough. “But I’m going to have to decline.”
“Wh— I didn’t quite hear ye.”
“I’m keeping Lattimer.”
He doubted Dunncraigh was rendered speechless very often, but that seemed to do it. The duke stood there in the middle of the room, staring, a hundred different emotions flitting across his face. Then anger settled in, and didn’t budge.
“Is this a jest?”
“No.”
“Ye’ve been a duke fer what, a month? And now ye decide ye’re fit to manage a Scottish estate in the Highlands? Ye didnae strike me as being a madman, Lattimer. And I’m telling ye straight up—this place is too much fer ye.”
“I have a steward,” he returned coolly. “I’ll manage.”
“Ha. Yesterday ye said ye meant to replace her with yer own man. Now ye think ye can rely on her? We only allowed her to take on this job oot of pity after her brother up and vanished. She’s running aboot here like a headless chicken, losing sheep, watching crops fail, and missing market dates fer wool and wheat. Aside from that, she’s a Maxwell. She’ll nae remain here if ye stay on.”
She would damned well stay on, if he had to tie her to the bedpost. Defending her to this man would only make trouble for her—but that didn’t mean Gabriel wasn’t supremely tempted to begin bellowing about how much better she’d looked after the Maxwells here than Dunncraigh likely ever would. “Your plan for manufacturing and sheep doesn’t leave much room for your clan here, anyway,” he said instead.
Dunncraigh narrowed his eyes. “This place will break ye, Major Gabriel Forrester. That’s who ye truly are, isnae? Ye wear that red coat and ye keep my land from me, when ye havenae the faintest idea what to do with it. And a man in the Highlands who doesnae ken what he’s aboot, that’s a dead man.”
Gabriel kept his arms loose by his sides, ready to move if Dunncraigh came after him. He hoped the old man would. “I’ve fought a great many battles with enemies who thought to end me, Dunncraigh. I’m still standing.”
“Ye’re a devil!”
“I’ve been called that before, too.” He would have been content to leave it at that and send the duke and his party out on their arses. As he’d realized, however, this wasn’t just about him. There were people to consider. People who would continue to look to Dunncraigh as their chief. “I’m not keeping Lattimer out of spite, Your Grace,” he went on, trying to keep his jaw from clenching. Being magnanimous didn’t suit him. “I have the means to make improvements here. Ones you might not be able to make, considering the amount you would be spending to gain it back.” Ones Dunncraigh probably wouldn’t make, if he meant to graze sheep.
“So ye mean to help the poor backward Highlanders where we cannae help ourselves. Damn ye, Sassenach.”
“I will do what I can for my property’s tenants, as is my duty,” Gabriel countered. “And given what I’ve heard from you, I believe I have more concern for them than you do.”
The Duke of Dunncraigh drew a hard breath in through his nose. “I’ll tell ye what, Lattimer; ye do as ye will. We’ll see how well ye fare when half yer tenants and yer steward and yer staff abandon ye. When the curse hits at ye again and again because MacKittrick doesnae want a Sassenach living here. And then I’ll make ye another offer, and ye’ll thank Christ fer my generosity and take it on bended knee. I know the Highlands. Ye dunnae. And the people here are mine. They arenae yers, and they nae will be.”
After that last bit of vitriol the duke stalked past him to the door, yanked it open, and slammed it shut behind him. A vase near the door teetered off a shelf, and almost without thought Gabriel reached out to catch it and set it back in its place.
Perhaps Dunncraigh’s threats and dire predictions would have intimidated some pampered English lordling. For him, though, the list of challenges and impossible disasters seemed more like a typical duty roster, even if the assignments themselves were different. It would have been much more dismaying to think he might be bored.
With a grin Gabriel went to inform Fleming that their guests were to be gone by sunset. And next he meant to find himself a bed he could actually sleep in. It needed to be large enough for two.
Chapter Thirteen
Fiona listened. The fate of Lattimer—MacKittrick—Castle waited down the hallway somewhere, decided between a man who didn’t want to be a duke and a duke who’d been neglecting his own people. She’d done what she could, what she hoped was best for the tenants, but if she knew one thing about Gabriel Forrester, it was that he would make a decision swiftly, and then act on it just as decisively. Which decision he would make, however, she had no idea.
The hands of the small clock on the shelf moved so slowly she could almost swear they were creeping backward. An hour, then two. No gunshots, no shouting, no bagpipes calling men to battle—that should have been a good sign, unless it meant that Gabriel had agreed to sell the estate to the Maxwell. Or that one of them had murdered the other one. “Oh, this is too much,” she muttered, and stomped for the door. Someone was going to tell her what had happened, or someone was going to get punched in the nose.
Out in the hallway the silence continued. With over a hundred people in the house, the lack of noise both surprised and unsettled her. The… aloneness of it, though, didn’t have as much to do with absent servants as it did with the realization of how much she’d come to depend on the presence of Gabriel Forrester in her life. And however much she tried to twist the answer into concern over the land and the tenants, she had to admit, just to herself, that she wanted him there, and she wanted him with her.
A loud thud from the direction of the stairs made her jump. “Hello?” she called, making her way around the corner. And then she stopped, blinking. The house wasn’t empty, after all. “What the devil are ye doing, Hugh?”
The footman looked up from the massive mattress he and three other servants wrestled down the main staircase like a great, floppy wall. “It wouldnae fit doon the back stairs, Miss Fiona,” the footman grunted. “We’ll have it cleared oot in a moment.”
“But what are ye doing with it?”
“His Grace said to burn it. All those feathers’ll make a great stink, but he said he didnae care aboot that and it was fit for neither man nor beast.”
The meeting had finished, then. But what had come of it? Once the lads got past the landing with the behemoth, she headed up the stairs. Someone up there was hammering, and two maids laden with a large buck’s head passed her on the way to the attic. Either a herd of elephants had found their way into Gabriel’s bedchamber, or someone was taking an axe to the room. That didn’t bode well. Her heart settled into a fast, worried tattoo.
Leaning cautiously into the doorway, she caught sight of Gabriel standing on a footstool and tearing the dark green hangings down from the skeleton of his four-poster bed. Behind him Kelgrove and three additional footmen dragged the massive wardrobe toward the door.
