“That’s semantics, Fiona. Some of these people whom you’ve known all your life, people whom you’ve helped more than they’ll ever realize,willcall you a traitor and turn their backs on you.”
Fiona started to protest that such a thing would never happen. As she considered it, though, she kept her silence. As much as she’d tried to provide for them, some of her neighbors and kin had little but the dirt beneath their feet. All they owned was pride—pride at being Maxwells of clan Maxwell.
Gabriel released her, moving around to face her. “I need to know that whatever happens,” he said, taking her hands in his, “I’m not going to lose you.” A quick scowl contorted his face. “Your support, I mean.”
Her heart stuttered. He might have altered what he said, and clumsily at that, but she’d heard it. She would never forget it, and the keen yearning it made her feel. Being essential to anyone, much less a man as self-possessed as Gabriel Forrester—she couldn’t remember ever feeling that before.
The question, though, remained—if she stayed on at Lattimer, she would likely lose her clan. She had a better reason than most to stay on, and even so the idea of not having that vast family at her back still gave her pause. How could she ask them to stay?
He continued to gaze at her, his expression unreadable. “Am I asking too much? We haven’t known each other for long, after all. How does Shakespeare have Henry the Fifth say it? ‘I speak to thee plain soldier.’ I couldn’t write you a rhyme to save my life. I’m not a master of the clever turn of phrase. If you—”
“Ye’ll nae lose me,” she whispered, lifting up on her toes. “Or my support.”
Freeing her hands from his, she slipped them over his shoulders, drawing his face down for a deep slow kiss that stole her breath and eased her worry. They would think of something, because the alternative would be worse than failure. And neither of them could afford to fail.
***
Taken all together, the number of staff and servants Fiona had hired over the past four years was quite impressive, Gabriel decided, following her into the castle’s huge ballroom. Nearly twice as many would fit in there and still have space to dance a jig, but as they all—the stable boys, the gardeners, cooks, footmen, maids, and men and women from half a hundred other positions he was certain Fiona had invented—finished shuffling around to look at him, it occurred to him that she’d been commanding nearly as many troops as he had.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Fiona said. “As ye know, the Duke of Dun—”
“Is it true, Miss Fiona,” a male voice called out, “that anyone here after sunset will be exiled from clan Maxwell?”
That caused another burst of noise, much of it angry and directed at him. Good; none of this was allowed to fall on Fiona’s shoulders. Not when she’d worked so hard to keep all these people—and all the others on the property—clothed and fed and employed. Putting his fingers to his mouth, he blew an earsplitting whistle.
The voices sputtered and died down to a low, concerned murmur. Once he had their attention, Gabriel dragged over a chair and stepped up onto it. “The Duke of Dunncraigh offered to purchase Lattimer from me today,” he stated in a carrying voice. “I turned him down.”
The voices erupted again, and he glimpsed Kelgrove by one of the doors, the sergeant’s hand in his pocket. Gabriel had seen mobs before, seen what they could do to a man with nothing to wield but anger and their bare hands. He put his own hand up again.
“Dunncraigh likes the textile and pottery works, and the distillery, of course, and he likes all the glens and glades and open fields, because they’re a fit place for him to graze his sheep.”
“We dunnae need the fields,” a woman’s voice shouted. “He can do as he wants with ’em.”
Fiona pulled a second chair over next to his, and reached a hand up to him. When she stood beside him, she faced the men and women, some of whom had likely been employed here since before she was born. “I asked my uncle Hamish once how many servants he employs at Fennoch Abbey. Eighteen, he told me. Now this hoose is bigger, but Dunncraigh has his own grand estate already. We’ll suppose fer the sake of argument that if he owned this place and if he didnae tear it to the ground as nae better than a ruin, he would send his firstborn, the Marquis of Stapp, to live here. Do any of ye think Donnach Maxwell would be willing to pay the salaries fer a hundred of ye? Nae. Two thirds of ye would be turned away. And then yewouldneed the fields, or ye’d be off to the workhoose in Inverness. There are Maxwells there right now, ye ken—but nae a one who hails from Lattimer.”
“For the past four years,” Gabriel took up, fighting the growing urge to kiss her right there in front of everyone, “Miss Blackstock has been keeping two sets of ledgers; one for the old duke and his solicitors, to keep them away from here, and the other for all of you, the villagers at Strouth and scattered across the property, and the workers in the factories.Shedid this. Not Dunncraigh. In fact, the only thing I can find that the Maxwell has done for you is to collect his tithes.”
“But he’s our clan chief!”
“Withoot the Maxwell, we’d have nae protection from the English and their soldiers!”
“I’mEnglish,” he countered. “And a soldier. Or I was one until this morning, when I realized I had to choose between a war on the Continent and keeping peace here. With all of you. I’m not a clan chief. And I know most of you refuse to see me as this castle’s laird because I’m not a Highlander. What Iam,however, is here. If you’ll allow it, I mean to stay.”
“What aboot the MacKittrick curse?” someone else, Fleming, he thought, asked. “If the castle went to Dunncraigh, the curse and all its ill fortune would be finished!”
“Nae!” Fiona said loudly. “Whether ye believe in the curse or nae, ye know the words of it. And there’s nae a mention of it ending when a Maxwell takes MacKittrick back. Old MacKittrick said the land would be cursed until an Englishman becomes a Highlander, someaught every one of us always reckoned to be impossible.” She put a hand on Gabriel’s arm, her fingers warm even through his sleeve. “Here’s an Englishman. I dunnae ken whether we can make him a true Highlander or nae, but we can damned well try.”
***
“—I couldnae say,” Hugh the footman commented as Fiona passed by one of the small sitting rooms, and she slowed to listen. “But if Miss Fiona thinks he could make a go of it, that’s a damned sight better than watching MacKittrick crumble aboot my ears.”
“Ye should keep yer voice doon, lad,” Fleming’s familiar voice returned. “Dunncraigh and his men havenae left yet. Oscar says Lattimer was oot shoveling shite with the rest of ’em trying to save the pasture. The Maxwell might at least have given us the seed, but he didnae. Miss Fiona had to go hat in hand to clan MacLawry to buy it.”
She smiled. This, today, had actually been the easy bit. Hope was fairly simple to spread. The next weeks, though, the first time something went awry,thatwould be the moment to watch for. Even knowing that, though, this afternoon she felt it, too. Gabriel—it made sense that he’d learned which words to use to inspire his troops, but no oath bound anyone to him here. And yet with him beside her, she didn’t feel alone. She hadn’t even realized how alone she’d been until he’d arrived to set everything on its ear. Of all the things she’d thought when he’d dragged her out of that mudhole, it hadn’t been that she would find him a partner, a lover, and a friend.
And while of course Lattimer was his, and all of the ultimate decisions were his, she hadn’t yet felt pushed aside, undervalued, or ignored. Perhaps it was because he had so little experience as a landowner, and she supposed it could change with time. But he listened to her opinion and asked her advice. By all the saints and sinners, she’d never before metanyman who did that and didn’t consider himself less because of it. It had certainly improved her opinion of him at the beginning.
Slowing again, she touched a hand to her lips. Through the hallway window she spied a herd of deer grazing along the crest of the hill, while below them a laden hay wagon rolled along the rutted front drive toward the stable, a dog running alongside, tongue out and tail wagging. Gazing out, she felt… content, and at the same time as if something unexpected and marvelous lay just beyond the horizon. Delight tingled through her at the oddest moments, making her grin. And it all centered around not the property, but the man. Gabriel Forrester.
