“I’m too old fer a governess,” Connell returned, not quietly.
“Then I’m your tutor,” Marjorie amended. “And you should all call me Ree.” She sat on the couch beside him. “I think I’ve only just taken the position, which would explain why we don’t know each other well.”
“Do ye know aboot my baby rabbits? Because Graeme doesn’t know about them.”
Beyond him Dùghlas rolled his eyes. “Ye really think Gr—”
“I think you told me about the rabbits because we’re friends,” she interrupted.
Connell nodded. “I think so, too.”
“‘Friends’?” a deeper male voice echoed from the doorway. “I’m nae yer friend. And I’m trying to decide why I shouldnae drag ye oot by yer damned hair and tell Sir Hamish exactly who ye are.”
And that would be Brendan. As she looked over at him, Marjorie reflected that even if she hadn’t known who he was, she would have known he was one of the Maxton brothers. Gray eyes, his narrowed, glared at her from beneath an unruly tangle of red-brown hair. He was thinner than Graeme, and a few inches shorter, but he stood taller than she did. And he was daring her to argue with him, to make one wrong step that would give him the excuse to do exactly as he threatened.
Marjorie folded her hands in her lap. “First of all, ladies do not care to hear a man cursing in their presence. Cursing makes a man seem impolite and inconsiderate, and no lady wants to spend her time with someone more concerned with proving how rough he is rather than with making her feel special. Second, m—”
“That would explain why Isobel Allen called ye a lunkhead and willnae go walking with ye, Brendan,” Dùghlas put in.
Stifling a smile at that, she stood, keeping her gaze on the sixteen-year-old. “Second, my brother is the Duke of Lattimer. I am not some helpless female who screams and faints. Mistreat me, and I will be the worst enemy you can imagine. Be fair and kind to me, and I can be the best friend you’ve ever known.” As she spoke she slowly approached him, stopping when they were merely two feet apart. Some of this she’d wanted to say to her neighbors for months, and she hadn’t dared. It felt good to say it now. She only hoped she wasn’t wasting a good speech for no good reason.
He didn’t back down, and she held his gaze for a long moment, having to lift her chin a little to do so. The anger practically radiated off him, and she certainly understood wanting more and not being able to find a way to achieve it.
“You think I’m the means by which you can help your family,” she said after a moment. “Perhaps I am; just not in the way you imagined.”
“Ha,” he retorted. “Ye’d help us, willingly, after what we did to ye? After Graeme tried to force ye to marry him? Ye wriggled oot of that like a clever lass. But I’m nae a fool, Sassenach. And we dunnae need English charity.” With a scowl he turned around and stomped out of the room.
Marjorie let out the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Brendan could still change his mind and go wag his tongue about her to Sir Hamish, and she wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. Hopefully, though, she’d at least given him something about which to think. Something to make him hesitate before he acted.
“Ye made him stop arguing,” Connell said, bouncing up beside her to take her hand as if they’d been allied for months rather than for the past ten minutes. “Usually Graeme has to drag him outside and throw him in the river before he’ll shut his gobber.”
“I didn’t wish to be dragged off by my hair,” she returned, pasting a hopefully convincing smile on her face. “Now. Please show me what you do for grammar and mathematics, if you don’t mind.” Because whether she wanted to be a governess or not, today she preferred that position to being locked up in a room again, or dragged off to the marriage altar because that was the least of several evils.
She wondered what Graeme might be telling his uncle and Sir Hamish Paulk about her, because she certainly qualified as an oddity in this household. Whatever his ultimate intentions, today he’d tried to protect her, keep her safe, and he’d lied to his clan to do it.
That certainly made her think about his kisses all over again, as well. And made her wonder whether she was still a captive, or somewhere in the past hour had become a mad, willing participant.
Chapter Nine
“Of course I’d be honored to judge the jams and shortbread at the fair, lad,” Raibeart Maxton said, a furrow appearing between his straight brows. “But ye might have sent me a note aboot that. I thought ye had someaught amiss here, sending for me at my ‘earliest convenience.’”
As long as Hamish Paulk sat in the room with them, nobody would be discussing anything more troublesome than jams and shortbread. “Aye,” Graeme said aloud, watching as the Maxwell’s favorite chieftain poured himself a second, generous glass of the house’s most expensive vodka. “I reckon Ross got overexcited when he delivered the message. That’s why I was surprised to see ye.”
“So we rode two miles fer nae damned good reason.” Sir Hamish sat again to sip at his drink. “And I missed half a day’s fishing.” He rapped his knuckles against the surface of the old, worn desk. “I’d rather know where ye found that fine Sassenach lass. A fortnight ago ye couldnae pay yer tithe to Dunncraigh.”
“I reckon if I decide to put the education of mybràthairahead of sending the Maxwell a bit of coin he doesnae need, that’s my affair,” Graeme retorted. He didn’t like the way Hamish called Marjorie “fine,” as if the lass wasn’t a good thirty years Paulk’s junior. And he definitely hadn’t liked the way the old man had looked at her.
As for that clever little trick she’d pulled, turning herself into an employee rather than a betrothed, in a sense he was relieved. More relieved than he’d expected. Aye, he would have married her, and she likely would have hated him for it. Now, he could pursue something more carnal, without feeling that he was pushing her into a union about which she had no real choice. Now she could tell him no—though he didn’t think she would. Not if he’d read those kisses correctly. No, he wouldn’t be falling for her, but wanting her felt safer now that they wouldn’t be… permanent. Now that he could put distance between them if he wanted to do so.
“But an English lass, Graeme?” Raibeart took up. “Even I have to question that. Ye ken we’ve a handful of educated Highlanders who’d welcome employment at a fine hoose such as this. Lads, too, which I reckon would make a more proper tutor fer Connell.”
“Ye ken we’re at war with an English duke,” Hamish put in. “Are ye trying to rile Dunncraigh even more than ye already have?”
Oh, for Lucifer’s sake. “If there’s one thing Garaidh nan Leòmhann doesnae have need of, it’s another lad. With her aboot, at least they have to use utensils.”
It had been twenty minutes now since he’d last seen her heading for the back of the house. He had to settle for hoping that Dùghlas had understood his hastily whispered instructions, that he’d found Marjorie, and that the fourteen-year-old had somehow managed to convince her to cooperate. Failing that, the lad and whoever he could round up to help him would have to throw her back into her bedchamber, when he didn’t know how the devil she’d managed to escape in the first place.
“I heard someaught aboot a Sassenach lass going missing out of Sheiling,” his uncle went on. “There’s a reward fer whoever finds her. Wasnae her name Margaret or Marjorie?”
