Prologue
Inverness, Scotland, 1806
Becca would be in the morning room, most likely, because she didn’t like fights. Callum MacCreath slammed the drawing room door in his brother’s face and stomped down the straight-angled stairs to go find the one sane guest—and the one female—in MacCreath House tonight. Let the quartet of devils upstairs make their bargains and plan how to spend their riches. He wanted no part of it. None. Not when it involved choosing blunt over damned common sense.
Just the idea that his older brother Ian, Earl Geiry, would let himself be pulled into a scheme with someone as greedy and self-serving as the Duke of Dunncraigh surprised him. Horrified him, rather. Of course he felt like he’d been shot between the eyes, because he hadn’t had the faintest idea about any of it. Aye, he could see some of the twenty-six-year-old’s reasoning—the MacCreaths had intermarried with clan Maxwell for centuries, and Dunncraigh wastheMaxwell, the clan’s chief. Power sought power. Whether the MacCreathsshouldbe standing so close to the duke was another questionentirely. He knew the answer, drunk or sober. But Ian’s sobriety hadn’t kept him from being entangled in this disaster-in-the-making.
As for Callum, he had begun to wish several minutes ago that he hadn’t come home tonight by way of the local tavern. Or that he hadn’t come home at all.
But Rebecca Sanderson had been here all evening, apparently pulled into the middle of this nonsense without an ally in sight. That, he regretted. And if they’d pushed her into something she didn’t want, he would see to it that it didn’t happen. Period. Growling that pledge to himself, he stopped outside the closed morning room door. “Becca?” he called, trying to keep his voice level. He thudded his knuckles against the old, well-polished oak door. “Are ye hiding?”
“I do not hide,” came from inside the room, in her cultured English accent. “You were all being loud and ridiculous, and so I left.”
Callum didn’t thinkhehad been ridiculous, but that was neither here nor there. “I’m coming in, lass.”
He pushed down on the door handle and stepped into the room. Rebecca Sanderson, the very English daughter of the very English George Sanderson who was still upstairs in the quartet of would-be business titans, stood close by the fireplace, her arms crossed over the deep blue silk gown that dripped with beads from the waist to the floor, her eyes of the same sapphire narrowed beneath a very artful tangle of blond hair as she looked up to gaze at him.
“I’m sorry I missed dinner,” he said, shutting the door behind him again and turning the lock. He and Becca had known each other for ten years, since she’d been eight and he, ten, but tonight she looked far more… adult than he could previously recall. It unsettled him. The whole damned evening unsettled him, and theamount of whisky he’d consumed did nothing to help with that.
“I’m sorry you missed it, too,” she said. “And I’m sorry you went out drinking, and I’m sorry you decided to stumble into the middle of this and accuse everyone of conspiring behind your back.” She lifted her chin a little. “We—your brother—attempted to include you on several occasions, but you couldn’t be bothered.”
So now she was speaking on Ian’s behalf. He wanted to grab hold of her bare shoulders, and clenched his hands to keep from doing so. “I’m fairly certain nae a one of ye mentioned that ye and my dull-as-dirt brother were contemplating getting married,” he ground out, the words sticking in his throat. “I would have recalled that.”
“Ian—Lord Geiry—was supposed to tell you a week ago. Evidently”—and she sent a pointed look at his rumpled black jacket and trousers—“you haven’t been home in that long.”
He looked down at his attire. Aye, Jamie Campbell had tossed up his accounts on the Hessian boots, and he might have spilled a bit of this or that on his sleeves, but the Seven Fathoms hardly had the strictest of dress codes. “I’ve been about,” he hedged. “And why am I the villain here? I’m nae the one who’s tried to drag ye into buying a marriage with a dowry of ships.”
“No one’s dragging me into anything,” she said stiffly. “I would hope you know me better than that.”
He did. And it comforted him a little. Perhaps it had all been talk and speculation, and nothing was settled. Nothing had been agreed to, and she remained no one’s pawn. “Then I dunnae need to remind ye that ye’ve agreed with me fer years that the Duke of Dunncraigh cannae be trusted any farther than he can be thrown. Or that ye laughed when I said that if Ian had one moredinner with Dunncraigh, the duke would think him a pimple on his backside.”
“It doesn’t matter what we said before. You shouldn’t jest about either of them, Callum. It’s not seemly.”
Callum edged closer to her, his jaw brushing the coiled blond hair at the top of her head as he leaned in. “What say we go down to the tavern, Becca, and leave the dusty brigade to rattle papers and pound their chests all on their own? I reckon they’ll nae miss us.”
Her cheeks darkened a shade. “You know I cannot,” she commented, the proper English tones still sounding out of place this far north in the Highlands. “Ladies do not spend their evenings in taverns, especially in the company of young men with questionable reputations. And especially not under the circumstances.”
“I dunnae care about the damned circumstances.”
He spoke more fiercely than he meant to, and she backed away half a step. “They are what they are,” she countered. “Profanity won’t alter anything.”
“I thought ye liked going down to the Seven Fathoms. If ye… Ye ken Ian will nae take ye down there. He’s likely got cobwebs growing on him.” And she most certainly did not, which was one of thousands of reasons Rebecca Sanderson and Ian MacCreath shouldn’t even be talking about marriage. Now she and he—that made much more sense, now that it occurred to him. If he hadn’t spent most of the past week—or year, really—at the Seven Fathoms, it might have occurred to him much earlier.
Blue eyes met his, then glanced away. “You shouldn’t say such things,” she insisted. “Your brother has a great deal of responsibility on his shoulders, and he carries it well for a man of only six-and-twenty.”
“And he’ll carry it just the same way when he’s six-and-sixty,” Callum said dismissively. “Ye’re nae but eighteen, and I’m nae but twenty, and I say we should spend the evening dancing reels in the Seven Fathoms, where the patrons at least have beating hearts and nae dust and rust settling in their bones. If the old men upstairs want to make poor business deals together, let ’em.”
“Lord Geiry—Ian—isn’t dull, Callum. Or old. And you shouldn’t say such things about your own brother,” she repeated, her voice sharp despite its low volume.
“Why the devil should I nae?” he returned, frowning. “We’ve both been saying the very same thing about him since yer da’ moved ye up into the Highlands. The only thing Ian’s ever done with us was go swimming in the loch, I reckon because that’s the only thing he could ever beat me at.”
“Callum, d—”
“Ye do recall on that first day we met when I dared ye to climb that oak tree, and Ian said ye’d break yer neck?” He flicked a finger along her throat, realizing with an odd… thud in his gut that he liked touching her. And not in the same way he’d boosted her into a saddle or helped haul her atop a stone wall to find bird’s eggs. Why had he been spending so much time at the tavern, anyway? It had been weeks, or perhaps even months, since he’d last gone fishing—or dancing, or riding—with her. “Yer neck’s nae broken.”
She grimaced as she looked up at him. “I did scrape my knee. You shouldn’t have dared me, and I certainly shouldn’t have accepted. Your brother was correct. That doesn’t make him dull. He’s been trying very hard to ensure your family’s safety and well-being into the future. You, on the other hand, smell of whisky and cheap perfume.”
He ignored the last bit. That first part sounded far too… ordinary for the Becca he knew. “Ye’ve been in on these talks, then, have ye?” he asked. “Ye knew Ian wanted into the shipping company with yer da’, and ye knew they meant to lease the docks from Dunncraigh, and ye nae said a word about it to me.”
