“I distinctly remember telling ye, Lady Geiry,” Callum noted, his gaze moving to her, “that Stapp isnae welcome in this house. Did I nae make myself clear?”
“He just arrived,” she hedged. “I haven’t had a chance to tell him anything. And he was only attempting to decipher the rumors about you.”
“Dunnae make excuses for me, Rebecca,” Donnach said. “If this boy thinks he can intimidate me, he’s welcome to try it.”
Callum tilted his head. “A boy, am I? If it comforts ye to think so, dunnae let me stop ye. I’ve only one bit of advice for ye today. Get out. Now.”
“We were just leaving. Rebecca, we’ll send for yer things later. Go fetch Margaret.”
“If ye’ve a yen to take the lady with ye, I’ve nae objection,” the new Lord Geiry commented smoothly. “The bairn stays here.”
Donnach lowered his head a fraction. “So be it. Rebecca, let’s be off.”
Startled by his matter-of-fact response to the idea of her leaving Maggie behind, Rebecca looked at the man who’d been her confidant for much of the past year, and her friend for considerably longer than that. “I am not leaving my daughter, Donnach. I hope you know me well enough to realize that.”
Finally the marquis looked back at her. “Ye cannae wish to remain beneath the same roof as this monster,” he stated, his tone an odd mix of disdain and pleading. “I was there that night, if ye’ll recall. He insulted ye andyer dear husband to the point that his own brother drove him away.”
“I recall.” Deliberately she seated herself again. “Find a way to remove my daughter from his protection and I’ll happily join you at Samhradh House. Until that happens, I will remain here.”
“Ye heard the lass, Stapp. And if ye dunnae leave through my front door now, I’ll set ye outside through the window.”
People didn’t talk to Donnach Maxwell that way. And they certainly didn’t threaten him. For heaven’s sake, he was the heir to the chief of clan Maxwell. Donnach certainly didn’t seem to know how to take it, either. He bristled, his hands curling into fists. “Ye still need to learn some respect, b—”
Callum moved. Before Rebecca could do more than gasp, he had Donnach by the back of the shirt and the rear of his trousers. Hauling the shorter man around like one of those giant men in the Highlands games, he heaved. First the vases and plates that sat on the table beneath the window crashed to the floor. Then the wood-framed glass panels shattered into splintered shards that caught sunlight as they spun—and Donnach disappeared through the window.
“Mayhap ye’ll recall now that I mean what I say. So ye go run to Dunncraigh,” Callum growled in a carrying voice, as the curtain rod fell onto the side table. “Ye tell him I know what he did to Ian, and that I’m a man of my word. I’ll be seeing both of ye. Soon.”
With that he turned on his heel and left the room. For a moment Rebecca sat there, stunned. No one, even in the Highlands, did what he’d just done. Not to the Duke of Dunncraigh’s firstborn son and heir. Callum MacCreath had just declared war on his own clan.
He’d thrown her—and Maggie—into the middle ofhis battle as surely as he’d tossed Donnach through that window. That infuriated her. But just as troubling was the abrupt realization of how certain he was. Not even Callum, at least the one she’d known ten years ago, declared war without good reason. He thought Ian had been murdered. And he thought the Maxwells had done it.
As certain as she’d been that Ian had made a rare mistake and paid for it with his life… No. It had been an accident. Because if it hadn’t been, everything in the past year had been a lie. And the idea that Callum had hold of the truth, the thought of what he might do with it, troubled her even more.
Chapter Five
Callum sat back in the library chair, half a glass of whisky by his elbow and a wolf sprawled out at his feet. Half of him regretted shutting Waya in his office before he’d gone to confront Stapp; seeing him with an arm chewed off would have been damned satisfying. On the other hand, throwing him through the window had uncoiled the rage that had been racketing about in his chest for the past five weeks. For the past ten years, if he wanted to be honest with himself.
The deep breath he took felt like the first one he’d managed in all that time. He’d plotted and set a course, aye, and run up his colors when he’d taken Waya out for a ride this morning, but finally he’d been able to fire that first shot. Now it would get interesting.
“You knew he would come calling, didn’t you?”
Callum slanted his eyes toward the glass of whisky, but left it where it sat. “I’d a hunch, aye.”
Rebecca crossed in front of him and made a wide detour around the wolf to seat herself daintily on the chair opposite. “And what if you’re wrong? What if Ian did simply slide off the road and drown?”
“I’m nae wrong.” He lifted his head to look at her.She had her golden-blond hair pinned up properly again, a halo about her face with the morning sun behind her. Somewhere in the past decade she’d gone from being pretty to truly beautiful. In the back of his mind the thought scratched at him again that he’d never kissed her. Half the lasses about Geiry Hall had been in his bed by his twentieth year, but he’d never touched the one with whom he shared his adventures.
“But if you are?” she persisted. “Because I have no reason to think that night was anything but a horrible accident. Ian was angry about something, decided he needed to drive into Inverness without waiting for morning or for the weather to clear, and off he went over my objections. You know he was never rash or impulsive, but he did get impatient. And that night he was impatient.”
“What made him angry and impatient, then?” If she’d had a hand in this, every word she uttered needed to be looked at from two sides, but that didn’t mean what she said couldn’t be useful.
“I don’t know. He didn’t tell me. He rarely told me anything.” She shifted a little. “Your hand’s bleeding.”
He lifted his left hand, hanging over the arm of the chair. Blood dripped from where a small piece of glass dug into his knuckle. “Hm.”
“That’s all you have to say? You threw a marquis through a window. I suppose I should be thankful we were on the ground floor.”
Callum lowered his hand again. “Donnach should be, ye mean.”
