That would seem to be accurate. She had no idea what to make of him now. “Very well. Iknewyou. I knew you would take it badly, which you did, so I didn’t want to broach the subject. Are you going to yell now and deny any of that?”
“Nae, since we both saw what happened.” He blew out his breath. “I told ye I got letters I imagine were from Ian. I had my foreman toss them in the fire. Honestly, I didnae even want to touch them. I spent a time being spiteful. After that, I… I suppose I just didnae want to know. I left the lot of ye behind. I figured reading about yer life, how happy ye were, how many bairns ye had…” He rolled his shoulders, clearlyuncomfortable with the conversation. “I didnae want to know I’d been wrong about ye getting tangled with Dunncraigh, and I didnae want to know I’d been correct.”
“But you came back.”
“Once that newspaper caught my attention, I couldnae pretend it hadnae. And I swore an oath.”
“You didn’t swear anything to Ian,” she pressed, wondering if she wanted to be a part of this conversation, after all.
“Nae. I swore to Dunncraigh.” He gave her a grim smile that sent a shiver down her spine. “I mean to keep my word.”
“But what if you’re wrong?”
“Then ye’ll have whatyewished for, Rebecca. Me, out of yer life. Permanently, this time.”
He might have been referring to leaving again for Kentucky, but from his tone he seemed to mean something even more final. Rebecca shivered again. For heaven’s sake, before he’d returned she’d been finding her footing again. Everyone, even with the overly dramatic expressions of pity and behind-her-back murmurings, had been kind. She’d begun learning something about her father’s business. She had a suitor who seemed only to want the best for her. And now in two days Callum had dragged her into conspiracies and made her question everything around her.
But as for his single-minded oath of vengeance, he’d already veered a little off the trail. “Why did you kiss me?”
The barouche rolled to a halt, and he stood to unlatch the door and step to the street. “Because I’d been imagining doing it for ten years, and I wanted to know someaught,” he returned, holding out his hand.
Trying not to show her hesitation, she clasped hiswarm fingers and stepped out of the vehicle. When he offered his arm, she wrapped her hand around it. “You wanted to know what?” she prompted, though every ounce of her shrieked at her not to ask the question. If he’d been imagining kissing her for ten years, she didnotwant to know why. Except that she did.
“If ye were as curious about me.”
“Well, I wasn’t.”
The slight smile that curved his mouth this time was genuine, a remnant of the high-spirited, adventurous boy he’d once been. “Aye, ye were. And ye are. As for what that means, I reckon I’ll find out.”
“You’re mistaken, Call—”
“At the risk of losing five quid, lass,” he interrupted, “I’m willing to accuse ye of lying. Now smile and tell me all about the local gossip while we eat. I still have some catching up to do.”
Rebecca wasn’t so certain about that. All of this might have caught him by surprise, and he’d had all of five weeks, most of them on a ship, to decipher as much as he had, but Callum MacCreath already seemed well ahead of her in discerning not only what he meant to accomplish, but what, precisely, he thought of her. And if she couldn’t catch up, or better yet change his mind, they would all be in a great deal of trouble.
***
“M’laird,” Dennis Kimes said, making another note on his third sheet of paper, “I cannae decipher all this in one morning. I do recognize some of the names, but I’ve nae way of knowing who else does business with them, or who the owners might be.”
Callum shifted a stack of books and crossed his booted ankles atop them. “What do ye require, then?”
“Honestly?”
“Do I look as though I want lies from ye, Kimes?”
The younger man paled a little. “Nae, m’laird. Honestly, then, I require a week, some assistance, and ye nae staring at me like the devil himself.”
In his own opinion he’d been doing more glaring than staring, but it likely amounted to the same thing. “I’ll do ye two better,” he returned, standing carefully in the clerk’s tiny paper-and-book-strewn office. “I’ll give ye a week, an assistant, access to whichever papers I have still at MacCreath House, another lad to keep a watch over ye in case ye uncover someaught… interesting, and I’ll ride out to Geiry Hall to collect whatever books might still be there.”
Kimes looked up, the pen in his hand dripping ink as his fingers abruptly shivered. “To keep watch over me?” he repeated. “Is this going to get me murdered, m’laird?”
“Nae,” Callum returned firmly. “It willnae. If there’s danger about, I mean to see that it’s aimed directly at me. That extra lad will remain by yer side, though, just to be certain.” That had to be a rule. No one else was allowed to be harmed either by Dunncraigh or by his own investigation into Ian’s death. And the more he considered it, the more he did want to know the exact details, exactly whom he owed a death, and why it had suddenly needed to go this far after ten years of apparent harmony.
That made several other paths clear, as well. He did need to go to Geiry; he wanted to go, to see where Ian had driven that phaeton, where his brother had spent his last hours and days. But he couldn’t go alone. Not with the Maxwells here in Inverness.
“If ye need me, send word by messenger. I’ll be but two hours away, and I’ll be back as quick as I can,” he stated, as he and Waya picked their way into the main part of the Crosby and Hallifax offices. “Make certain Mr. Crosby kens what ye’re about.”
“Aye,” Dennis returned, following him out. “Will ye have someone watching out for him, as well?”
