Mentally crossing her fingers, Rebecca lowered the handle and pushed open the door anyway. Callum stood glaring out the dark window, his fists on his hips. A half-full glass of whisky sat on the desk, with no sign of the decanter or bottle.
“What in heaven’s name did you say to His Grace?” she demanded.
He whipped around to catch her gaze. “Go ask him, if ye’re so curious,” he snapped.
“Perhaps I will, then,” she retorted. “He’s been far kinder to me than you’ve been. In fact, I’d be foolish to have any empathy for you at all.”
“Aye, ye would be.” Lowering his arms, he strode up to her. “I’ve a question for ye, Becca. The man offered me thirty thousand quid to go away. I didnae even have to hand over my shares of Sanderson’s. Just leave. Why do ye reckon he’d be willing to part with that kind of blunt and nae have control of the business?”
“Because you don’t simply make trouble. Youaretrouble. I would imagine he thinks that you’d counter anything he proposed to aid or increase profits, just because you don’t like him.”
His shoulders lowered. “Ye need to develop a better instinct for self-preservation, lass,” he muttered. “Do ye truly nae see it?”
“See what? That I have money and a fleet that will go to whomever I marry? Of course it will.”
“Aye. And if yer da’ had died before Ian, all that property of yers would be mine, now. I—or Ian—would have two-thirds ownership. Do ye honestly think Donnach Maxwell would still be courting ye if that were so?”
Rebecca opened and closed her mouth again, her thoughts bouncing between affront and horror. “Bad things happen, Callum. And perhaps Donnach is courting me because we’ve been acquainted for ten years, and he cares for me.” As for the order of deaths, it felt like he was only looking for ways to make a horrible set of circumstances even worse. Tragedy didn’t require a conspiracy. It made sense as she thought it, so she decided to say it aloud. “Tragedy does not require a conspiracy.”
Callum, though, had tilted his head again in the way that made her think him vulnerable, despite the fact that she knew him too well to be fooled. “He cares for ye, ye say,” he took up, clearly not even hearing the last thing she’d uttered. “Do ye care for him, then?”
Was he jealous?“First of all, that’s none of your affair,” she retorted. “Second of all, no one’s feelings but yours seem to matter, so don’t expect me to expose mine to your ridicule.”
“Have yer secrets then, Rebecca,” he said more quietly. “I dunnae think ye had a thing to do with this, and so whether ye want me about or nae, I mean to keep ye safe. Ye and Margaret. Ye dunnae have to like what I do, but know that as much as I mean to end Dunncraigh, I’ll see to it that ye and the lass are protected.” He took a slow step closer, bending down a little to reach for her hand. “I do recommend ye nae pin yer hopes on Stapp.And if hedoeshave yer heart, then I suppose I apologize to ye in advance for what I mean to do to him.”
God, he was so blasted stubborn!“If you’re apologizing to me,” she returned, refusing to back away when he continued directly up to her, “don’t stop with my injured heart. You’ve always been a wildfire, without aim or direction. Your… antics have singed me before. So however safe you think to make Margaret and me, we’re still directly in the middle of this. And if you begin murdering people left and right, people connected tome,at the best I will face censure. I might face arrest. How will you protect Mags when you and I are both shipped off to Australia?”
He scowled, a muscle in his jaw jumping. “I said ye’ll be safe. Ye will be. If ye dunnae get asked to a soiree over it, well, aye, I reckon I’m willing to apologize for that, too.” He tightened his fingers around hers. “If being singed a little is what truly troubles ye, it’s likely just as well ye decided nae to join me ten years ago when I asked ye to.” Callum placed her palm against his chest, and she could feel the hard beat of his heart beneath her fingers. “I mean to burn them down to ashes, aye.Them. But that isnae what troubles ye, is it?”
“Callum, you don’t know for certain if anything untoward happened at all. I don’t wish to see you hurt because you can’t forget ten-year-old wounds.”
“I could forgetthosewounds, lass. I don’t give a damn about Dunncraigh or Stapp. I earned my embarrassment and exile. They didnae do it to me. If they had naught to do with Ian dying, they’d nae enter my thoughts again.”
“It’s me you haven’t forgiven, then? Is that what you’re saying? Because those kisses didn’t feel like anger or revenge. They felt like—”
He bent his head and kissed her before she couldfinish her thought. “Felt like what?” he murmured against her mouth.
Sin. Lust. Need. All the things she thought she didn’t want from him, but nevertheless seemed to crave. She kissed him back, breathing in his heady scent of leather and shaving soap. Sliding her arms up over his shoulders, she sank into the heat of him, into the heady sensation of being wanted.
Leather and shaving soap. Rebecca pulled back a little, looking up at him from inches away. “You haven’t been drinking,” she breathed, studying his two-colored gaze.
“What?”
“I know you,” she persisted. “You get angry about something, and you go get drunk. But you haven’t had anything to drink today.”
Callum grimaced. “I keep trying to tell ye, yeknewme, Rebecca. The idiot boy who realized how stupid he was just a wee bit late and who by his own actions made certain he lost everything. I dunnae drink. Nae any longer.”
“But there’s a glass there on the desk.”
“I like to be reminded how close I am to disaster.”
“You own a distillery. How can you—”
This time his mouth curved into a rueful smile. “I’ve a particularly good sense of smell. And I’ll take a swallow when necessary. One swallow. My men have orders to club me over the head if I try for more than that.” He blew out his breath. “I’ve nae been clubbed but once. That was after I got the first letter from Ian, after five years of nae a word.”
“The letter you burned.”
“I burned them all, but aye.”
