Wandering over to the desk, she looked down at the papers spread across the surface. They were floor plans, but not of Maxwell Hall. One of them looked like the warehouse Callum was constructing down by the port, a place to house the barrels of whisky coming in from Kentucky while they finished aging. She picked up the other paper. This one was more complicated. A distillery?
A shiver ran down her spine. Was he building here? Did he mean, then, to stay? Had he begun looking to the future as she’d urged? But why not say anything? Of course not an ounce of Kentucky Hills Distillery belonged to her, but if they were going to be together, he should have said something about it. That was how Dunncraigh and Donnach had worked, seeing to all aspects of Sanderson’s because she was, well, a woman. Making it seem as if they were being kind by not troubling her with a business of which she owned a third.
“Och, my lady,” Mr. Kimes said, leaning into the room. “Have ye seen Laird Geiry?”
She jumped. “He went out for a moment.” She tapped her finger against the floor plans. “A distillery?”
“Aye. He’s been looking at property that might suit.” He sent her a cautious smile. “It seems he wants to stay in the Highlands.”
“So it does.” And if it hurt a little because he’d chosen to show that by moving his business rather than by simply telling her that she’d been correct and that he needed to look for ways to live rather than to die, she supposed it didn’t signify. Except that it did. He’d begun with his business, and not with her.
***
The rain had held off today, but it still looked like a close thing as Callum stood in the shadows of a stand of birch trees at the end of the street. Just down the way the Duke of Dunncraigh emerged from his large, rectangular house and stepped into his coach, the red coat of arms emblazoned on the door panel. The duchess appeared a moment later, looking even more skeletal than she had the last time he’d seen her.
She climbed in, as well, and the coach rolled into the street toward the less fashionable houses and more fashionable eateries closer to the water. From her appearance anyone would think Her Grace a kindly old lass, but on the half a dozen occasions he’d spoken with her, he’d found her to be hard and claws-deep into anything that affected clan Maxwell. If she hadn’t had a hand in the deaths of Ian and George, she’d at least known about them. And she’d still pretended to be a surrogate mama to Rebecca, a shoulder to cry on all the while her husband and son went about finding a way to take everything Becca owned.
He waited another five minutes or so, giving the duke and duchess time to realize they’d forgotten a parasol or a coat, then made his way past the usual strings of orange girls, rag-and-bone men, milk peddlers, and everyone else out walking for the afternoon. When acart of cabbage spilled, he took advantage of the momentary chaos and hopped the fence that circled Maxwell Hall.
With the lord and lady gone, the servants would likely all be headed below stairs for luncheon themselves. Even so, he moved around to the back of the house. Some of the upper-floor windows stood open, taking in the day’s cool breeze. Hopefully some of the ground-floor windows would be unlatched, as well. Days without rain were rare enough that they had to be utilized.
Crouching, he made his way to the glass double doors of the orangery and pushed down on the handle. The door opened, and with a grim smile he slipped inside. Potted citrus trees too delicate for Highlands winters stood scattered on the tile floor, birdcages and benches among them. The duke evidently liked his oranges, because he’d sacrificed part of his garden to make the glass-enclosed room.
Gripping the door handle to the main part of the house, Callum pushed it down slowly, allowing the door to open an inch or so as he peeked through. A maid hurried through the room, and he held still as she continued on in the direction of the servants’ stairs. Once she’d gone he moved into the back of the house, pausing just short of each doorway to listen.
Rebecca had said that the duchess rarely left home these days, so the servants would likely be giddy with the idea of having a long luncheon to themselves. They’d linger, hopefully, and give him enough time to find what he needed.
He’d been here once, when Dunncraigh and the duchess had held a soiree. He remembered it mostly because he’d found a very fine decanter of brandy in the duke’s office and liberated it for his own use. Callum grinned again as he swept through a downstairs sitting room tothe door at one side. The idea that his misspent youth would ever come in handy would never have occurred to him, but he knew where Dunncraigh’s office was because of precisely that.
The handle didn’t give; of course Dunncraigh locked his private office. He glanced over his shoulder again. Picking the lock would take time, but he could manage it. On the other hand, breaking it down would be much simpler. If he broke open the door, though, the duke would know someone had been inside.
Rebecca wanted evidence, a chance for justice rather than revenge. She knew he wanted something more immediate. And yet she’d trusted him to come here alone and do as they’d agreed, while she encouraged the Maxwells to keep up their pursuit of her. Well, perhaps he could do a little flustering and still keep his word to her.Hm.“In for a penny,” he muttered under his breath. Holding his shoulder close against the door, he shoved. Hard.
With a muffled crack the door frame splintered, and he half fell into the room. There. A little deliberate destruction to make him feel better—and to let Dunncraigh know someone had broken into his private sanctuary even with all his servants in the house.
Righting himself, he pushed the door shut, but it wouldn’t stay closed. A lead horse statue propped against the door held it in place, and he moved on to the desk. The window behind him overlooked the back of the stable yard and part of the small garden, but he wasn’t interested in the view. He sat in the duke’s chair behind the desk, feeling distinctly smug as he did so. Lucifer knew the damned Duke of Dunncraigh didn’t deserve a fine seat in a fine house. Not when it had been built on murder and the burned-out homes of his own clansmen and cotters.
The three drawers on the right were locked, an ornate, scrolled bar holding them all shut. The shallow one across the top was open, but all he found there was pages of blank writing paper, additional quill tips, a half-eaten biscuit hard enough that it had been there for months, and a cheroot.
Pulling the knife from his boot, he dug into the expensive mahogany on the face of the top locked drawer. A minute later he pried off the catch and drew the metal bar from its posts. Every bit of destruction felt… good, but he didn’t want to be reckless about it. He didn’t want Dunncraigh thinking his office had been ransacked by some random hoodlum.
He’d practically been one of those, a decade ago. Only a titled brother and his choice to self-destruct kept him apart from the common law-breaking rabble. No wonder Rebecca had turned down his proposal for marriage. And thank God she had. However much it had hurt, she’d had a good life without him there. If Dunncraigh hadn’t acted against Ian, he likely would never have returned to the Highlands.
As he pulled several ledger books, more paper, two journals, a bottle of whisky, and a short stack of signed contracts from the drawers, he paused. He would never have chosen for Ian to die. His brother’s absence from the world left a hole in him that he didn’t think would ever heal. A very odd series of events had led him to where he now sat, and while he hated most of them, for a select few he was exceedingly grateful.
He wanted Rebecca in his life, for the rest of his life. He’d had ten years to decipher where she fit, what he’d thought he’d lost forever before he’d even opened his eyes to it. Now that his world had shifted to include her in it again, he refused to let her go. Ever. And that was how he would continue to think of it—an awful thinghad happened, and he’d found her again. Reconciling it any other way was simply… impossible, and so he didn’t make the attempt.
None of that would matter, though, if he couldn’t find a way to put a stop to Dunncraigh. Shaking himself, he opened the first of the ledgers. Ten years ago he’d had only the dimmest idea of how accounts worked; Ian had been the earl, and those duties had fallen to him. Once he’d begun Kentucky Hills, though, he’d had to learn, and he’d become proficient at it. And what he saw in Dunncraigh’s accounts was a great deal more money going out than coming in.
Aside from the expected purchases—sheep, drovers, household repairs, servants’ salaries, and the like—the duke had purchased the land and properties he’d already learned about from Kimes’s research. There was even more to it than that, though. Seven ships, built in Southampton and presently on their way up to Inverness, ships for which the company had paid—and about which his partners clearly hadn’t been informed, and whose profits would no doubt go straight into Dunncraigh’s pockets. Shares purchased in Caribbean tobacco farms, which would explain the additional ships.
Balancing all the purchases were taxes he collected from cotters on his land, and the tithes paid him by his chieftains, the fee for the Maxwell keeping his clan safe and protected. Except none of the incoming funds had gone back into the clan. They’d gone to Domhnall Maxwell’s private plan to make himself even more wealthy.
How would the clans’ fifteen chieftains feel about that? Callum found a satchel beneath the desk and shoved the accounts book into it. The contracts were mostly for the properties about which he already knew, but they were additional proof in case someone thought he’d altered the ledgers. They went into the satchel, aswell. Then, trying to keep his heart steady and remember the time, he mentally sent up a prayer and opened the first of the journals.
It had been written by Dunncraigh, and after four pages of spitting about the Duke of MacLawry and his ludicrous progressive ways, the journal ended. With a curse Callum flipped through it, but the rest of the pages were blank. He dropped it back into a drawer and grabbed the second one. Dunncraigh making business deals without the knowledge of his partners was one thing, and evidence that he’d defrauded his clan was another. But neither of them were proof that the duke had either murdered Ian and George, or that he’d ordered it done.
The second journal was much older, with the initials of Dunncraigh’s late father embossed on the hard leather cover. Pulling out his pocket watch and deciding he still had plenty of time, Callum checked through it. Other than a great deal of ranting about the Sassenach in Scotland and the Jacobites ruining the Highlands, he couldn’t find anything of interest. That one went back into the drawer, as well.
