“Aye, the ship docked, Mr. Crosby. With a passenger on board. He’s asked to see ye, so I’ve brought him.”
The fat man straightened from looking at rows of numbers over the shoulder of one of his clerks. “A passenger? Do I look like I have time to be gawked at by visitors on holiday? And… what in God’s name is that?”
He pointed a plump finger at Waya, who yawned, giving everyone in the office a very fine view of her canines.
“That would be a wolf,” Callum supplied. “Canis lupus, to be exact. And I’m nae a visitor.”
“Mr. Crosby, this is Callum MacCreath,” Kimes supplied.
“To be exact,” Callum followed.
The accountant smoothed the hair running up one side of his head, his pink face going a mottled red. “Mr. MacCreath! I had nae idea ye were set for a visit. Please! Come in and sit doon.” He walked forward, holding out his hand.
Waya growled, and he jerked it away again. “Down, girl,” Callum cautioned, and stuck out his own hand. “Crosby. We’ve some things to discuss in private.”
“Of course. This way.” He indicated the left room.
With a nod Callum and Waya moved past him. “And Mr. Kimes,” he added. “I reckon I’ll have some use for him.”
Kimes hesitated, but from his glance at Waya it was more about being closed in with a wolf than anything else. Then he edged inside the office with them and closed the door behind him. Michael Crosby sank into the wide, sagging chair behind the desk and steepled his hands, elbows resting on his gut. “What can we do for ye then, Mr. MacCreath? If ye’ve a yen to look at ourbooks, I’m more than happy to have Mr. Kimes fetch them for ye. I assure ye, we’ve made every effort to—”
“What do ye know about the death of Lord Geiry?” Callum interrupted. The words continued to stick in his throat, even after he’d gone through them in his head a thousand times in the five weeks since he’d left the distillery. Murder, suicide, accident, mistake—all the possibilities ended with the same result. His brother was dead. And that couldn’t be allowed to lie. Not without him knowing every damned detail.
“Lord Geiry?” Crosby sat back. “He drowned a year or so ago, didn’t he? Someaught about driving a carriage in the rain and he slid down the bank of the loch. Why does…” His small eyes widened. “Ye’rethatCallum MacCreath? Geiry’s brother?”
“That very same one.”
“But lad—ye need to see the magistrate. Now. Ye’ve an inheritance, and a title, and—”
“And first I want to know exactly what happened. Exactly.” Callum dipped his hand into the thick, rough fur of Waya’s back.Steady. He could be furious, aye, but action could wait until he knew where to aim it. “Old newspapers, witnesses, any rumors of what might have been afoot at the time. I want them all. And then ye can bring the magistrate here to see me.”
“It may take us a few hours, m’laird.”
“Then get to it. I’ve arranged to have my luggage brought here.” He narrowed his eyes, hesitating now to ask the question that had dragged at him the most. “The house here in Inverness. MacCreath House. Is it occupied still?”
“Aye,” Dennis supplied. “Lady Geiry spent her whole year of mourning here in town. I saw her just last week, finally put off her black crêpe. Poor lass, she’s had a bad patch, first with Geiry, then her own da’ pass—”
“Her da’?” Callum broke in. “George Sanderson is dead?”
A muscle in Crosby’s plump cheek jumped. “Lad, ye’ve been gone a time, aye? Ye might prefer asking these questions of yer own. Dennis said that Lady Geiry’s in town. She’ll have the answers ye want, I reck—”
“Nae,” Callum growled. He’d given up hoping this all might be a nightmare, but every additional bit of information he heard made things worse. And then there were the things he hadn’t wanted to consider, the question that if his brother’s death hadn’t been some idiotic accident, who else had been involved?
And Becca. The last time he’d set eyes on her she’d flayed him to the bone. Aye, he would go see her. After he’d acquired every bit of information available about her, his brother, Dunncraigh, and their business enterprise. Something tickled at his mind, and he edged forward again. “Ian—Lord Geiry—died before George Sanderson, ye said?”
“Aye,” Kimes supplied, jumping when Waya swiveled her head around to look at him. “Barely two weeks apart, it was. The talk was that Mr. Sanderson’s heart couldnae take the loss of his beloved son-in-law.” Keeping his hand close against his chest, he pointed one finger at the wolf. “She looks hungry.”
“She’s always hungry,” Callum said absently, scratching behind her ears. “If Ian died before George, then Rebecca’s the one holding the reins to the fleet.” If it had been the other way around, whatever she inherited would have belonged to Ian… and now, to him. But in this circumstance, her father’s holdings couldn’t go to a dead man. That happened to be very… coincidentally handy for her. Unless it hadn’t been a coincidence.
That thought dogged him, chewed at him, for the nextthree hours as he read through old newspapers Dennis Kimes had begged or borrowed or stolen from sources the lad wouldn’t even reveal. At least one of them smelled like lemon verbena, though, so he suspected the lad’s mother to be involved.
What he read didn’t leave him feeling any easier. Just the opposite. Ian had been driving a phaeton from the Geiry estate a few short miles from Inverness, past Loch Brenan and into town. He’d done it for no uncoverable reason, in the middle of a rainstorm and at night, according to his wife of nine years. The next morning a pair of shepherds found the unhitched phaeton ten yards into the loch, the harnessed horses grazing nearby with a broken tress hanging off them, and then they’d spied Ian floating facedown a foot or two beyond that.
He’d imagined it. For the week it took him to get to Boston, then for the duration of the four weeks across the Atlantic, he’d imagined what might have happened to his brother. Reading the account there in slightly melodramatic black-and-white, though, was worse. This wasn’t his imagination. This wasn’t one of the scenarios he’d had nightmares about back when he’d first sailed away from Scotland. Back then those possibilities for disaster had come with a sense of… smugness. He’d warned Ian, and he’d been right. But now Ian—his older brother, his friend, his conscience—was dead. And he didn’t feel smug or righteous. He felt fury.
When he’d gleaned everything he could from newspapers and rumors, he had Kimes go fetch both the magistrate and this Bartholomew Harvey, Esquire, fellow. For another hour he signed papers, learned Ian’s financial status, and handed all pertinent papers over to Crosby and Hallifax. Mr. Harvey, Esquire, looked like he’d swallowed a bug, but Callum wasn’t about to trusthis new—and old—holdings to someone who hadn’t already proven themselves to him.
“You should be aware, sir—my lord, that is,” Mr. Harvey said, his voice as pinched and annoyed as his expression, “that I am exceedingly proud of the work I did for your predecessor.”
