“Mar has already departed,” Miss Van Etten informed him crisply. Sinclair did not miss that she failed to use the peer’s proper title, asurprising mark of disrespect toward a man who normally instilled obedient fear. “He will not be back.”
Sinclair did not wish to further annoy the potential new “laird” of Muckle Skaill, but he simply could not believe that the earl had just scarpered off at Miss Van Etten’s say-so. The man clearly had been intending to wed Miss Van Etten, and the cursed toff didn’t just hate to lose ... he never did. Moreover, people did not just acquire entire islands in less than a day because they found them charming—at least Sinclair hadn’t thought so.
“So you are now the owner of all this?” Sinclair swept his hands over Muckle Skaill, where he’d been born and where he’d worked for nearly a decade. Then he swept his palm out toward Frest and over the land he’d been tilling for almost twice as long—soil that he had a part in reclaiming by digging drainage ditch after drainage ditch after drainage ditch through the muck.
Miss Van Etten waved her gloved hand as if batting away a midge in August—the gesture reminiscent of Mar’s and his cronies’. Old frustration burned through Sinclair.
“There is the paperwork to finalize, of course, but those are just the details. The deal has been made.” Miss Van Etten spoke with a finality that Sinclair could not deny. Despite her outward blitheness, he sensed in her an unbending seam of steel. As she stood there looking so fierce, so supremely confident, Sinclair didn’t know whether to be annoyed, concerned, or impressed by her sudden acquisition of his and his fellow islanders’ homes. This lady must be made of stern material indeed if she’d managed to wrest Mar’s favorite playland away from his brutally tight grip. Sinclair would do well not to underestimate her.
“Is that all, then?” Miss Van Etten asked dismissively. Without waiting for an answer to her apparently rhetorical question, she turned and stomped off toward her stables. “Harrold! Is my baby ready yet?”
Baby?Once again, Miss Van Etten had managed to poleax Sinclair. As a bastard himself, he saw no shame in a babe born out of wedlock.Most folk, however, were not kind. Perhaps this was why Miss Van Etten had chosen to suddenly retreat to such a far-flung locale. Sinclair felt himself soften toward this woman who’d chosen exile over giving up her child.
“Raring to go, Miss V. She’s purring like a lion cub.”
And the English thought Orcadians used odd words and idioms. Clearly, they had not encountered enough Yanks.
“She didn’t give you any trouble? I was afraid the ocean trip would be too hard on her.”
“She spit up all over the bonnet, but I got her patched and cleaned up.”
Although Sinclair had stepped into the role of mother and father to his half siblings, it seemed odd for a woman to hire a man as a caregiver for her infant. Perhaps this chap was the father, yet their exchange seemed more like employer and employee. But a hidden relationshipwouldexplain why the earl’s plans to marry the woman had gone utterly awry.
Miss Van Etten’s dark-brown eyebrows knit together. Whatever her connection to the man, it was clear she cared for the bairn. “What happened?”
“Just a cracked cylinder, but I replaced it. She’s as good as new.”
Now what did that Americanism mean? It sounded like the man was talking about a machine, not a child.
“So I can take her for a spin?” Miss Van Etten asked.
She was heading toward thestables, not the house, not a nursery, but thestables. WhathadMiss Van Etten meant bybaby?
“She’s been idling for ten minutes now. The engine’s warmed up and ready to run.”
Her baby was anautomobile?
Startled back into action, Sinclair scrambled to catch up with Miss Van Etten. Although his stride was longer, she moved with a quick lightness that reminded him of the hares Mar had imported for hunting.
“Miss!” he called out just as she was about to disappear through the open stable door.
“Yes?” She craned her neck to glance at him, but she did not stop.
“If you are indeed the new mistress of Hamarray and Frest, there is a matter of some importance that I would like to discuss. Several, in truth.”
During the war, the crofters had designated him their spokesperson, a position he knew he had fallen into by default rather than by merit. His stepfather had been the leader of the islanders since the 1880s, and everyone had become accustomed to meeting in his house. Even after Sigurd’s stroke, the islanders had continued the tradition of gathering in his home, with Sinclair helping his stepfather host. Now that they needed to send someone to Muckle Skaill, they’d all turned to Sinclair—the one who’d lived there once and who understood the ways of toffs better than them.
“You wish to speak to me?” Miss Van Etten seemed generally perplexed as to why he would be seeking her counsel.
“Aye. About the crofts.” He caught up to her as she stepped farther into the old building.
“The crofts?” Her eyebrows turned to dark slashes against her pale skin as she stopped by the fanciest auto Sinclair had ever seen. But he had no time to admire the bonny machine.
“On Frest and the grazing rights here on Hamarray.”Grazing rightsmight be too formal a term for the unwritten agreement with the earl, but he needn’t let Miss Van Etten know that.
“I can’t see that I’d be much help to you.” Miss Van Etten opened the driver’s door to her bright-yellow vehicle and slid behind the driver’s seat. “I’ve barely been here a day, and I know next to nothing about agriculture.”
Sinclair clamped his teeth together and tried not to squeeze his left eye shut in frustration. It would not do to lose his temper. When he spoke, he was proud of how measured his voice sounded, even if a bitstilted. “According to your own statements, you are now the landlady, Miss Van Etten.”
