He called for the manservant and asked for mulled wine. Meanwhile, he poured her a small glass of sherry and took one himself.
“What is this?” She sniffed at it.
“Sherry wine. Try it.”
She sipped.
The look on her face. Oh, the look on her face. It was the moment in the keep all over again when he had thought she was . . . not beautiful but something else.
Now she took another sip and another. And a gulp and the glass was almost empty. He brought the decanter to her and refilled her glass.
“Careful, Lady Kinmarloch, careful. The wine will go to your lovely brown-haired head and you will declare your love and throw yourself at me and then where will we be?”
She glared. “I’m a Scot, Jack Pike. I can handle a little wine. Whisky is our mother’s milk up here, or havenae ye heard? And, rest easy. I willnae now, or ever, be throwing myself at ye.”
Despite her scorn, he was glad to see she sipped the second glass more slowly. She had likely not eaten much today and she was so slight. She would feel the wine much more quickly than he did.
Helen took Jack up the wide stone stairs to the gallery and explained the portraits there. “I wish there was one of my mother but she was never countess and so wasnae painted. I dinnae know what she looked like. Grandfather says she was beautiful, but he said the same thing about me.” She laughed. “The most recent painting is of my grandfather from fifty years ago. He must have been thirty.”
Jack looked at the portrait of Malcolm MacNaughton, the Duke of Dunmore three dukes before him. His grandfather’s cousin. Yes, the man was lean like Helen. Same blue eyes. And Jack could see they had the same large nose with a delicate boniness down the center, the same large jaw.
“Do ye see any resemblance to yer master, Jack Pike?”
Jack looked closer. Maybe, just maybe, he himself had the same forehead as the former duke. The shelf of brow which looked much too heavy on Helen but suited a man.
He straightened up and shrugged. “Not really. John MacNaughton is much better looking.”
“Is he as handsome as ye?”
He looked over at her. She was glancing at him sideways and her face was a little pink. Was Helen Boyd, Countess of Kinmarloch, flirting with him?
“Yes.”
“Really?” She seemed disappointed.
“Why? Did you want the duke to be plain?”
“Aye,” she blurted. Then she shook her head. “I dinnae care one way or the other.”
A bell, signaling dinner.
He offered her his arm, and they went back down the stairs to their meal.
The goose was excellent. Helen had her mulled wine, and he had claret. She was careful, he noted, to cut her food neatly with her silver knife and fork, to take small bites, but she ate at a remarkable speed despite that.
And the sherry and the mulled wine softened her. She smiled when he complained about the profusion of names in Scotland which started with Mac and Mc.
“Ye havenae even heard the worst of it, Jack Pike. Ye know now that Mrs. Mac is the cook? Well, guess what we call the housekeeper of the castle? She is theotherMrs. Mac. They are both Mrs. MacDonald.”
She laughed at his tales about his time in the navy. She especially liked the story about the time the ship cat jumped overboard after seeing a monstrously large rat, and he had swum out to get the wretched, clawing, ungrateful thing.
“Ye look like ye had an encounter with a cat yerself today, Jack Pike,” she said and pointed at his neck with her dinner knife.
His shaving cuts. He put his hand to his neck. “Now, these might be scratches of passion from a lovely lass, Helen.”
She flipped the knife in her hand so now it was oriented for stabbing rather than cutting.
“I’m joking, I’m joking. I’m obeying your orders. I promise. No lovely lasses.”
