“Perhaps a long betrothal, so we can get to know one another,” Alec hedged. “When I return, we can arrange it. A year, shall we say?” He wondered where the lass he’d met in the street was now. Married, he hoped, deliriously happy with her faithful, stalwart husband. She was a brave wee thing. Love had made her willing to do anything for a chance at happiness. She’d be the kind of wife who would stand by a man in his hour of need, love him always—if things went as she hoped, of course. What kind of wife would pampered, petted Sophie make?
She’d make him rich.
“A year!” Bray scoffed. “You feel I’m being too hasty, do you? Shall we make it sixty thousand pounds? Here’s what I’m willing to do. Since you must leave at once for your estates—and I fully understand you must take up your duties at once—I’ll arrange for Sophie to travel to Scotland. You can show her the glories of Glenlorne before the wedding. Would that do?”
“I’m not—” Alec began, but Bray rose to his feet, and held out his hand.
“She’ll be there within a fortnight. That will give you time to break the happy news of your impending nuptials to your kin—or is ‘clan’ the right word?”
“It was once an outlawed word, I believe, especially in England,” Alec said. Clans, the Gaelic tongue, the plaid, even bagpipes had been forbidden by the English Crown for decades after Culloden.
Bray chuckled. “His Highness plans to change all that. He adores Highland dress. Sir Walter Scott promised to find him a tailor who could make him a proper suit of Scottish garments, and bring a bagpiper to play for him.”
“If he can find one,” Alec muttered.
Bray ignored the quip. “I can see you are a patriot, a man of honor. Sophie prides herself on setting new trends, starting new fashions. The prince enjoys things Scottish, but it will take a female, a lady like Sophie to bring it into style. Imagine that if you will. Every Englishman will be tracing his Scottish roots, and Scotland will rise to glory once again—with pipes, plaids, and Gaelic.”
Alec swallowed a groan. English interest in Scotland had never, ever, boded well. He stared at Bray’s outstretched hand. Whatever reason Sophie was being married off, he was at least partly to blame. And his sisters needed the money. Wasn’t that why he’d come here tonight? He imagined arriving at Glenlorne, as penniless and useless as his father, another worthless mouth to feed, even if he was earl. Jasper Kendrick was right. Marrying money was the fastest way to a fortune, perhaps the only way. He had to marry someone, he supposed. Bray had shown him he had no choice.
Reluctantly, he clasped the hand of his future father-in-law.
CHAPTEREIGHT
Angus’s ghost, transparent as a gauze curtain, stood staring out the window of the old tower, watching over the glen. Georgiana could see the road through his broad back as it wound past this tower on the way to the new castle. Well, it was hardly new. It was older than either of them, and they’d been dead for nearly twenty years, but it was newer than this place their ghosts inhabited.
“What are you watching for?” she asked.
He gave her a steely look from under his white brows. He’d grown from a winsome lad to a fine, handsome man. She would have liked to grow old with him. She felt the familiar bite of regret, and tilted her head to smile at him, imagining what that might have been like.
“Can a man not admire the view?” he asked, crusty at her interruption, obviously wary of her wistful smile.
“Yes, I suppose so,” she said mildly, and drifted nearer, letting him feel the weight of her presence. He shrugged, but didn’t move away.
“Something’s about to happen. I can feel it in my bones like I used to be able to feel a storm coming down from the hills,” he grumbled. “Perhaps it’s here already. Devorguilla always was a scheming piece, and young Brodie MacNabb has arrived, all smiles and muscles, even if he hasn’t got the wit God gave a bonxie. She’s up to something, or he is—something that will change Glenlorne forever.” He looked at her like a fierce eagle.
As if he had bones. She suppressed a smile.
“Will it be as bad as Culloden? Glenlorne survived that, Angus.” Georgiana let her eyes roam over the width of his shoulders, the strength in the ghostly hands that clutched the windowsill. He turned to look at her, his gaze fierce.
“Aye, Glenlorne survived that, but this is different. My father divided his sons, put a few on each side, half Jacobite, half Royalist, just to be sure the MacNabbs would keep Glenlorne no matter who won.”
“And which side did you take?”
His scowl intensified. “How could I have chosen? I was a Scot, but—” He looked away his eyes roaming the glen, his shoulders hunched against the memory.
“But you were in love with an English girl, the daughter of an English lord,” she prodded, finishing his sentence.
“I wasn’t a coward. I would have fought with my brothers, but they didn’t give me the chance.” He studied his hands. “The night we planned to run away together, they caught me, packing my things. They knew well enough where I was going. They knocked me senseless, threw me over a horse, and dragged me to the coast. They put me on the first outbound ship they found, not caring where it was headed, just so long as it took me away from you.”
“So that’s why you didn’t come,” she said softly, without blame, though she felt regret keenly enough. It was a familiar companion.
“Did you truly believe I’d abandoned you?”
She sighed, and the breeze stirred the stunted trees that had begun to grow up within the tower’s ruined walls. “They told me you had done exactly that, later. They said you’d come to your senses and run away rather than face a life with me.”
“Bastards!” he hissed. A flock of swallows fled in terror at his malevolence, streaking past Angus’s shade and out into the open sky. He flinched, though they could not harm him. “I suppose my brothers paid the price for it. All dead, or captured.”
“If you’d stayed, you would have died with them at Culloden Moor, and I would still have lost you,” Georgiana said softly. She drifted closer still. “Tell me where the ship took you. I’ve often imagined—”
