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Chapter One
Scottish Highlands
Mid-January 1721
Clenching the wadded letter tightly in his fist, Broden pivoted on his heels and tramped the reverse path across the smooth flagstone floor. His boot heels rapped dully off the book-laden shelves and the dark paneled walls of the masculine chamber acting as his library, private sitting room, and study.
His heartbeat whooshed in his ears, a peculiarly muffled tempo, like someone striking a drum covered by a thick pile of blankets.
The fire in the hearth sizzled as occasional droplets of rain survived the treacherous descent down the chimney only to splutter to a quick death. Outside, a deluge poured from the contemptuous pewter-gray clouds as the biting winter wind assailed everything in its path with unrelenting resolve to pummel and saturate.
He supposed he ought to be grateful it wasn’t snowing.
A particularly powerful gust buffeted the sturdy rectangular stone house, causing the windowpanes to rattle and the unremarkable man sitting at Broden’s desk to cast a wary glance out the rain-splattered glass.
No doubt, Mr. Philibius Oswald, Solicitor, worried about his return journey to Eddleshaugh.
As well, he should.
If the weather remained this dismal—a savvy chap would wager on it—Oswald would be obliged to take a room at one of Eddleshaugh’s inns. After he and the sorry nag he’d arrived upon had slogged the almost two miles to the township. At this juncture, the much-traveled tracks to Edinburgh and then London, would be impassable if the torrent kept up. Given the ashen sky, that seemed certain.
After all, this was January in the Highlands. One could expect rain and snow. Snow and rain. Then more of the same.
Every bit as certain as the intractable weather’s continuation was another simple fact: Broden wouldn’t extend his hospitality and offer the attorney a bed for the night. Or two or three if the tempest lingered. Not after learning why Oswald had stupidly—Sassenach idiot—braved the storm and called unannounced.
An entirely different sort of storm brewed within the cozy study, though no less fierce or ruthless in its fury. As Broden struggled to accept the life-altering news he’d just received—Goddammit to hell—anger and disbelief vied for supremacy in every pore. Pores humming and pulsating and expanding in a silent, but raucous chorus of strain and vexation.
And the news… A groan of despair almost escaped past his meshed lips. News he’d never conceived nor expected to hear; not in a hundred—no, a thousand—lifetimes.
God’s hairy ballocks,he swore irreverently to himself.
Surely, it was a gargantuan mistake. An enormous, colossal error. A careless clerical blunder or a misprint on some long-ago faded, forgotten, and fusty kirk registry. Someone, somewhere had to have made a mistake.
He could not be—most assuredly did not want to be—the next Earl of Montforth. Plowing his free hand through his hair, he dislodged the ribbon that kept it tied in a queue at his nape. Earl or not, he wasn’t donning a ridiculous curling wig or powdering his hair for anyone.
He was not a mincing fop.
“There’s nae one else to inherit?” he demanded of the solicitor, aware but beyond caring that the man simply performed his duties.
Dinna kill the messenger and all that twaddin’ shite.
The silent reminder to himself did nothing to lessen his ire. His helplessness. The acerbic frustration. The unequivocal feeling of being trapped. Ensnared. Imprisoned.
He jabbed a finger toward the man of law, idly noting the dirt packed beneath his nails. Earls didn’t have dirty fingernails. Or hands. Neither did they muck out stalls, move rocks from grazing and farm the land, or chop their own firewood.
“Ye’re absolutely—without a single doubt—positive ye havena made a mistake?” he asked.
Oswald vacillated for a long blink, his Adam’s apple rapidly cresting and sinking like a miniature boat caught upon the tidal surges of a massive, violent storm. And his tiny ship was about to flounder.
“There is another distant English cousin,” the fusty attorney reluctantly confessed. His eyebrows—wiry copperish things with minds of their own and with an unfortunate proclivity to wriggle about on his forehead—huddled together over the pronounced bridge of his beaked nose.
“Aye? And?” Broden encouraged, grasping at even the weakest straw. Anything to keep him from plummeting into the loony world of the aristocracy.
“In truth, he’s already contacted me in anticipation—” Oswald faltered, realizing he’d disclosed confidential information, and his nervous gaze bounced about the room, landing everywhere but on Broden.
So, the other chap thought to inherit.
Interesting.
