School For Heiresses 3- Beware A Scot's Revenge (25 page)

He hastened his steps. Mother wasn’t one to buy on credit, but he’d left the ladies alone together for a day, and that might be something the lass would do just to torment him. Damn, damn, damn, damn.

“What is going on up here?” he demanded as he burst into the drawing room. Several pairs of eyes swung his way, mostly belonging to Rosscraig’s few maids and the housekeeper. But Lachlan cared only about the pair belonging to Venetia. Who didn’t look the least bit bored. She scarcely even looked like a London lady anymore. In a borrowed gray gown with frayed cuffs and a stained apron, she fit right in with the servants, a lock of her glorious hair drooping over one eye and her cheek marred by a streak of blacking. None of it dimmed her attractions one bit.

“Lachlan?” His mother moved from behind the other lasses, her gaze cold on him. “Go away, for heaven’s sake!”

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That response from his mother, who was always begging him to keep her company, flabbergasted him.

“Go do…whatever it is you and the lads do all day,” she went on. “You’re not supposed to see this until it’s finished!”

“If I’m paying for it, I’ll damned well have a say in what’s done,” Lachlan barked as he spotted Jamie perched atop a ladder, hanging curtains he’d never seen.

“Paying for it?” Mother said. “What are you talking about?”

“The new drapes.” He flicked his hand toward the sofa. “That new settee. And whatever else you’ve been buying on credit.”

“Don’t be a fool—that’s our same old settee. We just covered it with the good parts of our old curtains. And the new curtains are our old bed canopies.” She smiled fondly at Venetia, who watched him with those green eyes that never gave him quarter. “Being up away from the light, the fabric stayed fresh-looking, so the lass here suggested we use it for curtains and take down the canopy rails of the beds. Don’t need canopies anyway.”

“We were fortunate that the colors match,” Venetia put in, “and we were able to salvage most of the curtain fringe, too—it looks lovely on the settee.”

“We” apparently included the clanswomen cheerily engrossed in scrubbing floors and beating rugs and God knew what else.

“Looks nice, don’t it?” Jamie chirped from atop the ladder. “Brightens the room right up. You should see what the ladies did with the dining room, sir, fixing it up and arranging things all proper. Did that yesterday. Even cleaned the ceilings with a special mixture Miss Ross invented.”

Miss Ross? Oh, right, Venetia was supposed to be a London cousin. And judging from Jamie’s besotted smile, the lad had forgotten she was too lofty for the likes of him. Lachlan fought the urge to drag the lad down and smack the smile from his lips. “Aren’t you supposed to be taking care of the barley floor? The malting is still going on, you know.”

“Yes, sir,” Jamie mumbled, and started to descend the ladder.

“Pay no attention to Lachlan,” Mother told the lad. “He’s only complaining because he wasn’t consulted. He can spare you for a while.”

He could, but why should Jamie get to stay here, seeing Venetia with her cheeks flushed and her eyes shining with enthusiasm, while Lachlan spent his days at the stills, pining after her?

“If you need a man helping you, I’ll do it,” Lachlan said, though in the past he’d have sooner dragged his naked body over hot coals than fool with drapes and such female foolery. “Let Jamie go back to the stills.”

“No, indeed,” his mother retorted. “If you spend yer days here, you risk being seen by anybody who visits from town.” Her eyes gleamed at him. “Besides, it won’t do to have you hanging curtains when the earl arrives. You’ll need to look fierce and manly if you want to cow him into giving us our money, won’t
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ye?”

Was that sarcasm he heard? From his
mother
, of all people? He looked to Venetia, who seemed to hide a smile as she blacked an andiron.

That smile provoked him even more. “Duncannon won’t be here for a few days yet,” Lachlan persisted.

“And if anyone comes, that new butler you hired without consulting me will warn me so I can duck out of sight.”

His mother clapped her work-worn hands on her bony hips. “You’ve got more important things to do than hang about here. Lord knows ye’ve told me that often enough in the past five years. We wouldn’t dream of keeping you from it.” She strode toward him. “Jamie will do us fine. Now go on with you, and let us do our work.”

Reluctantly, he headed toward the door. “Perhaps I’ll see you at dinner,” he said as he reached the hall.

“We’re too busy to take regular meals.” His mother smiled at him from the doorway. “I’ll have Cook send a nice dinner to the cottage for you, all right?”

“But…” But what? He glanced beyond Mother to where Venetia paid him no mind at all, too busy setting the andiron in place.

A hard knot formed in his gut. He wanted more than dinner. He wanted to talk to Venetia, to see her, to be with her. But he wasn’t about to say that. Because he had no right to any of it, not when he’d be handing the lass over to her father in a few days.

If he didn’t end up killing the man.

“Yes, send dinner,” he mumbled, then left.

The next morning, after a night of restless dreams about Venetia, he swallowed his pride and went early for breakfast, but either they’d seen him coming or they really were at a crofter’s house seeing to a sick child, as the butler claimed. No one was home.

The butler didn’t know which crofter. He didn’t know when they’d return. He didn’t know a bloody thing that might keep Lachlan from howling his frustration to the skies. He told himself that was the end of it. They didn’t need him at the manor, and he sure as the devil didn’t need them. He’d often spent weeks away with the malting or the kilning, making sure the excisemen didn’t find his illegal stills. How was this any different?

Because Venetia is there.

That was absurd. He’d never missed having a woman about before; why should he miss it now? He didn’t want Venetia singing to him, annoying him…coddling him. No, indeed. He could slather horse liniment on his own wounds. Never mind that she had a way of doing it…

He had to stop thinking of her!

It didn’t help that he had to listen to his clansmen prattle on over the next few days about the changes at the manor and how Venetia and his mother were getting on so well. Every other minute, somebody was
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saying things like “You should have heard your London cousin singing ‘Gypsy Laddie’ ” or “You should have seen the lass teaching the wives how to make their silver shine.”

Apparently his “London cousin” could come and go as she pleased, while he was forced to stay away so nobody outside the clan would learn he wasn’t dead. He tried twice to see her, but the one time he actually caught them home, Venetia excused herself at once, leaving him to visit with his mother, who chided him for coming.

That glimpse of the lass was like a few drops of water dribbled in a parched throat. Not nearly enough. He could demand to see her, but then both she and Mother would know he yearned for her. That would only raise impossible expectations.

But by the third afternoon after their arrival, when the butler told him they were out walking, probably in fairyland somewhere, he couldn’t take it anymore. Determined not to be put off again, he planted himself in the woods outside the manor house where he could watch both entrances. If they really were walking, they’d have to come past him, and she wouldn’t be able to make an easy exit. He felt like a besotted idiot, lurking out in the woods, but just as he’d decided that the horse liniment must be going to his head, the kitchen door opened and Venetia slipped outside. Just as he’d suspected—they’d been in the manor all along.

Heart hammering foolishly in his chest, he crept through the trees toward her. Where was she going alone? And dressed like that, too, with a country lass’s tartan
arisaid
draped about her slender form and belted right proper?

After a furtive glance about, she tugged the excess over her head like a hood, then walked away from the house.

She cut off across the field separating the Ross estate from the Duncannon one, and his eyes narrowed. Ah, she was headed to her father’s house. To find shelter and beg whoever lived there to help her return to London? No, she could have done that before.

He hesitated, wondering if he should follow. If Duncannon’s people recognized him, it would raise questions about his miraculous resurrection. Next thing he knew, folks would be traipsing onto his estate to find out what was going on. Then he’d never keep this matter between him and the earl private. Still, he couldn’t let her roam Braidmuir alone; it wasn’t safe. She might run afoul of rough men who didn’t know who she was. He’d just have to be careful, stick to the woods and stay out of the parts where people were.

That’s what he told himself as he set off after her.

Unsure what to expect, Venetia crossed the bridge over the burn separating Lachlan’s land from her father’s. She’d asked Lady Ross to bring her here, but the woman had worried about anyone recognizing her.

Given how many years Venetia had been away, she found that highly unlikely, but just in case, she’d
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borrowed an
arisaid
from a servant to cover her head. She had to see what had happened in the years she’d been away. Especially after Lachlan’s comments about burned-out cottages. Lachlan. No, she wouldn’t think about him. Their three days apart made her miss him too much…and realize she’d probably read too much into his kisses and caresses. Although he’d visited the manor, he’d never once asked to see her. He’d inquired about their whereabouts and taken any rebuff in stride, as if his inquiries had been motivated only by politeness.

His mother said that his pride kept him from showing that he cared. Venetia wanted desperately to believe her, but she’d begun to lose hope. By now, Papa had received Lachlan’s letter and was heading to Scotland. If Lachlan never relented…

A band closed around her chest. How could she blame him for not wanting to marry the daughter of a man who’d ravaged his countrymen? That was how the people at Rosscraig saw Papa. Thinking she was a Ross cousin, they’d spoken freely of how the earl allowed his factor, McKinley, to toss people off the land with cruel abandon.

And now as she wandered Braidmuir, careful to avoid the groundskeeper or occasional shepherd, she quickly saw the results. There were no burned-out cottages, but there might as well have been. Of the twenty-two crofters’ huts, only four appeared inhabited, probably by sheep farmers. What had happened to the red-faced potato farmer who’d given her rides on his plow horse when she was a child? Where was the toothless granny who’d sat in front of the pink cottage, churning her spinning wheel every fine day?

Gone, all of them. Tears trickled down Venetia’s cheeks. Only the Ross estate nearby bustled with life. Clansmen tilled land, coopered whisky barrels, and tended the stills. Women did their washing while their children swung from branches and gathered heather. Lachlan had struggled to keep his people in their homes, to make sure they were provided for, even when it meant risking his life. Even when it meant this foolish kidnapping. Now that she knew why he’d done it, she could hardly bear to remember the insults she’d hurled at him. Especially when she saw Papa’s land lying silent except for the bleating sheep.

She brushed tears from her eyes. The Cheviots were everywhere, clogging every pasture, jostling up every hill. They’d overtaken even the grassy glen near the burn that bounded the property, the one Lachlan had always liked to fish.

Must they take this bit of her childhood from her, too? Temper flaring, she began shooing the flocks, trying to force them to leave the glen, but they only stumbled off a few feet before returning to grazing.

“There’s no point, lassie,” said a low voice from the woods behind her. “Even if you empty this glen of them, they’ll fill others. And it’s not really their fault anyway, is it?”

The band around her chest grew painful as she whirled to find Lachlan watching her while leaning against the same gnarled oak he used to favor. With his hair tousled and his trousers grimy from his work, he looked exactly as he’d looked sixteen years ago. It made her want to throw herself into his arms. It made her want to cry. He was no longer the endearingly wild Lachlan of her childhood. Thanks to her father, he wasn’t allowed to be.

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“No, it’s not the sheep’s fault,” she said, her heart in her throat. “But neither is it mine.”

He pushed away from the tree. “I didn’t say it was.”

“You shouldn’t be here, you know. Someone might see you.”

He shrugged. “Someone might see
you
, but that didn’t stop you from wandering among the crofters’

cottages.”

“You’ve been watching me the whole time?”

“Mayhap.” His expression veiled, he approached her.

“Why?”

The question seemed to unnerve him. “No reason.”

She wanted to scream. He’d followed her over here, and he couldn’t even tell her why? “Very well.”

She headed up the hill behind the crofters’ cottages. “Then you have no reason to stay.”

He kept pace easily with her. “You shouldn’t be here alone.”

“I’m not alone.” Gathering up her skirts, she hastened her steps. “I’ve got the sheep for company.” She paused at the top to stare at him. “Why do you care what I do, anyway, as long as it doesn’t affect your plans?” A sudden suspicion made her stomach roil. “You think I’m trying to escape, don’t you?”

“Don’t be daft,” he growled as he approached.

“Why else would you risk coming here where you might be seen—”

He cut her off with a kiss, a hard one meant to quiet her. It stunned her so much that for a moment she allowed it. Until she remembered that this was how it always started—with him kissing her and pretending things could be different between them, then reminding her afterward that they couldn’t. She’d had enough of
that
game. When he tried to deepen the kiss, she tore her mouth free. “Don’t you dare!” she bit out, then strode down an alley between two cottages, struggling to hold back tears.