Geddes opened the bedroom door just as Rosalyn, dressed only in her nightclothes with her hair in long tangles around her face, was scrambling off the bed.
“Rosalyn? Is he ill?” He could imagine no other scenario that made even a modicum of sense to him. His gaze went from Rosalyn to the duke, whose face was pinched into a look of amused puzzlement.
“Your Grace?”
The duke shook his head as if to clear it. “I’m sorry. I was having a dream, and suddenly it was real.” He looked at Rosalyn, who was plastered against the far wall, near the door. He offered both of them a wry grin. “Normally, I’m not one to question such a gift, but—”
Stunned, Geddes said again, “Rosalyn? What is going on here?”
She huddled near the door, her fist clenched to her chest, her eyes closed, her breathing ragged, and her hair loose and wild around her shoulders. She was speechless, it seemed. He had not seen that level of panic on her face in years, not even the day before, when she’d been attacked by MacNab. Suddenly, she let out a cry of frustration and ran from the room, slamming the door soundly behind her.
Baffled, Geddes crossed to the bed. “Your Grace, what happened? Are you all right?”
The duke stared at him from the bed, his dark eyes boring deeply into him. “I’m fine, thank you. I wish I could explain what just happened here, but I’m not sure I know.”
Equally confused, Geddes said, “I must find Rosalyn. Please, I shall return shortly.” He strode from the room and ran to Rosalyn’s suite. When he found his sister, he shook his head and sighed. She sat in an overstuffed chair in the corner, her knees to her chest and her face pressed against her hands.
“Rosalyn? What happened? What were you doing in there?”
“Oh, God, don’t ask me.”
“But Rosalyn, I…it’s…what…” He couldn’t form a coherent thought.
Rosalyn lifted her head and took a deep breath. Although he no longer saw panic in her face, he saw embarrassment, something that was not often evident in Rosalyn’s demeanor.
“I woke up during the night because I heard him call out. I went to his room and he wasn’t rational. He kept saying some woman’s name over and over again.”
“He was probably just having a nightmare.”
She hesitated and then nodded. “Aye, perhaps that’s it.”
Relieved that she probed no further, he asked, “He got you into his bed, Rosalyn?”
She nodded again.
A strange calm settled over Geddes, replacing the shocking image of his sister scrambling off the duke’s bed. Suddenly their future seemed on the verge of being quite secure indeed.
“I don’t know how that happened.” Slowly she rose from the chair and crossed to the window. She parted the curtains and stared outside.
Geddes tried not to sound pleased when he said, “You were compromised, dear sister. Good and compromised. I see a wedding in your future. Don’t fret, Rosalyn. Everything will be fine. Just fine.”
As he hastened to speak to the duke, he heard his sister’s muffled cry of frustration.
• • •
Fletcher stood at his bedroom window as he mulled over the morning’s curious events. Lindsay had come to him in a pristine white gown, a wide circle of bright red blood on her chest. She had hovered above the bed, a wistful, sad smile on her face. He wanted to tell her he hadn’t killed her, but it was as if she couldn’t hear him or didn’t understand. And then suddenly she was there, in bed with him, and he knew that he had to have her one last time.
He felt a twinge at his shoulder and glanced down. Bite marks? He ran his fingers over it, remembering that in their passion, she had bit him. Rosalyn had bit him. The perfect dream had been a different reality; the widow’s presence proved that. He closed his eyes, willing himself to remember more, but he could not.
She had been in his bed and they had made love. His smile turned grim. Made love. Hardly that. In his liquor-soaked dream it was Lindsay he pulled astride, impaling her. But in truth it had been Rosalyn.
Fletcher felt an odd squeezing in his chest, an emotion he couldn’t describe. Bemused, he looked out beyond the trees where he could see the stables. Later in the morning he planned to dress and take a turn around the grounds; he enjoyed seeing what he had inherited. He made a face. But before he could enjoy himself, he had to meet with two crofters about a dispute over a goat. And then at some point he was going into the village to face the nasty pub owner.
There was a knock on the door and Geddes poked his head in, his face a study in concern. “Might I speak with you?”
Fletcher nodded.
Geddes walked toward him, wringing his hands. “It’s a most unfortunate situation, my lord. My sister claims you cried out in your sleep, and when she hurried in to find out what was amiss, you, well, you dragged her into your bed.”
“Dragged her into my bed?”
“Yes, Your Grace. That’s what she claims.”
Fletcher didn’t know what he had done or what she had done. All he knew was that she was in his bed when he awoke.
Geddes cleared his throat and pulled at his collar. “Circumstances have forced me to talk to you.”
“About your sister?”
“Yes, but more importantly about the terms of the will.”
Fletcher lifted one eyebrow. “Terms? You told me about the will in Texas.”
“Not all the terms.”
Fletcher felt a great unease creep into his stomach. “So there are more conditions, other than just my being here?”
Geddes nodded. “By coming to Hedabarr, you have inherited the castle and the land, but unless you produce an heir within a year of your arrival, the MacNeil fortune will be awarded elsewhere.”
Fletcher strode in front of the long table that held the ancient chime clock. “You never told me this.”
“You became ill on the trip. I hadn’t the chance.”
“Who gets the money if I don’t comply?”
“The most sniveling, self-righteous prig ever to be born, who at this moment, I am certain, is waiting to hear that I have failed in my duties to bring you here and agree to the contents of the will.”
Fletcher rocked back on his heels, noting that Geddes was sweating. “Sniveling prig, huh?”
“Indeed, Your Grace.”
Fletcher pinned Geddes with a level gaze. “Why do I feel that as of this morning, you now have someone in mind to carry my heir?”
A look of guilt passed over Geddes’s features but was quickly gone. “I didn’t, not at first.”
“You mean to tell me that you hadn’t given your sister a thought?”
Geddes continued to perspire. “I admit I did. But she wouldn’t agree to such an arrangement and was absolutely vehement. Please, believe me. She is often stubborn and headstrong, but she is not devious. In fact, she told me she couldn’t agree to such an arrangement because you could very easily disregard her as a possible wife.”
“Yet I found her in my bed this very morning.” He turned to Geddes once again. “Don’t you find that convenient?”
Geddes looked offended. “Your Grace! You are not implying that she and I, in any way, planned this, are you? For I assure you, Your Grace—”
“For God’s sake, Geddes, will you stop Your Gracing me?”
“But, what am I to call you?”
“I don’t know,” Fletcher answered with an impatient swipe of his arm. “But when we’re alone, like we are now, it sounds so damned pompous. If you have trouble using my name, well, then don’t call me anything at all.
“Now, as to your sister. She could be carrying my heir now.” He leveled another gaze at Geddes.
“Yes, she could,” Geddes agreed.
“But if I ever learn that this was planned—”
“Believe me, it was not planned.”
Fletcher nodded. “Make whatever arrangements you have to. I’ll marry her, on one condition.”
Geddes stared at him. “And that is?”
“You give me some information on my siblings. Bringing them here was part of the deal, Geddes, if you remember.”
“Of course. I’ll check on it immediately.”
“Is there something else?”
“No. No.” Geddes left.
Fletcher stared into the fire. As a half-breed living and working with the army, he’d become jaded and suspicious of people. His question about being set up quickly dissipated when he recalled the way Rosalyn had scurried from his bed and fled from the room. Geddes was an honest man and had been sincerely shocked to find his sister there. Any subterfuge would have been evident on the man’s face, in his eyes. And over the years, Fletcher had become adept at catching someone in a lie. Geddes was simply not a man who could lie and get away with it.
Fletcher’s thoughts went again to the early morning hours. He had been satisfied, as had she. He liked that she was spirited. She spoke her mind to him. And she was quite easy on the eyes.
His life had changed. It was as if a door to another world had opened the day Geddes came into his cell. Here he and his family could live and live well, but not without the money attached to the will. Marriage was something he had thought out of his reach, so he had never asked himself if a family was important to him.
Now all that remained was getting his brothers and his sister here. He needed them with him; he wanted to see them grow up. He wanted to try to make right the mistakes of his youth. Until he’d set foot on the Scottish shore, he hadn’t realized how much he needed them. And until they were here and safe, he would not rest well.
Later, he saddled a mount and rode into the countryside to consider the question of the goat and the sheepherder.
A burly middle-aged man with his arms crossed over his chest stepped into the road ahead of him. A thick wad of tobacco bulged from his lower lip. “Ye’ve come about the goat, I’m thinkin’.”
No niceties. Fletcher appreciated that. “You must be Douglas?”
The man nodded. “Douglas MacDougal. They call me Lum.”
Fletcher raised his eyebrows.
“I clean lums,” he explained. “Fireplaces.”
“Where’s the goat?” Fletcher dismounted and threw the reins over a long plank in front of the croft.
“Damn thing eats everything. All me prize clover and grass for me sheep, the goat gobbled up like a pig on swill.”
Fletcher followed him to the back of the small house. There, on the grass next to a padlocked shed, was a tarp. He briefly noted that the shed windows appeared painted over. Douglas the Lum lifted the tarp and there lay the dead goat, a bullet hole in his head. “Whose goat is this?”
“Damn thing belongs to Bill Duncan. Bill the Goat.”
Fletcher stifled a smile. “And where is Mr. Duncan now?”
MacDougal looked beyond Fletcher, who turned and saw a younger man approaching rapidly on foot, shaking his fist. “Damn ye! Damn ye to hell, MacDougal, if you shot me goat I’ll sic me hounds on ye!”
“If ye kept that animal tethered it wouldn’t happen, Bill,” Douglas said calmly.
Bill Duncan looked down at his goat and shook his head. “He chewed through the tether. It was a rope the size of a man’s fist, mind ye, and he still ate it like it were a lamb chop.”
They both looked at Fletcher, apparently waiting for him to make a decision. He remembered Rosalyn’s suggestion: use your common sense.
“When did you shoot the goat, Douglas?”
“Dinner time yeste’day.”
Fletcher didn’t want to make a mistake. He didn’t want to pit one crofter against another. “How about if the two of you slaughter the goat and split the meat?” He held his breath.
“But he kilt me ram,” Bill said mournfully. “He coulda just led him back to me own place. Didn’t have ta kill it.”
Fletcher looked at Douglas for some kind of answer.
Douglas cursed and spit his wad of tobacco onto the grass. “That critter was too ornery to get close to. Nearly took a bite out o’ me arse.” He spat again. “I didna have no choice.”
Fletcher took a breath. “Since the deed is done, gentlemen, I suggest you take my advice and split the meat. It will come in handy for both of your families come winter, won’t it?”
The men studied one another. “Ye want the hide, man?” Douglas asked.
Bill cut his gaze to Fletcher, then answered, “Nah, ye can ha’e it.”
The men grudgingly shook hands and Fletcher took his leave, once again relieved that he had handled the situation calmly. Of course, these were easy. He wondered how he’d handle a truly difficult or dangerous situation.
He nudged the mount east toward a stream, following it south as it burbled over the smooth stones toward the sea. A tiny cottage was perched on a rise, a small garden to one side. Out of the corner of his eye he caught just a glimpse of something red down by the stream. Moving closer, he realized it was a child, a toddler just learning to walk, in a red shirt, weaving dangerously close to the water.
He glanced toward the cottage and saw no one. Laundry rustled in the breeze from a makeshift clothesline. The garden was empty.
At that moment he heard a splash from the stream. He dismounted quickly and ran to the site to find the toddler sputtering and flailing about in the water. He scooped the child out and, with the boy coughing and crying, strode toward the cottage. At that very moment a woman threw open the door, her eyes huge as she looked at Fletcher and her soaked, wailing child.
“Clive!” She reached for her boy, trying to settle him down once Fletcher passed him to her.
“He had fallen into the river, ma’am.” Fletcher watched the terror in the woman’s eyes as he explained.
Once both mother and child were more subdued, the woman invited Fletcher inside. While she changed the child into dry clothing, Fletcher looked around the cottage. It was clean and tidy, with colorful patchwork quilts thrown over some of the furniture.
The woman returned, put the child on the floor, and motioned for Fletcher to take a seat at the table. “Me name’s Birgit, Your Grace. Ye’ll stay for a wee cuppa?”
He assumed that meant tea, so he nodded while she prepared it.
The toddler, quiet and curious, sat on the floor and rubbed his cheek against the fur of Fletcher’s greatcoat and tucked his thumb into his mouth. Fletcher picked the boy up and settled him against the crook of his arm, where he sat quite contentedly.
The tea set out, the woman said, “Your Grace, I canna thank ye enough. Ye saved me Clive!” Tears threatened. “He be wandering off so much, I canna keep track of him. Some days I feel like putting him on a leash just to keep him safe.”
She wasn’t a pretty woman, but she was comely and the tea was strong and sweet, just as he’d begun to like it. “You know, when my younger brother was just a lad, he was the same way. Always off somewhere, scaring everyone to death with his curiosity. They put little bells on his moccasins so they would always know where he was.”
She brightened. “Aye, that’s a fine idea. I’ll have Fergie get on it as soon as he and the boys return from the village.”
Fletcher slanted her a glance. “Fergie the Burn?”
She straightened, proud. “Aye, Fergie is me man. He be a good man.”
“I’ve met your husband. Yes, he is a good man.” Fletcher finished his tea and stood, and handed her the boy. “Thank you for the tea.”
“Nay, ’twas nothing,” she answered. “Ye saved me Clive, Your Grace.” Her eyes welled with tears again. “I’m grateful, so grateful.” She gave him a clumsy curtsey. “And we’ll be sure to try them bells on Clive’s shoes, we will.”
Fletcher understood small-town mentality—rarely could anyone keep a secret and everyone knew everyone else’s business. But he had no idea how swiftly the news of Clive’s rescue rumbled through the island community.
He’d barely sat down to dinner that evening when Geddes reported that the news of Fletcher’s heroism was all over the island. Fletcher could only wonder if they used smoke signals to get the message around so quickly.