Highland Rogue

“Of course not, silly!” Her laughter set the cluster of golden ringlets piled high on her head into a quivering dance of their own. “But the melody runs through my dreams.”

“I know what ye mean.” Ewan caressed her face with his gaze. “The sound of yer voice and yer laugh have run through my dreams for years.”

And the way she’d felt in his arms that last night.

Fortunately for Ewan, the dance music began again—a lush Strauss waltz that perfectly expressed the buoyant, heady feelings within him. Otherwise, he might have broken his promise to himself and caused a twittering scandal among London society, by kissing another man’s fiancée in the middle of the Fortescues’ ballroom.

Tessa gave a breathless sigh. “It’s so romantic that you thought of me all those years you were off in America, working so hard to make something of yourself.”

It hadn’t seemed very romantic when he’d first arrived in Pennsylvania, a lad of eighteen, raw from the Highlands, without a penny in his pocket. But he’d had a fire in his belly, stoked by injustice and true love denied. That fire had fueled his rapid rise in the world.

“It was all for ye, Tessa Talbot. To make myself worthy of yer notice and yer company.”

Well, almost all, Ewan insisted to his bothersome conscience. True, in those early years he’d been at least as eager to take some revenge against her father, who had sacked him without a character reference. In time, however, he’d come to enjoy the challenge of making his fortune for its own sake. Once he’d had the resources to carry out his original plan, he’d assumed Tessa must have been long since married to someone else.

Then a copy of the London Times had fallen into his hands. Ewan vowed to have that blessed paper gilded and mounted. For it had informed him that the Honorable Miss Tessa Talbot, daughter of Lady Lydiard and her late husband, was engaged to be married.

Only engaged!

All his old fallow feelings for her had burst back into bloom, and Ewan had booked passage on the fastest steamer that would get him across the Atlantic.

“Worthy? What nonsense!” Tessa gave him a token slap with the hand that rested on his shoulder. “You know I’ve always thought more of real people who work for a living than I ever have of useless aristocrats.”

Her fervent declaration should have pleased him no end, but for reasons that eluded Ewan, it made him strangely uneasy. He told himself not to be so foolish. He had everything he’d ever wanted within his grasp. Nothing and no one would stop him now. Least of all some vague foreboding he could not even put into words.

It was like the feeling he used to get when stalking game in the hills above Strathandrew. When he’d slowly turn, to discover a pair of wild, wary eyes fixed on him. Try as he might, Ewan could not shake it.

When the final notes of the waltz died away, he bowed to Tessa. “Shall we get something to drink, then find a quiet spot where we can sit and talk?”

While he waited for her answer, his gaze roved over the Fortescues’ ballroom.

There! Near the orchestra dais. A tall, elegant-looking woman was watching him.

The color of her hair, her willowy grace of figure and her long, delicate features all put him in mind of a doe. But the relentless intensity of her gaze better suited a wildcat defending her young.

Did he know the woman? Ewan reckoned he might. But from where?

Then it came to him.

The elder Miss Talbot. What was her name? Catherine? Charlotte?

Whatever she called herself, no wonder she was looking daggers at him. The lady had always twitted and found fault with him during the summers when Lord Lydiard had brought his family north to their Scottish hunting estate.

She’d especially disapproved of his obvious fancy for her half sister. Ewan wondered if she might have been the one who’d tattled to old Lord Lydiard about his midnight meeting with Tessa, on the Talbots’ last night in Scotland, ten years ago.

Well, she’d get her comeuppance when he made Tessa his bride!

Long ago, Ewan had discovered that nothing vexed the elder Miss Talbot so much as when he pretended her slights had no power to vex him. Now, he shot her a wide grin of friendly recognition, with the faintest suggestion of mockery twinkling in his eyes. He knew it was bound to send her into a sputter of indignation. After all these years, he still relished the prospect of getting a rise out of her.

Miss Talbot crossed the ballroom floor with a brisk, purposeful stride. A man followed her.

“Claire!” Tessa cried when she spotted her sister. “What are you doing here? You never go out in the evenings.”

The two women clasped hands and touched cheeks with unfeigned affection.

Ewan had often wondered at their closeness. They were only half sisters, after all, and as opposite in temperament as any two women could be. Each had ample cause to envy the other, too. Tessa, her elder sister’s fortune and consequence in the family. Claire, her younger sister’s beauty and charm.

Claire Talbot smoothed a stray curl off Tessa’s forehead in a gesture that looked almost motherly. “I gather it’s high time I ventured out in society more often. To keep an eye on what you’ve been getting up to while poor Spencer is away. After all, we wouldn’t want any silly gossip to spoil your wedding plans, would we?”

Though she spoke to Tessa, Ewan could tell Miss Talbot’s warning was aimed at him. Did she think him too stupid to know about her sister’s betrothal?

Claire’s mild rebuke appeared to fluster Tessa, which Ewan added to his growing list of grudges against the woman.

“We’ll talk about all that another time, Claire.” Tessa glanced at Ewan and immediately recovered her usual sparkle. “You’ll never guess who’s come to London after all these years!”

“My powers of deduction are better than you may imagine, dearest.” Claire turned to Ewan and thrust out her hand. “Mr. Geddes, isn’t it?”

Ignoring her intention to shake his hand, Ewan caught her long slender fingers in his and raised them to his lips instead. “I’m flattered ye remember me, Miss Talbot.”

As he’d hoped, the gesture and the pretended warmth of his greeting succeeded in provoking her.

She pulled her hand away with the barest pretense of civility. “Pray, don’t flatter yourself too much, sir. I take care to remember a good many people. Not always for the most pleasant of reasons.”

Tessa must have sensed the tension between them, for her voice rang with forced brightness as she asked her sister, “Who is your escort tonight? I don’t believe we’ve been introduced.”

For a moment, Claire Talbot gave her sister a blank stare, then she turned to the man behind her. “Oh! Pardon my manners. This is Mr. Obadiah Hutt, a business associate of mine. Mr. Hutt, allow me to introduce my sister, Tessa, and Mr. Ewan Geddes…an old friend of the family.”

Ewan bridled. Did she think he was ashamed of who he’d been or where he’d come from? Was her introduction a veiled threat to expose his past?

And who was this Hutt fellow, anyway? He lacked the languid ease of a gentleman, and he shook Ewan’s hand with a firm grip, meeting his eye with a direct gaze…almost too direct.

“What Miss Talbot means, sir—” Ewan tried to stare her down, but she did not flinch “—is that I used to be a gillie on her father’s estate in Scotland.”

When a look of puzzlement wrinkled the other man’s brow, Ewan explained, “A gillie’s a sort of guide for hunting and fishing. Totes gear, loads guns, dresses the kill. That sort of thing.”

Tessa clasped his arm in a show of support that touched Ewan. “He was perfectly marvelous at it, too! Why, I can still picture him striding off to the hills in his kilt, with a gun slung over his shoulder. Like a hero of Sir Walter Scott’s, I always used to think.”

Miss Talbot’s business associate nodded at the explanation. “And what brings you down from Scotland, Mr. Geddes?”

“I didn’t come from Scotland, sir.” Hard as he tried to sound matter-of-fact, Ewan couldn’t manage it. “I left my home ten years ago, and I’ve never been back since.”

Thanks to Lord Lydiard. With a little help, perhaps, from the woman who now stood before Ewan, eyeing him with barely disguised hostility.

His old plans for revenge tempted Ewan sorely. Perhaps he should make a few discreet inquiries about Brancasters, after all.

I left my home ten years ago.

Ewan Geddes’s words, and the glint of outrage beneath his facade of casual charm, made Claire’s stomach constrict and her breath catch, as if strong hands had suddenly pulled the stays of her corset even tighter.