Highland Rogue

She’d come tonight expecting to do battle with a simple fortune hunter, like Major Hamilton-Smythe. Instead, she’d found an old adversary who might have far darker motives and a far greater capacity for mischief. One who might wish to harm the only two things in the world she cared about—her sister and Brancasters.

As the orchestra struck up a new tune, Claire turned to Obadiah Hutt. Behind the cover of her gloved hand, she whispered, “Ask her to dance.”

When he seemed not to hear, or perhaps not to understand, she hissed, “My sister! Invite her to dance.”

“Miss Tessa?” Mr. Hutt extended his arm, as Claire had bidden him. “May I have the honor?”

When Tessa cast a doubtful glance at Ewan Geddes, Claire urged, “Go ahead, dearest. There’s apt to be less talk if you’re seen dancing with a number of different gentlemen while Spencer is out of town.”

“Very well, then.” Tessa shot her sister a look as she took to the floor with Mr. Hutt—half warning, half pleading with Claire not to make a scene.

Claire and Ewan stood for a moment in awkward silence, watching Tessa and Mr. Hutt ease their way into the swirl of dancers.

“Well?” she challenged, when it became obvious he meant to ignore the opportunity. “Aren’t you going to invite me to dance?”

She quashed a foolish flicker of eagerness to feel his arms about her once again. Hadn’t ten years and a succession of men like Max Hamilton-Smythe taught her anything?

The Scotsman raised his dark, emphatic brows and thrust out his lower lip in a doubtful expression. “Ye wouldn’t think it too forward—a former servant taking liberties with the laird’s daughter?”

Claire skewered him with an icy glare, but she kept her tone and smile impeccably polite. “That would not be a first for you, would it?”

That wasn’t fair, her conscience protested. Ten years ago, she’d craved every liberty Ewan Geddes had been prepared to take with her. The trouble was, he’d only ever wanted to take them with her beautiful, vivacious younger sister.

For a moment, his gray eyes darkened like thunderheads over Ben Blane. Then, just as quickly, they cleared like the morning mist off Loch Liath. Both stirred something in Claire that she did not wish to have stirred. Heaven help her if she let this man gain any of his old power over her heart, or, worse yet, guess that he had.

He made a bow, so deep and sweeping it verged on mockery. “In that case, Miss Talbot, as my folks say, I might as well be hanged for a sheep as a lamb. Will ye do me the honor of a dance?”

No one had ever roused her usually temperate emotions the way he did. Claire struggled to subdue them.

“Did your people steal a great many sheep?” she inquired with arch civility, as she took Ewan’s arm and let him lead her to the floor.

“Only as many as they needed to keep from starving after they were driven from their land.” He spoke in a tone of cheerful banter quite at odds with his words. But when he took Claire’s hand in his and slipped his arm around her waist, she could feel the taut clench of his muscles.

Perhaps she provoked a more intense reaction in him than he had ever permitted her to see. The possibility restored a bit of her self-respect.

Remembering the reason she had lured him to the dance floor in the first place, she ignored his bait about starving Highlanders. “You look very prosperous now. You’ve done well for yourself in America?”

Not so well, surely, that the Brancaster fortune would fail to tempt him?

“Well enough.” His reply confirmed Claire’s suspicion. “There’s no limit, in the New World, to how far a man’s brains and hard work will take him.”

And if that wasn’t far enough, thought Claire, he could always cross the Atlantic to see how far hollow charm and a total lack of scruples would take him.

“I believe a truly determined man will succeed anywhere, Mr. Geddes. My grandfather, for instance. He built Brancasters from nothing, and he didn’t have to go all the way to America to do it.”

Ewan acknowledged her point with a nod. “A great achievement, to be sure. Then he was able to marry his daughter off to a laird.”

That stung. Had her father’s hurtful warning about fortune hunters been the voice of experience speaking? Claire refused to let Ewan see her flinch. One needed a tough hide to trade barbs with the man these days.

“If you think that gives you leave to pursue my sister, Mr. Geddes, I beg to differ. Poaching a few sheep is one thing. Poaching another man’s fiancée is quite another. Exactly what are your intentions toward Tessa?”

“Only the most honorable, I can assure you.” The hand that held hers tightened, as did the one around her waist. “I agree, Miss Talbot, there is a difference between sheep thieving and courting a lady. Sheep, curse their stupid heads, don’t give a hang who shears them. But a lady may have a strong preference about who she weds. If she changes her affections from one man to another before she gets to the altar, I’d hardly call that poaching.”

Heavens! This dance had become more like a fencing match set to music. For all that, some traitorous part of Claire enjoyed their thinly veiled cut and thrust. She had not felt so alive in years.

“My sister may have a strong, even passionate preference for one man this week, sir, then be quite as smitten with another fellow the next. Did it never occur to you why a lady of her beauty and charm should still be unwed at the age of twenty-six?”

Ewan’s roving gaze flitted to Tessa as she danced by in the arms of Obadiah Hutt.

“A bit fickle in her favors, is she?” He did not sound as troubled by the possibility as he should be. “What about ye, Miss Talbot? Why is an attractive lady of fortune like yerself still single at the age of…?”

“Twenty-eight.” Claire rapped out the words with perverse pride. “As well you know, Mr. Geddes, since my sister was sixteen and I eighteen during your last summer at Strathandrew.”

She let her reply sink in for a moment before she added, “I have not remained unmarried for lack of opportunity. Of that you may be sure. No woman with my size fortune has the luxury of going unpursued, no matter how great her deficiencies of beauty, wit or temperament.”

For the first time since they had been reintroduced, Claire sensed a change in Ewan Geddes’s manner. Gone was the antagonism disguised as affable banter. Something she’d said must have struck a nerve with him.

But what? And why?

For the first time since he’d met Claire Talbot, more than twenty years ago, Ewan felt a glimmer of sympathy for the woman.

In the past year or two, she’d been the target of several fortune hunters. It was not an experience he’d have wished on his worst enemy, let alone the sister of the woman he loved.

Around them, the music swelled to its dazzling conclusion. The dancers came to a stop and applauded politely. Some withdrew from the floor to rest or seek refreshment, while others lingered for the start of the next number.

Though he’d had every intention of escaping Miss Talbot’s company at the earliest opportunity, Ewan heard himself ask, “Shall we have another go, then?”

She seemed as surprised by the invitation as he. “Y-yes. I suppose. Thank you.”

Over her shoulder he could see Tessa staring his way with a look of puzzled annoyance. He tossed her a reassuring wink, hoping she’d understand that he was trying to jolly her sister around.

He was confident Tessa would break her engagement to marry him. But whether she’d stay the course against the disapproval of both her mother and her sister, Ewan wasn’t so certain. Some intuition warned him that he could never win favor with Lady Lydiard. But Claire Talbot might just learn to like him, if she’d let herself.

Perhaps he needed to take a different tack with the lady. Remember that he was no longer a nineteen-year-old gillie with a chip on his shoulder the size of a full-grown Scotch pine, and stop letting her gibes get under his skin. Lavish on her a little of the charm with which he’d won her sister’s heart.

“Only a rank fool would claim ye lack for wit, Miss Talbot.” He held her out at arm’s length and pretended to scrutinize her from head to heels. “And I can’t say I see any deficiency in yer looks, either.”

Nor did he.

Oh, she might not have the breath-catching beauty of his Tessa, but Claire Talbot was a bonny woman all the same. What her distinct, regular features lacked in softness, they made up for in character. Her eyes were not the warm blue-green of some southern sea, but the bracing blue-gray of a Highland loch. If he had not known her age, he would have guessed her to be several years younger.

His modest compliment seemed to fluster her more than any of his subtle digs. “You needn’t take pity on me, sir. I’ve lived with my sister long enough to recognize female beauty. And to know that I do not find it in my own looking glass.”

The music began again, this time a gentler melody that put Ewan in mind of a spring breeze whispering through the trees around Loch Liath.

He drew Miss Talbot toward him.

“Pity?” He stared at her as if he’d never heard anything so outrageous. “Ye’ll get none of that here, lass. For ye never had a drop to spare for me in the old days.”