Some Like it Scot (Scandalous Highlanders Book 4) (10 page)

She snorted. “Since ye clearly willnae go away, put up the damned targets.” Cat jabbed a finger into his chest. “But I warn ye, ye'll nae like what I have in mind for ye when I win.”

“I'll risk it.” Because whether she'd realized it or not, the moment she'd agreed to participate in the contest he'd already won. She'd given her permission for him to continue to come calling whenever he chose. Their tales were intertwined, now. Just the way he wanted it. Not as clever as his brothers, ha.

He led the way back inside the ruins to find Peter standing over Elizabeth's shoulder while the lass wrote out a short list of items. Several times Rowena and Arran and even some of the other servants had attempted to teach Gilling to read and write, but the footman seemed to view his illiteracy as a badge of honor—or at least of stubbornness.

“Ye've made some progress, then?” he asked, noting that the musket stood against the rickety old table. Well, he'd have to trust Cat not to shoot him, eventually. Now seemed as good a time as any. He shifted sideways, intentionally leaving the path open between the lass and her weapon.

“Aye,” Peter returned. “Nae lass should have to go withoot a proper teapot.”

“Well, we dunnae have tea, so it's nae so difficult,” Cat put in, as Munro tried to decide whether Gilling was being sarcastic or not. The footman grumbled so regularly that it was sometimes difficult to tell.

“Uncle, go set up a few shooting targets, will ye? The lass and I have a wager to settle.”

The footman lifted a thick eyebrow. “Ye're shooting against a lass?
Ye?
”

“Aye. Me. Go see to it,” Munro countered, before Peter could mention the clan gatherings and country fairs where Laird Bear MacLawry had defeated all comers and had the wee ribbons to prove it. If the wildcat decided the wager wasn't fair, they would all have to go back to the beginning again.

With a quick nod Peter left the kitchen, and Munro perused the list Elizabeth handed up to him. She actually had written “teapot” in neatly scripted pencil, along with a pair of cups and saucers to go with it, tea leaves, some hair ribbons, and an oil lamp, with the word “tarp” at the bottom as if it had been an afterthought. Or more likely, a suggestion from the eminently practical Gilling.

The list told him a couple of things. Elizabeth had never lived in anything but comfort previous to this. She had no idea how to live … here. And while she was likely the reason for this flight into the Highlands, she was not the captain of the expedition. That title went to the mad redhead currently digging through the picnic basket and making involuntary happy sounds as she discovered the bowl of sugar and the small sack of salt he'd managed to liberate from under Mrs. Forrest's disapproving nose.

“May I, lass?” he asked, gesturing for the stub of a pencil.

Elizabeth put it into his hand, this time the brush of her fingers against his unmistakably intentional. “Your uncle scoffed at being able to read my ‘frilly scribbles,' as he called it,” she said, with a breathy chuckle. “I'm glad to see you don't share his disdain for reading and writing.”

Saint Bridget, the delicate flower was flirting with him. Aye, she stood a handful of inches taller than her sister, but with her dainty speech and impractical clothes she seemed far more breakable than the wildcat. “As long as I'm nae expected to produce poetry, I reckon I can manage,” he said aloud, not certain he liked the way he so easily fell into his old thickheaded persona. Perhaps he'd been wearing it for so long that he
had
become that half-wit. “That Shakespeare book yer sister asked for. That was fer ye, I assume?”

“Both of us, really. We practically have Cat's book of Byron's poetry memorized, and I never liked
Childe Harold's Pilgrimage
much to begin with.”

Well, that was interesting. Clearly he needed to do some more chatting with young Elizabeth if he wanted answers about who these lasses belonged to and what they were doing in the middle of clan MacLawry territory. He caught sight of the salt sack vanishing into a leather satchel. Why did questioning Elizabeth feel like cheating? If one lass would talk and the other wouldn't, logic said he should get some answers from the chatty one. Even if he'd rather pry them out of the other one.

Munro glanced over at Cat as she straightened from the satchel and took a moment to tuck a straying strand of hair behind one ear. As far as he was concerned, she was the lass to pursue. Her sister seemed barely more than a child, and a man didn't want a child in his bed. A man wanted—
he
wanted—a lass with steel in her spine. At least this time he did. He didnae bed children, but he'd had his share of flirty, flighty lasses. More than his share. Or that was how it abruptly felt, anyway.

“M'la—loving nephew,” Peter said from the doorway, making Munro wince. “I've set up a half-dozen targets fer ye and the lass. And I fetched yer rifle from Saturn.”

“Saturn?” Cat took up, nearly succeeding in slipping a biscuit into her trouser pocket without him noticing.

“My horse. Now that I consider, it doesnae seem fair fer me to pit a rifle against a musket. Why dunnae ye choose whichever one ye prefer, and we'll both use it?”

“Fine. My musket.”

“Ye do ken a rifle's generally twice as accur—”

“I chose,” she interrupted. “Elizabeth, would ye come out with us? I reckon the odds of some other stranger bullying his way into the house are fairly small, but then Munro may have told any number of his other relatives about us.”

All it would take was telling one particular relative, and she'd likely find whatever plans she had overturned and stomped into the mud. But this wasn't any of Ranulf's business, and Munro meant to see that it stayed well away from his oldest brother's notice. “Nae,” he said aloud. “But I'll take another witness so ye cannae dispute the results later.”

And because he'd already decided that whichever of these lasses he wanted in his bed, he hadn't been lying about one thing: now that he'd met them, he had an obligation to keep them safe. That held true even if part of him did hope that Cat would try to pummel him again so he'd have an excuse to sling her over his shoulder. Trousers or not, when she wriggled she was all lass. And he liked the way that felt.

 

Chapter Five

Ranulf glanced over at the empty chair to his left, then returned to his breakfast of blood pudding and tattie scones. Since the platter of scones on the sideboard was still fairly full, he would hazard a guess that Bear hadn't yet risen. Potato scones didn't survive long when Bear was about.

After another few minutes of unexpected and unusual quiet, he turned in his chair to face the redheaded butler standing behind him. “Did ye ferget someaught, Cooper?”

“M'laird?”

“The newspaper, Cooper. I ken it's nearly a week old by the time it gets here, but I do like to know what's afoot south of Hadrian's Wall.” He shouldn't have had to explain it; after all, he'd been reading the London
Times
every morning for better than the past decade.

“I couldnae find it this morning, m'laird,” the butler returned, his jaw clenching. “I'm certain it arrived last evening with the post, but this morning when I went to look fer it, well, it had gone.”

“Is Arran here?” His younger brother made for the most likely suspect, but Arran lived a half mile away at Fen Darach with Mary and young Mòrag and another bairn due just after Christmas. Arran also received his own copy of the newspaper, the absence of which Ranulf only minded in that it disrupted one of the few orderly things in his day.

“Nae, m'laird. Shall I send someone into the village to find ye another copy?”

“Aye. We cannae have the rest of the family knowing things I dunnae.”

“I'll see to it right away, then.” Cooper gestured at Owen, the head footman, and the stout Highlander strode out of the room to begin bellowing for a groom and a horse.

“Is something wrong?” Charlotte, Lady Glengask, asked in her proper English tones as she strolled into the morning room.

Immediately Ranulf stood, his heart speeding just a little at the sight of his honey-haired wife. “Aye. My newspaper's run off. We're aboot to send oot the hounds.” Taking her hand, he leaned down to catch her mouth in a slow, lingering kiss.

Her free hand slid around his shoulders as she kissed him back. “What was that for?” she murmured, her fingers flexing in his. “I saw you just twenty minutes ago.”

“I liked what we were up to. Thought we might do it again,” he returned in the same tone. “After ye eat, of course. Cannae have ye wasting away.”

Charlotte laughed, her cheeks darkening prettily. “I'm meeting Winnie and Mary in the village for luncheon,” she stated, giving him a last kiss before she resumed her way to the laden sideboard, “but I believe my morning is free.”

That was a good thing; he was fairly certain he would combust if she'd had plans that didn't include being naked with him. “Cooper. Send word to Father Dyce that I cannae meet with him this morning,” Ranulf instructed. “I'll ride by the church this afternoon.”

“Aye, m'laird. Ian, go see if ye can catch Owen.”

As the second footman fled the room, Charlotte took the seat at Ranulf's elbow. Two years ago breakfasts had been a mad affair, with Arran and Bear and Rowena, and more than likely Lachlan MacTier, all stumbling in with the two hounds and friends and whatever tales or stragglers they'd picked up the night before. Now Bear was the only sibling still to be found at Glengask, and over the past fortnight even he'd been absent from breakfast more often than he'd appeared.

With Munro's grumbling about all the domesticity suffocating him and then the growling he'd reportedly done at Lachlan when Lord Gray declined to go hunting with him, Ranulf had to wonder if his brother was actually feeling jealous. Or lonely, or left out. The past months had been so occupied with marriages and pregnancies and bairns that perhaps he hadn't paid as much attention as he should have. That would have to change.

If he dug into Bear's troubles this morning, though, he was likely to lose both the time and the … desire presently coursing through him for the Sassannach lass currently drinking tea with her pinkie delicately lifted in the air. Ranulf took a breath. Aye, his family came first. Always. But Bear could come first this afternoon just as easily as he could this morning. He took a breath. “Cooper, let Bear know I'd like a word with him today, if ye please.”

“I'll see to it, m'laird.”

“In fact, I'll meet him at noon at the Bonny Bruce.” That should suffice; luncheon at the tavern would make Munro happy, and a meeting where they would both have to keep their tempers pleased
him.

“I'll have Ian inform him as soon as the lad returns.”

When Charlotte chuckled, he looked over at her. “What's so amusing,
leannan
?”

“I was just thinking that Cooper likely wishes you had your newspaper.”

He snorted. “This is a quiet morning, lass. Nae brawls last night, nae cattle gone missing, nae a lass storming the hoose armed with a broadsword and looking for Bear.”

“It was a shovel; not a broadsword. And as I recall it worked out well—for Bear, anyway.”

Ranulf lifted an eyebrow at her coy smile. “Ye, my dear, are wicked,” he drawled. “I recall when ye were a proper English lass.”

Charlotte leaned across the corner of the table and kissed him soft and slow. “That was before I met a scandalous Highland laird,” she murmured, and nipped his bottom lip.

Standing, Ranulf moved behind her, helped her to her feet, then swung her into his arms. “Hang breakfast. Ye and I are going back to bed.” And whoever had his newspaper, he hoped they were enjoying it.

*   *   *

“Ye see?” Munro said, flipping the pages of the newspaper he'd set on the ratty table of the tumbledown kitchen at the center of Haldane Abbey. “There's nae mention of any lass missing from London.”

Cat slammed her hand down on an article about the overspending of Prince George, preventing him from turning the last few pages. “I'll look for myself, if ye dunnae mind, giant. And even if they dunnae have a wee story about Elizabeth, that doesnae mean anyone's stopped looking. It only means they arenae talking aboot it.”

The woman refused to give even an inch. And while it did leave him frustrated and annoyed, her stubbornness also aroused him. Why, he had no idea, because she was a damned spitfire and the top of her head barely reached his shoulders, but there it was. “Mayhap ye could give me a bit more information aboot ye, then, and I could be of more help.”

Dark brown eyes lifted to meet his. “I won yer silly shooting contest, and I asked ye for a newspaper. Here's a newspaper. And ye moved the boards out of the hallway so I dunnae have to climb over them any longer. That's as much help as I need from ye today. Ye may go.”

Munro straightened, beginning to wish he'd taken the outcome of that contest a bit more seriously. Aye, he'd arranged it so he would be at Haldane, one way or the other, but Cat enjoyed ordering him about just a little too much. “As I recall, ye also wished for a door ye could bolt against me. I happen to have just such a door outside. Are ye still done with me, woman?”

Those brown eyes blinked, and for a brief moment genuine surprise touched her expression. Then she visibly squared her shoulders, and he girded his loins for further combat. The lass likely ate any bouquet of flowers a poor, unfortunate beau might give her.

“Ye cannae put a new door on the front of this wreck without any passersby knowing someone's in residence.” She didn't say anything else aloud, but her tone implied a “ye fool” at the end of the sentence.

“It's nae a front door; it's a door fer the kitchen. And I didnae say it was new.”