Page 24 of Who’s That Earl

“Perhaps Mr. Donaldson isn’t always wrong.”

Her answer did nothing to allay Mary’s visible concern. “How’s that?”

But Jane only gathered the dogs and began to walk away, one thought pounding through her head like a feverish pulse.

Lord Magnus is already here.

Chapter 9

Just inside the doorway to the Thistle and Crown, Thomas paused for a few moments to let his eyes adjust. The glare of sun against snow made the pub comparatively dim, though its stone walls were whitewashed and the large window facing the street was clean.

He was still blinking away spots when a voice said, “I dinna believe it.”

Eventually, Thomas was able to pick out a man standing behind the bar, his hip propped on a tall stool, his fair hair overlong. He must have been the one who had spoken, as the pub was otherwise empty.

“If it’s no’ Tommy Sutherland, back from the dead.”

Recognition—of that teasing voice, that ready grin—began to dawn, and Thomas responded in kind. “From England, don’t you mean?

“Hell. England.” The man shrugged good-naturedly. “What’s the difference?”

Thomas strode toward the bar, hand outstretched. “Eleazor Ross, is it really you?”

“An’ who else would it be, I’d like to know?” The other man, unsatisfied with the offer of a mere handshake, bounced to his feet, laid aside whatever he had been looking at and crossed the well-scrubbed wooden floor to give his old friend a back-slapping hug. His kilt swung with the energy of his step. “But I’ll thank ye to remember it’s still just Ross.”

The matter of names had been the subject of jokes among them when they’d been lads. Even then, Ross had been determined to leave behind the scourge of Eleazor, insisting on being addressed only by his surname. Now, he had grown into the sort of powerfully built man whom very few people would be brave, or foolish, enough to tease about the matter.

When they broke apart, Thomas said, “What of your family—are they well?”

“Och, well enough. Da’s worn out with the work, but sometimes he comes down in the evening,” Ross explained, jerking his chin upward to indicate the family apartments above. “My sisters are all married and gone, but for Davina.” The youngest sibling, whom Mrs. Ross had died bringing into the world, had been a towheaded girl when Thomas had last visited Balisaig. “An’ what of you?” Ross tilted his head to inspect him. “Ye didna get so brown in England, I ken.”

“I joined the army. They sent me abroad.”

“O’ course they did. None better than a Scotsman when there’s a job to be done.” Ross nodded knowingly as he returned to his stool. “What brings you home now?”

Home. There it was again, that insistence that he belonged to Balisaig, rather than the less-pleasant reality that it, in fact, belonged to him.

Thomas opened his mouth to explain the lost years. His father’s refusal to allow him to return in the winter following his mother’s death, when word had come that his grandmother was ill. The bitter knowledge that Gran had had no member of her family to walk with her on that last journey to the kirk. The unexpected commission. The maddening heat of Dominica. General Scott’s final, unsettling order.

But the words I’m Magnus—perhaps the only true answer to Ross’s question—wouldn’t come. At least, not yet. When they were finally, inevitably, uttered, they seemed certain to drive a wedge between Thomas and the friends of his youth.

He glanced around the empty pub. Though the mugs had been washed and the tables wiped, the scattered chairs still spoke of last night’s conviviality. A larger group had clustered by the fire to discuss something of interest or importance. In the corner, two figures had tucked themselves away from the crowd to huddle over a battered chess set. The misshapen stub of a tallow candle, employed to replace a missing pawn, still decorated the board.

He knew it would be more fitting to describe the kirk as the soul of the village, but it was here folks gathered, day after day, night after night. Here they shared the news, their sadness and their celebrations. Here where they fought and argued, yes, and here where they knitted themselves together again.

This community had welcomed him once. Would it do so again?

In the end he said only, “Got a job to do up at the castle,” and reached for the book Ross had been reading when he arrived, hoping for some distraction.

What he found was indeed distracting, though not at all what he’d sought. The compact duodecimo volume, cheaply bound, contained the first part of a novel. Specifically, The Necromancer’s Bride by Robin Ratliff. The very last name he’d wanted to see.

“Ah, that would be Elspeth’s,” Ross said, snatching the book from his grasp. He laid it behind the bar, out of reach, but not before tucking something between two pages to mark his place. “You remember Elspeth Shaw? She’s the barmaid here now. Her sister Esme’s at Dunnock.”

Thomas nodded, remembering the maid who’d brought his breakfast. He would have had only the vaguest recollection of the Shaws if not for the thick file General Scott had handed him, which had been supplemented by the estate records he’d collected from Mr. Watson. When the long journey, first from London and then from Edinburgh, had grown too tedious for him to bear, Thomas had finally given in and read through those papers, which had revealed at once too much and too little. He knew, for instance, that Mr. Shaw was Dunnock’s most prosperous tenant farmer. But he did not know what it might signify about the state of their affairs that the man’s daughters had put themselves into service.

“She certainly has interesting taste in reading.”

“That Ratliff chap spins a good tale,” Ross defended her—and, evidently, himself.