Page 9 of Who’s That Earl

“What are you doing at my desk?” Though her voice was little more than a harsh whisper, it carried clearly across the room.

Her desk? Not Ratliff’s? A sudden and irrational flash of anger burned away his previous amusement. Of course, the great man himself did not sit on a hard chair, hunched over a battered desk. He probably lounged on a pile of velvet cushions, like his dogs, while his—what was the word she’d used? Ah, yes, amanuensis—labored to catch every word that fell from his dissolute lips. Evidently, the man had no concern, no compassion at all for his employee. Why, the only concession to her comfort was the desk’s proximity to the fire, but that spot had its disadvantages, too—namely a pair of noisy, ill-trained dogs, over which she clearly struggled to exert any control.

Surely, the late Mr. Higginbotham’s family could have kept his widow from a life of drudgery, locked up in the south tower of Dunnock Castle?

With a conciliatory and not entirely convincing smile, he plucked up the shoulders of his greatcoat and let the garment drop once more over the chair’s unforgiving rail. “I was just looking for a place to hang this.”

“Oh.” He caught a glimmer of chagrin in her eyes, but it did not fully displace her wariness. “I’m sorry about that. Visitors are a rarity at Dunnock. The servants are not accustomed—that is to say—” Finally, she crossed the threshold. “Mrs. Murdoch asked me to tell you she’s prepared a room for you.”

Quickly, he skirted the corner of the desk and stepped forward to meet her, hoping the movement masked his surprise at her words. Such an offer had been the last thing he expected, though it did not escape his notice that the housekeeper had been the one to make it, not Jane. “That’s very kind of her.”

“Apparently, the rain has turned to sleet,” she explained when they stood no more than an arm’s length apart. He nodded. The rain had been suspiciously cold and thick an hour ago as he’d walked from the crossroads, where the stage had dropped him. “If you tried to make it to the village now, you’d likely break your neck.”

He could not quite persuade himself that it was concern he heard in her voice. The firelight lent her skin a warm glow that undercut the coolness of her demeanor, however. He let himself lean toward her ever so slightly. “How extraordinary to see you again, after all this time. And to find you here…”

He longed to reassure himself she was real, to touch her, to brush his thumb along her cheek, across her lips. She looked even better than he remembered. What once had been a mere pleasing plumpness about her figure had matured into the womanly curves of a painting by Rubens. Strong and sensual. Soft.

Though at the moment, that softness was well-hidden. Her expression, her demeanor, reminded him of an oyster’s shell, snapped tightly shut to guard the vulnerable places within.

“Yes. A strange coincidence,” she agreed, taking a single step backward.

Despite his desire to get closer, he understood her reserve. Seven years ago, they had been parted without so much as a chance to say goodbye. Their lives had marched onward, taking their separate courses, his marred by war and hers by widowhood. She had every right to be cautious. Still, he saw something more than chance in this encounter. “Oh, I wouldna call it a coincidence.”

A wrinkle darted across her forehead. “Is it my imagination, Mr. Sutherland, or is your accent growing stronger?” The disapproving set of her jaw indicated she was unwilling to be charmed by it.

Some in Scott’s service had been required to remove all trace of their origins from their speech. Thomas, on the other hand, had been known to play his up on occasion—though not for the purposes Jane seemed to suspect.

But this was different. Not a conscious affectation. Almost...natural. As if his return to Scottish soil had brought with it a return of the familiar cadences and colloquialisms of his youth.

He wasn’t sure he liked it any more than Jane seemed to.

“Must be something in the air of the Highlands that brings it out,” he said with a forced smile. “Dunnock is my home, after all”—or so General Scott had decreed with his curt order. “I rambled over the hills about Balisaig every summer when I was a lad,” he clarified when she stiffened further. “My gran lived and died here.”

Her gaze darted over him, lingering longest on his shoulders and chest. He liked the feel of her eyes on him. But she’d only been noting his lack of uniform, it seemed. “You’re home on leave?”

He waited until she met his eyes again before saying with a half smile, “Not exactly.”

He had spent every hour on the road between Edinburgh and here weighing his options, deciding what he would do when he reached Balisaig...when he reached home, as everyone was determined to have it. He’d claimed the title, but he wasn’t ready to declare himself Magnus—not yet. Surely, he would get more honest answers about the state of things here if people didn’t know they were speaking to the earl.

“Then why?” she demanded.

When he’d stepped from the coach, he’d intended to find lodgings in the village. The decision to come first to Dunnock had been a whim, born in part of his unreadiness to offer old friends some explanation for his return. Mostly, though, he’d been eager to take the measure of the man he hoped to hire to manage the estate.

“Perhaps I’d better discuss the matter with Ratliff himself, instead.” A delay would give him time to decide what to say. The speech he’d rehearsed for the imagined Mr. Higginbotham wouldn’t do at all.

“No.” Her reply cracked the air between them like a whip. He drew himself up a little taller. “You can’t,” she added, in a tone slightly softer but no less determined.

Was the man ill? A hermit? “Tell him, ’tis a serious matter I’ve come to discuss.”

“He’s—he’s in Edinburgh. Doing research.”

Thomas tried to convince himself that the sudden pinch in his gut, the tension in his limbs, was irritation, annoyance. Perhaps even anger. He’d come all this way, when he might have met the man in Edinburgh and have done with this matter of the lease.

But if he’d come no farther than Edinburgh, then he wouldn’t have found Jane.

He also wouldn’t have seen the letter. If it had just arrived, as its position on the desk indicated, and Ratliff was away, then he could not yet know of it. Had there been others like it? Did the man know he might be in danger?

No, that sharp, twisting sensation inside him was an old companion, one he recognized too well: fear. Every soldier knew it, though he might call it by another name, to salve his pride. It was what kept him alert, out of danger. Any soldier who didn’t feel it was probably dead.