“Your sense of humor will send you to the gallows. Oh, very well, I’ll bathe. After all, I want to be sweet-smelling for my future wife.”
“I brought soap, my lord.”
“I need to shave as well. Might as well have me as presentable as possible for my execution.”
Hawk guided his equipage through the undergrowth that bordered the loch. The day was warm for March, the sun bright. The water did look inviting, and he was tired of his own stench.
Frances had spent the past three hours delivering Cadmus’ only cow of her calf. Thank God both had survived. Cadmus and Mary needed milk for their new baby. She was sweaty, the sleeve of her old gown rolled to nearly her shoulder, and there was still dried blood on her arm. She knelt beside the loch and bathed her arm. Sophia would have a fit were she to see her stepdaughter looking like a dirty peasant. Then too, Frances thought as she rolled down her sleeve, she was putting off her return to the castle. She sat back on her heels a moment, thinking about the changes in her sisters over the past four days. All through dinner the previous evening, Viola had carried on about her new gown, green velvet to match her eyes, hastily sewn over the past two days, and her eyes had sparkled with anticipation of the earl’s male reaction. Even Clare was looking a bit smug, patting her lovely blond hair and speaking of the cucumber lotion she was using for her already perfect complexion. Thank God Clare no longer appeared to feel that Frances had betrayed her. It hadn’t been Frances’ fault that Ian Douglass had asked her to marry him, and not Clare. Well, she’d sent him to the rightabout quickly enough, and now his younger brother was sniffing after Viola! Of course, since their father’s announcement, Viola had ceased talking about Kenard.
Dinner had continued. Viola chattered and preened, Clare altered her vague look to one of wistful complacency. As for Frances, she’d kept her mouth shut, tightly shut, and stared back and forth between her sisters. Finally she set down her fork. The haggis suddenly seemed the most unappetizing concoction in the world.
“You really want to marry this man, this stranger? You want to leave Castle Kilbracken and Scotland?” she’d asked finally.
Viola tossed her head, but she grinned impishly at her sister. “Yes,” she said, “I shall marry him, Frances, and yes, I shall leave Scotland.”
“I shouldn’t make all your plans now,” said Sophia.
“I think perhaps the earl will like a more mature lady,” said Clare, “one who exercises a bit more control over her tongue.”
Not an ounce of vagueness in Clare now, thought Frances.
“But Papa said that the earl preferred ladies with wit and charm,” said Viola. “And beauty, of course. Am I not blessed with all of those things, Clare?”
“I should allow others to make that observation before I did,” said Adelaide, serenely taking another bite of her haggis.
Viola ignored this mild stricture and said in great seriousness to her sisters, “I shall marry him, but you needn’t worry, Clare, or you, Frances. I shall find husbands for both of you, rich ones. There are so many rich Sassenachs, isn’t that so, Papa?”
“A good deal more than are in Scotland,” said Ruthven, his eyes going toward Frances. She looked upset and he was sorry for it. As for himself, he was torn. If the earl chose her, he would lose the child who was closest to him in temperament, the child who rode beside him, free and easy as a boy, the child who hunted and swam with him, the child ... He frowned, realizing that her attitude would most certainly put off any gentleman. He couldn’t allow that. He supposed that he wanted the earl to choose Frances. He wanted the best for her, and he knew that in turn, she would care for her sisters. Hell, he thought, spearing a bite of boiled potato, he didn’t know which would be worse, losing her or providing for her.
“I think, Viola,” Clare said, her voice becoming a bit more strident, “that you shouldn’t be so quick to announce your victory, just as Sophia said.”
“Victory,” Frances repeated blankly. “We don’t know this man! He could be dreadful, mean and petty. He could be anything!”
“Frances!” said Ruthven, pinning his daughter with a fierce look. “That is enough.”
Frances immediately lowered her eyes. She shouldn’t have said anything, but her stupid, quick tongue ... She wanted no discussions, no questions, about her own feelings toward this unknown earl. Now, she knew, she was in for a lecture from both her father and her stepmother. Stupid twit!
But neither of them had said a word to her. She sighed, looking out over the loch. She admitted now that she had been avoiding the lot of them. She laughed a bit, thinking that she was more conceited than Viola. All her machinations—she was in the way of believing that the earl would pick her! Goodness, she could probably appear a goddess and he wouldn’t want her. Still, as old Marta was wont to say, “ ‘Tis better to wear a kilt than parade about bare-assed.” Well, she was going to wear that kilt, in a manner of speaking. She would take no chances, none at all.
Frances suddenly became aware that the birds had grown loud and nervous. She looked up, studying her surroundings. Was it a tinker perhaps? No, it wasn’t. Her eyes widened at the sight of a man—naked as a statue, but without the requisite fig leaf—climbing up some rocks that extended out over the loch. Dear God, he was going to dive in! She should tell him that the water, despite its inviting look, was cold enough to freeze off his ... She swallowed that thought. Lord, Clare should see him, she thought vaguely. If she didn’t faint from shock, she would be salivating to paint him. He was lovely, tall and muscular, his legs long and well-formed. Her eyes resolutely avoided the bush of thick hair at his groin and his male endowments. He was dark, his hair was as black as a raven’s wing, his complexion olive. His
chest was covered with tufts of equally black hair. Frances felt an odd warmth in her belly and rocked back on her heels. She was being a silly fool. She’d seen naked men before—well, actually, she amended, they’d been boys, swimming in the loch. He wasn’t a boy. She saw him dive cleanly into the loch. He broke the surface quickly, and she heard his howl. However, instead of wading quickly out, he caught a bar of soap tossed to him by another man standing at the loch’s edge.
He has more fortitude than I do, Frances thought, watching him vigorously lather his chest, then his thick dark hair. She shivered when he ducked under the water to rinse himself.
She felt gooseflesh rise on her arms in sympathy for him. He must be very dirty to stand that icy water.
She gulped when the hand holding the soap dipped under the water. Who was he? she wondered. And then she knew. He turned his back at that moment and waded toward shore. She looked at the long, clean back, the sculpted buttocks. She heard him say something and saw a short, plump man standing on the shore, holding a towel. She heard him laugh, a rich, deep sound, filled with amusement at himself.
The Earl of Rothermere had finally come. Her only thought as she sped back to the castle was that he wasn’t a troll.
Hawk and Grunyon arrived at Castle Kilbracken an hour later. For the first time since he’d come out of that god-awful loch, Hawk felt warm. That kind of shock could kill a man, he thought, and again laughed at himself.
Hawk pulled his tired horses to a halt in front of the gray-stone castle and looked about for the stable. He saw a long, narrow building off to the side whose slate roof looked dark red in the bright sunlight. A dozen or so chickens were squawking wildly at his intrusion. The two cows regarded him with mild interest at best, and the assortment of pigs snorted indignantly at the whipped-up dirt from his carriage wheels.
As he climbed down from the carriage, he saw two women dressed in coarse woolen gowns eyeing him silently. Then one said something to the other behind her hand, and the other giggled.
“See to the carriage, Grunyon,” Hawk said. “There doesn’t appear to be a stablehand about that I can see.” Hell, he thought, there didn’t appear to be anything civilized about. Suddenly a tall man who had that indefinable aura of authority about him appeared through the great front doors of the castle. He was dressed roughly, in well-worn riding clothes, his black boots dusty. They stared at each other a moment; then the man called out, “Rothermere?”