To Tame A Highland Warrior

Page 15

“I’d planned to allow you all to settle in a bit before I passed on his message, but the lot of you are already onto the right of it. St. Clair did bring you here for his daughter,” Hatchard admitted, rubbing his short red beard thoughtfully.
“I knew it,” Ramsay said smugly.
Jillian hissed softly. How dare he? More suitors, and among them the very man she had vowed to hate until death. Grimm Roderick. How many men would her da throw at her before he finally accepted that she would not wed unless she found the kind of love her parents shared?
Hatchard leaned back in his chair and regarded the men levelly. “He expects she will choose one of you before they return from their visit, which gives the lot of you till late autumn to woo her.”
“And if she doesn’t?” Grimm asked.
“She will.” Ramsay folded his arms across his chest, a portrait of arrogance.
“Does Jillian know about this?” Grimm asked quietly.
“Aye, is she duplicitous or is she an innocent?” Quinn quipped.
“And if she is innocent, to what degree?” Ramsay asked wickedly. “I, for one, intend to find out at the earliest opportunity.”
“Over my dead body, Logan,” Quinn growled.
“So be it.” Ramsay shrugged.
“Well, whatever he intended, I don’t think it was for the three of you to be killing each other over her.” Hatchard smiled faintly. “He merely intends to see her wed before she passes another birthday, and one of you shall be the man. And no, Grimm, Jillian doesn’t know a thing about it. She’d likely flee Caithness immediately if she had the vaguest inkling what her father was up to. Gibraltar has brought dozens of suitors to Jillian over the past year, and she drove them all away with one shenanigan or another. She and her da relished outwitting each another; the more unusual his ploy, the more inventive her reaction. Although, I must say, she always handled things with a certain delicacy and subtlety only a Sacheron woman can effect. Most of the men had no idea they’d been … er … for lack of a better word … duped. Like her father, Jillian can be the very image of propriety while planning a mutinous rebellion behind her composed face. One of you must court and win her, because the three of you are Gibraltar’s last hopes.”
Impossible, Jillian silently argued her case with shaky conviction. Her da would not do this to her. Would he? Even as she denied it, the long, considering glances her da had been giving her before he’d left surfaced in her mind. Suddenly his somewhat guilty expression, his last-minute hugs before he’d left made sense to Jillian. By the saints, as dispassionately as he matched his broodmares, her da had locked her in the stables with three hot-blooded studs and gone visiting.
Make that two hot-blooded studs and one cold, arrogant, impossible heathen, she amended silently. For surely as the sun rose and set, Grimm Roderick wouldn’t deign to touch her even with someone else’s hands. Jillian’s shoulders slumped.
As if he’d somehow read her mind, Grimm Roderick’s words drifted up, inciting more of that witless fury she suffered in his presence.
“Well, you doona have to worry about me, lads, for I wouldn’t wed the woman if she was the last woman in all of Scotia. So it’s up to the two of you to make Jillian a husband.”
Jillian clenched her jaw and fled down the corridor before she could succumb to a mad urge to fling herself over the balustrade, a hissing female catapult of teeth and nails.
CHAPTER 4
MALDEBANN CASTLE
THE HIGHLANDS, ABOVE TULUTH
“MILORD, YOUR SON IS NEAR.”
Ronin McIllioch surged to his feet, his blue eyes blazing. “He’s coming here? Now?”
“No, milord. Forgive me, I did not mean to alarm you,” Gilles corrected hastily. “He is at Caithness.”
“Caithness,” Ronin repeated. He exchanged glances with his men. Their gazes reflected concern, caution, and unmistakable hope. “Have you any idea why he’s there?” Ronin asked.
“No. Shall we find out?”
“Dispatch Elliott, he blends in well. Discreetly, mind you,” Ronin said. Softly he added, “My son is closer than he’s come in years.”
“Yes, milord. Think you he may come home?”
Ronin McIllioch smiled, but it did not reach his eyes. “The time is not yet right for his return. We still have work to do. Send with Elliott the young boy who draws. I want pictures, with great detail.”
“Yes, milord.”
“And Gilles?”
Gilles paused in the doorway.