was enamored with the far fairer, and much more elusive, Maura Darby. Calum’s ward.
Calum had taken Maura under his wing twelve years ago when her father, his oldest friend, had died. The lass was quite alone in this world, and Darby had appealed to Calum’s generosity and sense of decency. Calum had been happy to do it, particularly as the lass had come with a nice bit of money, and her presence would not affect him in any way.
But he’d severely underestimated how slighted his daughter, Sorcha, would feel about it. Or, perhaps more importantly, his wife. She was quite set against the lass from the moment she arrived.
The resentment only grew over the years. As the girls became women, no matter what Calum’s wife did to improve his daughter’s looks, poor Sorcha was destined to live her life with a bulbous nose and slightly crooked eyes, while Maura blossomed into a woman with appealing ink black hair and eyes the same blue as a winter sky. The more alluring Maura became, the more his wife tried to push her aside. As it happened, Sorcha had been the first to receive an offer of marriage—with the help of Mrs. Garbett, who had resorted to all but locking poor Maura away.
The lass had borne it well enough, with little complaint. She’d become accustomed, he supposed, to wearing hand-me-downs, having her things taken and given to Sorcha—a kitten when she was thirteen, a muff a few years later, a fichu that was given to her by a friend on her twentieth birthday. And those were the things Calum knew about.
But what had happened in the last fortnight under this roof had turned Sorcha into an entirely unreasonable wee shrew. This, Calum decided, was a bloody disaster.
As he understood it, a chambermaid witnessed a kiss between Maura and his daughter’s fiancé, Mr. Adam Cadell, and knowing this to be an unpardonable affront to her mistress, had run to the housekeeper, who in turn had run to Calum’s wife, who had then screeched down the stairs and into the study where Calum and Adam’s father, Thomas Cadell, were finalizing their agreement in the presence of the Duke of Montrose.
Mrs. Garbett was followed closely by a wailing Sorcha, whose sobbing had the unfortunate affect of making her nose look even larger. She was followed by the young man’s mother, Mrs. Cadell, who vehemently denied her son had done anything wrong. Last, and certainly least, a sheepish Mr. Adam Cadell, who insisted that the older woman, Maura, who had just turned four and twenty to his twenty years, had thrown herself at him and he had not known what to do.
Bloody randy rooster would have them all believe he was a poor wee lad who had been accosted.
A tribunal of three confused men—Calum, Thomas Cadell and the duke—was quickly assembled in the drawing room. Calum insisted the maid be brought forth to give her account. Maura, the accused, was also ushered in, and stood defiantly against the wall, her arms crossed over her body, her fair blue eyes flashing with defiance at the lot of them.
“I seen Miss Darby with her back to the wall, and Mr. Cadell kissing her,” the maid said with her eyes firmly affixed to the floor.
“I am certain it was the other way around,” Adam said hopefully.
Calum looked at Maura. “Miss Darby?”
“It was precisely as Hannah saw it, sir, aye.”
It didn’t sound to Calum as if she’d thrown herself at Adam, not with her back to the wall, but she’d confessed to the kiss, and he didn’t know precisely what to do. “Well, now,” he said uncertainly. “You must promise you’ll no’ do that again.”
“Mr. Garbett!” his wife shrieked with great hysteria. “Will you no’ defend your daughter’s honor, then?”
Dear God, did she propose that Calum call out the young man? Duel to death in their drive? To think of the scandal, not to mention the mess that would need to be tidied up.
“Pappa!” Sorcha’s shriek was identical to her mother’s. “I will no’ marry him! I hate him! I hate Maura! Why ever did you bring her here?”
Calum felt the weight of this unmitigated disaster bearing down on his chest. Plus, his head itched beneath his peruke, and he longed for a stick or something to shove up in there and scratch so he could bloody well think. If there was no marriage, there would be no deal. His ironworks, destined to be the economic jewel of all of Scotland, would circle the drain. He slowly gained his feet. “Let us not act in haste, darling.”
“Haste?” Sorcha cried. “It is the second time she has kissed my fiancé!”
Oh right. The first time, Maura had said the lad had caught her outside, in the garden where no one could see them, and had kissed her. The lad, unsurprisingly, had flatly denied it. The two families had sided with him.
“I didna kiss him,” Maura said, her voice surprisingly calm given all the female hysteria floating about them like an ether. “He caught me in the hall unawares and kissed me, sir.” She looked at the young fool. “Please tell the truth, Mr. Cadell.”
“How dare you!” Mrs. Cadell cried. “Know your place!” But then she swung around and hit the back of her son’s head with the flat of her hand so hard that he was knocked forward a pair of steps.
“She is a temptress, on my word!” Adam said frantically, looking around him, no doubt hoping to find a sympathetic face. He would find none.
“I donna want her here, aye, Pappa? I donna want her anywhere near me!” Sorcha insisted.
Calum exchanged a look with Thomas, who looked just as befuddled as Calum felt. Calum truly didn’t know what he was supposed to do with Maura. It wasn’t as if he could tuck her away in a trunk and put her in the attic.
“Mr. Garbett!” his wife said. “You must send her away!”
“Aye, all right, all right, I understand that feelings have been hurt,” he snapped, and tried to think. His cousin? He’d not seen David Rumpkin in many years. He lived in what had been his father’s manor near Aberuthen. He was an old charlatan, had never made an honest living, but Calum suspected he would take Maura in for a fee until this debacle blew over.
He glanced at Maura, who steadily returned his gaze, almost as if she was silently daring him to believe that wretched lad and send her away. Her icy stare sent a small shiver down his spine. “I’ll send her to my cousin for the time being, aye?” he said, his gaze on Maura. “In Aberuthen. A tidy manor house near a loch. Do you no’ like the sound of it, then, Maura?”
She did not flinch. She did not say a word. But the injustice radiated off her, heating them all.
“Send her away with all the privileges we have extended to her these many years, then?” his wife said angrily. “She has destroyed my daughter’s happiness, and for that, she should be made to repay the kindness we’ve shown her.”
“Indeed,” Mrs. Cadell sniffed. “She should be made to pay the consequence of using her wiles on an innocent young man.”
Innocent, his arse. “What would you like, madam?” Calum asked his wife. “A pound of her flesh? For she doesna have a farthing to her name.” Technically, she did, but he was not prepared to part with the stipend.
“She has a necklace,” his wife said.
Maura gasped. “No,” she said.
“No?”
