Page 14 of One Forbidden Kiss with the Laird (The Cinderella Shepherd Sisters #2)

Miss Kingsley blanched and Callum quickly stepped forward. ‘Allow me,’ he said, assisting the young woman closer to the horse.

Bruce mounted quickly and then reached back to pull Miss Kingsley up behind him while Callum boosted her up from below.

She looked uncomfortable sitting behind the large man, although not for lack of room.

Bessie was a huge horse with a broad back and capable of carrying two at least for short distances.

‘You’ll have to hold on tight,’ Bruce said, looking back over his shoulder. ‘I don’t bite, not unless you want me to.’

‘If there was a single moment in your life to behave and act like a gentleman, this is it,’ Callum said, his heart sinking at Miss Kingsley’s aghast expression at the situation she found herself in.

He leaned in closer to the young woman. ‘Bruce is a good man. He would defend your honour until his very last breath. You are in safe hands. He will take you back to the house so your ankle can be seen to as quickly as possible. Miss Shepherd and I will follow behind.’

‘Can you not take me?’

‘No one else can ride a beast like Bessie. You’re safe with me,’ Bruce said, patting Miss Kingsley on the leg. The young woman looked as though she were going to jump from the horse, twisted ankle be damned.

Before Miss Kingsley could protest any more Bruce spurred Bessie on and set off at a gentle trot, leaving Callum alone with Miss Shepherd.

‘Good work on finding Bruce.’

‘I hardly did anything. I stepped on to the road and he nearly ran me down on that great horse of his. He makes quite an impression.’

‘Miss Kingsley dinnae seem too happy to be sent off with him.’

‘No, I don’t expect she was. No doubt she had images of you carrying her home, gazing into her eyes and falling irrevocably in love with her.’

‘Ah. Instead I threw her on to the back of a horse with a questionable stranger and sent them off into the wilds of the Highlands together.’

‘Hardly the romantic gesture she has been dreaming of.’

‘I’m not very good at that stuff,’ Callum admitted.

For years he had lived a rough life, spending weeks at a time alone with only Hamish for company.

Even when he did mix with others it had hardly been polite society, with his companions from all different backgrounds, thrown together in the wilderness of Canada.

Many of those men had been running from something, or desperately trying to get back to something they had lost. It felt a world apart from sipping tea in a drawing room with the likes of Miss Kingsley.

‘You would have to do a lot more than abandon her to the rough manners of Mr Bruce to deter Catherine from this marriage.’

‘She has confided in you?’

‘Good lord, no,’ Miss Shepherd said with a laugh.

‘She would not confide in me if I was the only other person left in the world.’ She paused and thought for a moment.

‘I think she is very eager to marry you, though. She has been raised to make a good match, to marry well, and in you she sees she can realise that ambition and please her father.’

‘So it is not me she wants, specifically.’

‘I am sure she was not disappointed when she saw you for the first time,’ Miss Shepherd said, a sparkle in her eyes.

He liked her like this. She seemed carefree away from the oppressive reach of the Kingsley family.

‘But even if you were a decrepit old man with no teeth and only half a head of hair I think she would still be keen to marry you.’

‘I am not sure if I should be flattered or insulted.’

‘It is a good thing, I think. You and Sir William can go about your negotiations without worrying Miss Kingsley will object to any of the terms.’

‘How do I win against Sir William, Miss Shepherd?’

‘You wish me to betray family secrets?’

‘Merely share a few observations as to Sir William’s character.’

She thought for a moment and then turned to him again, her arm brushing against his. The touch was momentary, fleeting, but Callum couldn’t concentrate for a full thirty seconds, missing what she said first.

‘You are determined to marry Miss Kingsley?’

‘I am.’

‘Then I do not think there is any harm in telling you a little about Sir William. The quicker your negotiations are completed, the sooner I get to go home.’

He raised an eyebrow in question.

‘Sir William promised me he would fund my return trip to England if I helped secure your good opinion of Miss Kingsley.’

‘By bickering with her at every opportunity?’

‘I never said I was any good at it.’

‘You are that keen to leave Scotland?’

‘I am that keen to start thinking about the future. For the past year I have been chasing dreams, fixated on something that I now realise was never going to happen.’ She glanced up at him, biting her lip. ‘I felt guilty about doing it, about deceiving you.’

‘No need for any guilt. If anything you have made me question my desire to marry Miss Kingsley, not persuaded me to marry her…’ he grinned at her expression of exasperation and leaned in closer ‘…but I will not tell Sir William that.’

‘Then in return I will furnish you with everything you need to know to complete your negotiations.’

It felt odd asking Miss Shepherd, the woman he could not stop thinking about in the most inappropriate ways, to help him secure the knowledge he needed to finalise the details of his marriage to another, but this whole situation was odd.

‘Sir William is ruthless and relentless. He is a difficult man to win against. He will promise something and then withdraw it, dangle temptation in your path, make you think you want one thing when you came into the situation thinking you wanted something else entirely.’

‘A master manipulator.’

‘Exactly. He wins by not ever backing down. He will spend a long time gathering all the information he can so that he knows what is important to the person he is up against and what is less so and then he uses the information to get his own way.’

‘You have seen him do this.’

‘Countless times in countless situations. He uses the same tactics for both the mundane and the more important.’

Callum thought of his own situation. Sir William was aware of how important the land and estate was to Callum, so already he was on a back foot.

‘You need to meet him head on with information of your own.’

‘What sort of information?’

Miss Shepherd hesitated and then must have decided to throw caution to the wind.

‘He knows you are eager to gain land and the house in the negotiation for Miss Kingsley’s dowry.

He will be relatively sure you will concede some of that land if it means you get the house and a portion of the estate.

In his mind his job is to ensure he does not give away too much. ’

‘Already he has spoken about renegotiating what was promised in his letters.’

‘You have to counter with your own knowledge of what is important to him.’

‘His status,’ Callum said.

‘Yes. As I understand it, for years he has been trying to gain access to the higher echelons of Society. He has more money than half the dukes and Earls in England. He’s even organised a small personal loan for the Prince Regent in years gone by.

Yet despite this he is not accepted in their circles.

He is hampered by the facts of his birth. ’

‘I have the family name, the lineage.’

‘That is what he wants more than anything else. By marrying Catherine to you, his grandson will be the future Earl of Leven. He cannot change his own pedigree, but this is the next best thing.’

‘I can hardly threaten to take away the lure of the title. If I marry Miss Kingsley, then she will become Lady Leven, Countess of Leven.’

Miss Shepherd shrugged. ‘Then you had better be good at bluffing. Perhaps convincing Sir William you are ready to walk away. Dangle the promise of a title in front of him and then pull it away.’

‘You are a ruthless lass, Miss Shepherd.’

She laughed. ‘Before the last year I would have professed to have known nothing about these sorts of negotiations. My time with the Kingsleys has not been full of kindness and cheer, but I now can appreciate the nuances of a good business discussion.’

‘An education indeed.’

They were on the flat ground now, walking at a decent pace back towards Taigh Blath. Callum surreptitiously slowed a little, not wanting to be back at the house just yet. He reasoned he wasn’t sabotaging the match with Miss Kingsley, merely taking a little innocent pleasure while he could.

As they walked a few fat droplets of rain fell from the sky, splattering the earth in front of them. The clouds had gathered to form a dark blanket and there was no sign of the sun.

Miss Shepherd followed his gaze before searching the distance for any familiar landmarks that might tell her they were close enough to the house to make a dash for it.

‘I think we are going to get wet, Miss Shepherd.’

‘Since arriving in Scotland I have ruined two dresses already. If I ruin a third, I will be forced to parade round in my undergarments all day.’

Callum took a moment to savour the mental image of Miss Shepherd walking through the countryside in just a thin cotton slip. In his mind he could see the outline of her curves underneath the delicate white fabric, the swell of her breasts and the pinkish hint of colour at her nipples.

He swallowed hard, forcing himself back to the present. Thoughts such as this were not helpful in the slightest.

‘Do we push on and hope the rain is not too heavy?’

Forcing his eyes from hers to take in the sky, he calculated the distance between their current position and Taigh Blath.

‘We will be soaked to the skin,’ he said as the raindrops began falling in earnest. If they hurried, they could be back at the house in fifteen minutes.

Walking for fifteen minutes in the rain would not bother him, although he would rather he had the protection of one of his summer coats instead of the more formal jacket he had worn today, but Miss Shepherd might catch a chill in the rain and he would hate to be responsible for that.

Making a decision, he gripped hold of Miss Shepherd’s hand, pulling her gently off the road and on to an overgrown grass path.

‘I know where we can shelter, let the worst of the rain go over. If we’re lucky, it will only be a short shower.’

They ran now, trying to beat the rain as it began coming down faster and faster, the big drops splattering in the mud underfoot and making the conditions slippery.

Callum told himself that was why he was holding Miss Shepherd’s hand so tight, even though some part of him knew that was a lie.

As he held her hand he imagined what might happen if he kept running, if they left their troubles and responsibilities behind them and just ran until there was nothing but their wants and desires left.