Page 52 of The Scot Beds His Wife

Thus gathering the Magistrate’s Bench againsthim. The bully who would steal Alison Ross’s land from beneath her wee, stubborn arse.

Would they take into account that he offered her twice what it was worth?Nay.Because the truth was, if he pushed the document in his possession through to the Magistrate’s Bench and Erradale did, indeed, revert to Liam, then the fucking Laird would probably just give it back to her by way of reparation for the hell their father had visited upon her family.

Fine time for the Demon Highlander to go all penitent and altruistic. Just in time to fuck Gavin up the arse with repentance.

To take away the one thing that could make him happy. The one thing he wanted.

Again.

Frustrated breath hissed through his throat as he balled his fists and… pressed his knuckles down very decisively on the writing desk adjacent to the mirror.

He didn’t punch things. That was how his father dealt with obstacles. How Liam did.

He schemed. He used the wits, the strength, the intellect, and, granted, the looks God gave him to get what he wanted.

Glancing up, Gavin glowered at his reflection. These features, the perfect mix of his father’s brutish, Pict ancestors and his mother’s aristocratic breeding, served him well in all endeavors but this.

Had he been wrong about Alison Ross? When he thought he’d glimpsed lust in her eyes, could it have been something else? A mirror, perhaps, of his own desire… What about the kiss? He’d not imagined her response. The aggressiveness of it.

The passion.

It had set him on fire, and the blaze had yet to burn out. And after, they’d come to—well, if not a truce, at least a ceasefire. He’d held her for a moment and…

She’d let him.

He tried not to think of how many times he’d poured manipulation and skill into a seduction as a means to an end and winced. There had been more honesty and intimacy in that moment between them than he’d shared with a bevy of mistresses. Something had blossomed between them, hadn’t it? Some new understanding, some sort of nebulous whisper toward a reconciliation of terms.

Why had she run from him?

What if she hadn’t felt it?

Impossible.

A soft, familiar knock interrupted his reverie, and he rushed to open the chamber door.

“Mother?” he asked anxiously. “Are ye well?”

Eleanor Mackenzie, the dowager Marchioness of Ravencroft, had lived above five decades, and still her beauty remained unravaged by time. Her hair, once gold, fell in silver ringlets about a face nearly as smooth as that of a porcelain doll. Maybe the creases of her mouth had considerably deepened, and the skin beneath her chin was no longer as taut as it once was. When she walked, she made no sound. When she talked, her voice contained eternal apologies and shook with neurotic anxieties.

Even after all this time.

“Where is Alice?” Gavin took her hands in his, hisbroken, beautiful mother, and restlessly checked the hall for her maid and caretaker.

Green eyes, identical to the ones he’d only just been studying in the mirror, found his general direction, but never landed on anything.

Because they couldn’t.

“I—I’m sorry to disturb your sleep, my son,” she stammered. “But Alice has already gone to bed, and I didn’t think this was aught she could do something about.”

“What’s happened?” Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, Gavin gently nudged her toward the plush blue velvet chair by his fireplace.

“N-nay, take me to the window,” she stated, then amended. “If you would.”

Gavin led her there as she explained, “I—I opened my casement because the fire made my room a wee bit close, you see, and I thought I heard terrible echoes. A rifle shot, maybe. I was worried about poachers or… something worse. Perhaps we should call upon Mr. Monahan to look into it.”

When she’d said “Mr. Monahan,” she wasn’t referring to Callum, but to his father, their stable master, Eammon.

Unlatching the window, Gavin pushed it outward, muscles instantly tensing against the bracing chill. He listened to the darkness, and didn’t at all like the eerie silence that greeted him.