Page 7 of The Scot Beds His Wife

The corner of the Rook’s mouth twitched with the ghost of amusement. “I must say, noblemen rarely rouse themselves to meet me during nocturnal escapades. They generally send a servant to collect their thirty pieces of silver.”

“What happens on my land is my responsibility. Also, I require proof the cargo is not human as I’ll have no part in that.”

The Rook pulled back the heavy canvas to reveal several stacked, unmarked square crates, each too small to hide a person, even a child.

Appeased, Gavin nodded. “This way.”

Loading the cargo into the carts was backbreaking work, and it impressed Gavin that the Rook matched him burden for burden, load for load. The dark silence of the moonless Highland night pressed upon them like a shroud as they took the old road along low sea cliffs to Inverthorne, and stored the crates in the old Jesuit caves beneath the keep.

This finished, the Rook declined Gavin’s offer of a conveyance for his men back to the beach. He made a gesture, and one of his crew stepped forward with a bag of coins for Callum, and a larger one for Gavin, as the cargo was to be stored on his land for a very specific amount of time.

“I’m rather new to pirating, but is the exchange still the doubloon? I’d assumed currency had changed since the eighteenth century.” Gavin shook the heavy bag of coins, wondering if the Rook was unaware of the rather less weighty pound paper note.

The Rook seemed neither perturbed nor entertained. “In your hands is pure undetectable gold coin. It can be claimed by no government, trade organization, nor even traced to a mine. It is not bound to any certain economy, nor do you have to worry about an exchange rate.”

“In that case, it’s a pleasure doing business with ye.” Gavin nodded.

“I’ll return in one year’s time to collect my cargo.”

Calum turned to Gavin. “What are you going to do with your share, I wonder?”

A blood-chilling cry sounded from above, before Manannan Mac Lir dove to reclaim his place on Callum’s forearm.

“We’re not alone.” Callum pulled a pistol from beneath his woolen cloak just as a copse of elms and ash trees rattled nearby.

Gavin counted the clicks of seven gun hammers behind him, each pulled a hair slower than his own. He hoped to be spared the indignity of a death in the dark by friendly fire.

“Show yerself,” he commanded the interloper, and was instantly obeyed.

By a brindled long-haired Highland heifer who noisily waded from the underbrush to nose at some tender clover.

A release of the instant tension was followed by a discharge of pistol hammers and a few relieved grunts and chuckles.

“There’s yer answer.” Gavin smiled. “That’s what I’m doing with my share.”

“Highland cattle?” Callum snorted. “Tell me you’re joking.”

“Nay. I’m going to sell my part of Ravencroft Distillery to my brother, and buy the abandoned Erradale Estate and its bounty of cattle from the late Mrs. Ross’s daughter, the one raised in America.”

“Alison Ross, ye mean?” Gavin could feel more than see Callum’s dumbfounded expression in the darkness. “It’ll be the greatest land acquisition the Highlands have seen in centuries.”

“That’s rather the point.”

“But… the Mackenzie have never been cattle folk.”

Gavin noted that the Rook and his men had already melted into the night, and his hand tightened around the gold in his grasp.

“Nay,” he agreed. “The Mackenzie have never been cattle folk.”

But as soon as he could, he’d no longer be a Mackenzie. Not only would he have the St. James surname, a non-Mackenzie title, and an income all his own, but after the crown granted the emancipation he’d requested, the bulkof his land would no longer be considered the purview of Laird Mackenzie of Wester Ross.

He’d be free of the Mackenzie clan once and for all. Among all his numerous desires, that one burned the brightest.

CHAPTERTWO

Union Pacific Railway, Wyoming Territory, Fall 1880

Samantha Masters squeezed the trigger, planting a bullet between her husband’s beautiful brown eyes.