Page 109 of The Scottish Duke's Deal

Eleanor narrowed her eyes. “You said you knew the Duke.”

“I did.” His tone darkened, slightly. “Very well.”

She swallowed, keeping her voice calm. “Were you good friends?”

“Once,” he said, glancing toward Penelope with unnerving ease. “In the way wolves and hounds are sometimes raised in the same litter.” He smiled again, that same serpentine curve. “Five years. I’ve been waiting five years.”

Her throat went dry. “Waiting for what?”

Callum took a step closer. She didn’t move, even though her heartbeat thundered in her chest.

“You know,” he said, voice soft and reverent, “I imagined it differently. I thought I’d slit his throat at the edge of a river. Or burn his house down with him inside it. I even thought, once, about dragging him behind my horse through the village square.”

He was still smiling.

“But then…” he lifted a hand, palm up, as if gesturing to a stage, “then I saw you.”

Eleanor didn’t breathe.

“I saw the house. The horses. The governess. The girl with his eyes. And I thought…” He clicked his tongue. “How lucky for me. How perfect. That he left his duchess so unguarded.”

Her stomach turned to ice.

“You—” she began, but her voice broke.

He tilted his head, watching her.

“You’re mad,” she said quietly.

“Maybe,” he admitted “but I’m also very patient.”

He moved again, closing the distance. Eleanor’s feet braced instinctively.

“You see,” he said, “Ramsay took something from me. Something he’ll never be able to give back.”

She didn’t speak.

“My brother,” Callum said. “A boy with dark hair and foolish loyalties. Ramsay killed him.”

Eleanor’s lips parted. A thousand images flickered behind her eyes—Ramsay in the garden, Ramsay furious on the ship, Ramsay holding her like she was his only tether to the world. And now this. This man who looked at her like she was already a grave.

“Whatever happened between you,” she said, her voice trembling but firm, “it doesn’t concern me.”

“Oh, but it does,” Callum said. “Because since Ramsay took someone I loved, it only seems fair I take someone he does.”

Twenty-Six

She didn’t have time to scream.

Callum’s hand closed around her wrist like iron. His eyes gleamed—too close, too calm—as if he’d been waiting years to touch her and had only now decided how.

Eleanor reacted before she thought. Her fist flew on instinct, driven by sheer terror and the sickening realization that no one was coming.

It landed.

The jolt traveled up her arm. He stumbled back with a grunt but didn’t fall.

She had half a second to breathe before something knocked into him from behind—a blur, fast and solid—and this time, he did fall.