Page 67 of Anice’s Bargain

22

James wanted to smash Drake’s perfect jaw. The bastard wouldn’t look so very fine with his mouth gone lopsided.

“James,” Hamish hissed at him. “Are ye listening?”

James grunted and turned from where his wife had slipped her delicate creamy hand against Drake’s rippling forearm.

“Are ye sure ye can betray her?” Seamus cast him a dubious look.

“Bedding a lass and betraying her are two verra different things.” James forced a casual shrug. The words on his tongue were bitter, but they needed to be said. Laird Graham may be a nefarious cur, but he was a careful nefarious cur.

James knew that if he went to his father and asked to be part of the raid, the old man would realize the offer stank of duplicity. Instead, James would continue along with the Graham reivers and feign ignorance of his father’s hand in it.

James had invested two days of discreet conversations and perfectly worded compliance. Surely, it would not be long until Laird Graham approached him.

“I never got to sample Werrick.” Hamish leaned causally against the clapboard wall of a booth, which creaked in protest at his weight. “I hear the bounty is plentiful. Enough to feed a man for years.”

James swallowed his disgust. “Nor have I.”

“That’s shite.” Seamus knocked James’s arm with his sharp elbow. “Ye sample Werrick every night.”

The two reivers laughed and barely escaped being pounded into nothing by James’s fist. Instead, his gaze slid to Anice as she selected an apple from a vendor, her arm still affixed to Drake’s arm. James narrowed his eyes, as though doing so could break the perfection of the other man.

A hand extended from the shadows of the alley to James’s right and curled a finger at him, beckoning.

Speaking of the old goat, there his father was now.

James gave a nod to the two men and strode toward the alley. In doing so, he passed Anice and Drake and envisioned sweeping his wife from Drake’s arms and kissing her until she gazed up at him in the way that made his soul melt.

Anice caught his eye and cast him such an affectionate look, it nearly pushed him to make the fantasy a reality. That is, until he shifted directions toward the alley and her expression took on a look of confused suspicion. Or maybe it was simply confusion, and the suspicion came from James’s own guilt.

Regardless, someday he could explain this all to her, and then she would understand. No doubt she’d be grateful. He brightened at what that gratitude might entail from his alluring, lusty wife and strode into an open doorway in the alley.

“What’s got ye grinning like a fool?” Laird Graham snapped.

All elation faded at the gravelly voice. James’s entire life had been surrounded by hope for praise from this surly man. Even now, even in the face of the old man’s betrayal, there was a desperate part of James clinging to the cliff of acceptance from his father.

The alley stank of rot and refuse, and the small square room beyond the doorway offered no reprieve from its assault. The space offered little with only a table, a sputtering candle for passable light, an empty hearth scarred black from years of use and two wooden chairs that looked like they wouldn’t support a flea.

James clasped his father’s forearm in a greeting of unity and affectionate familiarity.

Laird Graham gazed at his son. Bits of white whiskers thick as fish bones stood out against the old man’s sagging jaw and breath rattled in his chest louder than a cat’s purr. Still, his eyes held a quiet pride James could not deny wanting.

Laird Graham tapped his temple with a yellowed fingernail. “I know ye’ve heard what it is I’ve got in my head.”

“Mayhap.” James folded himself into the better of the two chairs and prayed it held. The rickety thing teetered but held. “If ye’re the one behind it…”

In truth, James hated to sit during conversations such as these. It put one at a disadvantage to be so much lower than their opponent. However, he needed to appear relaxed, at ease.

His father held onto the back of the other chair, but did not sit, clearly taking the advantage to remain standing. As expected, the old man made a competition out of even that and smirked down at James with his victory.

“Ye’d betray yer wife?” Laird Graham asked.

James paused as if considering. “Will ye allow the men to come back to Carlisle after to resume their efforts with the harvest?”

“So ye can see yer precious oath fulfilled?” Laird Graham wrinkled his nose.

His father’s disgust at the Earl of Bastionbury had rankled James initially. Especially as James had tried to convince his father to be a better man, to consider the condition of his soul once he departed this world.