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“If you think so, then you should listen more.”
“Should I be like you and sit in the shadows and spy on people?”
“I learn things, like the fact that Lawler can’t abide her.”
“Then he should send her back to London so she can be with her own kind.” Angus spoke of the girl as though she were an alien species.
“Angus!” He heard Malcolm’s voice, and when he turned in that direction, Shamus slithered away. For someone as big as he was, he could certainly move quickly when he needed to.
After that, Angus quit letting everyone’s constant retelling of that day when he’d been humiliated by a bit of a girl bother him, and he started listening. When all of them lived as they did, under the rule and out of the pocket of one man, it was imperative to know what that man was up to.
They all knew the story—or at least part of it. When Lawler was no more than Angus’s age, on one cut of a deck of cards, he’d won from the McTern laird the castle and the acres surrounding it. What no one knew was that since Lawler was the third son of a man with little property, he was not to inherit anything. His father had told him that if he’d go into the clergy, he’d find him a church to preach at. But there was nothing in the world that Lawler wanted to do less than to spread the Gospel.
When Lawler proposed to the drunken old Scotsman that they cut the cards for his castle and lands, Lawler had lied and said he owned an estate in York. Had he lost the cut, Lawler would have had no way to pay the debt. But he hadn’t lost.
The next day, Lawler rode north to find the castle he’d won, and although it was a poor estate, it suited him. All he wanted to do was hunt and fish and play cards, so the old keep and grounds were enough for him. He soon found that the McTerns still thought of the place as theirs, so they did the work and the small profits went to Lawler. Now and then one of the Scots would do something he found intolerable and he’d have the man tied to a post and whipped, but he’d never hanged anyone.
And as the years passed and Angus, the young man who would have inherited the property, grew, Lawler left the running of the estate to him, as he seemed to love responsibility and work as much as Lawler hated it.
For days, Angus listened more and stopped letting his anger close his ears to what was going on around him. If Lawler didn’t like the girl, why not? No one seemed to know. Morag, who worked inside the castle, said she’d often heard Lawler shouting at the girl, but it was always done behind closed doors, inside the stone walls, and even as hard as she listened, she couldn’t make out what they were saying.
“Poor thing, how could he shout at an angel like that?” Morag said, making Angus roll his eyes.
No one missed the fact that every day when the niece went riding, Angus was nowhere to be found. Her mare seemed to know when she was going to show up because it started prancing about in its stall. The moment the mare lifted a forefoot, Angus seemed to dissolve into smoke. He wrapped his plaid about himself and went into the hills to stay away from her.
Of course this caused more laughter, but Angus didn’t trust himself to look at her and not lose control. He figured he’d either stand there in a stupor, or he’d— He couldn’t think what he’d do if she again made people laugh at him.
On the eighth day after Angus saw her, Malcolm ca
me into the stables very upset. “You have to go after her.”
“Who?” Angus asked. He’d been in the hills all night and had just awakened a few minutes ago.
“Her. Lawler’s niece. You have to go after her.”
“I’d rather face the entire Campbell clan alone than follow her. Besides, she can take care of herself.”
“No,” Malcolm said, “she’s gone off with Shamus.”
Angus paused for a moment with a harness in his hands, but then he hung it on a hook in the wall and kept walking. “Why would she do a thing like that? Does she like him?”
“No, you great daft thing. She went riding with him as her guide, her protector. Tam is home sick, puking up his guts, so she looked about the yard and said she’d take Shamus with her. What could anyone do? Tell her that Shamus wasn’t to be trusted? He’d beat anyone who said that.”
“She’s Lawler’s niece. Shamus would be afraid to hurt her.”
“If that’s so, then why did he loosen the cinch and make her fall? She could have broken her neck.”
Angus frowned. “She’ll be all right. He never hurts anyone more than they can stand.”
“You mean he never kills anyone. Do you know what he might do to a woman if he got her alone? Angus, he is three times the size of her.”
“Tell someone else to go,” Angus said. “Duncan or... I know, tell my brother-in-law, Gavin, to go. It’ll give him something to do besides lay with my sister.”
“She’ll be angry if she sees anyone else there, and if Shamus sees anyone, he’ll clobber him.”
“So you want me to risk a club on my head, all for a girl who believes the worst of me?”
“Yes,” Malcolm said simply. “You can take a pony and disappear in the hills. You can watch and never be seen. No one else can do that. And if you see Shamus doing something he shouldn’t, then you can stop him.”
