The Duchess (Montgomery/Taggert 16)

“He’s some old man. His family’s always lived on this land.”

She looked down at her eggs. They really were quite delicious. “Why does the name sound so familiar to me?”

Trevelyan took a drink from his teacup—Claire didn’t ask if it was tea or whisky—and mumbled, “Tradition.”

“What?”

He narrowed his eyes. “I’d think that with your romantic knowledge of your precious duke’s clan you’d know exactly who the MacTarvits are.” At that he held up his cup in salute to her.

Claire put down her fork and looked at him in wonder. “The whisky makers,” she said breathlessly.

He gave her a little smile to acknowledge that she was right.

Claire stood up and walked to the window. “All the great clans had other clans under them who were responsible for certain things. Some clans had families that were bards, men who wrote poetry for them and memorized the family’s history. Other clans had pipers.” She turned bac

k to look at him. “But Harry’s clan had the MacTarvits who made the whisky.”

Again he raised his cup to her. “I congratulate you on your memory.”

She sat back down and started on her eggs again. “And now this old man is the last one of his clan left in Scotland. The last of the great whisky makers. The—”

“Certainly not the last whisky maker in Scotland. Harry won’t have to do without if MacTarvit goes.”

“But what will MacTarvit do?”

“I don’t think that concerns Harry’s mother, the duchess. I think she cares about her cattle being stolen.”

“But what about tradition!” Claire said with passion. “Haven’t any of you read Sir Walter Scott?”

At that Trevelyan laughed. But it wasn’t a pleasant laugh, it was full of cynicism. The laugh had the tone of a man who knows all, has seen all, and is amused by the ignorance and innocence of another.

“I don’t care what you think of Sir Walter Scott, but it is tradition that the clans robbed one another. If this man has been making whisky for you for years I imagine he can afford to buy the cattle if he wanted to.”

“The duchess doesn’t pay him.”

Claire could only gape at him.

“Her Grace doesn’t believe in Scotch whisky, thinks it’s nasty stuff and unhealthy, the peat, you know, so she doesn’t pay him. She doesn’t order it from him, so what comes into the house she feels deserves no payment. Besides, she has always hated the man and wants him off her land.”

“It’s Harry’s land.”

Trevelyan gave her a nasty little smile. “If you think that you don’t know anything at all.”

Claire had finished her eggs and again got up and walked toward the bed, running her hand over the post at the foot of the bed. Here was a bed that Bonnie Prince Charlie had slept in, and they had been talking about a man of a clan that had been whisky makers to their clan for generations, yet they acted as though whether he stayed or not meant nothing.

She turned back to Trevelyan. “You have to do something.”

“Why do I have to do something? Why not your precious Harry?”

“This is no time for argument. We have to do something to keep this man on the land. You can’t dismiss a man who has been loyal for generations. What would your ancestors say?”

“My ancestors would probably say, ‘Good riddance.’ For all that you seem to have formed the opinion that this is a sweet old man who is being persecuted by my family, the truth is that the MacTarvits have always been the most cantankerous, stubborn, disagreeable men in the world. They make the whisky but they don’t sell it, we have to take it from them. We have to steal it.”

“Just as he has to steal food from you.”

Trevelyan stood. “You can stop looking at me like that. I’m not walking all the way to that old man’s house just to be shot at. I have work of my own to do and I don’t need MacTarvit’s ill temper to deal with.”

She followed him into the sitting room. “You invented ill temper! The two of you should get along very well.”