The Duke's Scottish Lass (Brethren of Stone 0.50)
Page 23
“My son?” he gasped.
She gave him a glowing smile. “The future fifth Duke of Manchester, Reginald Maddox.”
He touched the baby’s head, of course he would be named Reginald. “’Tis a miracle.” He swallowed to push down the emotion welling up inside him.
The baby made a guttural noise in his throat and the room burst into laughter. It sounded exactly like Stone’s growl.
“It can’t be,” Delia laughed.
“I believe it is,” Stone crowed proudly. “My nephew will be a man among men.”
“Whatever he is,” Roderick kissed his wife, “we will love him.” Then he kissed her again. “As I love you.”
“I love you too.” Delia’s eyes shone.
Roderick’s chest constricted with love. He said a silent thank you to his departed friend.
Scottish Devil
Brethren of Stone
Tammy Andresen
Other titles in this series:
Kilted Sin
Wicked Laird
Highland Rake
Rogue Scot
A Duke’s Scottish Lass
One family united by loss, driven to find love
Scottish Devil
Brethren of Stone
By Tammy Andresen
Six siblings unite after the death of their parents around their eldest brother, Stone. They consider blood to be a binding oath and vow to protect one another. They all must face their own demons as they find love and their places in the world.
Fire and Brimstone…that is what the locals liked to call him. It was their way of referring to him as the devil. Let them fear him, he cared not. Stone Sinclair’s eyes slashed through the crowd daring one of them to say it here and now.
He squared his shoulders and his neck made a cracking noise, causing several women to look fearfully at him. Utterly ridiculous. He knew that his scowling façade and his penchant for silence frightened some, as had his father’s, but they’d never been anything but responsible overlords. They were making these lands prosperous for all who lived here.
His parents died while attempting to rescue miners from a collapsed mine shaft. If those actions didn’t speak to the kindness in their hearts, Stone didn’t know what else could. He supposed it did in its own way. It was the reason so many now stood at their funeral. Though his more cynical side told him it was their twisted desire to ogle his family and hunt for any misstep that might confirm in their minds that they were devils.
He could make out the occasional word, though he kept his eyes on the large stone that marked his parents’ grave. His five brothers stood in a line by birth order on his right side. And his sister, Arianna, only five years old, held his hand on the left.
It was her little fingers tugging on his that finally cast his gaze down, instead of forward. “Stone,” she whispered.
“Aye, my little lamb?” his heart constricted every time he looked into those luminous blue eyes. What she had lost was so much more painful than what had been taken from him. He’d had their parents for the first twenty-four years of his life. But a little girl should grow up with her mother.
“When are Mama and Papa coming home?”