The Heiress Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 3)

She looked up at that cleft in his chin, and without thought, she raised her hand, stripped off the glove, and her fingertip traced the cleft. He stood completely motionless.

“I will make you an excellent wife. Do you promise you don’t have a troll’s character?”

“I like animals and I don’t shoot them for sport. I have five cats, excellent ratters, all of them, and at night they have the hearth all to themselves. If ever it is really cold in the dead of winter, they sleep with me, but not often, because I tend to thrash about and crush them. If you mean, would I beat you, the answer is no.”

“You’re obviously very strong. I’m pleased you don’t hurt those who are weaker. Do you also care about people? Are you kind? Do you feel responsible for those people who are your dependents?”

He couldn’t look away from her. It was very distressing, but he said, “Yes, I suppose so.”

He thought of his huge castle, only half of it really a castle, and that one not medieval by any means but built by a Kinross earl in the late seventeenth century. He loved the castle with its towers and its crenellated battlements and its parapets and deep embrasures. Ah, but it was so drafty in some parts, so dilapidated, that one could catch an inflammation of the lung just standing in one spot for ten minutes. So much had to be done to bring the entire castle back up to snuff. And all the outbuildings and the stables, the crofts and the drainage system. And the depleted herds of sheep and cattle, and his crofters, so many of them, poor and dispirited because they had nothing, not even enough seeds to plant for crops to feed themselves, and the bloody future was so grim and hopeless if he didn’t do something . . . .

He looked away from her, toward the line of immense town houses that lined the far side of Hyde Park. “My inheritance was sorely depleted by my father and polished off by my brother, the sixth earl, before he died. I need a lot of money or my family will be reduced to genteel poverty, and many of my dependents will be forced to emigrate, that or starve. I live in a huge old castle set at the eastern side of Loch Leven, beautiful really, not far to the northwest of Edinburgh, on the Fife Peninsula. But still, you would see it as a savage land, despite all its arable land and gentle rolling hills. You’re English and you’d see only the barren heights and crevices, and savage, rocky crags and hidden glens with torrents of rushing water bursting through them, water so cold your lips turn blue just to drink it. It’s usually not all that cold in the winter months, but the days are short and the winds occasionally heavy. In the spring the heather covers the hills with purple, and the rhododendron spreads over every crofter’s hut and even climbs the walls of my drafty castle, in all shades of pink and red and magenta.”

He shook himself. He was prosing on like an idiot poet about Scotland and his part of it, as if he were parading his credentials for her inspection, and she was looking up at him, her expression rapt, taking in every word and watching his mouth. It was absurd. He wouldn’t, couldn’t, accept it. He said abruptly, “Listen, it’s true. My lands have the possibility of wealth because of all the arable acres, and I have ideas how to help my crofters improve their lot and thus improve my own in the process. No, we’re not like the Highlands that must even now import sheep to survive. It’s called enclosing, and it’s a pernicious practice, for all the men and women who have lived on their plots of land for generations are being systematically disinherited. They’re leaving Scotland or coming to England to work in the new factories. So I must have money, Joan, and there is no other way for me to save my inheritance except by marrying it.”

“I understand. Come home with me and speak to my brother Douglas. He’s the earl of Northcliffe, you know. We will ask him exactly what my dowry is. It’s bound to be very generous. I heard him saying to my mother once that she should stop her picking at me for being on the shelf. Since I was an heiress, he said, I could marry anyone I wanted, even if I was fifty years old and had no teeth.”

He looked at her helplessly. “Why me?”

“I haven’t the foggiest notion, but there it is.”

“I could stab you in your bed.”

Her eyes darkened and he felt a surge of lust so great it rocked him on his heels.

“I said stab, not tup.”

“What does tup mean?”

“It means . . . oh, damnation, where is that wretched guile I asked you to fetch up? Tup is a crude word, forgive me for saying it.”

“Oh, you mean lovemaking, then.”

“Yes, that is what I mean, only I was referring to it in a more basic way, what it usually is between men and women, not the high-blown romantic nonsense that females must call lovemaking.”

“You are cynical, then. I suppose I can’t expect you to be perfect in every way. My two brothers make love, they don’t tup. Perhaps I can teach you all about it. But first, of course, you will have to show me the way of such things. It wouldn’t do for you to continue to shout with laughter when I open my mouth for you to kiss me.”

Colin turned away from her. He felt marooned on a very insubstantial island, one that kept shifting beneath his boots. He hated losing control. He’d lost control over his inheritance, and that was enough to try any man. He didn’t want to lose control with a woman to boot, but she kept thrusting and parrying, being utterly outrageous and taking it for granted that it was just fine, that it was normal, almost that it was expected. No Scottish girl would ever behave like this supposedly refined English lady. It was absurd. He felt like a damned fool. “I won’t promise you love. I cannot. It will never be. I don’t believe in love, and I have very good reasons. I have years of reasons.”

“That’s what my brother Douglas said about his bride

, Alexandra. But he changed, you know. She kept after him until he converted himself, and now I do believe that he would gladly lie down in the middle of a mud puddle and let her tread across him.”

“He’s a bloody fool.”

“Perhaps. But he’s a very happy bloody fool.”

“I won’t speak of this further. You are driving me into the bloody boughs and down again. No, be quiet. I’m taking you home. I must think. And so must you. I’m just a man, do you understand me? Just a man, no more, no less. If I married you, it would be for your groats, not for your lovely eyes or your probably very nice body.”

Sinjun just nodded and asked very quietly, “Do you really think I have a nice body?”

He cursed, gave her a boot up, and climbed back into his own saddle. “No,” he said, feeling more harassed than he’d ever felt in his life. “No, just be quiet.”

Sinjun was in no hurry to return to the Sherbrooke town house, but Colin was. She paid him no heed when they arrived, merely guided Fanny to the stables at the back of the mansion. He was forced to follow.

“Henry, do see to the horses, please. This is his lordship, Lord Ashburnham.”

Henry tugged on the bright red curl that dipped onto his forehead. He looked very interested in him, Colin saw, and wondered at it. Surely this outrageous girl had dozens of men panting around her, if for nothing more than to see what she would say next. Lord, her brother must have to warn every man who came through the front door about her excessive candor.