The Heiress Bride (Sherbrooke Brides 3)

be a very bad melodrama were it not so dangerous. Will you help me? It is absurd. You’re all supposed to be civilized gentlemen.”

“Forget civilization. If by any wild chance your husband just happens to knock Douglas out, it’s my turn.”

Sinjun shouted, “Blessed hell! Stop it!”

There was no discernible effect.

She looked wildly around for a weapon. No blessed umbrella stand or any other piece of dilapidated furniture she could use to bash Douglas’s head.

Then she saw just the thing. She calmly picked up a small hassock nearly hidden behind a sofa and swung it with all her might, striking Douglas’s back. He roared, jerking about and staring at his sister, who now had the hassock raised over her head.

“Get off him, Douglas, or I swear I’ll break your stubborn head.”

“Ryder, take care of our idiot sister whilst I kill this mangy bastard.”

But it wasn’t to be. The panting, the cursing, the grunts were all abruptly stopped by the obscenely loud report of a gun. In the closed room it sounded like a cannon.

Angus stood in the open doorway, an old blunderbuss smoking in his hands. There was a huge hole in the ceiling of the drawing room.

Sinjun dropped the hassock with a loud thud. She looked at that hole, smoking and blackening the ceiling all around it, and said to Douglas, “Is my dowry large enough to repair even that?”

CHAPTER

6

ANGUS STOOD QUIETLY in the corner of the drawing room, holding the blunderbuss close, eyes still watchful, even after he’d announced, “Forgive me, my lords, but her ladyship here bain’t much of a Kinross yet, and thus if someone must have his neck shot through, it will be one of ye even though yer her brothers. Ye also be Sassenach toffs, an’ that makes me finger itch like th’ divil.”

And that was that, Ryder thought, after he’d figured out the essence, which wasn’t at all good as far as he and Douglas were concerned.

Now Colin and Sinjun sat side by side on the worn pale blue brocade sofa, Ryder and Douglas on equally worn chairs facing them. There was no rug between them. Silence was the news of the day.

“We were married in Gretna Green,” Sinjun announced.

“The devil you were,” Douglas said. “Even you, Sinjun, wouldn’t be that stupid. You would think that I would go there immediately, and thus you would go elsewhere.”

“No, you’re wrong. After I thought that, I realized that you wouldn’t go there, that you would come to Edinburgh instead and quickly find Colin’s house. You see, I know you very well, Douglas.”

“This has nothing to do with anything,” Ryder said. “You’re coming home with us, brat.”

Colin raised a black eyebrow. “Brat? You’re calling her brat and she’s Lady Ashburnham, my wife?”

Sinjun said to him as she patted his hand in what she hoped was a wifely gesture, “It takes my brothers time to change and adapt to things. Ryder will come about, just give him a year or so.”

“I am not amused, Sinjun!”

“No, neither am I. I am married. Colin is my husband. It was doubtless the damned MacPhersons who wrote the anonymous letter to Douglas claiming Colin killed his wife. They’re cowards and liars and they’re out to destroy him, and what better way to go about it than to begin by ruining his nuptials with me?”

Colin stared at her. She was frightening. He’d mentioned the MacPhersons but one time, yet she’d put it all together. Of course, he hadn’t really spoken to her for nearly three days. She’d had a lot of hours to think and sort through things. Thank God she didn’t know the full extent of it—yet.

A very fat woman came into the room. She was wearing a huge red apron that went from right beneath the massive bosom of her black gown to her knees. She was smiling widely. “Och, ye’re here, me lord. It’s home ye be at last. And this sweet little lassie be yer wife?” She curtsied, using her apron.

“Hello. What is your name?”

“Agnes, me lady. I’m here wi’ Angus. I do what he doesn’t, which be most of everything. Look at the hole in the ceiling! My Angus always was excellent at his work. Be any of ye hungry?”

There was a chorus of yeas and Agnes took herself off. Angus hadn’t moved from his spot in the corner, blunderbuss still held firmly against his chest.

It was at that moment Colin realized that he’d been silent as the grave. He cleared his throat. It was his home, after all. “Gentlemen, would you care for a brandy?”