“Yes,” Trevelyan said as though from a distance, “that’s it.”
“Well, come on.”
Trevelyan was so lost in his thoughts about what she’d said he didn’t realize what she was doing. The shots rang out before he could grab her.
Chapter Eight
It’s amazing that two people can see the same thing, yet think they see two completely different things. When Claire saw Angus MacTarvit, all five foot four of him, built like the bull he resembled, she knew that at last she was seeing a real Scotsman, a man who didn’t wear a kilt because it could impress a woman but because it was what he always wore, had always worn, and what his ancestors had worn. The MacTarvits had probably worn the kilt throughout the ban, when England, in another attempt to subdue the Scots, had outlawed the wearing of kilts.
What Trevelyan saw wa
s a cantankerous little man who’d never given away or shared anything in his life, a man who could be thirty-five or a hundred and five. You couldn’t tell his age by looking at him, for he was smoked brown by the peat he used in distilling the whisky. He used peat for whisky; he didn’t drink the water and he’d certainly never bathed in it.
Trevelyan turned to Claire, planning to make excuses for the horrid little man, but what he saw were two people who had fallen instantly in love with each other. Claire, her face alight, walked forward, her hand outstretched. “Lord MacTarvit.”
“Lord MacTarvit,” Trevelyan said with a snort. No one had called the old man anything but MacTarvit for years. But he was the clan chief, even if he was the last of his clan.
Trevelyan saw the old man’s face soften, the leathery wrinkles relax into a ridiculous expression that made him look like a gnome. “Ah, lassie,” the old man practically purred, taking Claire’s hand in his right and caressing it with his left. “Come into this humble home. Would you like a wee dram?”
“Of your whisky?” Claire asked, conveying the impression that she’d tasted every whisky in the world and his was by far the best.
Trevelyan, with a grimace, started to follow the two of them into the low, thatched cottage, but MacTarvit blocked his way.
When he looked at Trevelyan, those gnomish features rearranged themselves back into his normal expression of rage. “And what would you be wantin’?”
“If you think I’m going to let her in there alone with the likes of you, your brains are more pickled than I thought.”
This seemed to please the old man and he stepped aside to let Trevelyan by, but then blocked his way again. “I thought you were dead.”
Trevelyan gave him a hard look. “She thinks I’m dead.”
MacTarvit frowned at that and stood for a moment as though considering this, then he nodded and went inside the cottage, Trevelyan following him.
From the moment Trevelyan entered that little cottage, everything in it black from centuries of smoke from peat fires, he became an observer. All his life he’d heard members of his family curse the MacTarvits. His father had complained endlessly about the thievery of the family and their refusal to buy and sell like the rest of the modern world. Trevelyan had grown up thinking that the MacTarvits were something the world would be better off without.
But now he sat on a three-legged stool against one wall and watched this romantic young American with this old man and he saw MacTarvit in a whole different light. Angus MacTarvit was a man out of the past. He was a throwback to another time, a time when the clans were powerful and they warred with each other. MacTarvit was from a time when men were valued for their handiness with a weapon and not with a money ledger. He was a man whose family had served another for generations, and now he was the last of his clan and he was trying desperately to hold on to the old ways.
“What be you lookin’ at?” MacTarvit said belligerently to Trevelyan.
“Don’t mind him,” Claire said. “He looks at everyone that way. It makes him feel that he knows more than they do.”
Trevelyan snorted at that. “More than the two of you do.”
“And now, lassie, why are you here?”
“I’m to marry the duke,” she said brightly.
MacTarvit looked at Trevelyan.
“She’s to marry Harry,” Trevelyan said softly.
Angus frowned at that, and Trevelyan knew he had no idea what was going on, for MacTarvit had recognized Trevelyan the moment he had seen him. And if he knew who Trevelyan was then he knew he was the oldest living son and therefore the duke. Trevelyan smiled at the old man’s puzzlement, having no intention of giving him answers to his unasked questions.
“Then what are ye doin’ with this lot?” Angus said, pointing his glass at Trevelyan.
Claire looked at Trevelyan for a moment. “We’re friends,” she said and smiled. “At least we’re becoming friends.”
Trevelyan gave Angus a smug little smile, which made the old man grunt, then he turned back to Claire. “So they’ve sent you to run me off, have they?”