The Scot is Hers by Eliza Knight
3
New Slains Castle, Scotland
“Alec! Alec, where are ye?”
The sound of his mother’s shrill voice broke uncomfortably into Alec’s reverie. Was his imagination getting the better of him? His mother had not been to Slains Castle in the last few years that he’d holed up there, calling the place gloomy and without civilization, which suited him fine.
Alec sat up straighter, sliding his finger between the pages of his book as he concentrated on listening. There was the distinct bustle of commotion from somewhere in the great castle.
He strained for the sound of her voice. Not once in the weekly correspondence she sent had she warned him of her impending visit. Of course, she wasn’t forbidden from coming to Slains. Indeed, he’d made it plenty well known that he would welcome her if she did since she was always begging him to return to the city. A request he was bound to deny for the sake of his sanity.
What was she doing here now specifically, though? And today of all days when the gloom outside made the castle especially dark and odious?
Lady Errol, the soon to be Dowager Countess of Errol if she had her way, never did anything spontaneously. And when it appeared that she was doing so, it was a great trick—as this must be. A sense of dread wrapped its way around his spine. What was his mother up to?
“Alec!” That was definitely his mother, and her voice was getting closer, as was the sound of her heels clicking on the wooden floor in the corridor beyond.
The door to his massive library burst open, revealing his mother’s slight frame. She was dressed impeccably as usual in a blue day dress that was all the fashion, he was certain. Not that he kept up with fashion, but he was well aware that his mother did. Despite having arrived by carriage, and who knew how many days she’d spent on the road, her hair was also perfectly styled, with her reddish-brown locks curled in ringlets, the light capturing some of the silver threads that had started to streak her temples. She wore a simple strand of pearls, which she’d told him from a young age were the only jewels she was willing to part with if she was accosted on the road by thieves. When he’d asked why she wore anything at all, she’d responded that a lady never left her home without her adornments.
“Mother,” Alec drawled out. He pushed himself to stand from the comfort of his well-loved leather wingback chair and set down his book, saving the place with his favorite bookmark, a thin slice of wood with his initials burned on it that he’d made as a lad with his grandfather. “What an unexpected and yet no’ disappointing surprise.”
He approached her with caution as if she were an aberration about to change into a true demonic form.
The countess’s face split into a thrilling and beguiling smile, the one that always melted away any irritation he had with her meddling, and tossed herself into his arms, nearly unbalancing him in the process.
“Oh, my dear son. Why have ye abandoned me for so long? I begged and begged ye to come home.” She pouted up at him. This move he’d seen her do to his father more than once, and usually, it got her out of whatever trouble she was in. It didn’t work on Alec, and he guessed the trouble this time was her surprise visit.
“I am home, Mama.” He wrapped his arms around her slight figure, smelling the familiar scent of her French perfume.
She ignored him and continued, “I had to come all the way up from Edinburgh to make certain ye were still breathing.” Lady Errol leaned back and pretended to swat him.
“But I’ve written back to all of your letters. Have ye no’ received my replies? Certainly, seeing my signature on paper was proof of life.” Alec played along with her, wallowing if only to please her into thinking she was getting what she wanted.
She waved away his answer and clucked her tongue. “Och, of course, I have.”
“Then ye must know I’m no’ dead.” He grinned widely, waiting for the ball to drop when she could no longer stand his teasing.
“Well, tucked up here, ye might as well be.” She ran her finger over the table and then the mantle, checking for dust, he was certain. The tip of her gloved finger came back clean, and Alec kept his comments to himself about how he was quite capable of running his household and did she remember he was nearly thirty?
Aye, he was in a grand castle that reminded his mother of Purgatory, no doubt, but Alec had not come without a full staff.
“Ye’re surprisingly dry for the weather,” he said instead.
Lady Errol whirled around with a perfunctory nod before bending to check the water level in a crystal vase. “My groom is very efficient.”
“He can stop the rain?” Alec goaded.
That got the reaction he hoped for, which was a small chuckle. “Something like that.” She touched her hair, perhaps to make certain it was all still in place, which of course, it was.
“Is anything the matter?” Alec asked. His mind raced to think of what might have happened to have his mother traipsing the countryside in this weather when she dared not leave her social circles in Edinburgh on pain of death. “There must be some reason ye rushed here without word.”
“There is nothing the matter. In fact, all is about to be well with the world. Can a mother no’ surprise her beloved son with a visit? After all, ye are my only child. I missed ye.” She smiled sweetly, but he could see through the ruse. His mother had some sort of plan concocted and thrust up her sleeve.
Alec cocked his head to the side, curious now. Because while he and his mother had a mostly decent relationship, they were not the type who dropped everything on a whim and ran hundreds of miles simply to say hello. He’d been brought up much differently than that. Visits between parents and their offspring were well planned with all the strictures of a social call in place. Surprise visits went well beyond what his mother considered decent. “How so, Mama?”
The countess sighed quite heavily, which set his nerves on edge. She was about to confess the true reason for this visit, and whatever it was, he was well and truly terrified for it. “I have brought civilization to ye.”
Alec narrowed his eyes. That did not sound promising at all. For more reasons than one, the most important being he hated society and all it contained. “What do ye mean ye’ve brought civilization?” He backed away from his mother, headed toward the window to peer outside, afraid of what he was going to see.
“I knew if I told ye, ye’d disappear. And it is high time ye rejoined the living. Namely the aristocratic social circles. Ye need a wife.”
Nay, nay, nay! It was one thing to have to read that simple edict over and over in a letter that he could toss into flames, but for his mother to be standing her before him declaring she’d brought civilization to his remote and quite comfortable castle in the Highlands was enough to make his brain explode.
Alec groaned, watching as carriage after carriage pulled into the long drive, gliding over the wet gravel. Grooms leapt down from their sodden perches to hold up wide umbrellas so the occupants were not soaked. With a grimace, he turned to face his mother. There was no sense in hiding his disappointment. She knew how he’d react, which is why she’d kept this sneaky proposition a secret.
“Mother, I’m going to take a very long walk off a short cliff and haunt ye in my death.”
Lady Errol scoffed. “Oh, do no’ be so dramatic. I’ve allowed ye three years to hole up here and pout. Now it is time to stop. Ye’re a grown man. An Earl. There are duties ye must attend, such as preserving your line and leaving a legacy.”
“I have attended my responsibilities,” he said, not hiding his exasperation when he cast her a glance. “The single duty ye deem important is the one I am no’ required by law to commit to.” As required, he’d gone to the House of Lords and performed as his title dictated. He’d helped the tenants on his land, making sure that they got the repairs they required, the justice they deemed crucial, and stepped in to mend broken fences when necessary. He’d even attended to his mother, sending her gifts and flowers on special occasions and writing her once a week to keep her abreast of all that he was doing.
There was only one duty he’d shirked in his mother’s eyes, and that was finding a wife. But that was not a duty he deemed worthy of undertaking. Alec would not be the first man to leave that task to others. He was not the last of his line. He’d plenty of cousins who would be glad to be the Earl of Errol and live in his grand castle. By the time that his life was at an end, his mother would have also passed on and need not worry about being cast out. For if he had his way, he did plan to live a long life—that was, if his mother would only stop making him wish he were jumping off a cliff.
Over the past few years, he’d also not been as alone as she might think. He’d had regular visits from his friends and even commandeered one of the ballrooms in the castle as a gymnasium. Lorne, Malcolm and Euan had all joined him several times for private boxing tournaments. But for some reason, his mother preferred to think of him out here brooding in the darkness, prowling the empty halls, like some gothic beast from a novel. Alec was not some “beast,” even if the scar on his face and his temperament sometimes caused him to resemble one.
“That is a choice ye’ll come to regret, and as your mother, I must make certain ye regret nothing. So I am here, and your guests are here, and ye’re going to have a fabulous night, as well as form an attachment to one of the young ladies who’ve come to meet ye.” His mother’s tone brooked no argument. If he were a younger man, he might have snapped to attention. But he wasn’t a younger man, and so instead, his irritation only grew at being treated like a child.
Crossing his arms over his chest, he fixed her with a glare of his own. “Tell the guests to leave.”
The countess actually looked surprised. “Alec—”
“I did no’ invite them here, and I’ll no’ be choosing a bride from the lot of lasses ye probably bribed to attend.” What price did his mother have to pay?
Lady Errol straightened her spine and stared him down the way she had when he was a lad. “Get changed, my dear. The guests will all be shown to their rooms, and we shall reconvene in the drawing room for tea in due time. I’ve even taken the liberty of inviting your friends so ye might attend the party this go around.”
As she said it, his gaze caught the crest on the Duke of Sutherland’s carriage as it arrived before the castle. The bastard had not even written him a warning of what his mother had planned. Some friend he was.
Lorne Gordon, the Duke of Sutherland, stepped from the carriage with his wife, Jaime. Alec had stood witness to his best friend’s exchange of vows the year before. Lorne’s duchess was not like the other society nitwits. Alec liked her. Lorne had fallen in love with her. Every time he saw his friend, he sent up a prayer of thanks that Lorne was still alive. Seeing that bloke wander into the club in town after being missing and presumed dead had been one of the happiest moments of Alec’s life. He’d thought Lorne perished on the battlefield.
“Ye’ve a couple of hours until tea, son,” the countess kept on when Alec didn’t respond. “Enough time to find the strength to attend your guests.”
“None of the rooms are prepared,” Alec said, incredulous.
His mother smiled smugly. “They are. I wrote your housekeeper a few weeks ago to tell her of my plans.”
Alec gritted his teeth. So much for loyal servants. “I will fire her for no’ telling me.”
Lady Errol scoffed, her hands on her hips. “Ye will no’ fire her for trying to please ye.”
“I am no’ pleased. And perhaps since it was your idea, I shall fire ye.”
“Ye can no’ fire your mother.” She rolled her eyes. “I told her it was a surprise. For your birthday. Now deal with it.”
“My birthday?” Alec groaned.
“Aye. Tomorrow ye’ll be thirty. All the more reason ye should tie the knot. As I mentioned, several eligible maidens will quite fit in with your brooding mood, along with all the other things that make a good match.”
He was too shocked to be offended or tell her how much he didn’t want to do this. His mother had no boundaries. If it weren’t for the guests downstairs, he might toss her out.
“Well, I must freshen up,” she said, a nod in his direction as if the conversation was over and his future decided. “Ye can thank me later.”
“I’ll do no such thing.”
She shrugged. “’Tis time, Alec. If your father were alive, he would have insisted on it long before now. I shirk my duties and promises to him by allowing ye to continue the way ye have.”
As much of a meddler as his mother was, he couldn’t fault her for wanting to do right by her late husband, his father. She was nothing if not dutiful, even in death. The reminder of his father’s passing had a wave of sadness coming over him. They’d been close, he and Alec. And while Alec had been away at war, his father had succumbed to an affliction of the heart. He’d heard the news days before he’d lost his friend in battle—days before he’d faced off with a man that he hoped to run into so he could gut him for getting in the way—Sir Joshua Keith.
His mother walked toward the library door but paused with her palm on the handle, turning to face him with a little frown puckering her brow. “Also, I think ye’re being quite selfish, my lord. Has it not occurred to ye that I might like to pass on hostess duties to a much younger lady? I am tired, Alec. And I do no’ wish to continue at this pace. I want to spend the rest of my days in as much leisure as ye’ve had here. Is that too much to ask?”
Alec frowned. The accusation she was making was unfair. “No one has said ye must continue being a hostess, Mama, least of all me. Ye can stop at any time.”
Her shoulders straightened with pride. “I am the soon-t0-be dowager countess. I have no choice, especially with ye staying up here in Aberdeenshire. Someone has to show their face for the family, and that has fallen to me.”
He’d not thought about it that way before. But it didn’t make him any more amenable to the situation or the idea of marriage. His feelings on that notion had not changed in the least. He’d rather hire a hostess to take over the duties for his mother than have to worry about them a second more.
Alec sighed heavily and approached her. “Go and rest, Mother.” He kissed her on her smooth cheek. “If it is leisure ye seek, I will find a way to give it to ye.” Without having to abandon his desires.
He ushered her from his library. Alec watched his mother disappear around the corner, no doubt in search of the stairs and her bedchamber. From the grand foyer, he could hear the giddy and boisterous noise of the guests arriving. Introductions were being made, along with happy reunions among friends. There was a little tug of longing at his heart. For he did want to be part of the reunion with his comrades. That had been a cruel trick of his mother to invite the people he did want to see along with the hungry lasses who would attempt to flirt with him, all the while their eyes would be on his scar, their lips twisted in disgust.
