Lucy and Her Scottish Laird Read Free

behind him.
    “Oh, do come along, old chap,” Erskine said, pulling Ian along with the others. “’Twill be an amusing afternoon.”
    “I am overdue for a change of clothes,” he said, though he did not mind passing a few moments with Kindale.
    “Daresay we all are,” Erskine countered, drawing Ian deep into the garden.
    “Nevertheless,” Ian said, glancing around at all the well-dressed young ladies who were tittering behind fans while gazing at the bizarre
    Glencory statuary.
    Ian doubted any of them would be interested in tying herself to a duke’s bastard son whose estate was about to go bankrupt.
    Not that anyone knew the truth of his heritage. Ian wondered what these young women would say if they discovered what he had learned just yesterday. That
    he was not his mother’s son. That his father had impregnated an Irish serving maid while his long-suffering, childless parents were on an extended
    trip in that country.
    According to his father’s drunken confession, he and the duchess had taken the Irish maid and gone into seclusion somewhere on the desolate coast of
    County Louth for the duration of the young woman’s confinement. The duke had intended to pay her for her infant if she bore a son, and pass Ian off
    as his own legitimate child. But the Irish lass had died during childbirth, so there was no payment to be made, and no one of import to gainsay the fiction
    of their family. The duke had taken care that neither the midwife nor their two hired servants had known their true identities.
    The duke and duchess had returned to their estate in County Armagh and they’d had Ian baptized and registered in the local church, making him the
    official, legitimate son of the Duke and Duchess of Craigmuir.
    Ian wondered how anything could be so simple. Surely someone had known, or at least suspected, what had happened.
    He found it amazing, too, that the duchess had held her tongue all these years, though she’d refused to show her “son” even an iota of
    motherly affection. Quite the opposite. With Craigmuir’s confession yesterday, Ian had finally come to understand why his mother abhorred him. He was
    the son she could not give her husband, and the proof of his infidelity to her – the woman he’d supposedly married for love.
    So much for the proverbial “love match.”
    At least Ian looked just like his father, down to the hazel color of his eyes, the slight cleft in his chin, and the deep creases in his cheeks. No one had
    ever questioned his parentage.
    But Ian could not help but wonder if his father had left had a scattering of by-blows all over the isles. His stomach turned at the thought of the duke as
    some indolent lothario, taking advantage wherever it suited him. Had the Irish maid – Ian’s
mother
– consented to their carnal
    congress, or had the duke forced himself upon her? Ian’s cousin, Duncan Munro was notorious for such behavior. Ian hated the thought that it might
    run in the family.
    “What do you know of Miss Stillwater?” Erskine asked. “What of her dowry? Will Kildrum settle—”
    “Hardly necessary,” Kindale said. “Baron Stillwater is one of the wealthiest men in Berkshire.”
    Erskine rubbed his hands together, reminding Ian of an illustration he’d seen somewhere of a miser and his ill-gotten goods. The man’s
    mercenary attitude was fiercely irritating. God, he wanted to get away from these people, away from his own thoughts. He gave up on having a chance to
    speak to Kindale alone, and walked back toward the castle.
    They did not catch the hint, but followed him, reaching him when he stopped at a particularly grotesque, full-body gargoyle next to a tall, thick hedge.
    “Come along and have a drink with us, old friend,” Markham said.
    “Forgive me, but no. I have no desire to spend the rest of the afternoon with all of you and these ridiculous simpering females. Especially simpering
English
females.”

 
    Chapter Two
----
     
    Lucy’s blood boiled when