The Tempting of Thomas Carrick Read Free

them, he found three notifications from the company’s bank, detailing payments made. One thick envelope was from a shipping captain Thomas knew, who occasionally reported on prospects he came across in far-flung ports that he thought Carrick Enterprises might be interested in pursuing. That missive in his hand, Thomas was reaching for his letter knife when his gaze fell on the last letter in the pile.
    The plain envelope was addressed to Mr. Thomas Carrick, with the “Carrick” heavily underlined. Across the corner opposite the post-office stamp was scrawled: Bradshaw, Carrick.
    Setting aside the captain’s letter, Thomas picked up the one from Bradshaw and squinted at the stamp.
    Carsphairn.
    Frowning, Thomas lifted the letter knife and slit open the envelope. There were two sheets inside. Sliding them out, he smoothed the pages, then leaned back in his chair and read.
    And grew increasingly puzzled.
    The missive was, indeed, from Bradshaw, a farmer on the Carrick estate. Thomas’s paternal uncle was Manachan Carrick— The Carrick, laird of the clan. Thomas had been born at Carrick Manor, on the estate, although that had been an accident of sorts, a twist of fate. He’d spent several summers there with his parents while they’d been alive; after their deaths when Thomas was ten, he’d spent a full year at the manor, embraced, nurtured, and supported by the clan. He owed Manachan and the clan a great deal for that year, but as time had passed and he’d healed and returned to normal boyhood life, Manachan and Quentin, his co-guardians, had decided that Thomas would be best served by going to school in Glasgow and living with Quentin and Winifred and their children. And so he had.
    Thomas had still visited the Carricks every summer, spending anything from a few weeks to a few months with Manachan’s four children and other children of the clan, but even more with Manachan himself.
    Thomas had been—and still remained—closer to Manachan than even to Quentin, whom he saw every day. Even when much younger, Thomas had intuitively realized that Manachan and Niall had been close, and with Niall’s death, Manachan had transferred that degree of closeness, of connection, to Thomas, Niall’s only child.
    Quentin, Winifred, and Humphrey were Thomas’s Glasgow family, yet Manachan was the family closest to his heart. Thomas understood Manachan and Manachan understood him, and that understanding sprang from something deep in their bones.
    It was precisely that understanding that made Bradshaw’s letter so difficult to comprehend.
    Not the details—they were plain enough. Bradshaw—Thomas could easily picture the burly man; he’d met him on and off over the years—wrote that, despite the season, by which he meant the planting season, being so advanced, no seed stock had as yet been supplied to any of the estate’s farmers.
    Frown deepening, Thomas looked unseeing across the room while shifting his mind from shipping times and the effect of the seasons on transport, and delved into his memories to recall the impact of the march of the seasons on the land. The Carrick estate lay in the western lowlands, in Galloway and Dumfries. It was already late to be sowing, surely?
    Refocusing on the letter, Thomas read again Bradshaw’s plea that he—Thomas—should intercede with Manachan over the matter of the seed supply.
    “Why can’t Bradshaw speak with Manachan himself?”
    That was what Thomas couldn’t understand. If there was a problem on the estate, then as laird of the clan, Manachan was the person to take that problem to. He always had been, and Thomas had never known any of the clan to feel the least reluctance over approaching his uncle. For all his fearsome reputation outside the clan, within it, Manachan was held in high esteem and, indeed, affection. He might be a cantankerous old bastard on occasion, but he was theirs, and to Thomas’s certain knowledge, Manachan had served the clan faithfully and had