Treasured Read Free Page B

gesture toward the window. “A lass will be in to licht the fire for ye. Dinner’s at acht.”
    Jack was unsure whether all Scots were this unintelligible or Hamish was simply determined to be difficult, but in either case Jack was not about to give the butler the satisfactionof asking for clarification. Jack nodded briefly in dismissal, ignoring the glint of animosity in the man’s eyes.
    Jack had barely finished pulling on a set of clean and blessedly dry clothes when there was a soft tap on the door, and at his response, a maid entered, carrying a hod of coal. Shooting him a sullen glance even as she bobbed a curtsy, she set about laying coal in the fireplace and lighting it. Jack strolled to the window.
    The vista before him was enough to make him wish the fog had not lifted. In the distance he could see a green swell of land strewn with boulders and what seemed to be a building that had fallen into a jumble of stones. Closer to the house a large, muddy yard led to outbuildings of various sizes, as well as some wooden pens. Directly beneath his window was a ditch. This, he surmised, was the “sheuch” Hamish had mentioned as the source of the malodorous scent in the room.
    Behind him, the maid uttered a little squeak, and Jack swung around to see black smoke billowing into the room from the fireplace. The girl, coughing, hastened to pull the handle of the flue, and Jack swung back to the window. The ancient catch stuck, but after a few moments of struggle, it screeched open, and he shoved up the window.
    The smoke wafted out, but the odor from outside increased, mingling with the smell of the smoke to render the room even more wretched. Muttering a curse, Jack left the room. If he had not already been planning to sell Baillannan, this day would have convinced him to do so. He stalked down the corridor, no purpose in his movement, just an itching need to get away. Every door along the way was shut, and the only noise was the sound of his own footsteps, imbuing the place with an eerie emptiness.
    The corridor ended at the long main hallway, and he stopped before the set of double windows, contemplating his folly in coming here. These windows looked out over the side yard, a slightly more pleasant prospect than the drainage ditch behind his own bedchamber. As he watched, a woman emerged from the house. She wore a cloak, the hood shoved back since it was no longer raining, and the light caught the dark blond of her hair. It was Isobel Rose. He straightened and leaned forward. Miss Rose intrigued him.
    It seemed absurd that such a beauty should be languishing away in this godforsaken spot. But it was more than her creamy-white skin and thick, honey-colored hair that drew him, something that went beyond the swift, strong tug of lust he’d felt when he’d looked up and seen her standing above him on the stairs. He would have expected tears, even hysteria, from any woman who’d received the blow she’d been dealt. Astonishment had lit her face, followed an instant later by a fierce flash of anger, then fear, in those deep-gray eyes, but she had reined her emotions in, settling her expression into one of studied calm. She did not hide her feelings, a talent Jack himself was well acquainted with, but she exercised a strength of will, a control, that interested him. He could not help but wonder what it would take to shatter that control. And whether any man had ever been able to do so.
    As he watched Isobel, he saw a tall, blond man striding toward her across the yard. She hesitated for an instant before she continued toward the man, her steps slower. Reaching up, she ran her hand across her cheeks, and Jack suspected with a pang of compunction that she was wiping away tears.
    He frowned, irritated by his reaction. He was no gentleman,no man of sensibility or refinement. No matter how much he might appear to be one, it was mere trappings—all clothes and speech and manner, learned at the feet of an adventurer with a heart