Claimed by the Laird. Nicola Cornick

in Mr. Ross’s application to suggest that he would be unsuitable for the job. On the contrary, he seems precisely the man we are looking for. I do not understand your objections, ma’am. You must see that I am in a dilemma—”

      “I understand very well the difficulties of attracting suitable staff to Kilmory.” Another voice, female, crisp, edged with authority. Lucas tried to work out if this was the woman from the previous night. He strained closer to the open door.

      “In this instance I must ask you to accept my assurance, Galloway,” he heard Lady Christina say. “I do not want Mr. Ross employed at Kilmory. I am sorry if that poses problems for you. Thomas Wallace will do the job just as well and his family needs the money. We must let Mr. Ross go.”

      The dust motes stirred, dancing in the shaft of sunlight from the window. Lucas stepped back hastily from the door as someone walked past. He caught a quick flash of damson muslin and a faint breath of perfume. It was the scent of bluebells. Recognition slammed through him and he only just managed not to push open the door and confront her.

      By the time that Galloway and Mrs. Parmenter reentered the room, he had resumed his seat and turned a blandly innocent face toward them.

      Galloway closed the door with a snap. Color high, he held out a hand to shake Lucas’s. “Thank you, Mr. Ross,” he said. “That will be all.”

      “Oh,” Lucas said. Then, feigning a note of perplexity, “I was hoping to hear the outcome of my interview immediately...” He broke off. Galloway was looking as stiff as an old soldier. Mrs. Parmenter looked flustered and upset.

      “Would you like me to wait for word at the Kilmory Inn?” Lucas asked.

      “That won’t be necessary, Mr. Ross.” Galloway was shepherding him toward the door. “Thank you for your application. We are sorry that you have not been successful and we wish you well in the future.” He sounded as though the words were stuck in his throat.

      Score two to Lady Christina MacMorlan. Lucas’s lips twisted into a rueful smile. She had trounced him last night and now she thought she was rid of him for good. He needed to raise his game.

      Galloway escorted him out onto the front steps with the air of a man seeing him safely off the premises. It was a glorious early-summer day, the sky a radiant, cloudless blue, the wind from the sea carrying a hint of salt and with it the soapy scent of gorse. Across Kilmory’s beautiful sweep of lawn, Lucas could see three figures standing in the shade of a vast cedar tree. One, gray-haired, slight and leaning heavily on a stick, he thought must be the Duke of Forres himself. He looked small, diminished in some way by his age. Lucas could see why it was his daughter who had a firm hand on the running of the estate.

      The other two figures were women, one fair and slender, very young, the other woman older, tall and elegant in a gown of damson muslin. She had seen him and there was an air of sudden stillness about her as though she was holding her breath.

      Lucas glanced at Galloway, who was waiting with an attitude of polite impatience to close the door behind him.

      Without hesitation he set off across the broad swathe of grass to confront Lady Christina MacMorlan. Since he had nothing to lose, he might as well try blackmail.

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “WHO THE DEVIL is that?” Allegra asked.

      Christina had been listening vaguely to her father’s plans for a twenty-foot-high Italianate fountain in the middle of the lawn whilst simultaneously wondering what she might spare from the dairy to take on her visit to Mrs. McAlpine in the village that afternoon. The poor woman had just given birth to her sixth child—all boys—and her husband had died in a storm that had taken his fishing boat only eight weeks before. When Allegra stopped walking abruptly and stood staring across the grass toward the castle entrance, she practically tripped over her.

      “Language, Allegra,” Christina said automatically. She had known that having Lachlan around with his blunt conversation would be a bad influence. Gertrude would have the vapors if she heard her daughter speaking like an Edinburgh dandy. And that was another problem; Christina had no idea what she was going to do with Lachlan. He needed a swift kick up the backside to send him back to his wife instead of sulking here at Kilmory.

      “Ladies do not use that phrase,” she said. “It is shockingly vulgar.”

      “They use it when they see a sight like that,” Allegra said. “Who is he?”

      Following her niece’s pointing finger, another sin against etiquette that Christina simply did not have the energy to correct, she saw the tall figure of a man framed in the castle doorway.

      Lucas Ross.

      Her heart began to race. Her breath felt tight in her chest. Suddenly the sun was too hot and too bright.

      “Damnation,” she said involuntarily.

      Allegra giggled. “Aunt Christina! How shockingly vulgar.”

      “Sometimes,” Christina said, “ladylike language simply isn’t forceful enough to express one’s feeling.”

      And staring at a man might also be improper, she thought, but there were times when it was impossible to resist. No man had the right to be as indecently handsome as Lucas Ross.

      In the half-light of the smugglers’ cave the night before, Lucas had looked spectacular enough with his strongly marked black brows, his firm cleft chin and tumbled black hair. There was something about him, an air of arrogant distinction that was innate but powerful, setting him apart from most other men. He had height and a broad-shouldered physique that exuded masculinity of the type Christina had never come across in the airless ballrooms or rarefied libraries of Edinburgh’s academia. Her sisters’ husbands both had something of that charisma and intensity. Christina remembered that she had looked at Lucy and Mairi and felt more than a little jealous of them. But now she thought that such ruthlessness, such uncompromising strength in a man would be too much to handle.

      It seemed ludicrous that Lucas Ross was a servant. He was too tough, too in control to be at the beck and call of others. She pictured him more as a soldier, or a sailor, an adventurer, someone who gave orders rather than took them. He was a man born to lead, not follow. But she was being fanciful. A man could not choose his station in life, nor could he necessarily change it.

      A shiver skittered down her spine. Lucas had descended the castle steps and was striding across the lawn toward them. He looked very purposeful, and she suddenly felt a desperate urge to run away. It was ridiculous, but even so the panic clogged her throat. He had not followed her instructions from the previous night. That should have told her something about the man he was and she should have thought twice before refusing to allow Galloway to appoint him.

      Well, it was done now, and Lucas would simply have to accept it. She was the Duke of Forres’s daughter and she did not expect to be confronted by a servant or be required to justify her decisions. All the same, as Lucas approached the three of them, the breath caught in her throat and she had to stop herself from pressing a hand against her bodice where her heart was tripping crazily, as though she had run too far, too fast.

      Suddenly Lucas was standing directly in front of her. His physical presence was so powerful that Christina took a step back even though there was nothing remotely threatening in his manner. Their eyes met. His were so brown they were almost black, dark as a winter’s night beneath those straight black brows, his expression impossible to read. The rest of his face was equally daunting. There was no warmth or softness in it. It was all hard angles and darkness. He held Christina’s gaze; she tried to look away and found that she could not. She was floored by the same physical awareness, fiercely intense, that had possessed her the previous night.

      Then it was over, as though it had never been, and he bowed most elegantly.

      “Lady Christina?” he said. His tone was deferential, in contradiction to the expression in his eyes, which was anything but respectful.