“Forgive me, Ellie,” Grif said, turning from his mother and instantly grabbing Ellie’s hand and bringing her knuckles to his lips. “Ye know I adore ye, but ye’re no’ exactly what we had hoped for, are ye now?”
“Oh no—Liam has made it perfectly clear that I’m not,” she admitted cheerfully.
“But Grandfather says we are much better than that old beastie,” Natalie sniffed, earning a tweak of her cheek from Carson.
“Of course ye are, Nattie,” Grif quickly reassured her. “And we’d no’ have it any other way… but if only ye’d come to us without selling the beastie—”
“Honestly, Grif!” This interruption from Mared, the Lockharts’ only daughter. “Ellie’s atoned for it, has she no’? She single-handedly turned ye into a gentleman—”
“I beg yer pardon—I was a gentleman long before our Ellie walked through this door, if ye please!”
“Aye, but ye canna deny she’s taught ye to dance and to walk and to talk like a proper English gentleman, as well as taught ye all their customs!”
“Aye, she has, indeed,” Grif grudgingly admitted.
“And the letters of introduction she’s penned for ye—why, they’re brilliant, they are!”
“Thank you,” Ellie said, clearly pleased.
“Ye think it is easy, then, to introduce Griffin MacAulay, laird of Ardencaple?” Mared demanded.
“That name…” Hugh said thoughtfully. “I donna understand why ye willna go as yerself, Grif. What harm can come of it? It all seems a wee bit complicated.”
“Ach, now,” Liam said gruffly. “Is it no’ as plain as the nose on yer face, then, MacAlister? Look here, I traveled to London and let it be known that I was a disgruntled outcast from the Scottish Lockharts, and thereby managed to ingratiate meself to our cousin Nigel. But then the beastie was stolen, and before I could set it all to rights, I was forced to depart abruptly”—that remark prompted everyone to look at Ellie again, who colored slightly—“so we canna be entirely certain if the English Lockharts know the beastie is even missing, can we now? And if they do know she’s missing, have they connected her disappearance to me? Or worse, perhaps they might be prodded into making a connection if they discover me very own brother in London. ’Tis all quite simple, lad!”
But Hugh shook his head in confusion. “Aye… but have ye no’ forgotten one thing, Liam? Grif looks like ye! How can he hide it?”
“He’s right,” Aila agreed, looking at her son Grif. “If Nigel Lockhart lays eyes on ye, he might very well recognize Liam in ye.”
Liam snorted at that. “No, Mother, Cousin Nigel is a bloody sot. He’d no’ recognize his own toe without help, I’d wager. And there is difference enough between us—if Grif has a different name, Cousin Nigel will no’ put it all together. Of that I’m bloody certain.”
“I’d no’ be so certain,” Aila said warily. “Ye know what they say of the beastie—she’ll ‘slip through the fingers of a Scot, for she’s English at heart.’”
“Hogwash,” Carson said. “I put no more stock in that than I do Mared’s curse,” he said, waving his hand dismissively at his daughter.
Mared colored instantly and stole a sheepish glance at Hugh, embarrassed by the medieval curse, which stemmed from the tragedy of the condemned first lady of Lockhart. The daughter of that unfortunate woman was cursed with her mother’s shame and her father’s hatred, and took her own life in 1454. Since then, and for reasons that were no longer clear, it was said that no daughter of a Lockhart would ever marry until she looked into the belly of the beast—or faced the devil, as it were. And it was true that no daughter had ever married—some were never offered for, and those who did receive offers died or watched their lovers die before a betrothal could take place. Wiser heads argued that the deaths were merely a coincidence, the result of human carelessness. But most in and around these lochs believed the deaths were the work of the diabhal, the devil himself, and that Mared, the first daughter born to a Lockhart in almost one hundred years, was cursed.
“This plan is really much better than the last, Mother,” Mared said now, before Carson could say more about the curse. “And we’ve thought it all through, have we no’?”
They had indeed carefully thought it through. They knew that Grif could only succeed in finding the beastie if he had money, had entry into society, and a place to reside that would convince the haute ton that he was legitimate, even if he had assumed a false and rather lofty identify.
“And all the obstacles have been resolved, have they no’?” Mared continued.