The Devil Wears Kilts by Suzanne Enoch Page B

battle as the hounds were, all of them only waiting for a word from their respective masters. Berling, though, kept the smile on his face, as if some lass had told him he looked less like a donkey when he grinned. She’d been wrong, whoever she was.
    “Yes,” the earl returned. “There I was, visiting my small holding just north of Glengask, and offering—”
    “Sholbray,” Ranulf interrupted for clarification, since they were evidently reciting their history for any onlookers. “Yer small holding is called Sholbray. A hundred years ago it was the Gerdens family seat, until ye burned out yer cotters and handed it over to a thousand sheep.”
    “My family’s seat is Berling Court in Sussex,” Berling said stiffly, his smile as chill as an icy northerly wind. “And when I offered you a very reasonable sum for grazing rights on your ill-used pastureland, you pulled me from my horse and broke my nose.”
    “I was trying fer yer jaw, to stop its flapping. I see ye still have the problem of speaking when ye shouldn’t.” He tilted his head. “Shall I give it another go, then?”
    “Brave talk for a man with three servants and two dogs for a clan.” Pale eyes darted again in Rowena’s direction, but evidently the earl knew what would happen if he as much as mentioned her.
    “I suppose we’ll find that oot.”
    Berling laughed loudly. “Yes, I suppose we will find that ‘oot,’ Glengask. But not today. Don’t you have some cows or cabers that need to be tossed?” With that he turned his black gelding, and the three men vanished into the crowd back the way they’d come.
    “Dogs, off.” Only then did Ranulf notice how large the circle of onlookers had become. “Be off with ye,” he growled, and guided Stirling back to where the three white-faced lasses waited. On one side of them Debny faced into the sea of English gadabouts, while on the other Owen had one hand inside his coat, likely resting on the butt of his pistol.
    “Ranulf?” Rowena said tightly.
    “All’s well,” he returned, forcing the anger that had been pushing to escape back into his chest. “Finish yer ices, and we’ll—”
    “We’ll be returning home now,” Charlotte interrupted. “And you will go … elsewhere, my lord. Your sister does not need this tiff attached to her reputation.”
    “‘This tiff’?” he repeated, wheeling his bay to fall in with her.
    “You were an inch away from brawling with Lord Berling, sir,” she stated. “Don’t pretend otherwise.”
    “I wasnae pretending anything. I was merely questioning why ye’d call it a tiff. It wasn’t as wee as all that.”
    “And don’t attempt your quaint colloquialisms on me. I don’t find them amusing.”
    He narrowed one eye. “And to think, I was looking fer a way to apologize to ye fer insulting yer Mr. Appleton.”
    “Stop that. I am furious with you. We do not threaten each other on the streets here. And certainly not over clan rivalries or some such thing.”
    For a moment he thought he might suffer an apoplexy, right there in the middle of Hyde Park. “Some such thing,” he repeated. Hadn’t he just told her that clan was everything to a Highlander? “It was a warning I gave Berling; not a threat.”
    “Semantics,” she retorted.
    “Aye, perhaps,” Ranulf conceded, admitting to himself that as … frustrated as he was with this woman at the moment, he was still allowing her to take him to task in a way that no one had ever been permitted before. Ever. “Three years ago he or one of his men put a musket ball through my brother Munro’s shoulder. And then last year he tried to buy my land for his bloody Cheviots. I’ll threaten him every time I set eyes on him. And if he ever takes another step toward me or mine, he’s done.”
    She glanced sideways at him then quickly away, as if she didn’t even care to acknowledge that he was there. And he still wanted to kiss her again, damn it all. “Have him arrested, then,” she