CHAPTER FIVE

      “ROBERT NEEDS TO find another bride now that his first choice has fled.” The Dowager Marchioness of Methven, radiating energy and disapproval, seated herself with orderly care on the upright chair Robert held for her. She had a habit of speaking about people as though they were not present. Certainly it felt to Robert as though his input into the conversation was not required.

      It was a week after the wedding and they were in the library at Methven Castle. Mr. Kirkward, the family lawyer, had traveled up from Edinburgh to advise them. He was sitting on a lumpy gilt-and-cream sofa and looking most uncomfortable. Lady Methven was seated opposite and Jack drew up a chair to one side. Robert preferred to stand. He crossed to the window and looked out; a soaking gray haze hung over the far mountains, damping the day down and casting dark shadows across the glen.

      This was how he remembered his grandfather’s castle, as a dripping, mournful edifice that had been barren of pleasure. In those days it had been his older brother, Gregor, who had brought light and laughter to the old place, but now Gregor was gone. As always, Robert felt the profound ache in his chest that memories of Gregor brought with them. Gregor’s death had changed his life and his future. He had been the second son, the spare. Methven should never have been his. His grandfather had told him so, that fierce old man who had made no secret of the fact that Robert was a poor substitute for his brother.

      “It is indeed most unfortunate that Miss Brodrie eloped,” Mr. Kirkward agreed, his dry, precise tones recalling Robert to the room with its sterile shelves of uncut books and its uncomfortable furniture. “Such volatility in a bride quite ruins one’s plans.”

      “Better before the wedding than afterward,” Robert said laconically.

      He saw Kirkward’s pale gray eyes blink rapidly behind his bottle bottom spectacles. Like Lord Brodrie and the minister before him, the lawyer was evidently thinking him a cold fish.

      “Quite so.” Mr. Kirkward shuffled the papers he had taken from his document case. Robert noted his discomfort. He had seen it in other men who had been uncertain how to deal with him. His brusque manner, his lack of warmth, intimidated many people. He knew that. It could be useful; he had never seen the need to change. Charm was a concept that was alien to him.

      “Any preferences for your next choice, Rob?” Jack asked. He threw Robert a glance laced with malicious amusement. Jack was one man who was most certainly not intimidated by him. But his cousin knew him better than most men.

      “I don’t have the luxury of choice,” Robert said tersely. “As I understand it, there is no one suitable. I have to wed a descendant of the first Earl of Cardross, and sadly his line was not very fecund. Only Miss Brodrie and one other cousin are eligible.”

      “That would be Lady Annabel Channing,” Lady Methven said, nodding. “Pretty girl, but a complete lightskirt. You would never know if your heir was yours or someone else’s.”

      Mr. Kirkward made a choking noise. He took off his glasses and polished them feverishly on a white handkerchief.

      Jack laughed. “I wouldn’t mind a brazen bride,” he said. “That might have its benefits.”

      Robert did mind, but there was little he could do about it. “My attempts to find a suitable wife have foundered,” he said. “I might as well choose an unsuitable one since she is the only eligible woman left.”

      If only he had not kissed Lucy MacMorlan. One kiss had made him ache to take Lady Lucy to his bed when what he was obliged to do was take another woman as his bride. He did not like Lucy very much. Her meddling had cost him dearly. He certainly did not trust her. But liking had little to do with wanting, and he wanted her badly.

      “You will do nothing so unbecoming to the name of Methven as marry a lightskirt, Robert,” his grandmother corrected him.

      “I’ll do what I have to do,” Robert said bleakly. “Grandmama, there is no alternative.” He would marry an entire brothel of lightskirts if that were the price he had to pay to keep his lands.

      “I regret to inform you that Lady Annabel wed last month in London,” Mr. Kirkward said primly.

      “Then we are in some difficulty,” Robert said. He felt a violent fury to be so hamstrung by fate. All his life he had taken control, wrested it to him when he had none, fought for it. To be outmaneuvered by a royal decree three centuries old, to be able to do nothing to secure his estates and the future of his clan was intolerable.

      “We simply cannot allow ghastly Wilfred Cardross to take Methven land,” Lady Methven said. There was a plaintive note in her voice, as though she suspected Robert of backing off from the fight. “He is a horrible man and he will clear the people from the estate and destroy their communities and sell off everything that he can and squander it all on the cards.”

      “I have no intention of allowing Cardross to take the Methven estates,” Robert said. The earl was a hard landlord who Robert knew would force the crofters from their traditional homes and livelihoods. Many of the families of men who had fought for the Methven clan for generations would be turned off, abandoned into poverty, families divided and their strong community spirit extinguished. Those on the far-flung northern islands that were part of his patrimony would simply starve in these hard economic times.

      He could never