Liam set his jaw against his son’s impertinence, his hands curling at his sides as the rage that had been his one constant companion simmered through him. “I’ll have no son of mine be a useless laze-about. If ye’re to run this business, ye’ll have to learn every detail, and have done every job.”
“But—”
“It’s past time, Andrew, that ye learn to be responsible for something other than yer own selfish desires,” Liam snarled. “Mark me, lad, ye’ll not leave here until these barrels are assembled, do ye ken?”
The visible ripples of heat in the air between them could have been caused by their clashing wills as much as the open barrel flames.
“Aye,” his son said through bared teeth, then turned his back.
Liam nodded to Thomas Campbell, who smirked with both knowledge and approval, being the father of his own three sons.
“Follow me, Miss Lockhart,” he barked, and stalked through the square toward the warehouse.
Her shoes made quicker sounds than his on the earth beneath them, but she kept pace with his punishing march until he stalked under the wide arched entry to the brick warehouse. Liam let the perpetual chill generated by the brick cool his work- and fire-heated body, as well as his ire. Halting mid-march, he whirled about and nearly knocked over his startled governess, who caught herself just in time.
“That lad is going to be the death of me,” he raged, running his hands through his hair. “He stomps around the castle like a dark cloud, glowering at everyone in his path. Stubborn, angry, obstinate, willful…” He trailed off as that dimple appeared in her cheek once again. “Ye find this amusing, do ye?” He scowled down at her, crossing his arms over his chest.
She wrapped the shawl tighter around her shoulders, and lifted a meaningful brow. “I’m sorry, my laird, I’m just confused as to which of the Ravencroft men you are referring.” A soft smile teased at the corner of her full mouth, and lessened the effect the veracity of her words had on him.
And just like that, his anger dispelled into a vapor, much like the angel’s cut of Scotch would once any one of these barrels were open. How did she manage to do that? It was like some queer sort of feminine magic, a spell she worked with a flash of that dimple and a merry twinkle in her eye. Suddenly the flames of his wrath were doused, and he could breathe again.
A caustic sound escaped his throat, half amusement, half bewilderment. “Am I truly such an ogre?”
“Not an ogre, per se.” Her smile deepened. “But I recall a story I read as a child about a rather distempered troll—who lived under a bridge and frightened all who crossed it—to whom I could possibly perceive a resemblance.”
A laugh warmed his throat but didn’t quite escape, as a hopeless sound of frustration smothered it. He rubbed at a blooming tightness in his forehead, then noted the soot still on his hand. Covered in the filth of the day, he must, indeed, appear like a troll.
A simple white linen handkerchief appeared in his hand, and Liam lifted it to wipe the grime from his face without thinking.
It came away black and ruined, and he found he couldn’t tear his gaze away from what he’d done to her clean, dainty cloth. “I always did make a better soldier than a father,” he admitted grimly.
“I’m certain you’re excellent at both.” She placed an encouraging hand on his arm, and Liam stared at it, wondering if anyone had ever done that before. “Perhaps being a father and being a lieutenant colonel are not so different, just require separate tactics.”
Liam’s entire existence became the weight of her lily-white hand covering his flesh. He watched her long, elegant fingers as they rested over the muscle they found there, and pictured them curling over something else.
Gripping him. Stroking him. And suddenly, the inferno that threatened to consume him, the fire he fought every godforsaken day, was redirected.
To his cock.
As though she sensed the shift in him, she snatched her hand away, smoothing the movement over by turning to the ceiling-high rows of whisky barrels and running her fingers over the Ravencroft crest branded into the lid where the tap would go.
“Miss Lockhart,” he started, reaching for her shawl with the intention of revealing her hair. “Mena, I—”
“You said there was something you wanted to discuss with me?” she said with false brilliance, retreating a step.
Liam let his hand drop and whatever he was about to say became like Scotch vapor. Intangible until ignited by a single spark. “Jani mentioned today that ye received some bad news from London a few days past. I’ve figured it was the reason ye’ve kept to yerself, and I wanted to inquire after ye.”
“It was nothing, I assure you. Just … the gossip of mutual acquaintances. Trifles, really.”
She was lying again. Liam had taken part in, and been the victim of, enough interrogations to easily identify deception.
Jani had also mentioned the letter had been from Liam’s own sister-in-law, Farah Blackwell. Normally, he would have assumed the contents had something to do with trifles. Farah had procured his governess the position so correspondence wasn’t, in itself, troubling.
But something restless and suspicious stirred inside Liam. Some instinct of danger and unrest that he had relied upon in his military days, which had saved his life on more than one occasion, pulsed red with warning.
Danger lurked nearby; he could feel it in his bones. A malevolent menace stalked his keep, but identifying it was like searching for shadows in the darkness.