The Adventurer: A Scottish Jacobite Historical Romance (Daughters of the Duke Book 2) by Jaclyn Reding

Author:Jaclyn Reding [Reding, Jaclyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oliver Heber Books
Published: 2023-08-28T16:00:00+00:00

10

It was Fergus, of course.

Calum should have known.

If any one of the men in his crew was going to come forward to challenge him, it could only ever have been him.

Fergus Bain came across the room at a saunter's pace, absorbing the stares of the others like a great oak collecting the rays of the sun, all the while keeping his own gaze fixed upon his foster brother. Calum knew that look, knew the challenge that sparked behind it. Though they were as close as if they had been born of the same blood, like true brothers, there had been times when Fergus would suddenly and unexpectedly challenge Calum's place in the Bain hierarchy, a reminder to him that while he might indeed be the clan chief's nephew, his place among the Bains was at best inadvertent.

Fergus had been just a lad of four, and Lachlann not yet born, when Calum had first been delivered to the Bain household for fostering. There had been no warning, no hint of Calum's coming aforehand. Calum's uncle, the Mackay chief, had simply brought the just-toddling infant to the door of the Bain's modest croft, and then just as swiftly had left him there to be raised. For a lad who had had his father all to himself those first formative years of his childhood, it must have been difficult, Calum realized, for Fergus to have had to share Uilliam's affections so suddenly and so unexpectedly. But he'd done his best to accept and get on, with only the occasional lapse of jealousy.

When Calum had been a lad, five or six years old perhaps, he had fallen from a climb in a tree, as five- or six-year-old lads would do, only the fall had been severe enough to have left Calum with a fractured forearm. Summoned by his cry, Uilliam had raced to help him, taking a hollering Calum into his arms and then carrying him slowly, gingerly, all the way back to the house to tend to him. Unfortunately, it had happened on the very day Uilliam had promised to take Fergus out deer stalking for the very first time. It was meant to be a day for father and son, but instead of packing up their muskets and heading for the moors, Uilliam had spent the afternoon splinting Calum's arm with a stout slat of hazel wood, and then sitting by his bedside throughout the night to watch for any signs of a fever.

It wasn't that he’d ever set out to favor Calum over Fergus or Lachlann, but Uilliam Bain had taken a clan oath to serve as Calum’s guardian. It was an honor that he had graciously accepted and which he earnestly carried out. Occasionally, unfortunately, it came at the expense of his own two lads.

Fergus had certainly made his feelings known that day Calum had broken his arm. It had been just as Uilliam had finished tending to Calum's splint when he'd realized Fergus was nowhere to be found. Fergus

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