[Highland Heartbeats 05.0] A Captain's Heart by Aileen Adams

Author:Aileen Adams [Adams, Aileen]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Goodreads: 37662093
Published: 2018-03-22T06:00:00+00:00

20

“What do you think you’re playing at?” Hugh demanded, keeping his voice low to avoid calling attention to the two of them.

The stone walls of the homes and merchants around them picked up every last bit of sound and caused it to echo, bouncing back and forth. The strain it took for him to withhold his anger was evident.

“I’m not playing at anything,” Derek hissed.

“Oh? That’s why you’re still here, in Kirkcaldy, when you should be on your way back to the manor house—if not already there?”

“It took much longer than usual to travel here,” Derek explained.

“You’ve still been away from the house for nearly a fortnight,” Hugh accused. “Do you know how the women have fretted over your absence? The strain nearly brought Heather’s time sooner than it should’ve come. Imagine what Jake would do to you if anything happened to her or the wee babe on your account.”

“You sound like one of the women now,” Derek sneered.

Hugh’s sharp intake of breath and the move he made toward his twin—one hand lingering near the dirk at his waist—put Derek on the alert, but nothing came of it.

“Watch what you say,” Hugh whispered, dangerously close to losing his temper. “I put my neck on the line to come after you, and I’m rewarded with insults.”

“What do you mean, your neck was on the line?”

Hugh sighed, leaning his back against the wall behind him.

“Phillip received word only three days after you departed that there’s been rumors of dissension among the Orkneys. It looked as though the worst of the bad blood between the clans had ceased, but months spent behind walls with nothing to do but talk each other into a fight seems to have set things off again.”

Derek rubbed his temples, the beginnings of a headache teasing there.

“Granted, they were only rumors, but everyone knows better than to put anything past an Orkney,” Hugh continued. “Fighting is what they do.”

“Aye. And you all thought they had something to do with my being held up,” Derek concluded, feeling slightly chastened for having insulted his brother in the light of this information.

“That’s right. I decided to come out for you with a handful of my men, and what do I find? I find you walking the streets of Kirkcaldy as though nothing in the world were wrong, as though you had nowhere else to be and no one waiting there for your return. Which is why I ask, what are you playing at?”

“I’m playing at nothing,” he insisted. “It’s more complicated than that.” Only once he’d looked around to be certain they were alone—there was no telling whether someone was waiting in the shadows between buildings, in the alleys, even at an open window—he lowered his voice even further and leaned in to be heard.

“I’ve made a bad friend here in the village. The man who owns the shipping company here, who demands I sell to him. I’d planned to leave tomorrow at first light to avoid another confrontation with him.”

“It’s not like you to run from a fight,” Hugh observed.

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