Page 47 of Never Kiss a Scot
Love? He dared not love. He slowly let go of her and stepped away, hating the distance but needing some clarity to think before he responded. It also gave him time to strengthen his defenses against her sweetness.
“I care for you, lass,” he finally replied. The look of hurt was so strong on her that it hit him as though he’d actually been punched.
“I knew it would take time for us to fall in love. I just had hoped it would be sooner.” She let out a breath and turned away from him. Not even the spell of the stones could bring her back to him. She walked away, back to where they had left their horses. She waited without a word as he joined her and helped her up in the saddle.
He wanted to take his words back, to explain himself. But what could a man say?“You’re a bonny lass and the greatest thing in my life, but I’m not capable of love, and I’m bloody terrified of it?”No, that wouldn’t go over well with her at all. Best he distract her from it instead.
“Would you like to meet some of my tenants on the land before we return to the castle?”
“If it pleases you, then I would be happy to.” Her tone was soft but also a little flat, as though she wasn’t fully paying attention to him anymore, like she’d locked herself away inside her own thoughts.
Brock frowned at her complacent, almost absent answer. He didn’t want a complacent, obedient wife. He would rather have her spitting mad as a polecat than quiet and withdrawn. He resolved that he would find a way to show her he cared, even if in the end he could not love her. He couldn’t lie to himself—if he were brave enough, he would love her like mad, but he was a coward for fearing what love would cost him.
They took the road back to the castle, and he guided her around the edges of his lands to where his tenants lived. These people raised sheep, and much of his exports were lamb-based products sent to the south of England. His father, as with some other lairds, had seen the tenants as mere cogs in a great wheel of forging a profit from the lands, but Brock refused to see his people that way. Now that they were his responsibility, he wanted things to change. He wanted to make sure they had the means to feed their families well and live in good homes. Many lairds in the Lowlands encouraged their tenants to abandon Gaelic, but Brock had removed any such restrictions after his father had passed a over a month ago.
His gaze swept the distant hills that were slowly being swallowed by the rising shadows of dusk. So much had changed in Scotland after the English had destroyed their spirit and broken their land apart by bankrupting many of the chieftains. Those men had sold their homes, their castles, all of it. His father had been one of the few men able to keep his lands intact.
Of course, now Brock knew the darker truth as to why, that his father had sold out his countrymen to an English spy, and he’d been rewarded for it. The thought turned Brock’s stomach and filled his mouth with a foul taste.
There had been rumors when he was growing up that his father had been a traitor. The men he’d claimed had been his closest friends from the other Scottish clans—the Campbells, the MacLeods, the Stewarts, the MacKenzies—had all lost fathers and brothers years ago in an attempted uprising. Just days before they’d planned to go to Edinburgh to rally support for their cause, they’d vanished in the night, every one of them. Only his father had survived, and finding himself alone, he soon abandoned his fight.
Brock sighed and looked out over his lands. Englishmen were happily buying up the land and building new castles. He didn’t want the Kincade lands to fall to the English like that. Better if the place were burned down than strangled by purse strings. Part of Brock’s desperation to marry had been with that in mind. He had to put the lives of his tenants first above his own interests.
But he would not force Joanna to part with her fortune, not unless she wished to do so. His hope was that once she saw his people, saw the needs they had, her heart would open and she would agree to help. Most of the Scots here lived in comparative poverty, eking out a living from the thin soil in a harsh and challenging climate.
Every day his heart weighed heavily with the duties he owed to the men and women who worked on his land. As in Ireland, potatoes were a mainstay of the diet of the less fortunate, but disease and famine were frequent and devastating when they struck. He’d seen far too many die from starvation. Last year alone, his tenants had lost wee bairns in the winter months from being unable to feed them enough. The wailing of those mothers holding their children in their arms before having to put them in wee caskets had broken Brock’s heart. He wouldn’t let that happen again, not on his lands.
Brock wanted Joanna to help secure new farm equipment so they could raise better crops to give his tenants a chance to not only survive, but thrive.
“We are here,” he told Joanna as they rode into a small village. There were two rows of old black houses. Their dark interiors were less pleasant than the more recent structures called white houses that many tenants were building on other estates. He halted his horse by the first dwelling and slid to the ground. Then he helped Joanna down and escorted her to the door. It opened before he could knock.
“My lord!” one of his best farmers greeted him. Dougal Ramsey was a tall, thin, but strong man in his forties with piercing blue eyes. His young wife, Annis, stood behind him, one hand resting on her lower back as she bent over a pot hanging above a fire in the hearth, her pregnant belly preventing her from reaching easily into the recesses of the fireplace.
“Evening, Mr. Ramsey. I returned from Bath and brought my new wife to meet you and the other tenants.”
“Married? My hearty congratulations to ye!” Ramsey grinned and waved them both inside. “Annis, put the kettle on for his lordship.”
Annis blushed shyly at Brock and Joanna as they stepped inside. Two small barefooted children scampered around, the girl holding a doll made of straw and the older boy holding a wooden sword, swinging it at invisible opponents.
“Elsbeth, Camden, his lordship is here. Go an’ wash up,” Annis commanded, then set about putting the kettle on. Brock shot a glance at Joanna, wondering what she thought of all this. It had to be so different from what she was used to. These cottages were bare inside, and the floors were simply the earth that the walls were built upon. The dark stone walls were grim and dark in color, and the thatched roofs offered dreary comfort in the winter and the rainy season.
Brock had spent a few nights in these cottages in the winter when the icy winds of the Atlantic dragged its claws across the hills and valleys of most of Scotland. The dilapidated state of many of these black houses was further darkened by the fact that the only source of light came from the doorway and the small hole in the chimney. It wasn’t an easy way to live.
Joanna’s stare moved about the gloomy home of Dougal and Annis, and he saw sorrow flash in her eyes.
“’Tis wonderful to meet yer bonnie bride, my lord.” Dougal bowed to Joanna, and Annis did her best to curtsy.
“Please, call me Joanna. Are these your lovely children?” She nodded at Camden and Elsbeth, who had stopped playing and were now standing solemnly by their parents’ sides, the doll and the wooden sword hanging limply from their hands.
“This is Camden. He’s eight. And Elsbeth here is five.”
Joanna bent down, a warm smile lighting up her face as she looked at the children.
“That’s a lovely doll you have.”
Elsbeth blushed shyly and held out the doll as though she was expected to give it up to please Joanna. It was something Brock suspected his father would have taught the tenants at a young age. He’d never let Brock spend much time around the tenants; he’d kept his sons busy with other things, like riding to Edinburgh to try to find markets to export the lamb they produced. Joanna took the doll from the little girl, gave it a hug, and passed it back to the child.
“Thank you for sharing her with me. She’s lovely.” Joanna beamed at the girl, and the child smiled back hesitantly.
