A Scot's Surrender (The Townsends #3)
Lily Maxton
For Josh
Chapter One
The Highlands, Scotland
1814
It began with a fire, and then a flood. A more superstitious man might have thought these were ill tidings, but Robert Townsend had never been very superstitious. These mishaps had concrete, observable causes—lightning, in the first case. A storm darkened the sky to the west, brought with it gusts of wind and ominous thunder, and then a searing bolt of lightning lit up the black sky like a firework. It happened to strike the thatch roof of the cottage of one Ian Cameron—the informal factor of the Arden estate—and set his house ablaze.
Cameron escaped the fire and even managed to save his possessions. But the cottage couldn’t be salvaged—it burned down to the stones of its foundation, to the rubble of what used to be a life. Georgina, Robert’s sister, and Frances, his sister-in-law’s aunt, insisted Cameron stay at Llynmore Castle until it could be rebuilt. They had plenty of room, they said, all sorts of chambers that weren’t even used—it would be no trouble at all.
Robert, out of a sense of politeness, agreed.
Ian Cameron seemed reluctant but moved in anyway, in lieu of any better options. Many of the tenants had whole families inside a small cottage—it would be a tight fit if he decided to stay with one of them. And the few abandoned cottages still dotting the landscape were in disrepair. At Llynmore he’d have a room of his own and a roof that didn’t leak over his head.
At least, this was what Robert assumed the man was thinking. He didn’t actually know, because he didn’t speak much to his brother’s factor, and Cameron’s face was aggravatingly impassive when he did. As though Robert was a fly buzzing around—not exactly annoying, but it might prove to be annoying if it droned on for too long.
Not that Robert cared. The man was his brother’s employee, not a family friend. Except…well…people usually liked Robert if he made an effort to be friendly—which he had; it made sense to be on good terms with Llynmore’s servants—and the Highlander couldn’t seem to care less.
It was like a sliver underneath Robert’s skin. It would have bothered him, had he dwelled on it much.
Which he didn’t, of course.
He had more important things to worry about.
His brother and sister-in-law, Lord and Lady Arden, were somewhere outside Glasgow at an exclusive country house party. Theo hated society, and he hated their parties even more, but he’d been invited by one of the lords who sat in Parliament, and Theo and Annabel were hoping to get support for a bill regarding wounded soldiers returning from the war, a cause close to both of their hearts. Robert knew Theo was also making an attempt to be more comfortable in society by starting out slowly.
But that meant Llynmore Castle was under Robert’s watch for the time being, and he was determined that when his brother returned, it wouldn’t be toppled to the ground, Georgina would not be ruined, and Aunt Frances wouldn’t have joined a traveling acting troupe.
Surely these were small, achievable goals.
Surely nothing too unexpected would happen—they were in the middle of nowhere, after all.
And that might have been the case—the handful of weeks of Theo and Annabel’s absence might have passed as uneventfully as every other week at Llynmore did, if the flood hadn’t arrived next.
The rain had come after the lightning. It was unfortunate—different timing and Ian Cameron’s dry thatch roof might not have caught fire so easily—but these were the ironies one had to either laugh at or weep over, and Robert chose more often to laugh. He wasn’t sure what Ian Cameron’s philosophy was.
Not that he cared.
The rain came, and stayed. It saturated the ground, muddied the roads, and confined everyone to the castle. Robert was writing by the faint glow of candlelight one night, the window rattling from fierce gusts of wind, the rain tapping an angry tattoo against the glass.
An angry tattoo… Maybe he should use that.
He had just pressed his finely sharpened quill tip to parchment again when a thump, thump, thump made him jolt. He dropped the quill, flinging black ink all across the page.
“Damnation,” he muttered. As he tried to blot the mess with a handkerchief and save his work, he realized the thump, thump, thump hadn’t ceased.
Someone was pounding at the door.
It wasn’t a sound they heard very often at Llynmore, which might have been why it took so long to recognize it. He shrugged back into his coat, which he’d draped over the chair, and went down the corridor. He nearly collided with Georgina—who emerged from her room with the alacrity of motion she always exhibited, day or night. She lifted a brass candlestick to cast light over his face.
“Who do you think it is?” she whispered. She must have pulled a dress on hastily; the ties hung loose down her back. Theo probably would have told her to make herself more presentable, but Robert wasn’t much of a disciplinarian…and he was mostly grateful she hadn’t come out in a dressing robe.
“No idea.”
“I’ll go with you. You might need my protection.”
Robert chose to ignore this remark. He was quite capable of defending himself. But he was also quite sure Georgina would not hesitate to thunk someone in the skull with a candlestick, and if there were multiple assailants, he might need assistance.
He shook his head, realizing he was thinking like a character in a novel. In real life, when people arrived at someone’s home, it was for perfectly harmless reasons.
Usually.
Though, in Robert’s defense, this lonely, old castle was eerie enough at night, much less in the middle of a storm.
The thumping continued.
“If they don’t stop, they shall wake up Frances,” Georgina said worriedly.
“I don’t think anything short of a cannon blast would wake up Frances.”
His sister nodded, as though conceding his point.
They reached the door at the same time Catriona, their housemaid—whose bedchamber was closest to the entrance—was pulling it open. She obviously didn’t have as active an imagination as Robert and Georgina, because she looked more irritated than alarmed.
In the doorway stood five well-dressed but bedraggled people. One of them, a middle-aged man, stepped into the hall and proceeded to drip water and mud onto the floor.
Robert heard Catriona sigh.
“Oh, thank goodness,” the man said in a crisp, clear, and very English accent. “We almost died crossing a flooded bridge, and then the wheel of our cart got stuck in the mud and the axle broke. We didn’t know if we’d be able to find shelter, and then we nearly walked straight into your curtain wall.” His gaze went to Robert. “Please, sir, do you have room for us?”
They had room, certainly. Robert wasn’t certain, however, how equipped they were to handle five unexpected guests. But he wasn’t going to turn away a group of stranded travelers looking for shelter.
“Of course,” he said, stepping aside. “For as long as you need it. Come in.”
This was the moment, he would think later. He didn’t have to be so generous. He could have told them they could stay the night and leave the next day.
This was his mistake.
Or, maybe, it was the best decision he’d ever made.
It was funny, life. Each new moment, each new choice, was another roll of the dice. And all one could do was wait and see where it landed.