Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
THE COMING STORM
Callum
My solar was in chaos, the main room turned upside down in an attempt to make it tidy.
Piles of outdoor clothes, paperwork, and files that were going down to the office, mugs that needed to be returned to the kitchen.
I didn’t live like a slob, far from it, but the castle’s highest rooms were my refuge, and no one came in here but my boys.
Mathilda had sent a message to expect her tomorrow, as planned. Something had changed after she’d spoken to her sister, and she hadn’t ditched me as I’d expected.
My heart was in a vice, had been for days.
“Are you taking your girlfriend to Braithar for the party?” Ally asked from on top of my quilt, his sprawled frame making the room even more untidy. I wasn’t expecting Mathilda to stay in my bed, but the chance was there, and I wasn’t going to put her off with clutter.
“Aye.”
“Did you change your mind about the raft race, yet?”
Him and that damn race. Lachlan’s invitation to Castle Braithar mentioned Highland games, including everything from caber tossing to a raft race across his river. The boys, of course, wanted to compete in the most dangerous part. It would be at night, in Spring, when rivers ran high.
“No.”
“Why? Are you going to fight with Lachlan? Take him on head-to-head in wrestling? That would be epic.”
“No.” The man was fifty for Christ’s sake.
My brother snorted. “Can you say anything other than one-word answers?” I gave him a look, and he rolled his eyes. “You’re no fun.”
Beyond other plans I had for Lachlan, I also wanted to reconcile with our relative.
Lachlan was chief of the clan. I respected him and I was also the heir to his title.
The head of the House of McRae. He had two daughters, neither of whom had any interest in the clan, or in Castle Braithar, their home.
I didn’t know what he had planned for Braithar, but the chieftaincy would pass to me.
The likelihood was we’d never reconcile to discuss it, and I only had myself, and my father before me, to blame. We’d both pissed the man off no end.
“What’s it like being in love?” Ally rolled onto his back, rucking up my quilt further.
He took his headphones from his neck and toggled the buttons.
“Because it looks like an epic case of blue balls. You’ve gone from miserable to super-strength edgy in a week.
I hope to God she puts you out of your misery and takes you to bed for the weekend. ”
So do I.
“Ye ken I dinna like you talking like that. Get away with ye,” I muttered and dropped down the stack of invoices I’d been sorting through then pointed toward the door.
Ally made a sport of baiting me, and I was close to the edge already.
“Take that tray of mugs down. Then find Wasp and sweep out the great hall.”
James knocked politely on the outer door at the top of the spiral steps—it could only be him as none of my brothers ever knocked.
“Come in,” I yelled then turned back to Ally. He hadn’t moved.
“You aren’t too big for me to pick up and throw,” I growled.
With a chuckle, Ally clambered up as James entered the room. My youngest brother flounced away, the tray left on the heavy wooden chest of drawers. “By the way,” his voice came as his boots rapped down the stone stairwell, “I need a new laptop. Mine broke when my bike landed on it.”
“Ally! For fuck’s sake. How?” I threw up my arms, my exasperation spilling over. He’d had the laptop for his birthday, same as Wasp. Except he couldn’t cope without his. How the hell was I going to afford a replacement?
The bank had refused to help with my debts. I’d had the letter yesterday. They were as fast to say no as they were to demand new payments, and I had fewer and fewer ideas on how to make them.
I parked the thought in my overflowing box of worries.
James gave me a small smile, his dark hair in disarray, telling me he’d been running his hands through it. Worrying, too, it seemed. “You wanted to see me?”
Despite my constant woman-shaped distraction, I still had a business to run, and younger men to keep in line.
All week, James had been as preoccupied as I was.
He’d been texting Beth, Mathilda’s friend, after he’d written his note to her.
They’d also been talking late into the night.
Whatever conversation they’d had was affecting him, and I wanted to gauge where his mind was at.
My aim with him, in the months left before he returned to his arsehole of an uncle and his own responsibilities, was to change the mindset he’d been poisoned with for the past decade. Make him into the fair and equitable man I knew he could be.
“I’ve a tenant in the village who can’t pay his rent. Tobias Sinclair. Talk me through how you’d handle it, then it’s yours to go and settle.”
James straightened his spine, and his gaze switched to the window. “My uncle would have an eviction notice drafted. How behind is your tenant? A month to repay is reasonable, but any more compromises your income.”
My already raw temper simmered. He hadn’t asked a single question about the circumstances. “The man works in quality control at the distillery. He has a new baby, a wife who is ill, and he’s given up work to care for them both.”
The younger man in front of me paused, and I prayed for a glimmer of insight to show my work with him had made a difference. Any little sign that my energies—already too thinly spread—were making an impact and denting his uncle’s malevolent teachings.
“How do his personal issues affect you?”
That was it. My lid blew.
“For fuck’s sake, James. Where would you send them? An ill woman, a tiny babe, and a desperate man? What good would it do the world to make that family homeless?”
His forehead furrowed, dark eyebrows slanting down, but my rant escalated, and my breathing sped up.
All the frustration in me spilled over. At the twins and not being able to give them all they needed.
At Gordain and his career and wanting desperately for him to get his streaming.
Over wanting Mathilda and having to control how I fought for her.
I advanced towards him, forgetting my size. How intimidating I could look.
“These are real people we’re talking about.
They’ve hit hard times, but that isn’t their fault.
You can’t think like this when it’s your own tenants who have issues.
” I chopped the side of my hand into the palm of the other.
“Fine, if they abuse your properties or your goodwill, but you need to ask the question before you serve a judgement. Find out the details and help them. A payment plan, a six-month hold on their rent, a no-interest long-term debt, if needs be. Whatever works. Marie Sinclair is a chemical engineer, so when in time she goes back to work they could clear the debt, no trouble. James, get it into your skull that people come first, every time. Kindness above money. That is your responsibility when you’re as blessed as we are.
What the hell have I done wrong to make you think you can just take a home away like that? ”
I glared then pulled back an inch, seeing his paled expression.
Oh no.
James had frozen, locked himself down, his expression and his features held neutral. Just like he’d been when he’d moved in.
My brothers understood my bluster. I could storm about the place, ranting, and none of them would bat an eyelid. Or they’d even laugh and bait me all the more. James didn’t have the same resilience. I normally—mostly—had better control, and guilt ate at me from how I’d lost it.
I took him by the shoulder. Squeezed. “Christ, man. Come back. I’m sorry for yelling. If I shout, shout back. Explain your thinking or ask me to explain mine. Don’t shut down on me.”
His jaw ticked. The neutral expression left his eyes, and his gaze flew to mine.
Panicked. Alive. “I know. I know! On one hand I have my uncle telling me to underline profit and protect the estate, and on the other I have you, my childhood memory of my parents, and my own reason telling me the opposite. I don’t know how to rationalise it.
Any of it. Tenants, compassion, making the right decision. ”
“Aye, you do—” I began, but he hadn’t finished.
“Relationships. Women.”
The words hung in the air. I drew my head back. Okay, this was more than I’d expected. But it was good. Very good. I gave him a shake. “Sit down, will ye?”
We moved to a pair of armchairs placed under the main window at the front of the castle.
The blue-grey loch and rich colours of the estate were as familiar to me as my own hand.
James and his thinking, however, were entirely alien.
My burst of temper evaporated as quickly as it had arrived. I trod carefully.
“I yelled out a number of options for Sinclair. I trust you to help them choose the best one, but I’m right here if you want to talk through any part of it.” James nodded, and I took a breath. “Now, tell me about Beth. You two have been talking? I take it she’s the woman you mean.”
He dipped his head, his gaze keen. “We’ve spoken every day.”
Every day? My jaw ached to drop, but I controlled my reaction. “Aye, it has been something like that between Mathilda and me. Are you…courting her?”
He let out a short laugh. “I hardly know.”
“But you have no choice?”
My mentee, James, tenth earl Fitzroy, and twenty-year-old heir of Belvedere, one of the grandest homes and estates in England, placed his palms on his knees like he was trying to ground himself in the middle of a tempest. “That’s a good way to put it.”
“What’s another way?”
“That I want to. Consciously, despite knowing all the problems it will bring. Callum, she’s more alive than anyone I’ve ever met. But I’m failing before I even start. I don’t even have the first clue how to impress her.”
I pursed my lips. I’d long suspected that James had little experience with relationships.
He’d barely known how to fit in with me and my boys when he’d moved in, though that had slowly changed.
He was bursting with energy, he worked as hard as any of us, but his emotional development still had far to go.
Better to lay out the basics and show him how my approach with Mathilda had beaten hurdle after hurdle thrown in our path. “Beth likes you in that way?”
He swallowed. “I don’t know. How can I tell?”
“She asks you questions, answers what you put to her, seeks you out for no real reason.” I swallowed now. “Calls you back.” At least I’d solved that problem in my own area. Mathilda used my number now, though we hadn’t spoken since she’d been with her sister.
“She does those things,” he said simply, his cheeks reddening under the black stubble he didn’t usually wear.
“Then I can only tell you what worked for me. Being so…moved by another person is rare. Rarer still if they return the opinion. Find a way to make it work, wee steps to get to know one another, and dinna let go unless she says so.”
He huffed, his gaze drifting to my bookcase, the titles a mix of leather-bound estate ledgers and paperback crime procedurals. “Maybe it’s easier for you with Mathilda. You don’t have the same barriers I do.”
A laugh erupted from me, and my mood lifted. “Aside from me suing her father?”
James’s eyes widened. I had an idea on how to tackle Mathilda’s father, but I wasn’t sure she’d agree to it. The woman I was falling for had caution and poise written through her bones. I was bullheaded if I didn’t plan. And sometimes even if I did.
“I have such a weight of expectation and duty against me, Callum. I hardly know where to start changing that.”
My mirth dried up. I wasn’t sure what he meant, though I knew he had hoops to jump through in order to inherit later in the year, but James needed to become his own man and take his own path.
My version of my duty—to my family, my name, and my clan—wouldn’t be identical to his, and I didn’t want to lead him.
“You shape what you can around what you want. Around what’s right for you. It’s your life, nobody else’s. If you want the woman, ask her out.”
James shook his head like nothing could be so simple, but he smiled, and for the first time today, I felt that I’d got something right.
I leapt to my feet, renewed in my intentions and with a list of jobs needing doing before a certain pair of lasses showed up at Inverness airport tomorrow at lunchtime.
“Now, help me straighten up this castle. You’re as responsible as I am for the coming storm. ”
I had four days to make Mathilda Storm fall for me, and I intended to make every minute count.