Page 53 of A Highland Duke to Claim Her Heart

Ewan could not help but think of Lord Pembury’s snide and true comment.

Would paying off the debts be enough to keep his brother away from his wife? And was Cassandra similarly in need of dissuading?

She, unfortunately, was much harder to read than his brother.

***

These thoughts were still weighing on Ewan that evening as he visited Annabelle. She was more subdued than usual as he tucked her into bed and then read to her from one of her favorite collections of fairytales. She didn’t laugh at the sections that usually sent her into fits of giggles, and she barely even flinched when he got to the darker bits.

When he was done, he set the book on her nightstand and looked at her seriously.

“What is wrong, darling?” he asked.

Annabelle’s eyes were wide as they gazed back at him.

“Is everything going to change now that Uncle Christopher is back?” she asked. Her voice sounded thinner than it usually did, and quieter, as if she were afraid of the question even as she asked it.

Ewan’s heart began to beat a little faster. “What do you mean?”

Annabelle looked down at her hands. She was picking at her cuticles, he noticed. “Only that Uncle Christopher was supposed to marry Cassandra,” Annabelle said. “And now that he is back, I am afraid that she will marry him instead, and then she will no longer be my new mother.”

Ewan’s mouth had gone very dry. “She will not marry your uncle,” he said swiftly. “Whatever gave you that notion?”

Annabelle shrugged. “It is the kind of thing that would happen in a fairytale. She would have to go back to the brother she was supposed to marry.”

“That is not how it works,” Ewan said gently. He smiled at her to reassure her. “Once two people are married, nothing can undo that bond. Do you understand?”

Annabelle nodded, and she looked marginally happier as she lay back against her pillows. “That is what Cassandra said, too,” she murmured, as her eyes fluttered closed. “She promised shewould not marry Uncle Christopher. She promised she would not go anywhere.”

“She will not be going anywhere,” Ewan said, and he pulled his daughter into a hug. Even in her sleepiness, she hugged him back. “I promise you as well.”

He could hear the vow as he made it, and he knew, as he left her room several minutes later, the candles snuffed out and his daughter gently sleeping, that he would not break it. Cassandra would not be going anywhere. Not if he had anything to say about it.

Several minutes later, he was in his study, and had just sat down to a night cap of port when there was a knock on the door. When it opened, he was surprised to see Alaric.

“This late?” he asked, raising an eyebrow, as Alaric crossed the room and sat down heavily in the chair across from him. “It must be serious.”

“It is serious,” Alaric said, grimacing. “I have been in Inverness.”

Now both of Ewan’s eyebrows shot up. “Have you? I did notice that you were absent today.”

“Something just did not sit right with me,” Alaric said, shaking his head. “With your brother’s sudden return, his story of theshipwreck, the dramatic clinging for life on the broken mast… I felt there was something amiss.”

It took Ewan several seconds to understand what his friend was saying.

Alaric continued softly, “And I have had word from a friend that he thought he saw Christopher in Inverness at a tavern not a week ago.”

Finally, Ewan found his voice. “You think… he is lying?”

It had not even occurred to him to consider that Christopher was lying.

But it would not be the first time.

“I do not know,” Alaric admitted. “But I do think that something is fishy about all of it, and I wanted to find out more. I spoke with the harbormaster you spoke to, and he did confirm the story, but his memory of it seemed hazy, almost as if he was trying to remember details that someone had told him to memorize.”

Ewan’s eyes narrowed. “Did you speak to any other men who work at the docks? Or any sailors? Did anyone else remember a shipwreck?”

“I did,” Alaric said. “And while some swore there was a shipwreck, others seemed not to have heard of it.”