Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Gabriel MacInnes snapped his timepiece shut and grabbed his coat. “Damn it.”

“Ye shouldn’t say that,” his niece Lorna announced, giggling behind him.

Right. He had the bairns now to mind after. As well as a distillery that was failing, an inn that was closed from fire damage and general lack of upkeep, and crumbling Dunsmuir Castle.

What a welcome home.

A week after laying his brother to rest, his life was a far cry from days in Paris managing his shipping empire. But now he had inherited Dunsmuir estate, found himself a laird, and a whole host of problems along with it.

He leaned forward, pushing away a stack of books and a vase full of dead flowers to glance at his reflection in the mirror. As if he knew what he was looking for. Only that the great hall suffered a leak, the plastered ceilings were peeling, and the furniture was arranged in a way that rendered the only decent room in the drafty tower house near useless.

“Are ye coming with me, lass?”

Her button nose was smudged with the drinking chocolate he had brought them from Paris. Almost the same color as her dark-brown eyes. “Can I?”

Could she? He had no earthy clue. She was six, so he suspected she was capable of walking into the village.

“If ye manage to stay out of trouble, don’t see why no’.”

Maisie raced into the great hall, wearing a flower crown on top of her honey-brown hair, and her face also smeared with drinking chocolate. “Do ye ken my sister, Uncle?”

“I’ve met her before, aye.” The damn buttons on his damn jacket were too stiff. Forget it. He would meet the builder without a buttoned jacket. Everyone would manage fine without a polished appearance. This was Scotland after all.

It had been years since he had been home.

Everything was different. The girls no longer wee babes. Everything was…

The doorknob fell off in his hand as he ushered everyone out into the hallway. He shut his eyes and breathed, certain the world was crumbling down upon him.

“Damn it!”

Everything was breaking or broken, yet he was expected to return home and slip into the giant void his brother had unexpectedly left behind.

He chucked it across the hall and ignored the girls laughing, even as the old housekeeper huffed up the stairs toward them.

“Young ladies, time to break yer fast. How many times have I asked ye no’ to run away from me?”

“But it’s so easy,” Maisie said.

Lorna jumped behind her uncle, poking her head out to stare down the menacing woman. “Because yer so slow and only ‘ave one eye.”

The older woman scowled, slapping her hands. “Lorna Annis MacInnes! I swear to heaven, yer mother is spinning in her grave. Yer no’ allowed to speak to me that way.”

The girls were orphaned. His brother had drunk himself to an early grave after his wife had fallen ill and passed. And now the girls relied on him and this ancient housekeeper, who marched about the house as if she were about to announce an invading clan was at the keep.

“I’ll take them with me, Mrs. Malcolm.”

“To the village, at this time of day? Dressed as they are? And don’t ye have business to see to?”

He rubbed his temples and pressed his lips together. There was not enough time to do everything he must in order to save his family, but he had to try. And this morning was the start of it all.

“Aye.”

Lorna and Maisie snickered, darting around him to dash down the long, dark castle hall. “Let’s ask him for a tart when we reach the village,” they attempted to whisper to one another. “I bet he’ll agree. Yer his favorite,” Maisie said.

So that was to be the way of it, then?

He would sort them out, and this house, and the distillery, and the inn because he needed to. Needs must and all that nonsense.

“Verra well, sir.”

Gabriel started down the hall toward his nieces when the older woman cleared her throat. “Sir?”

He halted, spun on his heels, and did everything within his power not to toss his head back toward the ceiling in frustration. Already fifteen minutes late.

“Mrs. Malcolm?”

“Their father wasna much of a father toward the end. They could use some manners. They need the guidance of a woman.”

“I didna return to marry.”

“A governess, then.” The housekeeper’s hands were twisted and gnarled with age, and her chin jutted out, only drawing attention to the missing teeth in her mouth.

“Noted, ma’am.”

The girls poured out of the crumbling house onto the stone drive with abandon, chasing one another around and shrieking, scrambling up the large oak tree as if they were squirrels. It was much too loud, considering he hadn’t had his cup of coffee yet. There hadn’t been time.

And there wasn’t time now.

“We’re late, lasses, time to leave.”

But he had barely pulled Lorna down from the tree before Finlay Wallace dismounted from his beast of a horse in the drive. “Why is there a damn architect in the distillery, MacInnes? He’s poking at the sherry casks. No one should be near the casks! I take care of those casks.”

“Good morning, Finn.”

Finlay and his brother had been friends since childhood, and Gabriel had always been considered the younger tag-along of the trio.

The man towered over Gabriel’s already tall frame, and beneath the mess of red hair, he had green eyes that were almost always full of anger unless he was drunk. Which he often was.

“Why is he there?” Finlay yelled, throwing his arm out toward the village.

“When I walked through last week, I noticed some structural damage from the fire last autumn. It needs to be corrected if we’re to continue operating the stills in the cellar.”

“Tavish doesna care. We dinna need to change anything. The stills by the river are fine as well.”

Gabriel nodded, annoyed that the girls were doing anything but listen. “Lorna, stay down. I need to reach the inn sometime tomorrow.”

Maisie tittered, then slipped, scraping her knee.

Gabriel peeled her off the tree and placed her firmly on the ground. “It’s only a scrape.”

“It’s only a scrape,” Finlay mimicked.

“Ye too, Wallace,” Gabriel said, motioning for everyone to walk toward the village. “We will all go together, but we’re late.”

“The architect isn’t late.”

“Good, at least someone is on time in this damn country.”

“This damn country was good enough for ye before ye decided to take off and live on the continent like some damn dandy. ”

“What’s a dandy?” Maisie asked, miraculously cured of her scraped knee. She spun around Gabriel, nearly tripping him. How was it so difficult to place one foot directly in front of the other?

“Exactly what yer Uncle Gabriel became,” Finn scoffed. “Too good for the rest of us now.”

Annoyance rippled through Gabriel. Well, more than annoyance really, but rage wasn’t productive. No, he needed to perform a walk-through with the architect at the distillery, visit the inn, then meet with the land steward to discuss the castle and its tenants in the village.

Except he hadn’t found the land steward, and he had a sinking premonition Tavish had managed Dunsmuir without one.

His brother hadn’t taken care of anything toward the end, not even himself. And now it fell on Gabriel to swoop in and fix everything before it was too late.

“I dinna remember ye bein’ so grumpy, Uncle,” Lorna said. She slipped her small hand into his, and he paused, gazing down at her fingers twined between his. Years ago, he remembered holding his mother’s hand as she walked through the orchards on the long summer nights. And how she hummed to herself, examining the trees for the autumn’s harvest.

He had toddled beside her, trying his best to keep up as her head spun visions of some sweet, prosperous future with a happy, healthy family.

But those were dreams, and right as rain, they rot given enough time. Just like the rest of the MacInnes family.

“Forget walkin’,” Gabriel said. “Help me hitch up the carriage, Wallace, and we’ll ride together.”

Nearly half an hour later, the carriage sped into the small, sleepy village. The slight breeze was perfumed by burning peat and heather, and the river behind the Thistle & Glen Inn was high after a week of rain, racing over the large granite boulders.

Gabriel checked his timepiece again before he curled up the ratty throw rug under the kitchen worktable, revealing the hidden door cut into the old floorboards that led to the stills. Or attempted to. Every minute counted if he were to rescue the remnants of the family legacy. Or else they would lose everything. Returning home meant he was using his own empire as collateral. The risk could ruin him and the years he had spent building it.

He climbed down the ladder into the dark musty crawl space before he reached yet another door. His father had sectioned off the cellar so as to hide the stills. The cellar access by the stairs from the kitchen was used for storage and preserving food. The side accessed by the hidden door was much larger and had little light. The advantage was that, as it was the part of the foundation built into the hill overlooking the river, the ceilings were taller.

Even that damn door stuck. He shoved his weight against it, finally barreling through and stumbling into the damp room.

For years, his father and brother had smuggled whisky. But with last year’s fire at the inn and his brother’s death, Gabriel was left with an interesting problem. They could continue doing business as his father and brother had done, or he could make the business legitimate now that the Excise Duty Act of 1823 had passed.

That required money and time.

Two things that they didn’t have.

Not to mention considerable change, something Finn was adamant against.

“Are you Gabriel MacInnes? No one will tell me who I’m supposed to meet.” A tall, thin man pushed wired-rimmed glasses up his nose, emerging from the shadows.

“Given the nature of things…” Gabriel began before Finn burst in from behind.

“I told ye to speak to me. Gabriel doesna ken barley from wheat?—”

“Finn.” Gabriel clenched his hands. The architect was here as a favor, and if the man left before he could get answers on rebuilding the distillery, they would need to wait weeks, likely months before he could find another to travel to the small village.

The architect raised his hands in the air as if in defeat. “I am only here to inspect the structure of this building so I can provide whoever paid me with the necessary advice on rebuilding?— ”

“Wait, wait! Rebuilding?” Finn threw his hands up, his face red as he spun and addressed Gabriel. “This worked well without ye. I’ll be damned if I allow ye to sweep in and rebuild it. Everything is fine as it is. And if ye start messin’ with it, Duncan McQuarrie will be payin’ ye a visit.”

The girls giggled in the background, chasing one another around the giant, empty tubs used for mash.

“Come back here, lasses,” Gabriel cautioned.

The whole cellar was damp and smelled of wet soot. The beams overhead were charred and had significant damage from insects or rot.

“I’ll speak with ye later, Finn. Privately.” Gabriel approached the architect who edged away. That familiar acrid taste of panic filled the back of his throat at the gesture. It happened often enough. Gabriel was not a small man, and given his love of boxing, his shoulders were broad. Most days he felt like a giant trying to quietly make it to the end of the day in a world that wished nothing but to be loud.

He didn’t care for the noise.

And all too often lately, his days and nights were full of it.

“Let’s walk around, Mr. Baylus,” he said, stopping short of the architect. “I would like to hear what ye discovered.”

“I am not sure you will, sir.”

“That is what I expected.” He ran his hand through his hair with a ragged sigh. At some point, he would find bottom, but it felt as if he had been falling for weeks now.

Worse news always followed.

Like the ear-splitting scream that ripped through the dark cellar a moment later.

“Lorna!” Maisie yelled.

Finn grabbed a candle and raced forward in the dark. “Maisie, stay away.”

“Help!” Lorna sobbed. “Owww. Damn it.”

“Ye can’t say that,” Maisie yelled back. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand as Gabriel rushed forward.

He felt the earth begin to crumble under his feet and paused. There, peering up at him, was his niece at the bottom of an old hole used for a still someone hadn’t filled in properly.

Damn it seemed an appropriate response, but if he was to do anything, he would need a governess.

“Lass, we’ll work on that mouth of yers, but first, I want ye to breathe in deep, like.” He crouched down, and slowly dropped himself into the hole beside. He glanced up as the others stared down. Still, this wouldn’t be the worst of it. He was certain of it. That was always the way with the MacInnes family. “Hold on to me now, and I promise it’ll be fine.”

“Right as rain, Uncle?”

“Of course.” He quickly examined her, thankful there wasn’t a broken bone but only a bad sprain. Another day, he would lecture her. Another day when the world wasn’t collapsing in on him, and he didn’t feel as if he were failing everyone.

And he was.

Gabriel MacInnes was a man on borrowed time, and the world was quick on his heels, ready to demand restitution.