Viscount Breckenridge to the Rescue

her, but you know my price. My nonnegotiable price. So what are you going to do about it?”

When he didn’t rush to reply but instead raised his tankard and, gaze forward, took a long sip of ale, she leaned even closer to say, “Correct me if I’m wrong, my dear”—the endearment dripped with latent scorn and fury—“but for you, time is running out.”

She was right, but he wasn’t going to let her guess at the chill that gripped his innards at the thought of what was at stake. Keeping his posture relaxed, he almost languidly shrugged. “You’ll just have to settle for one of her sisters. One of the Cynster sisters was our bargain, and either one of the others will do just as well to fulfill it.”

He’d used every last hour while they’d waited to hear the fate of Heather Cynster to search, again, high and low, for the goblet his mother had stolen and hidden. The goblet he needed to save all he held dear. His mother had never been able to bend him to her will, any more than she’d been able to influence his father. But she’d learned of the goblet, and of its importance to him, and had seized her chance.

She now had an exquisitely honed weapon she could wield, and was intent on wielding, to get him to do as she wished.

Her wish, her obsession, was insane. He knew it.

He also knew he had no choice but to carry out her manic dictates.

Still. . sipping his ale, he allowed himself to indulge the recurring fantasy of simply telling her to do her worst and be damned. .

A door deep in the keep slammed open. Two pairs of small feet came clattering over the flags.

Lifting his head, he set down his tankard as two tousle-headed young boys came rushing in, bringing the fresh air of the loch, the scent of pines and firs, and three water spaniels galloping in with them.

The boys saw him, and wide grins split their faces.

If they saw his mother standing beside him, they gave no sign as, with a cheer and a whoop, they raced up the great hall, clambered up onto the dais, and flung themselves at him.

He’d shifted his carver back enough to grab them, to tumble them in his arms, wrestle them about, then settle them in his lap.

They clung like monkeys, chattering nonstop, filling his ears with the highlights of their morning’s excursion with his gamekeeper, Scanlon.

Their warmth wrapped about him, settled to his bones, dispelling the chill that dealing with his mother had evoked.

For her part, although she glared at the boys, furious at the interruption, and even more over his turning away from her to them, she knew better than to say a word against them. They were all he had left of a family he’d held dear. His cousin Mitchell had grown up alongside him, but Mitchell and his sweet wife Krista were now dead, and the boys, five and six years old, were all he had left of them…

He drew in a deep breath. Struggled to harness the sudden rage that ripped through him — rage that the woman standing at his side should dare to threaten the boys, their future, and the future of every other soul under his care.

The dogs milled, whined, more attuned to his hidden emotions than the boys wriggling in his lap. One dog, the eldest, Gwarr, came to sit between him and his mother, dark eyes fixed on her, tongue lolling from between long jaws lined with strong white teeth.

His mother edged back a step, thin-lipped and tense.

He forced himself to look at her, the smile he’d summoned for the boys draining from his face. Keeping the anger, the sheer ire and fury she and her scheme provoked, from his voice — so the boys wouldn’t sense it and be disturbed — he met her eyes and nonchalantly shrugged. “One of the Cynster sisters, brought here and thus effectively ruined — that was our bargain. I’ll keep my end of it.” He held her gaze. “And you’ll keep yours.”

Eyes narrowed, her face pinched, her expression, as always, sour, she held his gaze for a pregnant moment, then humphed, swung on her heel, and stalked off.

His fury drained from him.

Idly reaching out to stroke Gwarr’s head, he turned back to the imps in his lap. Utterly trusting, their bright blue eyes looked out on the world with unalloyed hope and untarnished expectations.

He would give a great deal to ensure they had all the best in life he could give them.

Glancing at the large circular clock on the wall, he confirmed there was still half an hour before the meal. Summoning his broadest brogue, he looked down at the boys. “Shall we nae gae oot an’ luk in on the horses, then?”

Later he could think about kidnapping Eliza Cynster.

First, he would remind himself of why he would.