McGregor came alive with rage. “Ye even think about laying a finger on her, I’ll shoot you dead. I’m laird here, and don’t ye forget it.”
Juliana hurried past Mr. McGregor, who was waving the bottle dangerously. “You had better go quickly,” she said to Mrs. Terrell, half pushing the two women into the hall. “There’s no telling what he’ll do when he’s enraged.”
Mrs. Dalrymple scurried to the front door, narrowly missing two workmen who came in with a load of stone blocks. “Out of my way, if you please,” she shouted. “You should be using the back door. The back.”
She rushed out. There was bleating, and a scream, Priti’s voice admonishing.
Juliana hurried out, followed by worried Mrs. Terrell, to find Mrs. Dalrymple in a tug-of-war with the goat. The animal had snatched at the fringes of Mrs. Dalrymple’s silk shawl as she’d run by, and now the goat busily chewed as Mrs. Dalrymple struggled to pull the shawl out of the animal’s mouth.
“No, no,” Priti cried, shaking her finger at the goat. “Bad goat.”
“Heathen child.” Mrs. Dalrymple raised her hand at Priti, preparing to slap.
Rage flashed through Juliana, and she caught Mrs. Dalrymple’s wrist in a tight grip. “Do not dare to strike her. How can you even think such a thing?”
Mrs. Dalrymple tried to wrench herself away, but Juliana was too strong. The goat, whether in disgust, or for reasons of her own, spit out the shawl.
Juliana picked it up and thrust it at Mrs. Dalrymple. “Never, ever come to this house again.”
She expected Mrs. Dalrymple to exclaim that the shawl was ruined or demand the price of it, but the woman only gave Juliana another furious look and turned away. But the look held a flash of cunning, despite the woman’s anger and fear, as though Mrs. Dalrymple knew something Juliana didn’t.
Juliana didn’t like the look, but she was too angry to worry about it at the moment.
“Mrs. Terrell,” Juliana said, keeping her voice deliberately calm. “I am afraid that as long as Mrs. Dalrymple stays with you, I cannot receive you here.”
Mrs. Terrell remained cool. “I am sorry to hear that, Mrs. McBride.” She adjusted her gloves. “The ladies in this valley look to me for social leadership. I am afraid that they will follow my lead and not receive you. You’ve rather ruined yourself this day, I am pained to say.”
She turned on her heel—taking care not to let her summer shawl flap anywhere near the goat—and followed Mrs. Dalrymple down to the gate, where an open landau waited.
“Oh, really?” Juliana said to the air. “Well, we’ll see about that.” She looked down at the goat, still chewing on whatever piece of shawl it had managed to tear off. Juliana gave its head a pat. “Good goat,” she said, then took Priti’s hand and led her back into the house.
She found McGregor prancing through the wide hallway. He linked his arm through a smiling Komal’s and danced her around one way, then switched arms and went the other. She still had one of the whiskey bottles, and Mr. McGregor kept hold of the other, passing it from hand to hand as he danced.
Elliot was laughing.
“It is not funny,” Juliana said with grim determination. “That woman is odious. But Elliot, she said she was having someone investigate you. She wants you charged.”
“I can’t be charged for murdering someone still alive.”
“I do wish Mr. Stacy would make things easy on us and show himself. Rather obstinate of him not to.”
Elliot shrugged. “He does as he pleases. He might go back to wherever he came from without ever revealing himself.”
“Not very helpful.”
Elliot lifted his gaze from her to McGregor. McGregor had stopped dancing and was patting Komal on the shoulder.
“Don’t worry, lass,” McGregor said. “I will never let that nasty female hurt you.”
Komal actually smiled at him. Beamed, even. McGregor turned brick red and started to stammer. Komal snatched the second whiskey bottle out his hand and ran for the kitchen.
“Blast you, woman!” McGregor rocketed after her, Priti happily following. They heard voices raised, in two different languages, down the echoing passage to the kitchen.
“Poor old devil,” Juliana said, not stopping her smile.
She turned back to Elliot, who leaned his hips comfortably on the back of the empire sofa, his kilt outlining his thighs.
Even if he never spoke to Juliana of things important to him, she certainly could enjoy looking at him. And touching him. The wet heat of the bath hadn’t left her all day.
“But, really, we must do something about the Dalrymples,” Juliana said. “They could be dangerous to you.”
Elliot shrugged. “Mrs. Dalrymple is not Scottish, whatever she claims. She didn’t understand a word I said to her.”
“My dear Elliot, neither did I.”
He smiled. “In any case, I can’t be tried for murder if there is no body, no grave, no marker.”
“You can be tried if he continues to be missing, as the man suspected of making him go missing if nothing else.”
“The great British system of law makes them have to prove it.” Elliot went quiet. “But our Mrs. Dalrymple’s not wrong, lass. I am a murderer.”
“You’re not,” Juliana said stoutly. “Not if Mr. Stacy is alive.”
“He is.” Elliot’s hands tightened on the back of the sofa, the knuckles whitening through his tan. “I’m not talking of him. I’m speaking of other men.”
“You mean in the army. In battles.”
He paused again, as though gathering thoughts he didn’t want to think. “No. I mean when I was a prisoner. My captors taught me how to kill with my bare hands, and then made me do it for them.”
Chapter 20
Juliana stared at him with the surprise she did so well, the expression of not wanting to believe the horrors he told her. Her blue eyes went a bit wider for a moment. Elliot hated that, with everything he revealed, he’d shatter more and more of her innocence.
Elliot lifted his hands and looked at them, callused and worn, the fingertips scarred where they’d been cut off, the nails surprisingly whole for having been pulled out and grown back.
“They taught me how to put my hands around a man’s throat,” he said. “How to use my thumbs to crush his windpipe. How to press my fingers into his eye sockets and pull his cheekbones from his face. A man will fight so hard to live when he’s dying…”