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be, too—rebuilding
     Caerlaverock!” With a look that included his lady wife, he added, “We’ll be saying no more about this now, d’ye hear?”
    Mairi willingly complied with what amounted to an order. She nearly always preferred peace to its absence. Although her father
     shared the same peaceful nature, like many men accustomed to command, he was apt to lose his temper when anyone who owed him
     duty defied him.
    Despite her intent to banish thoughts and memories of Robert Maxwell, they continued to plague her, stirring oddly conflicting
     emotions as they did. She would recall his arrogance one moment, how clear his eyes were the next. Uneasily recalling his
     anger, she remembered the look he had given her as he’d turned to go.
    There had been no anger in
that
look.
    Calling her wits to order at last, she thrust him out of her head and focused instead on diverting Fiona from thoughts of
     Will Jardine and on fixing her own thoughts on what her father could teach her about the Dunwythie estates.

    Leaving Spedlins Tower as the sun peeked over the eastern hills, Rob and his men enjoyed a peaceful ride back to Dumfries,
     fifteen miles to the southwest.
    Mist rising from the river Annan and the still rain-damp landscape clung to shrubbery and trees in shredded skirts, but by
     the time the sun had climbed above the hilltops, the mist had disappeared.
    Rob and his men forded the Annan a few miles south of Applegarth. Staying north of the springtime morass of water meadows
     and bogs surrounding Lochmaben Castle, they met the Dumfries road a few miles to the west.
    Two hours later, they reached the royal burgh of Dumfries and followed its High Street to the tall stone edifice known as
     Alan’s Tower.
    Overlooking the river Nith, the tower was ancient. It had belonged to Alan, last Lord of Galloway until Archie assumed that
     title 140 years later. Rob’s branch of Maxwells having owned the Tower for some time before that, it had long served as the
     residence and court of the hereditary Sheriff of Dumfries.
    Dismounting in the yard, Rob tossed his reins to a minion, then paused to exchange a few words with the itinerant knacker,
     Parland Dow, who had his cottage rent-free from the Maxwells as payment for his many services to them.
    Touching his cap, he said to Rob, “Good to see ye, sir. I be a-heading into Annandale from here but I mean to be in Kirkcudbright
     again nae more than a sennight from now, ten days at most.”
    “I should be back at Trailinghail by then easily,” Rob said. “Fin Walters will have work for you there in any event.”
    Bidding the knacker a safe journey, Rob strode inside. He was not looking forward to his interview with his brother, but he
     rarely put things off merely because they would be unpleasant.
    Even so, when the elderly porter informed him that Alexander Maxwell wanted to see him at once, Rob felt his stomach clench
     just as it had so often in his youth under similar circumstances. The reaction was brief but annoying.
    “The master be in his wee chamber off the hall, Master Robert… sir, I should say,” the old man added with a smile. “Mind how
     ye go now.”
    “You sound just as you did when I was twelve and Alex was in rare kippage, Edgar,” Rob said, clapping him on a shoulder. “I’m
     gey old now for skelping.”
    “Aye, sir, and too big, I’m thinking. And much too skilled wi’ a sword, come to that,” the porter added dryly. “I just meant
     ye should avoid the solar. Herself and Lady Maxwell be a-talking in there.”
    That information drew a smile from Rob. The servants referred to only one person as “Herself,” and that was his maternal grandmother,
     Arabella, Lady Kelso. “I’ll go in to them after I see my brother,” he said.
    “Herself will be that glad to clap eyes on ye, aye. As for the master…” He spread his hands eloquently and left it at that.
    Rob nodded and thanked him, although he had needed no further warning about the state