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of his brother’s temper. If anything
     was likely to exacerbate it, it was the presence of Lady Kelso with her ever-sharp tongue.
    Outspoken as she was, she was Rob’s favorite kinswoman. When he left the porter, the knowledge that she was home acted on
     him as it always had when he was younger, too. It made him smile, knowing what she would say to him if she knew that Alex
     was in a temper and wanted to see him at once:
    “Then you probably deserve the rough side of his tongue. And if you dare to lose your temper when he’s lost his, my lad, you’ll
     deserve every lick you get.”
    As he crossed the great hall, where servants were setting up trestles for the midday meal, he drew a breath to ease his returning
     tension and resolved to keep
his
temper whatever Alex said to him.
    Since Alex could not yet know what the Annandale report was, Lady Kelso or Alex’s lady wife, Cassandra, had likely stirred
     his temper before Rob’s return. Not that it mattered what or who had stirred it. Rob would have to deal with it.
    He had faced many such occasions in the past, and his own temper was ever uncertain. Although he had rarely dared to give
     his anger free rein with Alex, it had happened more than once. Worse than that was the fact that he had rarely bothered to
     restrain it with others then unless someone like Lady Kelso forced him to do so.
    Keeping his temper in Alex’s presence to avoid the additional consequences of losing it had been about all he could manage
     in those days.
    Alex was a good man at heart, but he was also a man who knew his duty, and he’d believed strongly that he had a duty to raise
     Rob properly. Their mother had died when Rob was four, and their father had followed her three years later, leaving Alex as
     Rob’s guardian when the former was barely one-and-twenty years old.
    He had reached the door to the chamber Alex used as an office. With a single rap on the door to announce himself, Rob entered.
    Alex sat in a two-elbow chair behind the long table on which he dealt with the castle accounts and business of the Sheriff
     of Dumfries. He was in his fortieth year and his dark hair showed gray at the temples with a salty scattering of gray and
     white throughout. He had put on weight over the past few years and would have jowls and a second chin before many more had
     passed.
    He looked up and frowned at Rob’s entrance. His blue eyes were a few shades darker than Rob’s, his complexion paler.
    “You’re back,” he said.
    “I expect you knew I was, since Edgar said you wanted to see me at once,” Rob said, shutting the door. There being no other
     chair or stool in the small room, he stood facing the table, trying to read his brother’s expression. Although Alex was clearly
     annoyed, Rob could not tell if he was annoyed with him or something else.
    Alex said, “I did not expect you back so soon. Did the undertaking prosper?”
    “No more than either of us expected it would.”
    “Damnation, Rob, Dunwythie is one man, whilst you had the authority of the Sheriff of Dumfries to insist that he comply with
     our demands. Meeting him face to face, as you did, you ought to have persuaded him easily.”
    “He paid my demand no more attention than he paid the warrant you sent him last spring or the second one you sent just before
     winter set in hard.”
    “He pretends I have no authority to issue my warrants, which is absurd,” Alex said. “The man claims to hold to ancient ways
     of the stewartry. But such ways have no place in proper government today.”
    “The only dale in Dumfriesshire that agrees with that is Nithsdale, and it has long been a sheriffdom,” Rob reminded him.
     “The others pay their taxes through a steward or directly to the King.”
    “Aye, but I mean to exert my full authority as sheriff over all Dumfriesshire. So any area that continues to resist me will
     quickly learn its error. I expected
you
to teach Dunwythie that lesson straightaway if he continued