Read Some Like it Scot (Scandalous Highlanders Book 4) for Free Online Page B

one who could shoot the face off a shilling—squatting so close to the main house. And he had a fairly good idea what his brothers would have to say if they learned that he’d been driven off by a lass wielding a musket—twice now.
    He tied the sack to his saddle, and then swung up on his waiting gray gelding, Saturn. Gray House wasn’t precisely in the opposite direction of where he’d intended to go, but it was a good two miles out of his way. It meant a quick trip to Haldane, but that might well be for the best. The lass had warned him not to come by again, but she couldn’t shoot him if she didn’t see him. Hopefully.
    After walking into the bowels of Gray House so many times over the years that he practically thought it an extension of his own territory, he was startled into a halt by the sight of Dodge the butler blocking the foyer. “Where’s Lach?” Munro asked, rubbing his fingers against Fergus’s stiff ears.
    â€œIn the library, m’laird,” the heavyset Highlander returned in a hushed voice.
    â€œIs someaught amiss?”
    â€œNae, m’laird. It’s just that … Well, young Laird Colin has been a wee bit fussy, and he’s only just now quieted doon. Lady MacTier is asleep in the morning room, and—”
    â€œI’ll keep my voice doon,” Munro whispered, unwilling to listen to a recital of how many hours Lachlan and Rowena’s bairn had kept the house awake. His sister Rowena had been a yowler as an infant, too—and to an eight-year-old lad the sound had been like a cat’s screeching.
    â€œThank ye, m’laird. We all appreciate yer understanding.”
    And his unwillingness to hear more baby squawking. For Saint Andrew’s sake, he heard it almost every day with Ranulf and Charlotte’s son, William. With a nod he headed up the stairs and down the western hallway. The library door stood half open, and he slipped inside to close it behind him—then froze.
    The trap sprang closed before he’d realized he’d been caught. Lachlan MacTier, Viscount Gray, stood before one of the room’s tall, narrow windows and rocked backward and forward on his toes and heels like an escaped Bedlamite. In his arms he held a tumble of blankets, from which one tiny, clenched fist emerged to stretch skyward.
    Generally cynical green eyes widened as the viscount spied Munro. “Dunnae ye dare speak in more than a whisper,” he whispered, turning half away as if to shield his seven-month-old son from the blast of sound his uncle was poised to emit. “Or ye either, Fergus.”
    The hound promptly lay down as close to the door as he could get. “Yer damned butler already muzzled me,” Munro muttered back, diving into a chair by the fireplace. The liquor tantalus stood by the back wall, living up to its namesake, but in the presence of a bairn and at scarcely nine o’clock in the morning, he couldn’t quite justify a glass of whisky.
    â€œGood.” Lachlan, still bouncing on his toes, walked gingerly closer. “What are ye doing here?”
    â€œI came to take ye hunting. I hadnae realized ye’ve turned into a lass.” The insult lost a bit of its sharpness with both of them whispering at each other, but from the way Lach narrowed his eyes, he’d heard it well enough.
    â€œMy bride’s getting her first hour of sleep in nearly twenty,” the viscount murmured, “as is my lad. If ye’re thinking that being married makes ye soft, then ye keep yer damned temper fer an entire day while everyone aboot ye is wailing.”
    â€œI—”
    â€œColin fell asleep in my arms, and I reckon I’ll keep rocking him until either my arms fall off or he wakes with a smile. Do ye have any difficulty with that?”
    Munro shook his head. “I’ll admit ye dunnae sound like a lass,” he returned, “but ye’re still rocking a bairn in yer arms