Read To Tame a Highland Earl for Free Online Page A

his gaze. “It is my mess, after
all.”
    “ You should have married a
Scottish woman, you fool.”
    Erroll wasn’t married yet, but decided
against saying so. “Great Britain has come a long way since The
Forty-Five Rebellion , sir, but I would not ask a Scottish wife
to live among the lovely female wolves of the ton.”
    “ Yet you bed them as if you
were Pope John the seventh himself,” he shot back.
    “ I think you give me too
much credit. After all, I have not bedded your
mistress.”
    His father’s features hardened. “I advise you
not to try. I made you. I can make another just like you.”
    Erroll had no doubt of that, and the third
son would be even better than the second had been and far superior
to the first.
    “ I shouldn’t be surprised
to find you had a dozen bastard sons running about,” the marquess
muttered.
    “ I am quite
careful.”
    “ Not careful enough to
marry a Scottish woman. That would have made a man of you. But that
is of little consequence now. You will marry one of the Crenshaw
sisters and settle down. You did not survive war only to drink and
whore yourself into an early grave.”
    “ No need to worry, sir. I
have many good years ahead of me, unlike—” Erroll broke off at the
realization of what he’d been about to say. His father had finally
managed to rattle him. Erroll suddenly felt very tired. ”You have
made the trip for nothing.”
    His father released a heavy sigh. “You must
let him go, Erroll. I have.”
    Erroll went cold. “I beg your pardon?”
    “ Your brother’s death was a
blow to all of us, but it has been over a year. What would he think
if he saw you now?”
    “ He would recognize me as
the same man I always was.” Five years his brother’s senior, and
not the better of the two to carry on the title.
    “ Be that as it may, it is
time you set aside your feelings and marry.”
    “ And beget an heir, post
haste.”
    “ That is only part of it,”
his father said.
    “ The part that most
concerns you.”
    “ You are the eldest. It is
your duty to have sons.”
    “ I will no doubt have
them.” Then which world would he raise them in?
    “ You may care little for
your future,” his father said, “but if my property falls to Lydia,
she will ruin your sisters and mother.”
    Erroll wished he could argue, but his elder
sister was quite capable of wreaking vengeance on his siblings
because their father had sired two children with his mistress Moira
while married to her mother.
    “ As you said, you can
produce another son,” Erroll said. “Not to mention, you have
provided the ladies an ample dowry and allowance. Mother’s jewels
alone will keep her and the girls comfortable, and my mother does
have property of her own.”
    “ Would you have your mother
and sisters rely on her jewels for their livelihood?”
    No, he would not, and said so.
    “ I will not have my
holdings—not to mention Ravenhall—fall to Lydia and her husband,”
the marquess said.
    “ I thought you liked
Connor.”
    “ I do. He deserves better
than Lydia. But Ravenhall is not the Douglas ancestral home.
Generations of MacLeans have grown up there. Even you, though I
wonder if you remember.”
    His father rose and crossed to the hearth
where he stared down into the fire, hands clasped behind his back.
He was silent for so long, Erroll began to wonder if he had said
all he meant to say.
    Then his calm voice broke the silence. “You
have cinched the English noose more tightly around our necks.”
    A rare flash of anger flared. “Is that how
you see my mother; an English noose strangling you?”
    His father’s blazing eyes snapped onto him.
“You are never again to insinuate that I disparage your
mother.”
    Shame coursed through him. He’d gone too far.
The truth was, it was King George III who had placed the noose
around their necks when he’d ordered the marriage of the newly
widowed marquess to an English duke’s daughter. The marquess,
despite his faults, knew his duty