“I had the opportunity to meet Miss Tobias recently,” he said.
“Isn’t she utterly charming and so beautiful?” Esme asked.
“Charming and beautiful?” Justin asked. “You never mentioned that.”
“So she’s the lass who shot you?” Graeme asked. He laughed at his friend.
CHAPTER 2
Vanessa made her way quickly through the noisy pub and took a seat at an empty table. Heavy wood paneling covered nearly every surface in the room. The floor currently acted as a small pool for spilled ale. But she needed to eat.
Gingerly, she opened Jeremy’s notes and smoothed her hand across them. This was precisely the sort of place that Jeremy would balk at entering. He would despair at even laying his precious notes on the sticky surface of the table. So she did it regardless, knowing that he wouldn’t be needing them anymore. Furthermore, he shouldn’t have left them lying around while he was off dallying with Violet.
All around her, large and hairy Scottish men sat at the tables, slamming their mugs together, cursing and picking fights with one another. Were it not for her considerable practice at ignoring noise to focus on work, she might have been more distracted.
Vanessa was quite used to pretending that nothing around her was meant for her attention, a skill that had come in handy on more than one occasion when she’d been stuck beside a bore at a dinner party. Or been persuaded to dance with an arrogant, yet ignorant, oaf at a soirée. She’d learned such a skill at home with her family, where her mother and sisters spoke of nothing of more import than the next social engagement and which fabrics best complemented their coloring. Of course, they tried to include her, but Vanessa found none of that the least bit interesting. Instead, she wanted to read or study, or more precisely, she wanted to dig. Until this very trip, she hadn’t yet had the opportunity.
Now Vanessa was finally here in Scotland, where the history was mixed heavily with myth and the soil was rich with undiscovered fossils, all waiting for her to unearth and categorize them. First thing tomorrow morning, she would hike over to those castle ruins and find her way into the caverns beneath. Jeremy was wrong about Mr. McElroy’s discovery, and if the poor Scotsman were still alive, she’d find him to tell him so. It had been a point of contention between her and her would-be husband, but he’d taken the time to listen to her argument. She’d thought he’d been weighing her hypothesis. Now, though, she believed that he’d merely been humoring her. Well, she would prove him wrong—him and the rest of the scientific community who believed her to be utterly unqualified.
She had tried to argue Mr. McElroy’s point by sending several letters supporting his theory that the bone belonged to what the Scots called the water kelpie. But not one of them had been printed in any of the scientific journals. No, Vanessa didn’t believe a mystical creature still lived in those peat-stained waters. But something had lived there many years ago, and the evidence was just waiting for her discovery.
She put the tip of her pencil between her teeth as she collected her thoughts, then she jotted down a note.
“What’s a purty lass like you doin’ all alone?” A large-necked man plopped into the empty chair adjacent to hers. His thick brogue, laced with inebriation, took some concentration to understand. As he looked over her notebook, his nose wrinkled. “What are you doing there in that book?”
She closed the pages over her hand to mark her spot and glanced at him above her spectacles. “I am working, sir, and you are disturbing me.” Perhaps she should have stayed in her room. Still, she’d been hungry, and the barmaid had said this was the only place she could eat. So she’d sat to wait for her lamb stew.
He laughed, a gritty, dark sound. “Disturbing you, am I? Well, we’ll see about that.” He reached over, and with one swift pull, he yanked her onto his lap, knocking the notebook to the floor in the process. She struggled against him, kicking at his legs and trying to pound on his chest, but he clasped both her wrists in his vise-like grip.
“Unhand me, sir!” she said loudly, continuing to fight. She eyed Jeremy’s notebook lying facedown on the filthy floor. As gratifying as it might be to destroy something of his, she needed that research. “I must collect my notes!”
“I don’t think so. You’re a nice little morsel, aren’t you?” He buried his face in her hair. “And you smell real nice. Like flowers and honey.”
Vanessa’s heart thundered in her chest, the sound reverberating to pound in her ears. She had not carefully weighed the situation before she’d acted. She’d been so focused on her research, so intent on her own purpose, that she hadn’t bothered to think about this new environment. This was not the sort of place where a well-bred lady should travel alone. Yet here she was. Not very smart of her, she now acknowledged. This was precisely the impetuous behavior that her mother found so taxing.
There was no need to panic; that’s the reaction her sisters would have had. Vanessa, however, was levelheaded and generally good at sizing up challenging situations. This one would be no different. She merely needed to stay calm, keep her wits about her, and figure out a way to escape. Perhaps she should simply jerk herself away and run up to her room. But with the current hold the man had on her, freeing herself was impossible. She could call for help. Perhaps people simply didn’t realize that she wasn’t interested in being handled by this man. Certainly a crowd this size would not allow this man to truly harm her.
But as three other large Scots stood and moved to her table, each of their expressions more lascivious than the others’, she began to doubt her convictions. These men would not protect her. They would assist her assailant. She saw the great error in her logic. She had grossly underestimated her situation, and now she was in serious trouble. She doubled her efforts. Her legs kicked out, trying in vain to wiggle free from the man’s hold.
“What do we have here, Angus?” one man asked as he straddled a chair next to them. He ran a rough hand down Vanessa’s cheek.
She frowned at him and tried to pull away from his offensive touch. Had her hands been free, she would have walloped him good. Boxed his ears, or poked him in the eyes.
“A fine piece of muslin,” another man said. He moved his eyebrows up and down in a move that Vanessa could only assume meant he found her attractive. The irony of the situation was not lost on her. Finally, she had a man sexually interested in her, something her mother had spent hours fretting about. But eligible, appropriate men they were not.
The man who’d imprisoned her on his lap—Angus, the other man had called him—was trying to run his hand up her leg, but she managed to deflect his efforts with an elbow to his abdomen. The man next to him yanked on her hair, pulling her head back so she could see his grimy face above hers. His yellowed teeth smelled foul, a mixture of ale and rot. Her eyes watered.
“Oh, there you are, love,” another voice said from behind her. “I’d ask you kindly to remove your hands from my intended.”
She could not see the owner of the voice, but this man sounded different from the others. While his voice still had the lilt of a Scottish brogue, his tone was more refined, cleaner around the edges. Though his words were polite, his tone was edged with a threat.
“Your intended?” Angus asked.
“Aye. I said let her go.”
“As you wish,” the man said, then dumped Vanessa onto the hard wood-planked floor.
Vanessa landed with a thud, her wool dress splayed around her, revealing both ankles. A hand reached out to pull her to her feet. She snatched her notebook on the way up.