“I thought ye didna care for me, laddie.” The lordling winced when he called him laddie once again. “Why would ye offer me the chance to marry into the family?”
“I like your money.”
“Och now. That’s the sort of thing I can be appreciating.” Keir took another swig of wine. “Let me see it.”
Edmund tightened his fingers around the parchment. “Do we have an agreement?”
“Nae afore I’ve looked at it, we don’t.”
Edmund hesitated. The parchment crinkled but he extended it. Keir had to control the urge to snatch it out of his hand. He made his movements slow and uncoordinated.
“Well now. Isna that a sweet document. ’Course, it wouldna mean anything unless it were signed and sealed.”
“My father’s seal is on it.”
“Och now, are ye saying that yer daddy is the one I need to be negotiating with, laddie?”
Edmund’s face turned red. He reached for a candle. “My father is no longer running his estate. Everything is mine to direct. And I want everything in front of you for the land. You get Helena for your wife but not a shilling more. Only the land that is her dowry.”
“Sounds better than sheep. Doesn’t it, lads?”
His men didn’t disappoint him. They slapped their thighs and chuckled, making a few heated jests along with it. Edmund saw exactly what he wanted to see—a bunch of ignorant Scots who were easily duped. That was something his fellow Scots had been using against the English for centuries—their own arrogance. Edmund smirked, his confidence in his superiority restored.
“Well then, sign it and we have a deal.”
Cold-blooded whelp…
The only sympathy Keir had was for the mother who had once rejoiced at Edmund’s birth. It was a shame that his father had failed to mold him into a man. He poured melted wax from the candle onto the parchment and pressed his own signet ring into it. Keir suppressed a shudder for the callous way he signed over his sister.
But he did nothing to stop the burning flow of satisfaction that filled him when the parchment was handed back to him.
His…
Such a powerful idea. Beneath his kilt his cock hardened.
“Och, well I think it’s time for ye to be heading home, laird.” Farrell patted him on the shoulder, a couple of other men helping.
“Is it now?” Keir played his part, smiling at his men while Edmund was absorbed with the pile of coins gleaming in the candlelight.
“So it is.” He tucked the parchment into his doublet while his men pushed him through the door. They laughed and staggered until they stepped onto the street. The second they did, every man straightened. Their pace increased tenfold on the way to the stable where they’d left their horses.
Keir swung onto his horse, his men only a breath behind him. “Let’s clear away from here, lads.” Before Edmund set some of the low-life scum hiding in the dark corners of the tavern after the document that would allow him to claim Helena.
By the time Edmund’s men gave chase, there wasn’t a McQuade kilt in sight, the night masking them and the drink the English had partaken of dulling their wits. They shrugged and looped their arms over the prostitutes, giving them their attention.
Scots. They were only Scots….
Edmund Knyvett smiled. He was pleased. Only a mild amount of annoyance interfered with his happiness when his men failed to return with the parchment. He was not concerned. The parchment meant little. Why, it might take years for him to decide that Helena was ready to take her marriage vows. Her dowry and its rents remained his until she knelt at the altar.
Gullible Scot. He needed to play cards with the man again.
“That bastard sold ye his sister?” Farrell asked the question for the third time.
Keir merely shrugged. “If I say anything, it’s bound to be something profane which would be a wee bit misplaced, considering I’m happy with the bargain.”
“Ah, but will the lassie be happy with it? Now there’s the question. What are ye going to do with an English noblewoman on McQuade land?”
Keir rubbed his chin. Tension knotted his shoulders. Helena Knyvett was everything he’d hoped to bring back in a wife. Even if her brother detested him, her family relations wouldn’t risk offending him. They’d all consider that Edmund didn’t have a son of his own and that fate might deliver the title he was set to inherit into Helena’s children’s hands.
Aye, that was what he’d set out to accomplish. But the tension tightened.