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Bertrand. Ye make me legitimate, and I will be the one to have claim after the English duke.”
    â€œIt brings bile to your throat to think about Claude and Bertrand, eh, lad? It’s nothing more than dust in the wind yer claim would be were I to reinherit Douglass’s son.” She shrugged her thin shoulders, all the while watching him closely. “Time will tell, Percy, about yer claim—time and me, of course.”
    For a moment Percy gazed at Lady Adella in dumb surprise. Why, the old woman is like a great bloated spider, he thought, weaving her web and taunting me to come into it. Does she want all of us at each other’s throats? Rather, he quickly corrected himself, does she want me at their throats? He consciously pulled himself away. For the moment, he hoped that she would make him legitimate.
    He rose and clasped Lady Adella’s hand.
    â€œI will stay, if ye don’t mind, until all this business is straightened out. When I return to Edinburgh, I have a fancy to carry my legitimate name with me.”
    â€œAs ye will, Percy,” Lady Adella said. “Tell Crabbeto have MacPherson fetch here on the morrow, and I shall tell the old buzzard what to do.”
    â€œAye, Grandmama,” Percy said, and turned to take his leave.
    â€œPercy.”
    He turned.
    â€œBrandy will have nothing to do with ye. She’s much too much the child yet and doesn’t know what use to make of men.”
    She saw the suppressed gleam in his eyes as she nodded dismissal, and wondered if he knew how much he was like the grandfather he hated so much.
    Alone, Lady Adella parted her lips in a smug grin that showed most of her upper teeth. She knew something of the law, and now that Angus had finally left the world to take up residence with the devil, she fully intended to stir the legal pot to boiling.
    Old MacPherson would do her bidding, no fear about that, and the courts would fall in line. The Robertson name still wielded power. She would legitimize Percy and, aye, perhaps even reinherit Claude and Bertrand. As to what the English duke would think about her machinations, she shrugged her meager shoulders. He was, after all, safely stored away in faraway London. She was certain he would stay there.
    She gazed down at the small square pillow at her feet, Brandy’s pillow. Her granddaughter, with the curves and hollows of a woman’s body. Lady Adella thwacked her cane in annoyance. Three granddaughters, none of them with any prospects of marriage and even less dowry. Absurd to believe that the unknown English duke, although now the girls’ nominal guardian, would freely part with some of his guineas for some unknown Scottish relatives. Even though she admitted to herself that it was an outlandish idea, shedid not relinquish it. Time would tell, and she would be there to help in the telling.
    At least Percy would be able to fend for himself once she had seen to legitimizing him. Handsome and carefree he was—exactly as she had been once, many a long year ago. Drat Davonan anyway for not at least giving Percy’s mother his name. But then Davonan had always been odd. She remembered how delighted she’d been to hear that Davonan had even lain with a woman. But it hadn’t lasted, of course. Not a year later, he’d gone off with a brawny Irishman, leaving her to care for his small, helpless son. She wondered idly, with no pain now, if Davonan had really gone willingly to the guillotine with his French lover, a dissolute comte who had deserved to have his worthless head severed from his decadent body. At least Percy had not inherited that tendency from his father.
    Lady Adella slewed her head about toward the clock. Time to call Old Marta to assist her to dress for dinner. She gave a sudden cackle of laughter. Old Marta indeed. A saucy slut that one had been.
    Thank the Lord Angus had never gotten her with child.

4

    B ertrand Robertson was chewing thoughtfully on the end