Free Rose In Scotland by Joan Overfield Page B

there is nothing I won’t do to achieve it. All I ask is that you listen to Grandfather’s proposal before deciding whether or not to agree. Will you do that?”
    At first she didn’t think he would reply, and then he dipped his head. “Aye, my lady,” he said, his expression betraying nothing of his feelings, “I will listen.”

Chapter 4
    “Y ou’re mad,” Hugh said with quiet conviction, his gaze never leaving his former commander’s face. “Mad as a loon to even suggest such a thing, and I’m madder still to be sitting here listening to you. It will never work.”
    “Nonsense, dear boy; you must know I never act without knowing precisely what I am about,” General Burroughs responded, his brows lifting with icy displeasure at what he obviously considered a rebuke. “The plan is flawless. You marry my granddaughter, remain wedded to her for one year, and at the end of that year you divorce her. What could be simpler? It is swift, decisive, and completely unexpected. The battle would be won before the enemy was even aware it had been joined.”
    “Aye,” Hugh agreed, still stunned to realize the general was in complete earnest. “But ’Tis rather like using a brace of cannon to bring down a quail. Surely we need not employ such drastic measures to achieve our objectives. The earl is your son; he cannot be the villain Lady Caroline would have him.”
    A look of infinite pain flashed across the olderman’s face before he spoke. “He is my son,” he said quietly, “though it would give me much pleasure were I able to deny the wretch. And he is every inch the villain Caroline has named him. There is no doubt in my mind he wouldn’t hesitate to carry through with the threats he has made against her. Indeed, I fear he will do so whether she does as he commands or not.”
    Hugh stiffened at the general’s grim observation. “What do you mean?” he demanded, growing worried despite his determination to remain disinterested.
    General Burroughs remained silent for several seconds before responding. “A husband has complete control over the fortune and person of his wife,” he began in the careful tones Hugh remembered from their days on the battlefield. “And if Caroline were to bow to Charles’s demands and marry this Sir Gervase creature, there is nothing on this earth to prevent him from having her locked away. And did he choose to do so, there is precious little I could do to stop him.”
    Hugh hid his astonishment. “But you are a duke,” he protested, sickened at the thought of the proud and beautiful Lady Caroline locked away in the filth of an asylum. “Surely were you to set up a howl, they would have to release her.”
    “And so they would, to be sure,” the general agreed, “but by then who knows what damage might have already been done? The child could already have been driven to madness by her confinement, or worse still, have perished altogether. Oh, I daresay afterward I could kick upa devil of a scandal, make all sorts of accusations, but short of a trial, that would be the end of it.”
    Hugh’s hands closed into fists as he silently accepted what he was hearing. The general was a man who weighed every possibility with calculating care, and if he said a situation was hopeless, it was hopeless indeed. Still …
    “Could you not make yourself her ladyship’s guardian?” he asked after a moment, wishing he knew more of such matters. “That should keep her safe from your son.”
    “Yes, but it would be a temporary safety only,” the older man replied, suddenly looking alarmingly frail. “I’m not in the best of health, you know. That is why I am come to Bath.”
    Hugh sat forward, genuinely alarmed. “Are you ill, sir?”
    There was another silence before the general spoke. “I am as well as any man who has reached his seventh decade and who has led the sort of life I have,” he said, his blue eyes meeting Hugh’s with unwavering courage. “I may live another decade, I