Free The Last Debutante by Julia London Page A

estate, trying to sort out one of the infernal riddles Lord Horncastle was so fond of forcing onto everyone.
    “I’ve come to the end of my patience with the two of you,” she snapped. “It is quite obvious to me that we’d all benefit if one of you would kindly own to what has happened here!”
    “I don’t see how he can own to anything,” Mamie said pertly. “He can’t recall how he came to be here.” She stoodabruptly before anyone might posit a different theory and went to the hearth to toss another log on the fire.
    “ You, sir, know more about what happened to you than you have admitted,” Daria said, pointing at him. “And you, Mamie, can’t seem to find anyone in all of Scotland to help you! Yet you have a ham and chopped wood— someone has helped you.”
    “All from Nairn,” Mamie said with a flick of her wrist.
    “I find that impossible to believe. So please stop being untruthful about what happened here!”
    The stranger snorted as if that amused him.
    Daria’s anger soared just as high as if he had laughed outright at her. “And you, sir,” she said, turning on him. “You claim not to recall what happened to you, and yet you can recall what you were wearing at the time you were filled with lead. Furthermore, you were not the least bit surprised that someone was looking for you, which suggests to me that you know why you were shot. And I think you know your name!”
    His smile faded and he looked at Mamie. “Aye,” he said with a shrug.
    “Aye?” Daria echoed, surprised by his agreement.
    “Aye,” he repeated and turned his hazel eyes to Daria. “But I’ve no’ even a wee idea why I was shot.” He arched a dark brow in Mamie’s direction.
    Mamie clamped her mouth shut. She hung the kettle over the fire with such force that it swung and hit the stone wall at the back of the hearth.
    Daria didn’t relish the idea of walking to Nairn, but she was determined to find the answers to what had happenedhere if it killed her. “Very well,” she said irritably. “I should like to borrow some boots, Mamie. I am to Nairn.”
    The stranger’s brow arched high, and one corner of his mouth lifted as he took her in. “I canna have you walk to Nairn, lass. It’s too far for an English rose, aye? So I shall tell you the truth as I know it.”
    Mamie turned so quickly that she almost collided with Daria. “Don’t listen to anything he says. He knows nothing. How could he? He has been wounded in the head—he will remember nothing useful, I assure you.”
    Daria ignored her grandmother. She braced her hands against the table and leaned across, glaring at him. “ Tell me.”
    A slight shadow of a smile lit his eyes as he shifted forward with some effort. “I am Jamie Campbell, Laird of Dundavie.”
    “As if that has any bearing on anything,” Mamie muttered.
    “What does ‘laird’ mean?” Daria asked, sinking into a chair beside him.
    “It is something akin to a lord,” Mamie sniffed. “But not a lord. A decided step down from that.”
    Daria waved her grandmother off. “Go on,” she urged him.
    “The truth, lass, is that your Mamie is the one who shot me.”
    Daria reared back and slapped a hand on the table. As opposed to his face, as was her instinct. “Do you take me for a fool?”
    A slow smile appeared on his lips, and he shook his head. “No’ even a wee bit, leannan .”
    The way he said that word, whatever it meant, sent a shiver down Daria’s spine. What wretched game was he playing with her? She looked to Mamie for help, but Mamie had sunk down onto a chair, looking suddenly much older than her sixty-some-odd years. And something in her expression made Daria’s belly knot.
    “That’s ridiculous,” Daria said angrily, appealing to her grandmother to correct the record, to offer a reasonable explanation, any explanation.
    But Mamie seemed only to sink lower into her chair, her lips pressed together into an intractable line.
    Daria’s belly began to churn and she