THE PERFECT TEN (Boxed Set)

God’s sake.
     
    “ Humph! ” His anger forgotten, Duncan watched Silverstein and the stranger make their way up the stairs. He’d been relieved to his marrow to find it wasn’t Silverstein’s wife he’d seen in the boat, but who is this? He followed, listening to their conversation.
    Ah! So this is the new heir.
    He glanced at her left hand and his heart nearly stopped. Why had he not been told? A young, unattached female hadn’t taken control of Blackstone in centuries. The last, a beautiful but viperous titian, had nearly been the end of him. But what if this one...
    He scowled watching the woman’s lithe form lean precariously to the left as she struggled to carry her heavy bag around the tight curves of the stairway. Why in hell hadn’t Silverstein offered to carry it for her? Had chivalry died with his generation?
    Duncan stayed just steps behind her. He couldn’t have her toppling and dying of a broken neck before he could assess the possibilities.
    When the woman made it to the fourth floor landing without mishap, he sighed in relief. 
    “This is the solar,” Silverstein told the woman as he stepped over the threshold, “the master bedroom of the castle. Our previous heir, Robert Sheffield, preferred less spacious quarters and slept in the east wing on the second floor.”
    Duncan grunted at his solicitor’s blatant lie. He’d come into this very room shortly after Sheffield had arrived and found the bloody bastard trying to fondle the then ten-year-old Will Frasier’s jewels. Furious with Sheffield, Duncan had frightened the piss out of both his heir and the poor boy. His next inclination had been to pitch the old blighter headlong down the steps, but having accumulated enough blood on his hands for one lifetime, he’d contented himself with terrorizing Sheffield for the next two decades. The old fop hadn’t so much as dared look at another lad or venture above the second floor landing during the entirety of his residence.
    “I hope you find it to your liking,” Silverstein continued. “’Tis quite extraordinary. The tapestries on either side of the bed were produced in the late seventeenth century by one of your predecessors, Lady Katherine Stewart MacDougall. The bed is original to the castle. ‘Tis over-sized because Duncan Angus MacDougall, the first Laird of Blackstone, was a huge man. Supposedly, he stood six and one half feet tall, much like Robert the Bruce.”
    Duncan snorted. There was no supposedly about it. He did stand six and one-half feet tall and weighed seventeen stone, if anyone cared to know. And Tom knew better than to compare him to the Bruce. Hummph!
    Waving around the room, Silverstein concluded, “And the windows, Miss Pudding, offer a spectacular three hundred and sixty-degree view.” 
    Pudding? Which one of his cousin’s mangy descendants had had the audacity to rut with a Sassenach—an Englishman? Matters had definitely deteriorated further than he’d surmised.
    “It’s lovely,” Miss Pudding murmured running a hand over the hunt scene carved into his headboard. She then gently pressed the mattress. “But please call me Beth.” 
    “Beth it is, but don’t be distressed if most about call you my lady .”
    “Oh?”
    Silverstein smiled. “The honorarium comes with the castle. We tend to keep to the old ways as much as possible here. Within the next day or so, most from Drasmoor will be out to welcome ye.”
    “Ah.” She wandered to the open window. Staring out, she murmured, “It’s still so difficult to believe, Mr. Silverstein. That all this...,” her hand fluttered, encompassing the room and the view, “could be mine in just six months’ time. For so many years, I’ve not had so much as a pot to—”
    Hearing her voice crack then falter, Duncan moved closer to the now silent woman staring out his window. He studied her face as she tried unsuccessfully to blink away tears. What caused her to weep? From her silent shaking carriage, he suspected she wasna a woman who cried easily and he hoped for her sake that it wasn’t too often. ‘Twas not a pretty sight.
    She’d bitten her bottom lip to the point of scarlet and strange black streaks now stained the flat planes of her cheeks. When she shivered, he felt heat radiate off her and instinctively stepped closer, only to be bathed in a strange scent, an exotic mix of sweet and soft. He fought the unaccountable urge to reach out and touch her. How curious.
    “Shall we tour the rest of