by Karen Ranney
“It’s all right, Mercy,” Elizabeth said.
No, it wasn’t, but her aunt was kind to say so. Mercy managed a smile, clutched the valise tightly in her hand, and followed her aunt inside the room.
A massive four-poster bed sat in the center of the room. The wood dome and frame were covered in royal blue silk, the fabric worked into the design. The mattress looked to be twice as thick as normal.
Two bookcases—no doubt made by Chippendale—sat on either side of the bed and held a selection of books, glass flowers, and gilded boxes.
The painting over the white fireplace was of lush flowers, the pinks, greens, and golds of the artwork echoed in the carpet and upholstered chairs.
This bedroom was the perfect backdrop for her aristocratic-appearing grandmother, who now sat in one of the wing chairs before the fireplace like a queen expecting one of her subjects.
Before the war, Mercy’s family had made an annual pilgrimage to North Carolina. Her childhood was marked by such visits. They stayed for a few weeks, and it was always with a sense of relief that they returned home.
During those visits her grandmother never lost an opportunity to lecture Mercy on various aspects of womanhood. There was such a long list of things she should or should not do that over the years she had written them down in a journal and always took care to reread her notes before leaving for North Carolina. Whenever she made a mistake, such as laughing too loud or running when she should have strolled, her grandmother didn’t criticize her. Instead, Fenella was the focus of her irritation.
“What are you teaching that girl? Do you act that way in New York?”
That had been the refrain during those childhood visits.
Mercy was her father’s daughter and because of that she could never win her grandmother’s approval.
Fenella had married James Rutherford after meeting him at The Patton in Hot Springs. Her father had brought his mother to the resort, thinking that the North Carolina spa would help the older woman’s arthritis. At the time, Ailsa and her husband had approved of the marriage, especially since James Rutherford was exceedingly wealthy. Over time, and especially in the years before the start of the Civil War, their feelings had changed. Her father was now an enemy and, by extension, so was anyone related to him.
“She has a set of standards, Mercy,” her mother had said. “She insists that everyone follow those standards.”
“Is she very unhappy?” Mercy had asked that day.
Her mother looked surprised, then pensive. “I don’t think she is,” she answered.
“She seems unhappy.”
She thought the same thing now.
Ailsa Macrory Burns was tall for a woman and rather formidable despite being so slender. Her beautiful hair was snowy white and swept up into a coronet at the top of her head. Her blue eyes were probably her best feature, large and cool, capable of freezing the object of her irritation to the spot. Her chin was pointed, her entire face too thin, no doubt a result of the conditions she’d had to endure before coming to Scotland. Her nose, aquiline and regal, however, regrettably reminded Mercy of a beak.
Overall, the impression Mercy had was that Ailsa was a force of nature, someone with whom you dealt with care.
She went to greet her grandmother, kissing her cheek as she had always done. Ailsa’s cheek was papery and tasted of powder. Her perfume smelled of lavender and something else that reminded Mercy strangely of grass.
Pulling back, she smiled and said, “You look well, Seanmhair.”
“You look abominable,” Ailsa said, frowning at her. “What are you doing in Scotland, Hortense?”
Mercy tried not to cringe.
Her grandmother was the only person who called her that. Her full name was Hortense Abigail Paula Sarah Gramercy Rutherford. She bore the name of her father’s mother, that of her two deceased sisters and the feminized version of her deceased brother’s name, as well as her father’s middle name. Her parents had acquiesced to calling her Mercy when she was old enough to announce that she hated the name Hortense.
“Mother wanted you to have this,” she said, putting the valise beside her grandmother’s chair.
Ailsa ignored the bag. Instead, she studied Mercy as if disliking everything about her. At any other time, she would never have dared to appear before her grandmother wearing a soiled dress, but what did it matter now since she was wearing a turban and she looked so abysmal?
“What have you done, Hortense?”
“She was in an accident, Mother.”
Ailsa glanced at her youngest daughter with a frown. “Was I asking you, Elizabeth?”
Elizabeth only shook her head. Mercy was grateful that she hadn’t had to travel from America with her grandmother. She could only imagine what that journey had been like for her aunt.
“Well?”
“There was a carriage accident,” Mercy said.
Her grandmother didn’t ask if she was hurt or the reason why she was wearing a bandage. Nor had she asked one question about Mercy’s mother, as if her eldest daughter was no longer any of her concern.
Had the war burned away any trace of maternal affection?
Mercy bent and opened the valise. Elizabeth gasped at the sight of all the money, but her grandmother didn’t say a word.
“What is this, Mercy?” her aunt asked.
“We’d heard how difficult it was in the South. Mother wanted you to have this, but you’d already left for Scotland.”
Elizabeth looked like she was blinking back tears. Her grandmother, on the other hand, appeared to have been carved from marble. Her face was frozen in a rictus of expression. She might look the same the moment after she died. Only her eyes bore any sign of life and they were fixed on Mercy.
“I don’t want anything from James Rutherford,” she said, the words forced through thinned lips.
“The money isn’t from my father. It’s from my mother. Your daughter.”
“It’s one and the same,” Ailsa said. “Do you think I would take charity from the man responsible for the deaths of my friends and the ruination of our farm?”
She stared at her grandmother, not one word coming to mind. Her father had only a small interest in an armaments company. Other than that, most of his businesses were focused around shipping. Did her grandmother think that he was responsible for the blockades of the Southern states? Or that he had done something directly to impact the outcome of the war?
“Take your blood money. I don’t want it. And you can tell your mother that I am not yet pitiful enough to take her charity.”
“It’s an act of love,” Mercy said. “Not charity.”
“Don’t you talk back to me, child. I’m not yet infirm, either.”
Nor was she very likable. Four years had changed her grandmother. There was a bitter edge to her now that hadn’t been there before. She could remember her grandmother laughing, but the woman seated in front of her now didn’t seem capable of amusement.
“I can’t take it back,” she said. “I’ve come all this way to give it to you.”
“Then you’ve been extraordinarily foolish,” Ailsa said. “Go home, Hortense. You’re not wanted here.”
Mercy glanced at her aunt. Elizabeth grabbed the valise, closed it, then reached out and took Mercy’s arm.
They didn’t say anything as they left. Nor did her grandmother speak.
Charity? It hadn’t been charity. Nor was her father’s money somehow tainted. Ailsa Macrory Burns, however, didn’t want to hear contrary thoughts or protests.
Her grandmother was right. She’d been extraordinarily foolish.
Chapter Nine
When Elizabeth opened a door in the middle of the corridor, Mercy saw that her baggage had been delivered to her room. A young girl, attired in a green dress with a white apron and cap, was finishing unpacking Mercy’s trunk and hanging up her garments. No one but Ruthie had ever touched any of her things and it was an odd experience having a stranger go through her clothing a
nd personal articles. But Ruthie shouldn’t be working until she was feeling better.
“This is Lily,” Elizabeth said.
The girl curtsied to her, the first time anyone had ever curtsied in Mercy’s presence.
“If you need anything at all you have only to ask Lily.”
Mercy nodded. “Thank you, Lily.”
Inwardly, however, she vowed to do things for herself. After all, she hadn’t always had Ruthie. Nor was she helpless.
When Lily left, Mercy went to the chair in front of the vanity and sat heavily.
“Seanmhair hates me, doesn’t she? And Mother? Does she hate her, too?”
“She hates the world right now, Mercy. She lost everything she knew. Thankfully, Uncle Douglas welcomed us with generosity and affection. She isn’t treated as a poor relation here, but as a member of the family who’s finally come home. For the first time in a long time, it’s given her some kind of position.”
Her aunt had been forced into the same situation, with the added loss of her fiancé, yet she hadn’t descended into bitterness. The events Ailsa had endured had only whittled down her sharpness. It had always been there, ready to be a weapon.
“If Father’s messenger had found you in North Carolina, would she have taken the money then?”
“I don’t know,” Elizabeth said. “I hope she would have. Things were awful there, Mercy. It would have been an act of foolishness to refuse, but Mother has her pride.”
Mercy nodded. She’d met her share of prideful people today.
“I can’t leave right now,” she said. “Ruthie needs a chance to recuperate.”
“Of course you can’t. If nothing else, I want to spend some time with you. Besides, Mother didn’t really mean what she said.”
Mercy was certain that her grandmother had meant exactly what she’d said.
“Did Fenella really send you here?” Elizabeth asked.
She couldn’t lie to her aunt. “No.” Her mother would have been terrified by the idea.
“I think it was a very generous gesture to bring the money to Mother, but I suspect it is not the true reason you’re here.”
Elizabeth returned her gaze and it was almost like seeing a younger version of her mother. Both women had suffered losses. Both had a look on their face that said they were anticipating being hurt again.
How could she explain, without sounding ungrateful, that she’d desperately wanted her freedom?
She’d been cosseted, protected, and wrapped in bunting for fear that something might happen to her. If she wanted a new book one was delivered to save her a trip to the bookstore. All manner of people came through the doorway of their house to offer a multitude of products to the Rutherford heiress: sweets, dresses, hats, gloves, shoes, lace, hairpins. She didn’t need to lift a finger and anything she wanted was provided.
How did she tell her aunt about the guards who accompanied her everywhere? Or when she had the sniffles, five physicians were called in to treat her? It was as if her parents were terrified she was going to be stolen or was going to die at any moment.
“Freedom,” Mercy said. “I needed to get away.”
“Couldn’t you have settled for something easier, instead of crossing an ocean?”
She didn’t answer that question. It wouldn’t have worked to simply visit another town or state. She needed to get far enough away that her father couldn’t send men out looking for her. She didn’t have any doubt that he would have done exactly that and that she would have been returned home within days.
“Was your life so bad that you would do something so dangerous, Mercy?”
“I felt like I was in a prison, Aunt.”
“We’re all in some kind of prison, my dear niece. Life itself is a prison. We’re all expected to behave in certain ways,” Elizabeth continued. “Society dictates our behavior. Decency, honor, loyalty—they are not just traits that men possess.”
“Why can’t you possess all of those traits and still have some control over your life?”
“It’s not that easy,” Elizabeth said.
“I should think it would be no more difficult than a decision. How do I wish to live my life? In accordance with someone else’s notions of it? Or doing what I want to do?”
“Isn’t that a selfish way to behave?”
“Is it? I know men who behave that way, Elizabeth, and they’re heralded as having their own minds, of being trailblazers.”
“Are you talking about Lennox Caitheart?”
She’d been thinking of Gregory, who did exactly what he wanted to do at any time he wanted to do it.
“I wasn’t,” she admitted, “but he might well be an example.”
“You would be foolish to model your behavior after his.”
“Would I? I envy his freedom.” She smoothed her hands over her knees then clasped them again.
For most of her life she’d been a dutiful daughter. She tried to be as perfect as any person could be. Not once had she spoken for herself. If she had she had no doubt about her father’s reaction. You wouldn’t want to cause your mother any pain, would you? She’s suffered so much already. She couldn’t even allow herself thoughts of rebellion, not until the day she actually rebelled.
“You do realize, don’t you, that you’ve done something that must surely be worrying your parents.”
Mercy nodded. “I know and I’m sorry for it.”
She should’ve spoken up years ago, but nothing was ever as important as her parents’ feelings. Hers certainly weren’t. Living in the enormous gray house had been like being encased in glass.
“What made you decide to leave?”
She didn’t know how to explain that, either. One day the glass had simply shattered. She knew she had to escape for a little while. The money was only an excuse, a rationale she’d given herself, but if it hadn’t been there she would’ve done something else, gone somewhere else. If life was the prison her aunt thought it was, she’d become an escaped prisoner.
“You have to go back. You know that, too, don’t you?”
Mercy nodded. “There’s a price you pay for everything you do,” she said. “My father taught me that. I’ll go back and be dutiful once more.” There was no other alternative, but even as she said the words she felt a cloud descend over her mood.
Her aunt sat on the edge of the bed and regarded her somberly. “They must be frantic.”
“I left them a letter, telling them where I was going.”
She’d also told them that she’d taken the valise and intended to convey the money to her aunt and grandmother as her mother had originally wanted. She’d also asked them to stop planning the wedding. She hadn’t wanted them to incur any additional expense because she was determined not to marry Gregory.
“I booked passage on one of Father’s ships, which was tantamount to being chaperoned by the captain and his first officer. They were very kind and promised to take word to my parents that I’d arrived safely.”
“Only to have a carriage accident on the way here,” Elizabeth said, surprising her by smiling.
“I sincerely hope that no one tells them,” Mercy said. “Otherwise, they’ll think that they were right all these years.”
“I won’t tell them,” Elizabeth said. “I can’t speak for Mother.”
That meant her grandmother was going to lose no time telling her mother everything. Yet she was no longer a child. She hadn’t been a child for well over a decade.
“I understand why I live the way I do, Aunt Elizabeth. I just don’t want to live like that anymore. Even Gregory was their choice.”
“Gregory?”
“The man they want me to marry.”
She didn’t tell Elizabeth about Gregory’s heroic reputation, that he’d dispatched a number of Southern soldiers in countless battles. Not when Elizabeth’s fiancé had been killed in the war.
“My parents planned for Gregory and me to live with them. Father had already given orders to start renovations on the sec
ond floor.”
Even after she became a wife she wouldn’t be able to escape her protective parents.
“And you don’t want that?” Elizabeth asked.
“No.”
“How does Gregory feel about it?”
“He’s very ambitious. When James Gramercy Rutherford wants you to marry his daughter and live with him in his house, what man would refuse?”
Elizabeth didn’t say anything, but her soft smile spoke volumes. Perhaps a man who wasn’t so ambitious or who chose his own path in life.
Her aunt stood and came to her, bent down, and gave her a hug.
“I’m sorry. I wish I could change the situation for you.”
“Me, too,” Mercy said. “Not just my situation, but yours, too.”
Elizabeth smiled at her. That simple expression eased Mercy’s discomfort from the verbal flogging she’d received from her grandmother. And maybe from being banished from Duddingston Castle by Lennox Caitheart.
“I’ll leave you to rest for a while,” Elizabeth said. “I’ll come and get you for dinner in a few hours. Unless you would like a tray here.”
“I’ll go down to dinner,” Mercy said.
She doubted she was going to look any better in the next few days and wasn’t about to spend all that time in her room, although it was a lovely place. The wealth that had created Macrory House was evident in this guest chamber as well.
Lemon-colored silk fabric lined the walls and upholstered the chaise, the headboard, the bed hangings, and the window curtains. Watercolor paintings of flowers and herbs in gold frames hung in various places on the wall. In addition to the four-poster bed, the room was furnished with a vanity, a small secretary, a bureau, and an armoire that looked wide and deep enough to accommodate all the clothing she’d brought with her.
After Aunt Elizabeth left, she put the valise with the money at the bottom of the armoire. Coming to Scotland had been a fool’s errand, but at least she’d obtained some freedom for herself, however short it might be.
Mercy removed her traveling dress, grateful that the cuffs and collar were detachable. She would just replace them rather than try to remove the spots of blood on her collar and the dirt on the cuffs.
