by Karen Ranney
It seemed to Mercy that the frontal assault was the only way for a woman to survive in Scotland.
“I’ll not have your parents thinking that you have a haven here, Hortense. I’ve already written them, telling them I’ve no liking for the situation.”
Mercy looked at her grandmother. She hadn’t expected anything less of this new Ailsa.
It was obvious that there was nothing she could say that would soften Seanmhair. She certainly wasn’t going to explain that she’d wanted a little freedom from her situation at home. Ailsa would only frown at that explanation and tell her that she was acting in an unladylike manner. Nor would she tell anyone that the prospect of marriage to Gregory was like a huge black cloud on the horizon.
The Rutherford-Hamilton wedding was planned for the next spring and was going to be ostentatious. She wouldn’t be surprised if a parade down Fifth Avenue was arranged. It wasn’t so much a rite of passage as an announcement to the world that James and Fenella Rutherford’s only daughter was marrying. For that, all of New York needed to stop, if just for a moment, to acknowledge the day.
She’d already seen the white carriage that would carry her to the church. The frame, roof, and wheels of the vehicle were gilded. The interior was upholstered in tufted white silk. No doubt it would be pulled by two pairs of magnificent matched horses.
The bridal gown had been ordered from Worth. The flowers had also been reserved in advance in such quantities that blooms would probably be picked from all over the country and shipped to New York.
In other words, if money was no object then anything was possible.
She truly hadn’t come to Scotland to hide. Nor had she envisioned her grandmother’s ancestral home as a permanent refuge. The journey here, the journey back, the days—or weeks—she would remain at Macrory House only constituted a temporary respite, a short stint of freedom before she returned to the life already carefully mapped out for her.
“Do you understand what your grandmother is saying, lass?” Uncle Douglas asked in his booming voice. “We can’t be seen to agree with your foolishness.”
“I do,” Mercy said calmly.
“We’re happy to offer you hospitality until your maid heals, but I don’t want your parents to think that we approve of the situation.”
“Or of your journey here, Hortense,” her grandmother said. “In my day such a thing would have been scandalous enough to ruin a girl’s good name.”
“Have you nothing to say for yourself, then?” Douglas asked.
Mercy shook her head, uncertain what words would pacify the older man.
He scowled at her, an expression matched on her grandmother’s face. Elizabeth was still looking down at her lap, but Flora was staring at her with wide eyes. Perhaps everyone cowered before Uncle Douglas, but she was James Rutherford’s daughter. She didn’t cower before anyone.
“You’ve got a head on your shoulders, Flora,” he told his granddaughter. “I’ll not have you act the fool like this cousin of yours.”
“No, sir,” Flora said, smiling prettily.
She was to be seen as an example, then. Someone not to emulate. How very strange since she’d been exemplary most of her life. The sensation was almost heady. Mercy Rutherford, unbiddable, wicked, and recalcitrant.
The first course was served and she occupied herself with eating the fish soup and ignoring the side-eyed glances from her relatives. Conversation swirled around her, dealing with Lennox Caitheart, a new litter of puppies, and Flora’s upcoming visit to Edinburgh.
The feeling of being isolated was a new one, but not entirely unwelcome. At home, her parents hung on to her every word. Sometimes, she had the feeling that even her breathing was monitored both awake and asleep. Being ignored was almost a gift.
She wasn’t required to speak until dessert. She’d eaten all the other courses in complete silence. That had never before happened and it was such a novel experience that she thoroughly enjoyed it.
“Why haven’t you married, cousin?” Flora asked.
The question took her off guard. She glanced up to find everyone at the table looking at her.
“Is it normal for American women to be so old before they marry?”
Granted, she was a few years older than she might have been if the war hadn’t intruded. Still, she was hardly ancient.
No one seemed to think Flora’s question intrusive or rude. Even her grandmother looked merely curious. Not once did she send a censorious glance in Flora’s direction.
It was a strange sensation watching someone else being treated as she was at home, as if she was special and could do nothing wrong. Mercy couldn’t help but wonder what other people thought when viewing her parents’ behavior around her.
“I’m going to be married next spring,” she said. Even to her own ears her voice sounded dull and lacking in enthusiasm.
“Why so far away? If I was to be married, I’d be clamoring for my wedding to be held immediately.”
Mercy only smiled in response. She wasn’t going to mention the complicated arrangements, the hundreds of people involved in ensuring that the Rutherford-Hamilton wedding was the event of the season.
With any luck it wouldn’t happen.
Nor was she going to tell anyone how she felt about Gregory.
How odd to feel a spurt of kinship for Lennox Caitheart. They’d both earned the ire of the Macrorys, albeit for different reasons.
Chapter Thirteen
“What’s she like?” Irene asked.
“What is who like?”
“The Macrory girl. The new one from America. The one you nearly killed.”
Lennox looked up from his soup and stared at her across the table. She would have had a fit if she’d known that he’d treated Miss Gallagher on this same table this morning.
“Who told you that?”
No doubt it was Jean. The two sisters had a remarkable way of communicating. If anything important happened at Macrory House, Irene heard about it within the hour. He often suspected they had runners between the two homes. But her ability to ferret out knowledge wasn’t limited to Macrory House. Irene hadn’t been here this morning, but she already knew the details of what had happened.
“She’s female,” he said.
“Is she pretty?”
He took a bite of crusty bread and made a point of chewing slowly.
Irene wasn’t the most patient of people. By the time he was ready to answer, she had already started frowning at him.
“I suppose she is, if you like that sort of woman.”
“What sort of woman would that be?” she asked.
“Used to getting her own way in all things. Insistent. A barnacle.”
“How long were you with her?”
“What does that matter?” He reached for his bread again, frown or no frown.
“She seems to have made an impression on you in a short time.”
“It was a difficult situation. You can tell a great deal from people in difficult situations.”
“So,” she said, standing and taking her empty bowl and plate to the wash stand, “are you going to see her again?”
“Why on earth would I want to?”
“To ensure her health, perhaps. To check on her wound. McNaughton has put quite a bandage on it, I hear.”
“He shouldn’t have,” Lennox said, annoyed. “It will heal faster if it’s exposed to the air.”
“Why don’t you send a note explaining that?”
“I doubt McNaughton would listen to anything I have to say.”
“Not to McNaughton. To the Macrory girl. Or are you going to let all that fancy education go to waste?”
Irene was the only person in his life who made a point of bringing up his medical training as often as she could. He’d returned to Duddingston Castle after Robert had died, a necessity as it turned out. If Robert hadn’t died, Lennox had planned to finish his education and set up his practice in Inverness.
Things happened. Plans sometimes
went awry. He couldn’t live in the past, however much Irene brought it up.
“She’ll be fine,” he said.
“They don’t like her.”
He put down his spoon and stared at her. “What do you mean, they don’t like her? They have to like her. She’s a Macrory.”
Irene shrugged, went to the stove and retrieved the kettle, pouring boiling water into the dishpan.
“Not according to what Jean said. That block of ice of a grandmother didn’t have much good to say.”
“What about Flora and Elizabeth?” he asked, as familiar with the residents of Macrory House as Irene. She related tales of their exploits, flaws, and failings nearly every day. At first he told her that he didn’t like to listen to gossip. After a while, however, and especially after she divulged how often he was a topic of conversation, he found himself waiting for Irene’s stories.
“Flora hadn’t met her yet and poor Elizabeth just wanders around the house like a ghost herself.”
He knew her tale, too. Her fiancé had been killed in the American Civil War. Of all the people in the house, he was inclined to like her the most, for all that they’d never met.
“She’ll be fine,” he said again, but the first niggling doubt entered his mind. “Are they going to send for the physician?”
“Not that I’ve heard,” Irene said. “Why should they? A physician has already examined both of them.”
“I didn’t finish my training, Irene.”
She waved a hand at him as if to dismiss his words. “Yer bum’s oot the windae! You and I both know that you were nearly finished. What you missed probably doesn’t matter. If you weren’t determined to become a bird.”
He really didn’t want to start this conversation. He knew that Irene’s starchy comments were because of her affection for him. For that reason, he tried to ignore what she said on the subject of his airships. He couldn’t convince her. She was of the mind that if God had wanted man to progress in such a way He would’ve filled his arms with feathers.
“If I send her a note,” he said, before she launched into a full tirade, “will you take it to her in the morning?”
She smiled, an expression that always startled him. Irene had a utilitarian face, broad and long with lines that had been carved by years and experience. Yet when she smiled, time fell away and he could see the girl she’d been, eyes alight with mischief.
“That I’ll do,” she said. “You go on and write the note.”
He shook his head, knowing that she would badger him until he did so. A good thing he’d already finished his dinner.
The castle’s library had seen better days. The roof over the room had been damaged and a number of the books—some of them valuable—had been irreparably damaged in his grandfather’s day.
He used the library as an office, but not that often. Most of his sketches and his calculations were performed in the Laird’s Room where he’d devised a sloping table that allowed him to see a drawing at a different angle. Sometimes all he needed was a different perspective to figure out a problem.
Now he sat at the desk and looked around him, wondering how long it had been since he’d entered the library. Robert had used this desk, that pen. The silver inkwell was his favorite, as was the silver blotter, two items Lennox could never bring himself to sell.
His older brother had epitomized family to him. Although he’d lived a number of years in Edinburgh, knowing that Robert was at Duddingston had always been reassuring. They’d been separated by seven years, but together they’d faced the deaths of their parents. First their mother, then their father less than a week later, both of influenza.
Even so, he’d never considered that Robert would die.
After Robert’s death everything fell apart. The Macrorys wouldn’t honor the grazing agreement that Robert had made with them. Their herds had to be sold. The seaweed contracts weren’t renewed. Nor were the pacts Robert had made with the fishermen in the village. He saw Douglas’s fine hand behind all those events.
Within a matter of months, he was out of money.
That first year had been difficult. He’d never shouldered the responsibility that was suddenly thrust on him. To get out of his financial difficulties he could have sold Caitheart land, but he’d balked at that. Instead, he’d taken another course and found a buyer for his design of a new chimney flue. The money from that sale had lasted them almost a year. Before the year was over, however, he’d gone back to his notebook of ideas and constructed a strongbox that opened in the middle, allowing the two sections to part.
He’d never sold one of his airships, however. Those felt like part of him, a segment of his identity. Although he wouldn’t be the first man to fly—that had already been accomplished in a glider and a hot-air balloon—he did have an idea that might be revolutionary if he could prove that it worked. The air itself could power an aircraft.
The first time he’d successfully piloted his governable parachute design and landed without incident, he’d come to the library. Here he felt closer to Robert than anywhere at Duddingston. Robert had brought in some of the artifacts from the Clan Hall, arranging them on a few of the bookcases, as if he wanted the history of Duddingston Castle around him as he worked.
What would Robert have thought of his efforts in the past five years? A question he’d asked himself numerous times. He didn’t know. He would never know. The elder brother he thought he knew had changed. Robert had fallen in love. A woman had dictated Robert’s actions. A Macrory woman.
He pulled out a piece of stationery from the middle drawer, dipped the pen in ink, and began to write.
The Macrory woman had told him her last name, but he couldn’t remember it. He was sure that Irene knew it, but he just wanted to write the note and get it over with. So he addressed it to Miss Mercy, feeling a little foolish for doing so.
I have heard that your wound has been bandaged. It will heal much faster if you leave it open to the air. I realize that such an action may challenge your vanity, but rest assured it will not be for an extended time.
He frowned at the words he’d written. Perhaps he could’ve been less didactic. Or more gracious. He could have wished the rest of her visit to Scotland to be uneventful and pleasant. However, being at Macrory House, he couldn’t imagine how that would happen. He could take out that remark about her vanity. She hadn’t struck him as excessively vain.
She’d been genuinely concerned about her maid. In that respect she was unlike most of the Macrorys, at least according to Irene through Jean.
Maybe he should reword the whole thing. Better yet, he shouldn’t send her a note at all. The sooner everyone forgot about the accident, the better. Besides, she’d called him insane.
Yet he couldn’t help but remember the look on her face when he told her to leave. He’d never been that rude to anyone before, but the accident and the fact that she was a Macrory summoned forth all sorts of memories and emotions.
He wanted his brother back and that was impossible. He wanted someone to be punished for what had happened to Robert and that was impossible, too. No one was at fault. The carriage accident had been caused simply by too much speed.
Before he talked himself out of it, he sealed the letter, writing her first name on the flap. There, that should both assuage his conscience and silence Irene.
Chapter Fourteen
Mercy would have been tempted to stay in bed if it hadn’t been for the knock on the door.
She was in no hurry to encounter the inhabitants of Macrory House this morning, especially her grandmother. The passage of years had softened her memory of Ailsa. She’d had nothing but empathy and compassion for the desperate times her grandmother and aunt had gone through, yet it was all too obvious that those emotions weren’t wanted or appreciated.
All she’d accomplished by coming to Scotland was injuring Ruthie.
She slid from the bed and went to the door barefoot.
“Good morning, Miss Mercy,” Lily said, bobbing
a curtsy. “It’s a fine day, it is. With a breeze blowing from the north, giving us a hint of the autumn.”
Mercy expected Lily to enter the room, but she stepped to the side and grabbed a large silver tray.
“Is that my breakfast?” Mercy asked, staring at the tray piled high with food.
“Cook and I didn’t know exactly what you wanted, miss, so we thought a little bit of everything was called for.”
Mercy closed the door behind the young maid and watched as she placed the tray on the small table beside the chair.
While Lily arranged everything, Mercy put on her wrapper.
“Tomorrow morning, miss, if you’ll tell me what time you’d like to get up, I can come and open the draperies for you. That way, you can greet the day with a beautiful view of Scotland itself.”
“Thank you,” Mercy said, a little overwhelmed by such a bright and bubbly manner first thing in the morning.
Usually, she and Ruthie merely nodded to each other until they were each sufficiently awake. She wasn’t an early riser, especially if she’d been to an event the evening before, but neither was she known to lay in bed until midmorning. Normally, the sounds of the household woke her.
“You really didn’t need to bring me a tray,” she said. “I can come down to breakfast tomorrow.”
“None of the family does, miss. The only meal they take together is dinner.”
How odd, but the practice might be a blessing. She wouldn’t need to undergo her grandmother’s scrutiny until this evening. Unless, of course, she was summoned beforehand. That was entirely possible. Ailsa liked to lecture.
After visiting the bathing chamber, she returned to the bedroom, sat, and tasted her Scottish breakfast. Blood pudding was something she would avoid in the future, but the scones were wonderful. The eggs were excellent, as well, along with the buttered toast. Cook made bread each Wednesday, she was told, and the butter was churned from cream from their own cows.
“Have you worked here long, Lily?” she asked as Lily bustled around the bed straightening the sheets and bedspread.
