Marblestone Mansion, Book 1 (Scandalous Duchess Series, #1)

by Marti Talbott

  Prescot, and at least two of the footmen, took the wagon to town every day to pick up more furnishings and at last, the green room, the red room, the blue room, the pink room, the purple room, the yellow room, and the orange room were complete. Each had paintings on the walls, vases for flowers, four-poster beds, chest of drawers, easy chairs, lamps, pillows and new bedding.

  As a gift, Abigail and Claymore presented Hannish with a large tapestry depicting a Scottish Border Collie and her five pups. It was perfect for the marble foyer, and he hung it on the wall with pride.

  Margaret Ann settled in nicely and with no men to pester her like there were at the hotel, the color improved in her cheeks. Each day, as one of the men carried the basket of washed clothes to the clothesline, she let William crawl in the grass. He still tried to put everything in his mouth, but a little grass wouldn’t hurt, they all decided. Now that they had more help with the cleaning, Sassy and Cathleen were usually outside too, to see that no harm came to the child.

  Just as often, Hannish stood in his study window and watched. Sometimes, Sassy looked at him, but not often enough to make it obvious that she cared, at least not obvious to him.

  Hannish still went to the kitchen each morning for tea and occasionally ate breakfast with the servants, especially if McKenna was not yet awake. His loneliness was becoming more and more unbearable, and breakfast with Sassy and the others seemed his only comfort. Cathleen had a few stories of her own to tell, most involving practical jokes Sassy played on Old Mrs. Forthright, and Hannish often found himself smiling about them later in the day. Yet their eyes only met occasionally, he dared not touch Sassy, no matter how much he longed to, and the war between his heart and his mind raged on.

  He reminded himself of his pledge to Olivia nearly as often as Sassy reminded herself he loved his wife. It was maddening for her to be in the same house and not be able to feel his arms around her. It would never happen, she knew, and once they had enough saved, she and Cathleen planned to move away. It was the only way to quiet her aching heart, so she took to reading the newspapers after McKenna finished with them.

  There had to be someplace for them to go, even if she could not imagine life anywhere else.

  *

  “Oh, McKenna, what am I to do?” Abigail asked, nearly out of breath as she rushed into the small sitting room on the first floor. She paused just long enough for Alistair to finish delivering her and walk away.

  “What is wrong, Abigail?”

  “Charles has fallen in love with the worst possible woman.” She quickly sat on the edge of a chair.

  “Oh no, how dreadful.”

  “It is worse than dreadful: she has been arrested in Paris by a detective from Scotland Yard.”

  McKenna’s eyes widened. “Arrested for what?”

  “I do not think I can even say it.” Abigail put her hand on her chest and shook her head.

  “I shall ring for tea.” McKenna got up, rang the bell and sat back down.

  “Bigamy,” Abigail muttered.

  “What?”

  “She has been charged with bigamy, can you believe it?”

  “Bigamy? I am truly shocked.”

  “I can scarcely believe it myself.”

  “Has Charles married her?” McKenna asked.

  “He will not say, but McKenna, I think he has. He has gone to London to see about getting her out of jail. Of course, he needs more money and Claymore might not send him any. We think Charles should come home now.”

  “That might be best.”

  Abigail scooted back in the chair, watched Ronan bring the tea tray in and begin to serve them. “Charlotte and her brother have left town finally. They did not say where they were going, back to Denver, I suppose.”

  “I cannae say I am sorry to hear that.”

  “Neither am I. Oh, I do hope Charles has not married her. What will we do if he has? What on earth will we do if he has married a bigamist?”

  No one was expecting it when Donnel did not wake up one morning, least of all her sister Blanka and Donnel’s sons, Dugan and Ronan. She seemed in perfect health the night before, although she complained of a slight headache and went to bed early.

  The doctor was called, but Donnel’s flesh was cold and there was no denying she had been gone for several hours. Of all the women in the house, Cathleen was the most upset and Egan, the one who escorted her to America from Scotland, seemed to be the only one who could console her. He sat beside her, held her hand just as he had on the train and let her cry on his shoulder.

  The undertaker brought a casket to the mansion and waited until Blanka, Sarah and McKenna finished dressing Donnel in her best dress. With the help of her sons, he carefully laid the body in the burial box and then the men carried the casket into the parlor.

  The footman brought in extra chairs from the dining room and when they were ready, Donnel’s family and friends sat in a circle around the body. It was a time of remembrance, and for quite a while, no one spoke.

  At last, Hannish said, “She thought to kill me once?”

  “I remember that,” said McKenna. “What was it you took without permission?”

  “The liniment for her knee. I had a sore shoulder and I thought it would help,” Hannish explained.

  “Aye,” said Blanka, “but you might have mentioned it. She looked high and low for that liniment, and never thought to look in the barn.”

  Hannish shrugged. “By then, she’d been yellin’ so long I was afraid to come out. I was only ten and I’d spilled most of it.”

  “What did she do to you?” Sassy asked.

  “She made me scrub the kitchen floor on my hands and knees every day for a week. I never took anything without permission again.”

  Egan chuckled. “That was Aunt Donnel’s favorite punishment. When we were growin’ up, the MacGreagor kitchen floor was the cleanest in all of Scotland.”

  Dugan smiled too. “And she’d not forget either. If the kitchen floor was already being scrubbed by one of us, there was always the next week. No Sir, she never once forgot a punishment.”

  “How many of you were there?” Halen asked.

  Hannish looked to Blanka for the answer. “Seven?”

  “Eight, all boys, save McKenna. A terrible fever one year took both my boys and two of Donnel’s. That was before Egan and his mother came to live with us. The elder Mr. MacGreagor loved having children in the house and we always found enough room for more in the servant’s quarters somehow.”

  Seated next to her, McKenna reached over and took Blanka’s hand. “I can’t think what we would have done after our parents were killed, had you and Donnel not been there to care for us.”

  “You are orphans too?” Sassy asked.

  “Aye,” Hannish answered, “but we had a duke for an uncle. He moved us all into the big house where Jessie cooked for us, Alistair was my Uncle’s butler and Millie was head housekeeper. By then I was sixteen.”

  “What happened to your parents?” Cathleen wanted to know.

  McKenna looked at the pain in her brother’s eyes and answered for him, “They were killed when a man failed to pull a switch and two trains hit head on.”

  Halen caught her breath. “Dear God.” Her words lingered as all of them imagined what that might have been like.

  “Those were the worst of days,” Blanka said, her eyes filling with tears.

  “Aunt Blanka,” said Dugan, “Would you like to rest now?”

  Blanka brushed her tears away. “Aye, but I will say this about my sister. She was a good woman, the best there ever was. We had our troubles, same as anybody, but we lived a good life.” All the men stood when Blanka got up and took Dugan’s arm. “We had a very good life...all in all.”

  *

  Drawn by matching dapple-gray horses, the summer hearse came two days later to take Donnel to the church services and from there to the cemetery. The entire household went, even little William, who slept through most of it.

  In the following da
ys, everyone carried on as best they could, but there was always one empty chair at the servant’s table in the kitchen. Yet, even death does not stand in the way of love and each evening, Hannish watched Alistair and Sarah walk arm in arm around the rim of the massive yard. The men decided any respectable mansion should have a swing tied to the branch of an old oak tree, and it became Prescot and Millie’s favorite place to talk.

  Even Blanka seemed to be getting better, now that the dog had taken a shine to her instead of Cathleen. “Traitor,” Hannish said, each time he walked past Blanka’s day room and spotted the dog stretched out on the foot of her bed. When she was not yet asleep, it always made Blanka smile.

  The dog was growing by leaps and bounds and somehow figured out that if he went to the front door, either Prescot or Alistair would let him out. It was better than waiting for someone to notice him at one of the other doors. Likewise, when he pawed the front door a couple of times on the outside, one of them would let him back in. Traitor, still half puppy, was a little too rambunctious for the toddler, so he was not allowed to play much with William, no matter how badly he wanted to.

  *

  The day of the MacGreagor Ball drew closer and closer. Three couples and their servants came from Scotland five days early, as McKenna suggested they should, so they would not be suffering from high-altitude sickness when the ball began. Dinners were lavish and there was plenty for everyone to do, including ironing out the wrinkles in gowns packed away in steamer trunks during the journey. McKenna could not decide what to wear, and asked to have three gowns prepared, so she could choose at the last minute.

  Each day, Hannish took his sister and the guests on sightseeing tours in open-air buggies he rented from town. It gave the servants time to rest, and him a chance to forget about Sassy, if only for a few hours. Apparently, their guests already knew about Olivia, and none of them mentioned her name. For that, he was grateful.

  Then it happened. The wagon was about to pull away when he spotted Sassy in an upstairs window watching him. He tried not to make it obvious, but he could not take his eyes off her. What’s more, she did not leave the window and did not look away either. It was the first real indication he had that she felt something for him, and his heart skipped a beat. Too soon, the wagon took him and his guests out of sight.

  Still, the struggle between his growing affection for the woman he was beginning to think of as Leesil, instead of Sassy, and his pledge to Olivia, the woman he only felt contempt for, continued.

  On the day of the ball, McKenna rang her unanswered bell three times before she decided to go look for Sassy. She found her sitting in the grass near the clothesline, with her head down, looking very sad. McKenna quietly knelt down beside her. “What is it, little one?”

  “I dinna think love would hurt this bad. I dinna think that at all.”

  “Does your heart ache for him?”

  “You know how it feels?”

  “I do, I was in love once.”

  “Tell me about him, Miss.”

  McKenna closed her eyes. “There is little to tell, He simply chose to marry another.”

  “He is a put-her.”

  “Indeed he is. Do you wish to tell me about the man you love?”

  Sassy sighed. “You know who he is. I do not hide it very well.”

  “I think you have hidden it very well. I dinna know for certain until just now.”

  “Then he does not know either?”

  “I think he does, he just does not want...he is trapped between what our father taught him and what he feels in his heart.”

  “Donnel said I must wait until he has his wits about him, but it is taking a long time.”

  “It certainly is.” McKenna got to her feet and reached out her hand. “Come with me, Miss Leesil Covington, ‘tis time he sees what he will be missin’.”

  *

  From one mouth to the other, word spread through the mansion quickly that Sassy was going to the ball, and no one was to breathe a word of it to Hannish. Most guessed what that meant and they were more than willing to become part of the conspiracy. Therefore, when McKenna asked a giggling Cathleen to fetch the new seamstress and tell her to bring her pins, the request was carried out at once. Cathleen peeked around every corner to make sure Hannish was not walking the halls, and then snuck the seamstress up the stairs.

  Thankfully, McKenna had three gowns cleaned and pressed, so there was a choice to be made. The blue one was nice, but it did not exactly match the color of Sassy’s eyes. Pink did nothing for her auburn hair and therefore, the darker blue one, with the daring ‘V’ neckline and silver lace trim would have to do. It only needed a little taking in at the waist, and a slightly altered hem in the front of the skirt to keep Sassy from tripping on it. The foot long train in the back was perfect and the silver trim was sure to shimmer under the ballroom lights.

  Sassy stood still for the fitting and concentrated on remembering how to dance. Once the gown was off, Cathleen helped her bathe and then Millie came to dry her hair, brush it, loosely pile it on top of her head and then weave delicate white flowers into it. A touch of rouge and she was ready to put the dress on again. To complete the look, McKenna added brocade slippers and white gloves that came to just above Sassy’s elbows.

  If Hannish missed seeing Sassy that day, he did not mention it to anyone. Instead he busied himself, making certain they had enough food, the furnishings in the ballroom were adequate and the new red drapes were hung properly. When it was time, he went upstairs to dress in the new formal suit he was forced to buy, since Olivia neglected to bring his other ones.

  McKenna put on the blue gown and got herself ready. Then she sat Sassy down on the bed. “You wait here. I must greet our guests and when it is time, I shall send Prescot up to get you.”

  “I am a little frightened, what if I...”

  “You’ll be just fine. Shall I ask Alistair to dance the first dance with you?”

  “If Millie does not mind.”

  Millie grinned. “I do not mind, so long as I get to see the look on Mr. Hannish’s face when he sees you.”

  “Good then,” McKenna said, hurrying out the door. The orchestra was beginning to play and everything was as good as it was going to get.

  Abigail and Claymore were the first to arrive, and with them came three of their servants to help with the guests. When more arrived, Prescot escorted them into the ballroom and then came back for more. Next came the mayor and his wife, the sheriff and a woman he introduced as an old friend. The Goodwins, the Mabs, the Millers, and of course, Pearl and Loretta, both looking lovely, both happy to see Hannish and both escorted by two gentlemen no one had ever seen before. Six more carriages arrived, delivering guests from the Antlers hotel, plus the hotel owner and his wife.

  At last, it was time, and when McKenna gave the secret signal, Prescot slipped up the back stairs to get Sassy.

  “I believe that is all our guests,” said Hannish.

  “Are you certain? I thought I invited more.”

  “Did you? Who?”

  “Well, let me think. The Carsons are not yet arrived and then...” She looked up just in time to see the hem of Sassy’s dress appear at the top of the stairs.

  Hannish followed her gaze and step-by-step, a vision of loveliness began to descend. As soon as he recognized her, his mouth dropped. “Leesil?”

  She kept her arm around Prescot’s, smiled and nodded.

  Crouched down at the top of the stairs, Millie was having trouble hiding her giggle. She covered her mouth, quickly got up, ran down the hallway to the back stairs, and then hurried to the kitchen to tell everyone about the stunned look on his face.

  “Shall we?” Prescot asked when they reached the bottom of the stairs.

  “Please,” Leesil answered.

  Alistair quickly stepped forward and offered his arm to her. “I believe she promised the first dance to me.”

  “I’ll tell Sarah,” Prescot threatened.

  “Very well, bu
t you’ve not heard the last of this.” Alistair put his nose in the air and followed them.

  Still shocked, Hannish watched until they were across the parlor and went out of sight. “McKenna, what are you up to?”

  “She wants to go to a ball and I think she should.” With that, McKenna walked away as well.

  *

  Alistair took Sassy in his arms and she waltzed with him as though she had been born to it. “Keep smiling and do not look at him, it will drive him daft,” said Alistair, after they made a turn at the far end of the ballroom.

  “Is daft a good thing?”

  “Just now it is.”

  “I see. Does everyone know?”

  He turned her and then answered, “We guessed it long before you did, I imagine. He always knows where you are and if he does not, he goes looking.”

  She blushed. “I did not know that.” Sassy did as Alistair suggested and if Hannish was bothered or even in the room, she did not see it.

  Hannish was there, of course, refusing to stay at the front door to greet any other guests no matter who they were. He watched her for a moment, and when he spotted Pearl, he asked her to dance. She was delighted, and Hannish intentionally waltzed her closer to Alistair and Sassy, but Sassy kept smiling at Alistair and seemed not to notice him. Just then, a woman he had never seen before tapped Pearl on the shoulder. Reluctantly, Pearl let the stranger have her way and left the dance floor.

  “I have come to dance with the second most handsome man in the room,” the stranger said after they danced halfway around the room.

  She had a nice smile and an easy manner. “Who might the most handsome be?” Hannish asked.

  “My husband, naturally. Do forgive me, Mr. MacGreagor, for my attire, ‘tis a long ride on the train from New York.”

  “You have only just arrived?”

  “Aye, the train was quite late.”

  “I am not surprised. Where might your husband be?” Before she could answer, someone tapped him on the shoulder. “Watch where you put your hands on my wife.”

  Worried that he was about to get in a fistfight, Hannish stopped and stared at the intruder. At last he smiled, let go of the woman and deeply bowed, “Your grace, welcome to America.”