Perhaps just as well.
‘Then it will be good for you to be together again,’ Morven said in a composed voice. ‘I suppose the laird is away? The new laird.’
‘What?’ Her mother blushed and didn’t make eye contact with either of her daughters. ‘No, I believe he is now home.’
‘Was he away again?’ Morven asked straight-faced. ‘Or has he not returned since his…’ She hesitated. Banishment sounded much too harsh, and it hadn’t been that. She just felt it was. ‘Sojourn in the Indies,’ she said finally.
‘Er, I think he returned, went to do some estate business elsewhere and now is home. Tell me, do we need to stop in the village to freshen up?’
‘No,’ both her daughters chorused together.
‘Let’s just arrive and then freshen up, Mama,’ Morven said. I need to get it over and done with. ‘I assume we are expected today?’
Their mama blinked. ‘Ah, yes of course we are. Very well, let’s just head to the castle.’
‘As we have for the last goodness knows how many days?’ Murren said sotto voce to Morven. ‘On and off.’
Morven nodded. There wasn’t really anything else to add on the subject. She was on edge and worried that if anyone said anything even slightly controversial she would break down and scream.
The coach trundled along the tiny village street linked to the castle and the estate. A few locals watched as they drove past and one urchin whistled and shouted. ‘Aww, bonnie horses, fair braw.’
Morven chuckled. ‘That child has sense.’
‘I’ll never get the hang of the dialect,’ Murren said, despairingly. ‘Did it take you long?’
Morven shook her head. ‘No, but I have an ear for voices. And you won’t be here long enough to need to understand everyone, will you. After all Mama will want to be back in London in time for your coming out.’
‘Oh but…’ The duchess took one look at Morven and stopped speaking abruptly. ‘Ah yes, but who knows what will happen by then?’
‘We’ll be eaten by midges and smell of garlic,’ Morven said sweetly. ‘And hope to lose the marks and bites before Murren’s ball. She is having one, isn’t she? I’m sure Brody agreed. At the town house no less.’
‘I haven’t asked your brother yet, but…’
‘That’s fine,’ Morven said firmly. ‘I did and he said of course.’
Her mother opened and closed her mouth like a codfish. ‘Are we there yet?’
Morven couldn’t help it. She began to laugh. ‘Almost, Mama, almost.’
It wasn’t much more than half an hour later that the horses began the final pull up the pass, their hooves thudding in a steady rhythm on the dusty road. Ahead of them, the castle showed starkly on the skyline. Morven leaned forward to see it better, and even though her heart beat over-fast and her skin crawled with tension, she couldn’t help but be awed by the sight.
It had been the same all those years ago. Although then a red-haired giant had thundered down the hill on a black horse to greet her. This time there was no such welcoming committee. However, the wrought-iron gates were open and the coachman turned the equipage through the gap and past the crested gateposts, and urged the tired animals on.
‘It’s big,’ Murren said in an awed voice. ‘I never thought it would be so enormous. It rather scares me. I hope I’m not in one of those towers or turrets or whatever they are called. I wouldn’t sleep a wink if I was.’
Her mama stared at her and frowned. ‘Really, Murren, do not be silly.’
‘I’m not,’ Murren replied peevishly. ‘But nor will I be at ease in a place like that. Why did we have to come?’ She sounded close to tears. Morven frowned. Murren might be timid but this display seemed somewhat affected to her. However, evidently not to their mama, who sighed.
‘As you wish. I’m sure the castle has a basic room for you in a part of it you do appreciate. However, remember, the laird is a prominent person around here, to be…’ she coughed and cleared her throat ‘…to be looked up to.’
And if that is what she was going to say I’ll eat my hat.
‘I can look up to him from a basic room as well as a prison,’ Murren said stubbornly, and shot a sideways glance at Morven. Did she wink? ‘After all, he is a passing acquaintance, no more.’
‘Well of course he must be revered,’ Morven said as their mama took a deep breath, presumably to prepare herself to upbraid Murren. ‘Just like Brody at home.’ Something caught her eye and she leaned even closer to the window aperture to look out. ‘And as hands-on as Brody as well.’ She sat back and waited for her mother to twig.
‘Hands-on? How?’
Morven nodded towards a barn a few fields away. ‘Unless he is no longer red-haired and over six feet tall, I believe by helping to put a new roof on a barn.’
The figure she thought to be Fraser was standing, bare-chested on a cross-beam and helping another man lower a long heavy piece of wood into its allotted place. Her mouth went dry and her inside muscles clenched as she feasted her eyes on the one man who had ever mattered to her. The man she had given herself to gladly, and who had forgotten her.
‘Good Lord he might kill himself,’ the duchess gasped. ‘What on earth is he thinking?’
‘That he is more likely to die of boredom if he’s not allowed to help,’ Morven said percipient as ever. The Fraser she had known would have always been in the thick of it, and she was sure seven years on his family’s tobacco plantation wouldn’t have changed that.
And good Lord even at this distance I can feel him. As all those years ago, her body had clenched at the thought of Fraser. Of him next to her, holding hands, of saying to her in his deep gravelly Scottish voice, “My Morven, will you plight your troth?”
****
Fraser’s plan for a ride into Stirling had been thrown to the wind, when, not long after he’d got up and broken his fast—alone as he preferred these days—a message had arrived about the roof on one of the barns used to store fodder. Somehow the thatch had come loose and it needed to be repaired there and then with new hazel rods to secure it. Could he give the thatcher the go-ahead once the men had secured the beams?
Fraser told his factor that he’d be at the barn within the hour, changed into clothes more suited for a day in the fields—or clambering around on a roof—left a message for his mama to say where he was, and exited the castle. This had to be dealt with. He’d let the problem of his marriage or non-marriage slide for seven years. A few more days wasn’t going to make any difference.
Less than an hour after he’d discarded his jacket, he was shirtless and sweating. With his neckerchief around his forehead like a bandana he clambered around and over the building along with the workmen of the estate. Fraser believed in being hands-on whenever possible. How could he ask someone to do something he himself wasn’t prepared to try?
Oh he knew certain things—like thatching—had to be left to the experts, but others? He had no intention of standing back and keeping his hands clean.
Hence his present position—doing the mucky jobs—whilst his more experienced staff did the important ones. Fraser carried timber and chocks, nails and hammers and did as he was told, before he sat with his back resting on the wall, bandied words, laughed at sallies levelled at his lack of fitness and enjoyed a glass of ale and a thick cheese and onion sandwich.
Half an hour of food, drink and banter later, they stood up and clambered onto the roof once more.
God he ached, although he would never admit it, especially to his men who worked twice as hard. No doubt by the end of a few months he’d be used to manual labour once more. After all in Barbados he’d been very hands-on, but since returning to Scotland his lifestyle had become considerably more sedentary. That needed to change. He winced as his back protested at the angle he insisted it hold, and thought longingly of a hot deep bath.
Soon. Fraser stretched and prepared to work again.
‘There’s a carriage coming up the drive, my lord,’ Archie Retson,
his factor, exclaimed some half an hour later, as they both balanced on a cross-beam. ‘Posh equipage and all.’
Fraser looked towards the drive and swore under his breath when he saw the smart carriage. So it was all about to kick off? That phrase, he thought, suited this situation perfectly. Whatever he discovered when he finally got to Stirling, life was not going to be plain sailing from now on.
‘Friends of my mother’s, up for a visit,’ he said to Archie insouciantly. ‘It will do Mama good. She is still a little down.’
Liar, she is more than a little meddling. Down has nothing to do with it.
‘Aye, it was a hard blow to her, the old laird going so suddenly, and not a sign he wasn’t good for another ten or twenty years,’ Archie replied sombrely. ‘Not that you aren’t filling his shoes proper like, but well. He was a one was the old laird, and he and your mama fit together.’
Fraser understood what the other man meant. He nodded and checked the last hazel rod they had secured. ‘He is a hard act to follow. If I manage half as well, I’ll be happy. There, do you think that will do for the winter?’
Archie studied their handiwork with a professional and critical eye. ‘I reckon so.’ He picked up the tools they’d been using. ‘And for your information, just one more thing…’
Fraser stared at him as he reached the top rung of the ladder to take him to the ground. ‘Yes?’ What now? Please not more roofs to fix. As much as he liked manual work, the weeks since he’d returned to Britain had seen little of it in his immediate orbit, and his muscles told him so in no uncertain terms.
‘You’ve got more than halfway there already,’ Archie told Fraser roughly. ‘He’d be proud.’
Those simple words put a lump into Fraser’s throat. It took several seconds before he felt able to reply. Even then it was only with the most mundane: ‘Archie, thank you.’ Fraser swallowed several times. ‘That is a compliment I’m proud of. Now I best get on. I want to go back via the village and check if old Russell has sorted that well out properly. If he isn’t bothered about clean water, the rest of his family is. He’s a lazy so and so.’ Not only that, as a former traveller, he’d know when the gypsies would be back to sell their wares.
And I can ask that all-important question.
‘Best catch him before he wanders to the inn, then,’ Archie suggested. ‘Now his gout isn’t as scuppered by the weather as it has been lately, he’ll pop along after lunch for an hour or so.’
And no doubt whilst Jessie—his daughter, who kept an eye on him—was busy elsewhere. ‘At least I’ll know where to find him if he’s not there,’ Fraser said once he’d ducked his head and torso in the nearby stream and dried as best he could on a scrap of material Archie gave him.
‘He’s a chancer, and I’d bet a lot of pheasant poults somehow make their way into his larder, but I canna help but like the rapscallion.’
Fraser pulled his shirt over his head and sniffed his sweaty and odorous neckerchief before he shoved it in his saddlebag. ‘Best not to produce that anywhere near a female until it is washed and ironed.’ He slid his arms into his jacket and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘That’ll do.’
Archie grinned as he donned his own serviceable tweed jacket. ‘Aye, I reckon so.’
Fraser saluted him with a wave of one hand and saddled his horse once more. He really ought to go and greet his visitors, for whatever he said to the contrary they were as much his as his mama’s, but he needed time to decide what to do and how to react. He didn’t want to face Morven without an idea of how they stood. A visit to Russell might help him plan. With a mental wince at the look his mother would bestow on him, not to mention the dressing-down she would ring over his head given the opportunity, he turned his horse away from the direction of the castle and headed down the pass towards the village.
Whilst he was there he might just check if the dower house was ready for occupation. It might be time to take his castle back and arrange it as he wanted it. Married or not.
Married or not.
‘Ah well I’ve seen the signs that the tribe will be back.’ Russell nodded his head sagely and shifted his empty tankard across the scarred wooden table. The screech put Fraser’s teeth on end, as it was undoubtedly intended to. He ignored the silent blackmail hint and raised one eyebrow.
‘And, what does Wullie say?’
Russell coughed. ‘I dinnae ken. Och, I’m awfy dry.’
Fraser said nothing. The silence lengthened until at last Russell spat into the fire and sighed.
‘You’re awfy hard, laddie—m’laird, ye ken. Like thon faither o’ yours.’
‘A compliment indeed,’ Fraser said emotionlessly. ‘Better you remember it than not. So?’ He deliberately raised one eyebrow in his best aristocratic manner.
Russell scowled. ‘Jessie’s Wullie said they’ll be back for the games,’ Russell said, his dialect so thick even Fraser had difficulty understanding it. ‘They’ll do the usual. Expect the normal site and so on, not to mention the handouts and your housekeeper buying the dolly pegs and the heather.’
Fraser nodded even as his heart sank. The games were weeks away. Plus, his largesse would be expected to go above and beyond the clothes, food and purchases. Madame Beshlie would expect to read everyone’s palms. His own palms itched as he remembered the last time she did that. Look how that had ended up.
His body tightened as he thought of one golden afternoon, and the three special weeks that followed.
How his love had looked up at him, how they’d slipped away from the games and held hands whilst Tam Curtin, gnarled and aged, had spoken those portentous words… “Do you…”
They had.
Misneachail, his horse, shied at an unseen something on a nearby bush, and Fraser pulled himself out of his introspective memories and concentrated on what he was doing. He might not be in any mad hurry to get home, but nor did he want to arrive on Shanks’s pony.
Plus for his own peace of mind, he wanted to look over the dower house. Whether he chose to be married or not, it was time for his mama to take a step back. He wouldn’t tell her she was meddlesome to her face, well not in so many words, but Fraser had long decided it was hard enough for any new laird, with or without a wife, to take control of what was in effect his destiny, when part of the old brigade was so closely involved.
He’d coped, and coped well in Barbados, and left what had been an ailing tobacco plantation when he arrived as a flourishing one. Although the Kintrain estate was well maintained, Fraser was damned sure he could make it better and ever more prosperous. He didn’t want any interference as he did so. Therefore, the dower house had to be next on his agenda. He’d have to be subtle to ascertain whether his mama thought it a good idea, or even better whether she would suggest it herself.
Twenty minutes later he was glad he’d made that decision. The couple that looked after the house were overjoyed to see him.
‘For you know, m’lord, your mama has held everything together until you got back, but I know she’s ready to come here,’ Mrs Black said earnestly. ‘She’s often said the day can’t come soon enough when you manage your own household and she lives here instead. Cosier and more homely.’
‘She said that?’ Fraser asked in a surprised voice. It wasn’t the impression she’d given him.
Mrs Black coloured. ‘Oh, milord, I hope I wasn’t speaking out of turn. But she did mention you were ready to settle down and she and your siblings wouldn’t want to encroach on your wife’s territories.’
Really? How bloody dare she? Fraser was ready to explode, except it wasn’t Mrs Black’s fault. Oh he knew how his mama would say such a thing. Anything to further her goal, whatever that may be. In this case, he assumed, in the hope of pushing him towards a bride.
I have one, maybe. Which is for me to discover and her not to, yet.
‘Ah, well she’s a bit ahead of me I’m afraid,’ Fraser said in as pleasant a tone as he could manage. ‘I’ve not found a bride let alone announced my marriage
yet, nor have any intention of doing so, therefore there is nothing to worry about for a while. I’ll get her to decide on how she wants the house furnished, and advise her she is welcome to move as soon as she likes—be I alone or not. Meanwhile, let me know if there is anything you need. Your comfort is as important as hers. Without you the house would grind to a halt.’
Mrs Black blushed and beamed as she stuttered a disclaimer. Fraser kept a pleasant smile on his face until all the necessary platitudes had been exchanged and then he thankfully made his farewells.
Bloody, interfering, annoying, meddlesome… Fraser seethed as he rode back up the pass towards Kintrain Castle. His mother should be pleased she had guests, or she might well have found herself out on her ear. To how many other people had she spread scurrilous and totally untrue gossip?
Well—untrue as far as he’d intimated to her.
Fraser checked his horse. He hadn’t seen Brogan Gillies—the laird from up the glen and probably his closest friend—since he got back from Barbados. Blow his mama and her guests; he needed to meet his friend. He’d go and talk to Brogan and get the local gossip. He turned Misneachail in the direction of Ballancrain, Brogan’s estate.
‘Honestly? I’ve heard very little,’ Brogan said as pleasantries in the typical way of males—a thump on the back and a few derogatory remarks—were exchanged. ‘I got the news you were due home when we were at the kirk one Sunday, and before I’d had a chance to find out when, your mama said you were away on estate business. I didn’t even know you were back.’
‘The day before yesterday.’ Fraser took a long swig of ale. ‘Just in time to be poleaxed by the news of impending visitors.’
‘Really? Who’s that then?’ Brogan asked in a disinterested voice. ‘That’s not generally know in the glen.’
‘The Duchess of Welland and her daughters.’
‘Ah.’ Brogan laughed. ‘As in daughters plural? Which one is earmarked for you?’
Fraser nodded. ‘Plural definitely. Morven and Murren. Which one is earmarked for me? I have a niggling suspicion it might have been the younger if I hadn’t intervened.’
The Scottish Lord’s Secret Bride Page 3
