Ann Lethbridge

by Her Highland Protector

  ‘Mrs Hughes,’ Jenna said with a teasing twinkle in her eyes.

  All this while she’d let him think... He felt as light-hearted as a condemned man given a reprieve. It didn’t make any sense to feel anything at all, but he grinned at her all the same.

  * * *

  The Kirk was the first thing they came to, and beyond it a few cottages lined the lane. A bend in the road obscured what lay ahead. ‘The entrance to Braemuir is further along,’ Jenna said wistfully.

  Sean drew up outside the house beside the church. ‘I will leave you here.’ He handed Jenna a bundle. ‘Here are your own clothes. Give my regards to the vicar.’

  ‘Won’t you come in and have a cup of tea?’ she asked. ‘A rest?’

  ‘Other business is calling, but thank you.’ He touched his hat, turned the wagon around and headed back the way they had come.

  Jenna looked after him with a frown. ‘Surely he didn’t think Mr Hughes wouldn’t make him welcome?’

  ‘I have no clue what that man thinks,’ Niall said, and he wasn’t going to guess. He gestured her to go ahead of him up the garden path.

  She glanced longingly down the road. ‘We could go up to Braemuir. Just for a quick peek.’ There was longing in her voice and her face.

  ‘We can hardly go visiting, dressed as we are,’ he said, taking in her gypsy clothes and the thick plait hanging all the way down her back to her hips. ‘It might be wise to send a note.’

  She sighed. ‘You are right, of course. We might not be welcome even then.’

  ‘They will no doubt be honoured you wish to visit.’

  Seemingly satisfied, she headed through the gate and up to the front door of the two-storey stone house. Before they could knock, it opened.

  An elderly gentleman, his thinning white hair a halo around his head, came rushing out. ‘Jenna,’ he said. He stopped short as if collecting himself. ‘My lady. Look at you, all grown up and just as beautiful as your mother.’

  Jenna laughed and opened her arms. ‘Mr Hughes, you haven’t changed a bit.’

  Niall held out a hand. ‘Mr Hughes. Niall Gilvry, at your service.’

  The older man turned to greet him, but even as he shook his hand, he was looking puzzled. ‘Lady Jenna,’ he said in a querulous voice, ‘where is your maid? Your lady companion? Do not tell me that mad gypsy brought only the two of you?’

  ‘That mad gypsy saved our lives,’ Jenna said. ‘Can we go inside, so I can tell you all about it?’

  ‘Oh, indeed. Indeed. Mrs Hughes has the kettle on the hob. It only wanted you to arrive for tea.’

  Jenna turned to Niall, her face alight with mischief. ‘Mrs Hughes always has the kettle on the hob for tea.’

  ‘This way. This way,’ Mr Hughes said, ushering them in. ‘Straight into the parlour, my dear. You surely remember the way.’

  * * *

  The news relayed by Mr Hughes was not good. At least half of the people in the village had left. Most of the crofters had been put off the land by the lessee and their houses torn down. Apparently with Lord Carrick’s permission. ‘Where did they go?’ she asked the vicar.

  ‘Some to America. Some south to find work.’

  There was a cold feeling in the pit of her belly. ‘I can’t believe you didn’t write sooner to let me know.’

  The older man’s face took on a pinched expression. ‘I wrote. Your cousin required me to desist at once. My interference was unwelcome.’

  Her chest tightened painfully at the hurt in his voice. ‘He never mentioned you had written.’ She put down her teacup, afraid she would spill her tea she was shaking so badly. With anger. ‘He had no right to keep your letters from me.’

  The old cleric shook his head. ‘I gather the lease on the land is due up in a month and there is talk of renewal. I thought I should give it one more try.’ He rubbed his hands on his thighs, looking embarrassed. ‘I thought to go around Lord Carrick by way of Sean. I wanted you to see for yourself what is happening here. I hoped that once you did, you would care again. The way your father did. The way you did when he was alive.’

  ‘I do care. I have always cared. I just...’ Her heart ached so badly she couldn’t speak. But she had to be honest with him, with herself. ‘But with Father gone, I just couldn’t quite face it to begin with. Not on my own.’

  ‘Aye, lass. I can understand it. You were always close to your father.’

  ‘It was just so sudden. Such a shock.’ Her eyes started to burn and she stared at her clenched hands in her lap.

  ‘I know. I know. But we must accept God’s will for us, ye ken. But it is time you came back and took up where your father left off.’

  ‘I would very much like to visit the house if you think the tenant would be amenable.’

  His eyebrows climbed his forehead. ‘There is no one there but the mice.’

  Confused, she gazed at his sorrowful face. ‘You mean he is away at present?’

  He shook his head. ‘No one has lived there since the day you left.’

  ‘But that isn’t possible. The land is farmed. I saw sheep.’

  ‘Whoever leased the estate from your uncle, turned around and sublet the land to Mr Drummond in the next glen. It is his sheep you see in the pastures.’

  ‘The house is empty?’

  ‘Aye. The servants all paid off and long gone.’

  ‘But my father’s horses. His cattle.’

  He stared at her sadly, shaking his head. ‘Gone. Sold off to pay your father’s debts. I think Carrick did all he could to make sure you didn’t lose the house or any more land.’

  Niall shifted. He had been silent throughout her conversation, but when she looked at him, there was a strange expression on his face. ‘What is it?’

  He grimaced. ‘Something I saw. In Carrick’s account book. Not the one in the office where I worked, but in his desk drawer.’ His cheekbones tinged red. ‘I was sent to find some receipts by McDougall beneath a ledger. I glanced through it.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘It was a private accounting. I believe it showed payments to him personally on Braemuir’s account.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  He got up and went to the window, looking out with his hands behind his back. He turned and squared his shoulders. ‘I can’t say I do, either. Perhaps we need to find out who leased the land in the first place.’

  ‘The land agent Lord Carrick assigned to find a tenant might be able to assist you.’

  She sieved through her memory and recalled a slender youngish man with dark hair and eyes. ‘Mr Stuart? Is he still here?’

  ‘Stuart left shortly after you did.’ Mr Hughes said. ‘It was Carrick’s man, Tearny, I believe was his name.’

  Her eyes widened. She looked at Niall whose stance had become rigid. ‘The same Tearny as...’

  ‘There were payments to Tearny in the ledger,’ Niall said. ‘We at Dunross also had dealings with the man, and not to his credit. But as you know, he can’t be much help to us since he is dead.’ A thoughtful looked passed over his face. He shook his head sharply as if deciding not to speak his thoughts out loud.

  ‘What are you thinking?’

  ‘It is better not to give voice to suspicions that cannot be proven.’

  ‘This concerns me. My land.’

  ‘Carrick is my relative also. And my chief. There may be a perfectly innocent explanation. I will no blacken a man’s name on the basis of gossip.’

  She recoiled at the fierceness of his tone. He was right. He was Carrick’s relative. Set to watch over her by that very man, his clan chief. He would not go against him without very good reason.

  She turned back to the vicar. ‘So there is no one to prevent me from visiting the house.’

  ‘No one,’ the old man said. He laced his fingers together. ‘I am not sure I did the right thing, sending for you. It was an old man’s fancy that you could turn things around, but I fear it cannot be. The people are gone. The house, in a sad state of disr
epair...’

  She gasped. ‘Disrepair?’

  ‘It was never very good in your father’s time, but it is much worse now, I think.’

  ‘There was nothing wrong with it.’

  ‘You were young. Perhaps you did not see. It needed a new roof even then. And he had closed one wing completely.’

  She remembered a long corridor where the furniture was covered in holland covers. She’d thought nothing of it then. ‘The house is huge. There were only two of us living there. We had no need for all those rooms.’

  ‘It would probably be better to look at it before you make up your mind,’ Niall said gently, clearly believing Mr Hughes’s account.

  ‘It can’t be that bad,’ she said firmly. ‘I am going to be married. We are going to live there.’ She winced and looked at Niall, whose face showed nothing of his thoughts.

  ‘You are affianced?’ Mr Hughes said, his face lighting up. ‘To this young gentleman? You will let me perform the marriage ceremony, will you not?’

  ‘Actually it is another gentleman who is the bridegroom.’ She hadn’t barely given a thought to her betrothed since the night they left the cave on the beach. She’d been too busy trying to survive. Oh, was she going to lie to herself? The truth of the matter was that she’d been too taken up thinking about Niall Gilvry. She straightened her shoulders. ‘A Mr Murray.’

  Mrs Hughes frowned at her, her cheerful round face becoming serious. ‘You never did tell me how you came to be travelling without your maid and a lady companion, Lady Jenna. I have trouble believing Lord Carrick so lax in his guardianship that he would have allowed it.’

  ‘He didn’t,’ Niall said grimly. ‘The fault is mine.’

  Mr Hughes gave him a stern look. ‘Explain yourself, young man.’

  ‘No,’ Jenna said. ‘It was no one’s fault.’ And she set about pouring out the story of what had happened that had led them to travel to Braemuir in Sean’s wagon. She didn’t tell the whole of it, yet both the Hugheses looked thoroughly shocked.

  ‘There is no help for it,’ the doughty cleric said gravely at the end of her recitation. ‘You must marry Mr Gilvry.’

  ‘No,’ Jenna said stepping back. ‘It is not—’

  The flash of pain at her rejection in Niall’s eyes stopped her cold.

  Before she could say more, his expression shuttered, became coolly remote. ‘No,’ he said. ‘My duty as a member of Lord Carrick’s clan was to guard Lady Jenna’s person. I may have done a poor job of it, but there is no need for her to wed me. She is betrothed to Mr Murray, who is no doubt even now awaiting word that she is well and safe.’

  Mr Hughes’s gaze was sharp as it rested on his face. ‘Have it your way, then, Lady Jenna, if you think this other young man will stand by you after such an adventure.’

  ‘He has no reason not to,’ Niall said harshly.

  Jenna could tell that Mr Hughes did not believe him and felt her face go red.

  Chapter Twelve

  Upstairs in the small guest room, with Kitty the scullery maid helping her, Jenna shed the trappings of a gypsy and donned her freshly pressed gown. She’d done as Mr Hughes requested first and written Lord Carrick, telling him she was safe and sound. She’d also asked that Mr Murray join her here for their nuptials.

  Since the afternoon was still young, she was determined to visit her home. Just the thought of looking on it again made her heart flutter. Not nerves. Joy. She could not wait to make ready to celebrate her wedding there in three weeks’ time.

  Kitty finished lacing her gown. ‘Will that be all, miss? I mean, my lady.’

  Somehow the plump-cheeked girl with lively brown eyes and a quick smile had managed to get Jenna’s unruly hair plaited and wound around her head in a thick coronet with the help of pins borrowed from Mrs Hughes. ‘Yes, thank you. You have done very well.’

  The girl flashed her little smile and scurried away.

  Now to face Niall. To explain why she’d been so quick to reject any thought they might marry. Not that he’d offered, not really. But clearly the speed at which she’d rejected the notion had hurt his manly feelings.

  She went downstairs and found him in the parlour, so engrossed in a book he did not look up when she entered.

  ‘Good book?’ she asked.

  He did look up then and for a long moment he just gazed at her, his face expressionless, perhaps even a little bleak. She had indeed wounded him with her rejection. She wished she could recall the bluntness of her words.

  He rose and put the book aside. ‘Voyages Round the World by Kippis.’

  ‘Ah, Captain Cook. And were you planning on following in his footsteps?’

  His expression tightened. ‘Just passing the time.’

  The end of that line of conversation. ‘Where is Mr Hughes?’

  ‘He was called out to one of his parishioners.’

  She clasped her hands at her waist. ‘About what I said earlier, with regard to us not marrying—’

  ‘You don’t need to explain,’ he said stiffly. ‘You are betrothed.’

  ‘If he’ll still have me.’ She coloured a little and looked down. ‘I promised my father that I would marry well. My father inherited his father’s debts. He did everything he could to make sure I was not burdened the same way. Apparently, he even sold off some of our land. But Mr Hughes is right. He wasn’t able to do all he wished with the house because the estate needed so much. He was terrified he’d lose it. I promised him I would make sure the title and the estate remained with the family.’

  ‘In other words, he charged you with the duty of marrying a well-to-do member of the aristocracy and providing an heir.’

  ‘If you must be so blunt, then, yes. It was his dying wish.’

  ‘Let us hope Mr Murray is up to the task.’

  Heat coursed up her face at the matter-of-factness in his tone. ‘I very much fear he may wonder why we did not return to the castle once we escaped our abductors.’

  ‘Clearly, I could not take the chance of the brigands finding us on the road to Carrick.’

  ‘You are taking responsibility for the decision, then.’

  ‘It was mine to make.’

  She looked down at the floor. He had clearly given this some thought while she was bathing and dressing. ‘And how did we get here? How did we travel so great a distance with no one seeing us, yet remain respectable?’

  ‘By oxcart. With a farmer and his wife. A Mr and Mrs McFadden. Unfortunately I was so glad to arrive, I forgot to ask them for their directions. And besides, we travelled incognito, to preserve your reputation.’

  ‘You think Lord Carrick will believe us? And Mr Murray?’

  ‘They will be only too pleased to believe it. A man who would risk his neck for a bird’s egg is unlikely to give up the prize, provided there is a reasonable explanation.’

  ‘Mr Hughes says we can be married the moment he arrives.’

  His expression didn’t alter. It remained cool. Remote. ‘Then let us hope it is verra soon.’

  She managed a fleeting smile of agreement, though her heart felt heavy. It was a good thing Mr Murray wasn’t around to see her lack of enthusiasm. Not that he had any illusions that theirs was a love match. It was simply an arrangement that suited them both.

  Was it too much of an imposition to ask Niall for one last indulgence? ‘Will you walk with me up to Braemuir?’

  ‘You didna’ think I would let you walk up there alone, did you?’

  At the severity of his tone, the breath left her chest in a rush. ‘You think we are in danger here? At my home? Surely those men wouldn’t think to look for me here?’

  ‘I think it wise to take precautions. Whoever was behind this seemed to know a great deal about you.’

  Her mouth dried. Her heart raced. But what if he was using fear to make her do as he wished, to protect her? Since she did not want to walk to Braemuir alone, she wasn’t going to argue. ‘Are you ready?’

  He nodded and picked up a hat from the table
. He looked at it with an amused smile. ‘Courtesy of Mr Hughes. He seemed to think it would not look well if I was not to appear like a perfect gentleman. We are also to invite someone called Kitty to join us.’

  ‘Kitty is serving as my maid.’

  ‘There you have it. A perfectly respectable outing.’ He ushered her out of the room.

  The shade of bitterness in his voice was something best left ignored. Outside she took his arm and Kitty, who had been waiting in the hallway, fell in behind them. As he had said—a perfectly respectable outing for two disreputable people. No, really only one. He was a gentleman. She was the one who had behaved like a hoyden last night. But heaven help her, if she was to have the time all over again, she very much doubted she would do anything different. Never in her life had she felt so happy, or such extraordinary pleasure.

  * * *

  As they walked through the village, she saw that at least half the cottages were empty. At the tavern, she waited outside while he went in to drop off their letters for the boy to take to the post. Sadly she noted the inn’s air of decay. When she moved back into Braemuir, there would be work for people. She would need to staff the house and the stables. Yes, coming back here was the very best thing she could do for those that remained.

  Niall strode out of the tavern, pulling on his gloves. He smiled briefly. ‘A rider will take the letters to the post office later this afternoon.’

  What would Carrick think? Would he be angry with her? With Niall? Surely he would see they had no choice.

  They strolled down the lane, slowly leaving the village behind. Somehow she managed to restrain her urge to run to Braemuir’s gates. She kept remembering Mr Hughes’s warning. Surely it could not be that bad.

  They turned a bend in the lane and arrived at the arch bearing the Aleyne crest. The boar on one side of the shield and the bear on the other. When she married, the crest would change to incorporate her husband’s coat of arms. Family Before All. As always, the familiar Gaelic words pressed down on her shoulders. Duty. Responsibility. Weighty matters lain upon her by her father.

  The gates were open and she passed through with some trepidation. She peered down the gravel drive, overgrown with weeds, that cut across a tree-edged lawn that looked more like a hayfield. It looked abandoned.