by Imani King
Chapter 8
I was woken up by the next morning by a series of knocks on my door followed by a small, plaintive voice:
"Miss Robinson? Miss Robinson?"
It was Cameron. I found her standing alone in her pajamas with a very worn-looking stuffed dragon clutched in her arms. Instead of saying anything to me when I finally opened the heavy door she just reached both her small arms up and curled her body around mine when I picked her up.
"What are you doing here, little one?" I asked, "Isn't Mrs. Clyde making breakfast for you?"
But I knew why she was at my door. It was the day she was to fly back down to London. And none of the fake cheer I forced into my voice fooled her.
"I don't want to go to London, Miss Robinson. Please let me stay here."
I put her down on my bed and sat beside her.
"I want you to stay here, too, Cameron. But it isn't my decision. It isn't your Daddy's decision either. If you don't go to London your Daddy might get in trouble."
She knew she had to go. I could see it written all over her face and in her trembling lower lip. Once again the question of what any mother could be doing to a child to make them so reluctant to see her leapt into my mind. I had yet to see any marks on Cameron other than a small bruise on her left thigh that she herself had told me she'd gotten when she slipped and fell on the mossy rocks beside the loch. She didn't strike me as a storyteller, either - she'd owned up to sneaking into the kitchen and gorging herself on shortbread earlier in the week when Mrs. Clyde and I had been surprised by an uncharacteristic refusal to eat dinner.
"I don't want to go."
Cameron's voice was a barely audible whisper. I felt completely helpless.
"I know you don't want to go, honey. But today is Saturday and tomorrow is Sunday - you'll be back tomorrow night! Mrs. Clyde will make stew for dinner and you can eat it with me and your Daddy. And then next week it's going to be hot so we can go swimming in the loch."
"And then next weekend I have to go to London again. And the next weekend and the next weekend."
Cameron was the child of a very wealthy man. When she started school it would be the best private school in Scotland. I knew she would never want for the best of anything materially or educationally. Emotionally, however, she seemed as deprived as any child I've ever seen - and I grew up hovering around the poverty line. Her desolation made me angry. All the visits to London were court mandated and as far as I knew even in the United Kingdom custody decisions were made based on the best interests of the child. Who had made the decision that Cameron McLanald had to visit a mother she clearly hated every single weekend of the year?
She refused breakfast so I took her to her room and helped her get dressed and then I carried her across the courtyard and out to the helicopter landing pad that sat just outside the castle walls. The Laird was there waiting for us and the look on his face exactly matched my own feelings.
Cameron wailed when her father pulled her out of my arms. She fought a little, too, snatching at my shoulders and holding onto my body with her legs but giving up within seconds, going limp and allowing herself to be strapped into the back of the helicopter. Her father leaned in to kiss her and whisper something into her ear. Just before the door closed I reminded her:
"We'll have dinner together tomorrow night, Cameron! We'll see you soon!"
She didn't look up, though. Even when the door closed behind her and the pilot started the rotors. She didn't see me and Darach waving and smiling as hard as we could as the copter rose into the air and careened off to the south, leaving us behind to stand in the cool fog of the morning for a few moments, saying nothing.
"Do you want to go to the pub later this afternoon, for a pint?" Darach's voice was low and he sounded defeated.
"A pint?" I asked, "sure, that sounds nice."
Darach started to walk back towards the castle first and I decided to let him go, sensing that conversation was probably the last thing he wanted. If I felt terrible about watching Cameron's tiny little blonde head bowed in defeat as the helicopter took off - and I did - it could only have been that much worse for her father.
There was a pall over the castle and its grounds without Cameron there. It wasn't just the lack of her joyful shrieks as she went on various adventures and discovered new and interesting bugs and amphibians in the fountain's pool, it was the fact that everyone in the castle knew the circumstances of her departure, and we all hated it. Even Mrs. Clyde was in a somber mood when I found her in the kitchen a few minutes later.
"Jenny. You'll be wanting breakfast? How does toast and poached eggs sound?"
I wasn't even hungry but I wanted company so I told her toast and poached eggs sounded perfect and sat down at the long wooden table where I'd sat the first time I walked into Castle McLanald. It felt like a long time ago even then, although in truth it had only been just over a week.
"DAMNIT!"
I jerked my head up at the sound of Mrs. Clyde swearing and saw her holding half a wooden spoon in her hand. The other half lay on the floor at her feet.
"Och, Jenny, I'm so sorry lassie. I don't know what's gotten into me."
I knew what had gotten into her. It was Cameron. There was no point in even pretending it wasn't.
"Does this happen every weekend?"
Mrs. Clyde looked up and I watched the expression on her face change when she realized I wasn't talking about the wooden spoon.
"Aye, Jenny. Every weekend. It's getting worse, too, it is. God knows what that arsehole woman is doing to that poor child but there doesn't seem to be a damned thing any of us can do about it and I think it's going to drive her father mad."
I tried and failed to hide the shock on my face at hearing the word 'arsehole' coming out of Mrs. Clyde's mouth.
"I'm sorry for the language. She's a monster though, Jenny, a real monster - the kind of human being you don't think exists until you're unfortunate enough to run into one."
It was clear Diane was a figure of hate for everyone at Castle McLanald but I had yet to hear any real details about what exactly it was she'd done to earn her reputation. It wasn't that I needed details to believe it - Cameron's fear was more than enough to prove that Diane was, at the very least, a terrible mother - it was more an attempt to understand just how one person could be so seemingly and wholly repugnant.
"What exactly did Diane do when she lived here?" I asked Mrs. Clyde slowly, hoping I wouldn't immediately get shut down - Mrs. Clyde, while friendly and warm, also gave off the vibe of someone who could keep a lot of secrets. To my surprise, though, she simply poured two cups of tea, carried them to the table and sat down opposite me, looking out the window.
"Have you ever met someone, Jenny, who seems sweet and kind on the surface but turns out to be as rotten as a winter crabapple on the inside? Someone who never really does anything out in the open so it's almost impossible to even know how to ask them to stop because you know they'll ask you what they should stop and you won't quite have a response for them?"
I did at one time know someone like that - my own mother, who had finally disappeared from my life when I was seven without ever telling me who my father was. I nodded at Mrs. Clyde, confirming that I knew exactly the kind of person she was talking about.
"That's how Diane is. Except she's worse than most people like that. Even horrible people usually have a good side, or a soft spot or something in their past that can help you to get feeling a little sorry for them. Diane doesn't have any of that. She slithered in here like a snake and got her claws into everyone around her. By the time the Laird figured out just how far she'd gone we'd lost three members of staff, the Laird was half insane, the bairn was barely able to sleep at night and she - Diane - was pregnant again, by the gardener. She didn't keep it, mind. A gardener's baby is not worth near as much as a laird's."
"Why did he marry her?" I asked, incredulous. Darach was not a stupid man.
"Aye. Why did he marry her? Because she's as good at fool
ing people as anyone I've ever met. When she fell pregnant she told him her pills must have failed, which I feel safe in calling a lie. And she's from a good English family, mind, a highborn family - the Laird's mother thought she was the bees knees."
The Laird had never mentioned either of his parents before, except to tell me that they lived abroad and rarely came back to Scotland. Mrs. Clyde continued:
"So she helped Diane talk the Laird into marriage, scaring him with the possibility of scandal and the shame of an illegitimate child. Besides, if they hadn't married, Cameron wouldn't be in line to inherit. Of course the Laird didn't want that. And as soon as the ink was dry on the marriage certificate Diane lost any reason to keep up her pretenses."
Mrs. Clyde went through three cups of tea as she told me the whole story - at least as much as she knew. And at the end of it Diane did, indeed, sound like a monster. She'd presented herself to Darach - and to his family and everyone else at Castle McLanald - as a sweet, fragile flower, a woman longing to settle down in Scotland with the love of her life and their soon-to-be-born baby. After the wedding she'd returned to the Castle a different woman. A minor disagreement with the stableman over her horse's care had led to an accusation of sexual impropriety and his immediate firing. A maid had followed the stableman after apparently having the temerity to draw the attention of a man in Diane's presence, calling Diane's own allure into question. Mrs. Clyde confirmed that the maid had been fired for nothing more than an admiring glance being aimed in her direction, before anyone knew the full extent of Diane's malevolent narcissism.
When Mr. Clyde caught Diane and the gardener in an outbuilding without their clothes on, she had tried to play it off as another lascivious Scotsman forcing himself upon her but that time, it hadn't worked. Everyone knew the gardener - everyone knew his parents, too. When he told the story of how he'd rejected her advances over and over until the fateful afternoon, it included a cup of tea he'd shared with an oddly friendly Diane and a sudden feeling of extreme intoxication that came over him. All he remembered, he said, was stumbling back to the garden shed and blacking out until a few hours later when he woke up to an enraged Darach shaking him and shouting at him to never show his face at Castle McLanald again.
It had been Diane's undoing to mess with the gardener, who was well-loved by all the staff. Mr. and Mrs. Clyde, as well as everyone else who worked on the estate, had started to keep a very close eye on her after that. It was Mrs. Clyde herself who had peered through a crack in the door as Diane lowered a screaming baby Cameron into a bath of ice water over and over until the baby's skin was red and she was shivering so hard she could no longer cry.
Darach had had no choice but to listen to Mrs. Clyde when she told him about what she'd seen - she had practically raised him and he knew her to be an honest woman. Diane was on her way back to London within twenty four hours, already on the phone to her father and then to the most powerful divorce lawyer in England. When I asked how she had been granted weekend custody in light of the incident in the bath (which made me feel sick to think about) Mrs. Clyde told me Diane had wept in court and claimed Cameron had been running a high fever. The panic and fear had driven her to try anything she could to bring the baby's temperature down, including the ice bath.
"Cameron was fine at breakfast that day, less than an hour before it happened, as bonny as ever. No, she wasn't sick. She must have done something to displease her mother, probably a dirty diaper or a mess of some kind but no, she wasn't sick at all."
"Did you testify in court?" I asked, shocked that someone could just get away with behavior like that.
"No, I didn't. Diane's lawyer is very good, she convinced the judge we were all biased against her and that our testimony wouldn't be truthful."
"So what's happening now? Are they divorced? Will Cameron be allowed to stay here in Scotland?"
I was furious by then and unable to keep the image of a screaming baby Cameron being lowered into the ice-water over and over again by her own mother out of my head. Darach had said she was clever. She knew the bath would leave no marks. There were a lot of things that wouldn't leave marks. I was determined to make an effort to get the information out of Cameron once and for all when she got back from London.
"No, Diane is dragging her feet. She wants half of everything - half of the estate. If she gets it, the Laird will have to sell the place. I'm sure he'd do it tomorrow if she'd give him full custody - she doesn't even want the child, she just doesn't want the Laird to have her, either. Cameron is her trump card and the Laird's biggest weak point. And Diane spots weak points like a lion spots a gazelle, Jenny."
I sat across from Mrs. Clyde and let everything she'd told me sink in. I was already angry with Diane - for whatever it was that was causing Cameron's upset - but I was started to get a taste of the hatred I could feel in Darach and the Clydes when they spoke of her.
"I thought you should know, Jenny. The Laird is a private man but you're in charge of Cameron and I thought maybe if I told you the story, you might be in a better position to help her. We all love the bairn so much, and it's hurting us all to see her so unhappy every weekend."
I thanked Mrs. Clyde for telling me and then left her in the kitchen to go and get ready for my trip to the pub with Darach. I had no idea what I was going to say to him about what I'd been told, if anything.
Chapter 9
Darach drove us to the pub in an ancient, dusty Land Rover and I didn't mention anything Mrs. Clyde had said - not at first. He noticed my mood, though, and tried to make me laugh.
"What were you expecting, a Lamborghini? I'm not the Lamborghini type, Jennifer."
I forced a smile. "I'm not the Lamborghini type either. But only because I can't afford it."
My comment wasn't even really a joke but the Laird laughed anyway. He was wearing a thin, blue cashmere sweater over a button-down shirt and a pair of dark dress pants. I watched him drive out of the corner of my eye, noting the way his long, pale fingers gripped the steering wheel at the top and the way he used the heel of one hand to turn it. He looked so perfectly at ease in his own surroundings - I envied him that sense of belonging - of home.
We got a few stares when we got to the pub and Darach noticed me noticing them.
"They know who I am. And they don't know who you are. That's all it is - just nosey locals."
It still made me a little self-conscious. I had yet to see a single other black person in Scotland, although I suppose it wasn't that much of a surprise, given Castle McLanald's isolated location. When Darach came back to the little wooden table we'd decided to sit at he handed me a large glass of dark liquid.
"Here you go, Jennifer the American. To your first pint!"
We clinked glasses and he watched me take a small, tentative sip. I really tried not to make a face but whatever it was he had me drinking it was extremely bitter.
"Ha! Don't worry, we'll have your palate trained soon enough."
I watched him sip his beer, probably a little too closely I must admit. It left a mustache of foam in the stubble on his upper lip and my fingers itched to reach up and brush it away. It was a relief to be in the pub - the unfamiliar surroundings and new experiences took my mind - and, I suspect, the Laird's - momentarily off Cameron and the fact that she wasn't waiting for us back at the Castle, safe and sound.
The beer didn't just taste strong. Before I'd even finished half of it I could feel the warm, comforting fog of a mild buzz descending over me, making it even more difficult to take my eyes off the straight line of Darach's jaw or the burly width of his shoulders.
"You lightweight, you're not even halfway through your first pint!" he teased, grinning at me and taking a large gulp of his own beer, as if to show me up for the wimp I was.
At one point he got up to go the restroom and left his wallet on the table. I checked to see if anyone was watching and opened it up to see if I could find an I.D. card of some sort. I wanted to know how old he was and I didn't want to have to ask and po
ssibly embarrass myself.
"Jennifer! If you need money, you can just ask."
Busted. I looked up at the Laird. He was grinning at me, sitting back down at the table.
"What do you want to know? How old I am?"
I nodded, cringing, as my cheeks and the tips of my ears got hot.
"I'm thirty-three, Jenny. You could have just asked - I may be an old man to you but I'm not quite over the hill yet."
I almost laughed out loud at Darach's "old man" phrase. He was many things, but 'old man' was not one of them. Devastatingly handsome, masculine enough for his mere presence to make my heart race - yes - but not in any way 'old.' The vibe he gave off was one of grown-up virility - a kind of sexiness that was all his own and nothing like any of the boys I went to college with.
I wasn't sure about bringing up my conversation with Mrs. Clyde and initially decided against it. Darach seemed happier at the pub but I could still sense the sadness underlying everything. He looked drained and I understood more fully why that was. What I wanted to do was get out of my chair, walk around to where he was sitting across from me and put my arms around him. It wasn't just because I wanted to feel his touch again (although that was definitely part of it) - it was the sense of helplessness, of being unable to do anything to truly make him feel better.
We chatted for a while but neither of the two elephants in the room - the kiss we had shared the previous day or Cameron's weekly visits to London - were brought up. The feeling that had been in the air between us at the Treacle-Eater's Tower was still there, but I could feel all the weight of the day on top of it.
"I'm sorry, I'm terrible company, I shouldn't have dragged you out here tonight, Jennifer."
Darach winced as he spoke to me, slowly turning his pint glass round and round in circles on the table.
