by Imani King
My ears perked up at the word 'Laird' - I knew it was the Scottish word for 'Lord' but no one had mentioned anything to me about any lairds or ladies. We drove for over an hour and I spent most of it repeatedly nodding off and jerking awake, embarrassed at my inability to keep my eyes open.
Any assumptions I may have made about working for a normal, middle-class family were wiped out when Mrs. Clyde turned the car onto a graveled driveway and a castle - an actual castle complete with ivy-covered turrets and heavy wooden double doors for a front entrance loomed up in front of me out of the misty night.
"Wow." I breathed, unable to contain myself at the sight of it. "Is this - is this where I'm going to be living?"
Mrs. Clyde chuckled and nodded her head.
"Aye, lass, this is Castle McLanald - I don't suppose you see many houses like this in America."
Houses? It wasn't a house. It was definitely a castle. And Mrs. Clyde was only partially right - I didn't see any places like it in America. I followed her up a set of wide, shallow stone steps and through the front door, where an older man greeted us with a nod. He turned out to be Mr. Clyde.
"Are you hungry, dear? I can see your tired, perhaps you just want to get into bed?"
She was right. Castle or not, vague worry that I'd managed to travel back in time or not, I was so tired I was starting to slur my words.
"I think I should just, uh, go to bed," I replied, blinking in the dim light.
Mr. Clyde took one of my suitcases in either hand and disappeared through a low, arched doorway - one of many that led out of the foyer - and Mrs. Clyde ushered me after him. I didn't notice my room. As soon as the door was closed behind me I threw back the covers on the bed and managed to mostly undress before climbing in, curling up into the soft mattress and falling asleep.
When I woke up, it was with the feeling you get after a long and much needed rest. All the blurriness of last night's arrival was gone and I felt refreshed and ready to explore what was to be my home and workplace for the next two and a half months. My phone said it was 11 a.m. but that was New York time - it was actually 4 p.m. in Scotland. I cringed a little, hoping Mrs. Clyde would be understanding about just how long I'd been traveling, but then I looked up from my phone and saw my room and forgot all about what time it was.
I'd only ever seen rooms like it in movies - usually movies set in the past. It appeared to be situated in one of the turrets of Castle McLanald, with walls that curved around the sturdy wooden bed and tall, rectangular windows that followed the curve. The view outside the windows was as quaint as the one inside - an open courtyard with a fountain standing in the middle and surrounded on all sides by thick, gray stone walls. I opened one of the windows and took a deep breath of air so fresh it almost smelled sweet. The bright sunshine made me feel momentarily brave. It wasn't even three months here, in a beautiful castle nestled in the Scottish countryside. Even without familiar faces and friends around, surely I could manage? You might even enjoy yourself.
My suitcases were where Mr. Clyde had left them at the foot of the bed - I spent a few minutes unpacking, taking extra care with the small, framed photo of my grandmother that I placed on one of the windowsills. Looking at her face made me feel hopeful - she always told me to look uncertainty in the eye and face it bravely.
There was an almost comically narrow corridor leading from my room to a large bathroom that looked luxurious but extremely outdated, with fixtures that didn't appear to have been replaced since Victorian times. It took me a good few minutes to get the hang of the dual hot and cold faucets and avoid being alternately scalded and frozen as I washed off all the grime of flying and trains and travel. There was also a very generously sized clawfoot bathtub which promised a good, long soak with a book and a glass of wine when I had the time.
When I felt presentable I ventured down the twisting stone staircase that I'd hardly noticed the night before - it was the kind of architectural feature that makes you think of people in long nightgowns carrying half-melted candles on little trays.
"Ah, Jennifer! We thought we were going to have to come and drag you out of bed ourselves!" It was Mr. Clyde. "Mrs. Clyde will get you some grub if you're hungry - she'll be in the kitchen."
Mr. Clyde pointed me in the direction of the kitchen as it dawned on me that I was, in fact, completely starving, having not had anything to eat since a positively awful lettuce and cheese sandwich at Heathrow airport that had cost the equivalent of ten dollars.
I sat down at a long table in the cavernous kitchen and watched Mrs. Clyde bustling about as she made me something to eat - I offered to get something for myself but she was insistent that it wasn't my job to be doing any cooking so I was happy to sit and wait as the smell of frying bacon and eggs filled my nostrils and made the rumbling in my belly worse.
"A proper Scottish breakfast," she smiled at me before placing a large plate of food down on the table, "even if it is almost tea time."
I looked down. Some of the things on the plate were familiar. Well, two things. Eggs and sausages. There was something that looked like ham, but when questioned Mrs. Clyde said it was bacon. When in Rome.
"And this?" I pointed at what looked like a pile of thin, dark biscuits.
"Black pudding."
Black pudding? What was that? It was black, but it didn't look like any pudding I'd ever seen. I made the mistake of asking Mrs. Clyde what it was.
"It's delicious, Jennifer. You must give it a try. It's made of pig's blood."
I was in the middle of trying to figure out how to politely refuse the Scottish delicacy when a deep, amused male voice called out from behind me:
"Go on, then! I can't have my daughter looked after by someone who doesn't like blood pudding."
I turned around to get a look at who was speaking and noticed Mrs. Clyde looking flustered as well.
"Laird! We weren't expecting you until Sunday! There's not been any trouble in London has there? Where is the little one?"
"Calm down Mrs. Clyde, everything is fine. A little trouble with Diane in London so I'm back a day early, Cameron will be up tomorrow."
I didn't pay much attention to the conversation between the Laird and Mrs. Clyde, due mostly to being helplessly dazzled by the Laird himself - but if I had I would have caught the ominous undertones in both of their voices.
The Laird, though. The Laird. He was one of those men that made it very difficult not to stare. The sun was shining through the high windows of the kitchen, catching his thick blonde hair and giving it a coppery tinge. He had high, wide-set cheekbones and a straight Roman nose. I could see about a day's worth of beard growth scattered across a jawline that matched the rest of his face in its general, broad masculinity. The most striking thing of all about the Laird, though, was his eyes. Deep-set under a prominent brow and arrestingly blue, I actually felt my heart skip a beat when he turned them towards me, smiling so they crinkled slightly at the corners.
"You must be Miss Robinson. Welcome to Scotland - I trust the Clydes have helped you settle in?"
I got to my feet feeling slightly awkward at the juxtaposition of the domestic surroundings of the kitchen and the fact that the Laird was my employer. He shook my hand and then looked down at the plate sitting in front of me.
"Go on, have a wee bite. The name is much more gruesome than the taste."
And damn if I didn't sit right back down and do exactly what the Laird was asking me to. Even then in the first few moments with him some part of me seemed compelled to do what he wanted. He watched me lift the fork to my lips and then laughed as I chewed slowly for a few moments. It didn't taste like blood at all - in fact it didn't even taste like meat, it was surprisingly mild - almost bland.
"Well?"
The Laird kept his eyes on me, as did Mrs. Clyde, waiting for my pronouncement. When I looked up at them and said: "It tastes...like oatmeal," they both smiled approvingly.
"Yes, it has oatmeal in it, too," Mrs. Clyde said, setting down a mug of hot te
a beside my plate.
She and the Laird fell into a conversation I pretended not to listen to as I sat back down to finish my breakfast. There were a lot of references to a Diane and to Cameron, the Laird's four year old daughter and my soon to be charge. Without noticing what I was doing I just went back to looking at the Laird. He was a very big man - noticeably big, tall enough to take note of even if I'd only seen him on the street. Six foot four? Six foot five? Something like that. He was wearing a pair of dress pants and a button down shirt, both of which managed to do an almost painfully good job of revealing the fit, well-muscled build of the man beneath them. When he turned to the counter to take one of the oatcakes Mrs. Clyde was offering I shamefully couldn't stop myself from checking out the rear view: shoulders so wide all I could do was imagine what running my hands over them would feel like and a round, firm ass that looked perfect in the dark dress pants. When he turned back around I quickly looked back to my food, terrified he'd seen me looking.
He didn't show any hint of having noticed my ridiculous behavior, though.
"I'll see you again tomorrow, Miss Robinson, when Cameron returns from London."
"Yes. It was nice to meet you..." I paused, realizing I had no idea how to address him.
"Darach," he said, "I know you Americans aren't ones for formalities and to be truthful neither am I. Darach will do."
Then he was gone and I had to do my best to keep any hint of disappointment out of my expression so Mrs. Clyde wouldn't notice it.
"Aye, he's a handsome one isn't he, Jenny? You'd best not pay any heed to how fair he is lassie, because he's in no position to be looking for a wife - he's already got one down in London and she's a handful."
Ugh. Of course. That must be who Diane was. I did my best to eat the rest of my breakfast but it was too much. Mrs. Clyde seemed pleased anyway, smiling at me as she cleared away my plate:
"Well done. That'll help you get over the jet-lag. I've got a few more things to do for dinner tonight but when I'm done I'll show you a little of the house if you like."
I smiled at her repeated insistence on calling Castle McLanald a 'house' and accepted her offer of a tour. She told me that in the meantime I could go for a walk in the grounds and I decided to do just that - the sunlight was too warm and inviting and I was eager to get a feel for the place that would be my home until September.
Chapter 3
I ran into a groundskeeper in muddy boots as I was wandering rather aimlessly around the garden that sat in front of Castle McLanald and asked him how far I could walk without leaving the property. He laughed out loud.
"You'll not be leaving the property, not for a good few hours of walking, at least."
A few hours. So the McLanald's didn't just own a castle, they also owned all of the land I could see sprawling out around me.
The castle itself was set on the highest point of the landscape and surrounded by carefully tended gardens. As those gardens came to an end the land turned wilder - it was down a narrow footpath into one of the less-groomed areas that I turned, woken up by Mrs. Clyde's tea, my fresh-aired surroundings and, probably most of all, my encounter with the Laird. Handsome men aren't a complete rarity in New York so I wasn't sure what exactly it was about the Laird that had me so intrigued.
Darach. Darach, yes, that's what he'd asked me to call him. Even his name felt exotic and thrillingly foreign to my mind. He had presence that went beyond his Viking-like good looks. It could have been his position or his money but it felt like something specific to him, something that would be there whether he had five dollars to his name or five billion. And why was I already daydreaming about someone I'd just met - my married employer, no less?
Typical. Go abroad to experience a new culture and a new country and within twenty-four hours I was already focusing on a man. I did this during my freshman year at college, too, with my first real boyfriend - Jordan. Classes, studying, exploring the city - all of it had taken a backseat to a relationship that ended up being embarrassingly unworthy of my attentions. When my grandmother got sick it took Jordan less than a week to decide he "couldn't handle" the situation and bolt. Ever since then I'd worried about my tendency to get too attached to people - well, to men - who simply weren't very attached in return.
Hell, one of the main reasons for coming to Scotland was to learn to be more self-reliant - more comfortable with being alone. The last thing I needed was a schoolgirl crush. What would my grandmother think of this place? What would she think of me in this place, reverting back to old habits before the jet-lag had even worn off?
The thought of her caught me off guard, the way it always, always does and I felt the threatening sting of tears in my eyes. Dammit, Jenny. Get yourself together. Why are you even here if you're going to spend all your time wallowing, which you could have done just as easily back home?
The sound of footsteps yanked me out of the threatened spiral of self-recrimination and I looked up to see a young woman walking towards me. Unlike me, though, she seemed to fit into the landscape around her - she was dressed in a long, thick skirt that billowed out in the wind that was also blowing her blonde hair around her face. She smiled as she got closer to me and I almost did a double-take at the similarity between her and Darach - it was immediately obvious that she was a relation of some sort.
"You must be...Jennifer? I'm Anne McLanald."
I took her outstretched hand and shook it, nodding that yes, I was Jennifer.
"Have you met my brother yet? The Laird? He was supposed to be in London until tomorrow but Mrs. Clyde said he came back early?"
I replied that I had met her brother. Anne was eerily like him - she even held her body the same way he did, with the same nonchalant ease that I'd seen earlier in the kitchen. It occurred to me that the two of them had probably looked like twins as children, before puberty had hardened his jawline and broadened his shoulders at the same time that it softened her into the tall, slender and quite beautiful creature I saw in front of me. She was giving me a look I couldn't quite decipher.
"Did you - did my brother hire you?"
"Er," I paused, not sure what Anne was asking me, "well, yes, I'm going to be here until the end of the summer."
"No, no," Anna waved her hand at me slightly impatiently, "I mean, did Darach hire you himself? Did he do the interview? Or did Mrs. Clyde do it?"
"Mrs. Clyde interviewed me on Skype. I only met Darach this morning."
"Really?!" Anne seemed surprised by my response - I caught it when she held back what was going to be an amused eye-roll. "Hmm. Alright. Are you coming out here to see the loch?"
Anne changed the subject quickly and kept going before I had time to respond:
"I've just been to see it - it's such a beautiful day isn't it? Do you want me to show you where it is?"
At the time I didn't know what a 'loch' was but Anne seemed so enthusiastic and so eager for me to get a look at it that I just nodded and followed behind her as she turned and started leading me back down in the same direction she'd come from.
"So you met my brother?" Anne called back to me without bothering to turn around as we walked.
"Yes." I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible - already getting the feeling that Anne was fishing for information.
"He's quite a sight, isn't he?"
Well, there was no obvious response to that question, so I didn't give one. Anne stopped in the middle of the path and turned to me with a knowing smile on her face:
"What? You didn't notice? My brother has been breaking girl's hearts since he was twelve years old - and he's been known to have...certain tastes."
That was twice now. Both women I'd met at Castle McLanald had made a point of noting Darach McLanald's good looks. Why? I was starting to get the distinct impression of the Laird as a golden boy of sorts, a favored son doted on by women young and old, related or not. I've never really gone for that kind of thing, especially in a grown man, and the look on Anne's face felt slightly presumptuous. W
hat of it if the Laird was smoking hot? Was I being made fun of? That seemed like bad manners - and it put me a little on the defensive.
Anne saw the look on my face before I replied and immediately changed her expression to one of contrition.
"Och, Jennifer, I'm sorry! I'm not implying anything about you! If anything I'm implying something about my brother."
WHAT about your brother? I wanted to ask, in much the same way I'd wanted to ask Mrs. Clyde when she brought up the Laird's dashing features - and his apparent lack of availability. Yes, he was handsome. Yes, I had definitely noticed. No I was not planning on begging him for a proposal - fantasist or not, I have my pride.
Anne continued: "Never mind me. I'm just - well, let's say I know my brother's predilections, is all."
I didn't know the Laird's 'predilections' but at that point I was damned if I was going to ask about them. We kept walking in - at least on my part - a kind of perplexed silence, until the path suddenly turned to the left and a small lake with dark blue water that looked unfathomably deep came into view. It was beautiful enough to take my breath away and sweep all thoughts of the Laird from my mind.
"Wow."
"It's lovely isn't it?"
I could hear the pride in Anne's voice.
"See that little waterfall over there? You can slide down those rocks and straight into the water - only on a really hot day, of course, because the water in the loch is absolutely arse-freezing."
The water did look cold. It also appeared that word 'loch' meant lake. I was glad I wasn't going to have to ask anyone about it and risk looking like a stereotypical insular American.
"Jennifer, I'm sorry if I was too familiar earlier. I really didn't mean anything by it - it's really lovely to have someone new here for the summer and I think you're going to love Cameron. I'm going to the south of France for the summer and she needs a solid female presence in her life."
