White Regency 03 - White Knight

by Jaclyn Reding

  Grace’s sudden place in the household of Uncle Tedric, a bachelor accustomed to coming and going as he pleased, had left her feeling like a burr beneath his saddle. And then there was Christian, who had made it abundantly clear he had been forced by his grandfather the duke—against his will—to wed her.

  All her life, she had known a sense of waiting, of searching, as if the world was spinning past her and she could but watch from the outskirts. But now was her time, a time to cease being an inconvenience, to cease being tolerated. Now was her time to pursue her own life’s path.

  Grace looked to the timepiece once again, then closed her fingers around it as she headed for the door.

  Yes, this was her time.

  Chapter Twenty-two

  The following morning broke to a glorious sunrise that peeked over rugged mist-skirted mountains to the east. After sharing a hearty breakfast of porridge, bannocks, and tea, Grace and Alastair set out on their round of visits to the tenants of the estate. Flora, Deirdre, and Liza set to mopping up the water that had puddled beneath the various leaks in the roof. To help pass the hours inside during the previous day’s rain, Deirdre and Flora had baked shortbread for Grace and Alastair to take along with them for the tenants. In doing so, they had depleted nearly all of the sugar and most of the flour and butter Grace had brought along with her on her arrival. McFee and McGee had gone that morning, sailing north for Ullapool to purchase sacks of meal, sugar, and the various other food stores they needed to provision the castle.

  They had taken with them a letter that Grace had written to Mr. Jenner at his offices in London with a request for the release of additional monies from the account that had been set aside for Skynegal’s restoration. Until then, she would have only what Nonny had given her many years earlier to keep them.

  It had been an early spring day when Nonny had come to her holding a small embroidered reticule. “My mother gave this to me when I was a young girl of your age shortly before I wed your grandfather. Women seldom are permitted money of their own and oft are left desolate in times of need. When my mother gave this to me, she made me promise that I should only open it in time of great extremes. I was fortunate in that I never met with such crises and so I am passing this on to you, dear. I hope you shall never come to a time when you are faced with misfortune or deprivation, but one can never tell what Fate has in store. If you should find yourself in such circumstances, just remember, like Pandora’s box, with this you shall never be utterly without hope.”

  Grace had never opened the bag, not even to peek, until just before she had left London to travel to Skynegal. She had known that the bag had contained money, but she could have had no notion of the amount. She had been overwhelmed when she had found several five-guinea coins wrapped within four fifty-pound notes. Discovering the treasure had removed the last obstacle to her departure for Scotland, affirming for Grace from then on that she was indeed pursuing the right course.

  Grace and Alastair set out across the heather-covered Sgiathach hills on sturdy Highland ponies, riding over a verdant glen carpeted in bluebells, primroses, and wild anemones. They came across strath and brae along the River Sgiathach, a peaceful scene touched by the trill and chip of the bright red crossbills who flitted about the fir trees as they passed. Along the way, Alastair passed the time recounting tales of his childhood on this same land, land on which his great-grandfather had toiled more than a century before.

  “You speak of your love of this land as some would the love for a woman,” Grace remarked, sitting with ease in the sidesaddle as her pony picked its way along the narrow glen path. “Have you never wed, Alastair?”

  Alastair immediately fell silent—not a thing he was prone to do—and Grace reproved herself for her too-inquisitive nature. “I’m sorry, I should not have asked you something so personal. It isn’t my place to pry.”

  “Nae, my lady, ‘tis nothing improper in your asking.” He shook his head. “It is just that I haven’t thought of it in some time. No, my lady, I have never wed. I thought to once, even got down on my knee to ask her.”

  “She refused you?”

  “Nae, my lady, not at all. Iseabail accepted and we even made ready to wed the following summer. I had a year yet to complete my schooling. ‘Twas while I was away to university in Edinburgh that she grew impatient. She wanted us to wed sooner, but I could not quit my studies. So she wrote to me that she had decided to wed another.” He hesitated a moment, his voice hushing slightly. “Evidently the attachment I had assumed between us was not truly extended to me in kind.”

  Grace knew well torment of loving another who did not love in return. “I am so sorry, Alastair.”

  He summoned a resolute smile. “Aye, she’s gone to New Scotland these past ten years, but for as long as I live, I’ll ne’er forget the first time I saw her. ‘Twas at a ceilidh and everyone came from hereabouts for dancing and singing. I had never met Iseabail before and when I first set my eyes upon her, she was singing an old Scottish ballad. Iseabail had the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard before or since. I was awestruck, aye. Everyone listening was, too.”

  A sentimental look came over his face as the ponies continued on their way across the glen floor. Alastair gazed wistfully at the pathway ahead, singing softly in a brogue that he had heretofore kept hidden.

  Ca’ the ewes to the knowes,

  Ca’ them whaur the heather grows,

  Ca’ them whaur the burnie rows,

  My bonnie dearie.

  Hark, the mavis even’ sang,

  Soundin’ Cluden’s woods amang,

  Then a fauldin’ let us gang,

  My bonnie dearie.

  They rode along a space, each lost to their own thoughts. Grace listened as Alastair sang, not so much to the words, but to the love that was still so evident in them, the love he bore for the girl who’d broken his heart so many years ago.

  A small part of her wondered if Christian ever thought of her as she did him, with a wonder for what might have been had they met under differing circumstances. They were thoughts that stole into her mind far more often than she cared to admit, when she would lie awake at night, watching the moon through her window. She wondered if Christian ever reminisced as she did about the intimacy of what they had shared together, the emotions their union had brought. She knew the passion they had so briefly shared had touched him—perhaps not as deeply it had her—but there must have been something to have made him return to her as he had time and time again. Grace wouldn’t believe that it was simply the sexual act for if he hated so much the place she’d come to hold in his life, he could have just as easily taken his pleasure with another. But he hadn’t. Knowing that was what left the small kernel of hope deep within her heart.

  They steered the ponies across a shallow brook that tumbled across the glen. A simple stone cottage lay snuggled close against the hillside in front of them. A column of smoke rose out of a small chimney—the lum, as Alastair had called it—above the thickly thatched roof that was weighted down against the Highland winds with stones hanging from ropes that stretched from one side to the other.

  A handful of small white sheep dotted the verdant hillside, picking among the moor-grass and heath, their distant bleating carried on the soft breeze that blew down from the mountains. As they approached the cottage, Grace spotted a small face peeking at them through an opening in the wall where there was no window, only an oilcloth flapping in the breeze for a covering. Dogs barked, running around the ponies who were so docile, they barely gave the hounds notice. A low stone wall enclosed a small byre where a stocky pony and a shaggy bedraggled Highland calf stood watching them with little interest.

  They stopped the ponies and were dismounting when a man came from inside the cottage to meet them. He wore a coarse woolen shirt with full sleeves rolled to his elbows and a tartan belted at the waist and draped from one shoulder across to the waist on the opposite side. Woolen stockings with a similar crisscross design covered his legs below t
he knee, and leather brogues laced over his feet. Behind him, lingering in the doorway, stood a woman, her head covered by a kerchief, her feet bare beneath her ankle-length skirts. Two small children clung to her on each side.

  “La math, Alastair,” the man said in Gaelic.

  Alastair nodded to him. “Calum, you look well. How is the family?”

  The man answered him in rapid Gaelic, eyeing Grace suspiciously as he spoke.

  “Calum,” Alastair said, “I’d like to introduce you to Lady Grace, Marchioness Knighton. Lady Grace has inherited Skynegal. Lady Grace, please meet Calum Guthrie.”

  Calum bowed his head respectfully, saying, “My lady.”

  He no longer spoke Gaelic, but when he raised his head to look at her, she saw again the unmistakable darkness of suspicion in his eyes, suspicion and fear of what her coming to Skynegal might portend for him and his small family.

  “It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Guthrie,” Grace said, smiling openly in hopes of allaying some of his misgivings. When he didn’t respond, she motioned toward where the woman still stood framed in the low doorway. “Is this your wife?”

  Calum nodded. “Aye, she is. ‘Tis Mary. An’ the two boys, Calum and Ian.”

  Grace left her pony and walked over to the others, smiling at the woman. She made to hand her the shortbread they’d brought, wrapped in linen. “Hello, Mary. It is a pleasure to meet you.”

  But the woman did not look at her, nor did she move to take the bundled shortbread. Instead she glanced uneasily to her husband.

  “She disna speak English,” Calum said, coming to join his wife. He said something to her in Gaelic and she nodded, then turned back to regard Grace, bowing her head with a tentative smile.

  “This is for you,” Grace said, holding out the shortbread to her again.

  Mary looked to Calum, who nodded, and took the bundle. When she saw what it was, she smiled, although the same cloud of fear that Grace had noticed in Calum’s eyes now darkened her eyes as well. “Taing is buidheachas dhut, baintighearnachd do.”

  Now it was Grace’s turn to look to Calum in bewilderment. “I’m afraid I do not understand Gaelic yet.”

  “She gives her thanks to you, your ladyship.”

  “Please tell her she is most welcome.”

  As Calum repeated Grace’s words to Mary, Grace crouched down and extended her hand to the first of the two boys. He looked to be about seven years old and was tall and thin like his father. She noticed his clothing was tattered and he had no shoes to cover his feet. He did not take her hand, but looked curiously at the fine kid glove that covered it. The other boy did the same, peeking from behind him.

  “She disna have a hand, Da,” said the first one.

  Calum quickly silenced him with a Hish! and the child turned to her as if she’d suddenly sprung a second head, one that was coming to swallow him whole. Grace held up a hand and shook her head, saying, “It is all right.” She tugged on the fingers of her glove while the boy just stared with a mixture of both fascination and fear. When all her fingers were loose, Grace drew off the glove to reveal her bare hand underneath.

  She flexed her fingers. “See, I do have a hand. It was just covered by a glove.”

  The boy’s fear melted away beneath the light of curiosity. He took up the glove Grace offered to him, staring at it as if it were made of the finest gold.

  “Will you shake hands with me now?” Grace asked and he did, wrapping his grubby fingers tightly around hers.

  “What is your name?”

  “Calum,” he mumbled, his attentions again focused on the glove, the way it was stitched, the small flower embroidered upon it. He set it up against his hand, comparing the size of it to his own.

  “I should have known that your name was Calum because you look just like your da.”

  She noticed the second boy peering tentatively around his brother’s arm. He was perhaps three or four, with a mop of reddish hair and a sprinkle of freckles crossing his small nose. Grace removed her other glove and handed it to him. “And I would guess your name is Ian.”

  “Aye,” he answered in a tiny voice, clasping the hand she held toward him and taking the glove with his other. “You are vewy pwetty.”

  Grace smiled brightly. “Well, thank you, my fine sir.”

  “What’s a ‘sir’?”

  ” ‘Sir’ is another name for a grown-up boy like you.”

  He grinned at her, still clutching her glove.

  Grace stood then and peered inside the cottage, but she could see no more than a foot beyond the low doorway, for it was very dark inside. She glanced to Calum still standing beside Mary. “May I have a look inside? I’ve never been inside a crofting cottage.”

  The two exchanged a curious glance and then Calum nodded, seeming almost reluctant to allow her inside but afraid to refuse her.

  Grace removed her tall riding derby and stepped through the doorway into a large room that was at once a kitchen, sitting room, and bedroom together. Despite its meager furnishings, it was a place that gave one a sense of home the moment they entered. A fire burned in the small hearth, over which an iron kettle hung from a hook. The far corner of the room was completely taken up by a huge pine box bed. A crude oaken table stood at the room’s center, covered with numerous wooden bowls of porridge—at least half a dozen. Odd, Grace thought, for only four had come out to greet her.

  Mary came inside and quickly began taking away the bowls when she noticed Grace’s interest in them. Grace turned to Calum. “I hope you will forgive us for interrupting your breakfast.”

  He shook his head. “Nae trouble, my lady. We were a’ready finished.”

  “You have a lovely home,” she said, noting the small feminine touches—fresh wildflowers set in a jug upon the table, a bit of colored cloth fashioned as a curtain over the window. Grace walked about the room. She stopped before a wooden peat box to admire a woolen blanket that lay across its top. Intricately woven, its design reminded Grace of the shawl her grandmother had given her years earlier.

  It was as she was fingering the finely spun wool that Grace realized there were sounds coming from inside the peat box, sounds not unlike the whimpering of a child followed by the distinctive shh’ing of comfort.

  Without hesitating to ask, Grace took the blanket away and lifted the cover off the peat box. Behind her, she heard Mary give a cry of alarm as Grace discovered a woman crouched inside with a small child of no more than two years clutched tightly against her. The woman was trembling, staring at Grace in terror. The child immediately began to cry. Mary shouted something in Gaelic and then buried her face against Calum’s chest, sobbing.

  Grace turned to Calum. “What is wrong? Why is she hiding in there?”

  Calum’s expression had grown utterly defeated. “I know I canna expect you to forgive such a t’ing, my lady, but by the grace of God, they had no other place to gae.”

  “Forgive? What is there to forgive? I’m afraid I do not understand.”

  Alastair came forward from the doorway to explain. “My lady, the woman inside the peat box is Mary’s sister Elspeth and her daughter. They had previously lived on the neighboring estate until they were evicted.” He turned to Calum, his expression sympathetic, then looked to Grace once again. “What Calum realizes but you do not, my lady, is that there is an unwritten law among the lairds of the estates and the local magistrates that any family found offering their home to another family who has been evicted will as punishment suffer the same fate.” He hesitated. “They fear you will now evict them from their home as well.”

  Grace looked slowly around the room at the myriad of faces all watching her—Calum, his boys, even Mary, her face wet with tears, and Elspeth, who was now standing inside the peat box. Grace might as well have been the monarch of hell for the look of pure and utter terror they all returned to her.

  Anger, fierce and raw, began to burn within her. It was barbarous and cruel that these poor people should live under such a terrible th
reat every day, fear of simply offering shelter to their own family lest they should be turned out as well. She watched then as the two boys, Calum and Ian, walked slowly to her, their eyes never leaving hers as each of them gently placed her gloves upon the table, returning them to her as if hoping, praying that this one small gesture might keep her from punishing their loved ones.

  Grace blinked away the tears that had begun to form in her eyes and turned to Elspeth, who still stood behind her. She was clutching her daughter tightly in her arms, the child’s tiny face tucked away against the safety of her mother’s neck. Grace held out her hands. “Please let me take her for you so you can climb out of that box.”

  Elspeth looked confused. Calum spoke to her in Gaelic, nodding, his tone reassuring. Slowly, tentatively, Elspeth loosened her hold on the child, handing her to where Grace waited to take her. Grace took the girl and held her against her while Elspeth quickly climbed out of the peat box with Calum’s help. The child looked at Grace and sniffed, her chin quivering. Grace smiled at her and touched her softly on her cheek, wiping away a tear. “It will be all right,” she whispered, and pressed a kiss to the soft curls at her forehead before handing her back to Elspeth.

  Grace took a deep breath and turned to speak to Calum. “You fear that I will evict you from your home because of the actions of others who hold a position similar to mine. I give you my word, Calum Guthrie, that no such thing will take place. Not today. Not ever. There will be no ‘Improvements’ such as have occurred elsewhere in the Highlands here at Skynegal. Please be sure to tell the other tenants what I have just said.”