“Mah lady, was the breakfast ah sent up not yah taste?” the woman asked. Unlike Caoimhe, who held the soft and subtle accent of her low birth, the cook was from the deep highlands and her accent strong. Her eyes were a little panicked and a lock of her brown hair had fallen from inside her little hat. “Ah can prepare something else for yoo? Sommut hot? Ah’d not thought when yoo would wake so ‘spect cold to be better.”
The woman would have clearly gone on if Caoimhe hadn’t waved her hands in assurance, a smile upon her face.
“No no, it was lovely, thank you,” she told the woman, glancing over her shoulder and thinking about the four flights of stairs between the kitchens and her chambers. “My apologies, I should have brought the dishes down.”
The cook’s eyes widened, and there was an awkward silence in the room as the scullery servants stopped their tasks to watch.
“I very much enjoyed the bread,” Caoimhe said, a little slowly, and trying to fill the quiet. “You use some form of spice?”
The woman’s breasts drew up as her pride saw her swell. She nodded eagerly.
“Ai but ah do.” She gestured to the table a little awkwardly. Clearly, she was making more of the same. “Cloves like my ma did make.”
Caoimhe wasn’t sure, but the stout and dominant woman seemed to be blushing.
“Well, it was lovely,” she said, not sure how to continue a conversation where the other party seemed so hesitant to speak more than simple replies to blunt questions. “Perhaps the laird and I might have some with our midday meal?”
Now it was the cook’s turn to appear awkward. She dusted her hands on her apron, despite them already being clean, and several of the servants looked away. The woman was saved from answering by the appearance of a manservant that manifested at the door leading into the grounds. It was opened to allow the heat of the kitchens to escape, and the steward made easy use of it, walking around the table in the center of the room and careful not to get flour on his dark tunic.
“My lady, the master is not at home, currently,” he informed her. “He was summoned away at haste and insisted upon not waking you. He left the message in my charge and I can only apologize for not being there to offer it to you with immediate effect upon your waking.”
The man spoke with such a high level of formality that Caoimhe felt her spine straighten and her shoulders turn proud. There was a hint of English about his language and Caoimhe wondered why Niall might employ an English steward.
“I see,” Caoimhe responded, wondering if she was more disappointed or relieved over her husband’s absence. She frowned and pushed the thought to the back of her mind.
“Did he say when he might be back…” She trailed off when she realized that she didn’t know the man’s name.
He addressed himself to her with a sharp and elegant little bow, his hand to his chest. “Brogan, Your Ladyship. And, the master estimated to be back in a few days. He encourages you to grow used to your new home. You have the entire premises at your leisure. He requests only that you not leave the estate without an escort.”
Feeling decidedly deflated and perhaps a little imprisoned, Caoimhe licked her lips and nodded before the man glanced down at her appearance.
“If I may, my lady…” He gestured that they should step out into the corridor beyond the kitchens, away from prying eyes and curious ears.
Uncertain, Caoimhe smiled and waved goodbye to a bemused-looking kitchen of staff and followed the man a little ways down a hall that sported paintings of the surrounding countryside. One of them was very good, and she liked the way it captured the waters at the coast.
“My lady, if you’ll forgive me…I have seen that you should have several serving maids assigned to your care. They would be able to ensure that your…attire is fitting for the wife of a laird.”
Caoimhe touched the back of her head, feeling at the bumps and shapes of her braid. She had not thought the care that she took in her appearance was so bad. She felt her cheeks bloom in shame. The man was not cruel in his delivery, but his blunt form of politeness hit hard all the same.
“I woke up alone and just thought…”
“There is a small bell in your chambers,” Brogan explained. “Ring it and you’ll be tended to by your—”
As if drawn by his explanation, there was a light scampering of feet over a small staircase nearby. The steps were clearly designed for servants, which explained the lack of propriety in the young girl that was hurrying about them. From Caoimhe’s position, she could not see who came to interrupt the conversation, but the mystery individual could certainly see Brogan and began speaking before they even came into sight.
“Sir! Sir, her Ladyship is awake and not in her chambers. Do you think that she—”
The young girl suddenly appeared off of the bottom step and stopped dead in her tracks, her mouth snapping shut. She was young, possibly no more than fifteen years of age, and was dressed in a similar style of garment to the servants in the kitchen. Her hair was blonde and naturally curly, a fluffy sort of halo about her head. Her big, blue eyes widened as they landed upon Caoimhe, and her lips rolled in as if she were wanting to bite them off for their untimely impertinence.
Caoimhe only smiled.
“I am here. I did not mean to startle you. I saw to myself this morning.”
The girl looked decidedly uncomfortable as she ducked into a little curtsy that was probably more graceful than anything Caoimhe could have managed.
“Um…it’s okay, my lady…” She had clearly never been apologized to by her superiors before. She then made a little face.
“But...you know that you don’t have to make your own bed, right?”
9
Out of Her Depth
Over the next few days, Caoimhe began to feel more familiar with the towering, drafty manor of Aberlynn. Determined to not be so much of a fool that she became lost in her own home, she had taken to wandering the corridors and hallways, steadily committing each wing to memory. Each section of the estate was its own small castle, the rooms arranged for the comfort of a particular class of its residents, from the servants to the children of the house to the master and mistress themselves. Not to mention the copious guests and relatives that such a building was expected to hold.
Caoimhe had, at the beginning, wondered as to Niall’s limited number of staff. An estate this large surely couldn’t be run by a single head cook, two stewards, and no more than a dozen servants. But, with so many of the chambers shut away, left to become dusty in idle disuse, it was clear how the basic handful of servants that he employed could manage the duties themselves. Barely a third of the property was in active use.
On her explorations, Caoimhe had found pretty ladies’ parlors, with portraits on the walls that had fallen into disrepair. There were dining, bathing, and sleeping chambers collected together to serve a visiting family. She found a music room, where fine instruments had been left to gather dust and decay, and a sitting room that was so masculine in its atmosphere of dark wood and hunting trophies that she could only assume it to be a drinking space for the men of the house. She could practically smell the tinge of whiskey still being absorbed by the walls.
In the limited time that Caoimhe had known her new husband—or at least been in his company—she had seen nothing that would suggest a lack of pride or honor. She remembered how Niall had taken the dram at their ceremony, refusing to let even superstitions affect their reputation among the families of the highlands. So, why was it that he had cleared away so much of his property? Why not see it cleaned and tended and polished to the fine shine that it was worth? How had he let his estate fall into a household that was haunted by more ghosts than it was guests?
When next she found Brogan, she asked him.
“Brogan, the chambers in the west wing…why is none of it properly packed away?”
The older man with his white hair and impertinent sort of manner straightened in the spine. He appeared a little offended, as if she were sug
gesting he had failed in his duties, but his tone was one of polite respect.
“My lady?”
Caoimhe gestured down the hallway to a particular set of rooms that had all had their doors closed and their windows fused shut.
“Some of the rooms here still have their pieces in place. The fabrics are stained with dust and the paintings are beginning to peel. If the chambers are not to be used, I thought that the things inside should have been put into storage?”
Brogan looked a little uncomfortable. The high ridges of his cheekbones bloomed a flattering pink and he struggled on an exhale. It was the first time in the last three days that Caoimhe had ever seen the man struggle for how to phrase his words.
“I… That is… It is not my place to question my master, my lady,” he insisted. “But if you wish for the rooms to be cleared, I can arrange for it to be done.”
“No, no, that’s alright. I was just curious,” Caoimhe assured him, hands raised. “Let us go and have lunch, instead, Brogan.” She was still unused to simply being addressed as “my lady.” The idea of actually giving orders in the name of the wife of the laird was a little too much just yet. Instead, she had taken to speaking with the staff as if they were her friends or siblings, not her subordinates.
For the last three days, Caoimhe’s life had fallen into a pattern that revolved around the kitchens. She would wake and descend to the warm smell of baking and freshly squeezed juice. She would take her morning repast with her around the castle while exploring, before returning to speak with the cook, Mary, over lunch.
Initially surprised by Caoimhe’s request to eat at the end of the long table in the kitchens, the large woman and the three girls duty-bound to the lower levels had softened when Caoimhe had quietly mentioned that to eat alone in a large and empty dining hall was not only wasteful to the staff’s cleaning but also lonely.
A surprisingly romantic woman at heart, Mary had instantly attributed Caoimhe’s aversion to eating alone as the sorrow of an abandoned bride. And Fanny, Eliza, and Millie had fallen under the same misconception. Their soft sighs and blushing looks told Caoimhe exactly what they felt of their lord and master. As Mary had grown more used to Caoimhe’s presence in her territory of the scullery and kitchens, she had opened up and made no illusions of her opinion on a man that married one day and upped and left the next. She was only silenced on the matter whenever Brogan appeared in the doorway with a query or question for Caoimhe, reminding the woman to whom she spoke. Mary always went quiet for the next half hour or so, her gaze slipping to the corner of her eye and wondering if Caoimhe would ever reprimand the criticisms she had made towards her husband.
Caoimhe had always just smiled back.
And the pattern had gone on repeat.
Caoimhe felt no desire to defend her husband against his overly passionate cook, but neither did she share in Mary’s disgust over his behavior as a newly-married man. It seemed almost laughable to think that a man of Niall’s height, build, and power would need a shield of any kind.
While there were whispers of doubt in her mind over the purpose of his absence, Caoimhe had felt remarkably calm without his towering, looming presence around. She had feared, going into this union, that she would exist in this new home like a hunted animal, attempting to steer clear of a man whose presence made him utterly impossible to ignore. Instead, she was able to breathe, to come to terms with her new hearth and home in her own time and in her own way.
And she was not lonely.
After the midday meal, Caoimhe would hover in the kitchens with Mary. She worked dough beside her new friend and learned to make jam from Eliza. She found herself to be useful and productive. And despite each face holding its own expression of perplexity when she had first insisted on wrapping an apron around her middle, it took little time for each of the staff to accept her active presence.
Perhaps it was the way that Caoimhe talked and held herself, as one of common trade, that set them all so much at ease. But, for herself, she found their company far easier than any that she had spoken with at her wedding. They talked about the cat that Millie had recently found sneaking around her parents’ house, mused over the sweetness of the blackberries that Caoimhe worked into jam, and sympathized with Eliza’s lack of sleep over her new baby (a topic that Caoimhe steered clear of when such a matter was brought around to herself). As the days passed into a soft and familiar pattern that was almost routine, the servants laughed and joked with Caoimhe as if she were one of their own.
She had even managed to get them to call her Caoimhe. Almost.
“Lady Caoimhe?”
The voice came from the back door that led out into the grounds. The young boy that helped the groundskeeper was standing in the open way, his flat cap in his hands. He looked a little awkward, standing in his tunic and a pair of boots that had seen better days.
“Yes, Ben?” she asked, looking up from the dough she was kneading. Mary was showing her a new recipe for flatbread, and the spongy consistency of the ingredients made it hard to knead into submission. She was already covered in flour. But given the promises Mary had extracted from her to teach the woman how her mother made sowens next, she was hardly worried about her state of distressed appearance.
“A carriage just arrived.”
Caoimhe’s hands stilled as she looked up, surprised that no one else had ceased to function. Perhaps they were used to the idea of visitors at the estate, or maybe they still thought of her as the lady of the manor. But either way, they seemed perfectly undisturbed by the news that someone rich enough to own a private carriage had come to see the laird.
Unsure of what to do, her hands coated in dusty white and her hair irate around her face, Caoimhe thought quickly.
“Find Stewart and tell him to address the guest and apologize that the laird is not here, and arrange for them to visit another time,” she told the boy, who was off like a shot with the instruction. Caoimhe found it easier to tell a child what to do after several years’ experience as an aunt. It was less intimidating than holding power over those that were older than herself and watched her with the distinguished eye reserved for priests and kings.
As if to prove this point, Stewart himself appeared in the kitchen doorway looking every day of his incredible age. The man claimed to have served under Niall’s great grandfather but, to look at him, an observer would suppose it was longer than that. The years had wrinkled his face, and he had no hair to speak of barring a few wisps that shot directly out from his ears. Yet, despite his decrepit appearance and lack of most of his back teeth, he still stood straight and cut an impressive bow of formality.
“My lady, Lady Fiona Brodie has arrived.” When Stewart spoke, it was with a slow and reedy sort of tone that reminded her of frail spirits. If half of this castle was dusty and haunted, then Stewart was most certainly its ghost. “I have informed her that the lord is not at home but she says that she has come to see you, my lady.”
“Me?”
Caoimhe glanced down at herself and her state of dress. Had she been back home, in the coastal township of her parents, where her mother lay in the back room in the hot afternoon hours and her nephews and niece ran riot over the gardens, she wouldn’t have thought twice about her appearance. She’d have answered the door with pride, holding no shame that she was baking for her family. Yet, even with her limited knowledge of the noble class, Caoimhe could tell that a lady toiling away in the kitchens was not a habit to be proud of. And the flour that had marked a clear rectangle on her skirts where her apron had sat was an obvious proof of her crimes.
She could remember exactly three women from her wedding that might have been the Fiona that was currently visiting, but matching faces with names was difficult after only one evening’s acquaintance. She knew that there were no more women on Niall’s side of the family bloodline, so she had to have married into it. This meant that Fiona had been either one of two brunette ladies—one sporting grey at her temples and large jewels on her hands,
and the other gently cradling a subtle baby bump. Or she was the fine, blonde woman that had spent most of the evening looking as if she had something stuck up her nose.
Caoimhe glanced at Mary, who had rapidly become her confidant in most things.
“Do you think Lady Brodie would be terribly offended if I turned her away?” Surely refusing to see someone that had arrived unannounced was less shameful than being decorated like a scullery maid in their company?
Mary only huffed a little comment of amusement, which Caoimhe did not find particularly helpful.
“If there be a way for that woman to find offense, yoo can be sure she’ll find it, my lady.”
The blonde, then.
With no other alternatives, Caoimhe removed her apron and attacked her dress with batting hands. It was sod’s law that she had chosen that day in particular to gown herself in a woolen creation of plum purple. She had thought that the dark color made her hair look shinier. Now, all it did was reveal the white finger marks of her attempts to clean it.
Caoimhe was still fixing the dank ends of her hair, sweaty and coiled from the heat of the kitchens, behind her ears as she followed Stewart upstairs and down the hallway towards the foyer. Lady Fiona had been seated in the front parlor, where the afternoon sun would be streaming in through the windows.
Stewart stopped at the appropriate door with a subtle look of enquiry.
“Should I arrange for refreshments to be brought, my lady?” he asked.
Caoimhe could not fault Niall’s staff.
Where he had apparently left her to her own devices, either confident or uncaring of her abilities to rule over a household this large, the stewards and their servants had taken Caoimhe’s ignorance in stride. Her inexperience with formal affairs or how things were done within the household countered by Stewart or his successor Brogan, who was always there to lend translation or aid. Every night, Caoimhe had gone to bed pleasantly exhausted, her mind swirling with new titbits and manners of etiquette that she had been forced to learn that day. But she would have never managed such self-education of the ensuing disaster without the aid of Niall’s stewards at her elbow.
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