The Laird

by Grace Burrowes

  “Preacher’s grandsire, perhaps,” Michael said, studying the kitten. “I can’t recall sitting for this, but Angus was always quick with a sketch. He caught Bridget to the teeth.”

  And Erin. Small, pale Erin, who’d been near Brenna’s age but never her match for energy.

  “Don’t suppose there’s much to find in here,” Hugh said, still not setting foot in the room. “If I committed a grand crime, I’d hardly leave the evidence in the most public room of the house.”

  “Angus isn’t in here much.” Michael turned his back on the portrait, surveying the rest of the room. “The pipe smoke is barely noticeable.”

  “How about we look in his office?” Hugh suggested. “I’d love to get a peek at what he pays himself.”

  “I know exactly how much he pays himself.” Michael closed the door to the parlor, but had the sense he was leaving behind something noteworthy. Not evidence, perhaps, but something that might point to evidence.

  They spent an hour in the office, and found every ledger book and tally sheet neatly organized and filed. Rental agreements, some of them going back to the time of Michael’s grandfather, were arranged alphabetically, and expired agreements kept in the drawer below those.

  “Then what are these?” Hugh asked, peering into the bottom drawer while Michael investigated Angus’s desk. “We have the agreements in force now—and they don’t fill an entire drawer—then the leases for all those holdings either vacant or back in your control, and then—”

  He scraped the bottom drawer open farther.

  “Uncle has a mistress,” Michael said, running his finger down a column of figures in a green ledger book. “Down in Aberdeen. A Mrs. Fournier.”

  Hugh lifted the half-dozen leases from the bottom drawer and brought them to the desk Michael occupied near the window.

  “You sound pleased for the old bugger.”

  Relieved, in fact. “You’re a widower. Don’t you crave the company of a friendly woman from time to time?”

  Hugh peered at the figures marching down the page.

  “I can’t imagine getting that lonely. Even if she’s French, comely, and creative, that’s a bloody lot of companionship he’s paying her for, and I doubt Angus gets down to Aberdeen more than four times a year.”

  The sense of matters out of place grew stronger as Michael considered the figures. Mrs. Fournier was growing wealthy on the strength of Angus’s infrequent visits. On a steward’s salary, she was an extravagance, affordable only if Angus had investments somewhere yielding interest.

  But then, how did a man make investments on a steward’s salary, particularly when he was using much of his income on a woman? How did he maintain his household accounts, put some by for his dotage, pay the help who served him day-to-day?

  “What have you found there?” Michael asked.

  “A few more leases,” Hugh said, pushing the stack across the blotter. “My own among them.”

  With Neil’s name scrawled across the top in pencil. Each lease had a name similarly annotated, in faint pencil, and not the leaseholder’s name.

  “You’re the only family still here. The rest of this stack have left.”

  “Neil nearly went into a decline when old Deardorff and his boys cleared out,” Hugh said, peering at the top lease. “Jack Deardorff was the closest thing Neil had to a friend, though they seldom socialized.”

  “I recall Olin Deardorff.” Michael traced Jack’s name—Johnson Andrew Deardorff—in a corner of the Deardorff lease. “He hated the winters and played a mean fiddle.” He’d also never liked Angus, not even when Michael had been a boy.

  “That he did. Angus would be happy if I were to clear out,” Hugh said, “but nothing we’ve found suggests he robbed Brenna at gunpoint and made off with a year’s profits.” Hugh scooped up the leases and put them back out of sight in the bottom drawer. “Do we keep looking?”

  “I don’t want to.”

  “I do,” Hugh said, studying a bookcase full of tomes on art, drawing, architecture, and sculpture. “I want to find something that will let you hound the bastard from the shire the way he’s tossed so many off their holdings, meaning no disrespect to my laird’s uncle, of course. I never knew Angus took his art so seriously.”

  “He has talent,” Michael said, rising from the desk. “My father admitted that much, but studying on the Continent thirty years ago was out of the question. Money was tight, the auld laird not convinced of the value of book learning beyond what it took to read the Bible, and France was falling into bloody disarray.” The office held no paintings, no drawings, and no feminine cutwork or framed embroidery.

  And that was also a relief.

  “If I were harboring evidence of a crime committed years ago, I’d not keep it in the rooms where tenants, company, or family might visit me,” Hugh offered with studied casualness.

  “Neither would I.” Michael closed the ledger book with a snap and reshelved it in the same position from which he’d removed it. “You take the family parlor. I’ll have a look around upstairs.”

  Hugh’s expression went blank, pityingly blank, for it was a sorry day when a man had to search through his uncle’s personal effects for evidence of a crime against family.

  Sixteen

  “I told him.” Lachlan’s voice held hope and pride.

  Maeve didn’t so much as turn to face him. “You told who?”

  “I told the laird you didn’t take the carrots.” Lachlan scrambled up onto the bench beneath the parapets. “You’re not supposed to be up here alone.”

  Boys were stupid. Cook was stupid. Older brothers were stupidest of all.

  “You’re up here with me, so I’m not alone, and Brenna said I could come up here.”

  If Maeve were honest, she’d admit she was glad to see Lachlan, even if he had kept silent while she’d suffered many injustices.

  Lachlan picked at a bit of moss growing from a crack in the stones.

  “Brenna probably said you could come up here when Prebish was about, or Elspeth. If you fell off the parapets, your head would split open like a tomato. You shouldn’t come up here without Elspeth or Brenna or somebody, and you should wear a shawl because it’s colder than down in the bailey. Don’t you want to know what I said?”

  Maeve was cold, inside and out, and she ached the way crying always made her ache. If she were with Bridget and Kevin, Bridget would have asked her to turn pages at the pianoforte while they sang silly songs, or Kevin might have taken her for a ramble to visit the latest batch of puppies.

  “All I want is to go home to Ireland. If you knew I didn’t take the carrots, why did you let Cook yell at me, and then let Michael send me to my room?”

  Almost as bad as the false accusations was that Lachlan had heard the whole business. To know he’d been able to speak up for her, and had waited until later to do so, made everything worse.

  Even worse, when things couldn’t really get any worse.

  “Nobody listens when they’re mad,” Lachlan said, standing on the bench to drop his bit of moss into the bailey below. “Besides, I didn’t want anybody to hear what I said to the laird.”

  A ray of cheer shone through Maeve’s black mood. “You broke something, in the butler’s pantry. Was it something valuable?”

  “I made any noise I could so they’d stop pestering you. I didn’t mean to break the platter.”

  Maeve’s upset eased a trifle. “Will you have to pay for the platter? Kevin gave me some money for my own before I left Ireland.” Kevin, who often smelled of horses and might yell at her sometimes, but only when she deserved it.

  Lachlan picked another bit of moss loose, a larger patch, and peered over the stone crenellations. Maeve stood too, because the view from up here was very grand.

  “I’ll pay for what I broke. Da would want me to, but the laird said it was an accident, and we all make mistakes. I think he’ll apologize to you.” The larger chunk of moss went sailing down, down, down to land in a pot of pansies.


  “Apologizing is nice. You shouldn’t throw things into the bailey like that.”

  Because somebody could come out of the castle or the stables and get pelted with the moss, and Maeve would probably be blamed for that too.

  Lachlan shot her a grin. “It’s fun, but I’m cold. They’ll change the flag when the party starts tomorrow. It takes two men, one to climb up, and one to keep a rope on the climber. For safety.”

  The party. All over again, Maeve felt the lump in her throat, the ache that was for Ireland, but not only for Ireland. The ache was because everybody was excited about that party, and nobody had time for her, not even when she asked if she could help. She turned her back to the cold stones, watching the pennant above them whip and flap in the stout breeze.

  “Climbing up there wouldn’t be so hard. The stones stick out like a ladder. Do you think I could see Ireland from up there?”

  “I think you could fall off the roof and split your head open on the cobbles,” Lachlan said. “I wouldn’t like that.”

  Tumbling from the roof would be awful, but for a few seconds, it might also feel like flying free.

  “I don’t want to go back down to the kitchen.”

  Because an apology was a fine thing, for making the wrongdoer feel better, but a few humble words wouldn’t undo the sense of betrayal Maeve felt from Cook, her brother, and even Lachlan.

  “I thought I’d find you two up here.” Brenna stood in the doorway to the winding steps, a shawl about her shoulders. “This was my favorite place when I was your age, but that breeze is chilly.”

  “I have boots to polish,” Lachlan said, rising and brushing past Brenna. “Good day, my lady.”

  Brenna unwrapped her shawl and tucked it around Maeve’s shoulders, bringing Maeve warmth and the scent of flowers. Then she sat beside Maeve and laid her arm across Maeve’s shoulders.

  “Did you come up here to cry, wee Maeve?”

  Of course, she had, but now that somebody who was blameless and even understanding was at hand, Maeve couldn’t say that.

  “Lachlan broke a platter. He might have to pay for it.”

  Brenna patted Maeve’s arm while the wind snapped the pennant’s rope against the flap pole in a rhythmic flap-flap-flap.

  “What was the boot boy doing, carting a breakable platter about, I wonder? Platters are heavy, and Lachlan has a fair bit of growing to do.”

  Platters were heavy, and homesickness was heavier still. Maeve turned her nose to Brenna’s shoulder.

  “I want to go home.”

  “I know, lass. It’s good that you have some place you love so much you miss it, but missing home and family hurts too. I’m glad you’re here, though.”

  Those words helped—some. “Can you invite Bridget and Kevin for a visit?”

  Brenna withdrew her arm, and when she straightened, even being wrapped in her shawl didn’t compensate Maeve for the resulting lack of warmth.

  “I cannot, because your sister ought not to travel when she’s close to having the baby, and I cannot tarry up here but a minute, there’s so much to be done.”

  “I hate Scotland.”

  “Come here,” Brenna said, moving to the side of the parapets that looked out over the loch.

  Maeve hopped off the stone bench, keeping Brenna’s shawl wrapped tightly about her, because the wind was worse on this side of the parapets.

  “Ireland is that way,” Brenna said, stretching out a hand in the direction of the loch. The water was dark today and frosted with whitecaps, and not a soul stirred on the shore. “There’s water between Scotland and Ireland, but also lots of beautiful countryside. You might write to your sister, you know. Tell her everything you don’t like about this place, tell her you miss her.”

  “That would be a long letter.”

  Brenna’s smile wasn’t that of a grown-up indulging a silly little girl. Her smile said she understood that even a silly little girl’s life could be hard and lonely sometimes. “You may use my desk, and I’ll have Cook send up a pot of chocolate. I can’t have you taking a chill.”

  That felt good, to be ever so gently scolded for lingering up on the windy heights. Maeve followed Brenna down the winding steps and started on a mental list of all the things about Scotland worth hating.

  ***

  The upper reaches of Angus’s house were not well lit, the housekeeper, as was prudent, having closed every drape and door to keep out the chill breeze and protect paintings, rugs, and furniture from the damaging effects of the sun.

  Michael found his uncle’s bedroom on the third try, the ubiquitous pipe scent even stronger than usual.

  The space was not unusual for a comfortably well-off gentleman’s private chamber, though Angus’s personal finances were becoming a mental sore tooth. A large bed dominated the room, raised two steps for warmth, swagged with burgundy velvet and adorned with matching pillows tasseled in gold.

  The bed was more imposing than the one Michael shared with Brenna.

  The shelves were full of books, some in French, titled in gilt lettering. A sturdy rocker sat near a large hearth, and a wardrobe occupied an interior wall. Above the hearth, where Michael might have expected a landscape of the Scottish countryside, a hunting scene, or some grand depiction of a stirring moment of Scottish history, hung another rendering of the children with the kitten.

  Unusual, perhaps, but not if Michael’s own mother had furnished the place.

  And yet… Why would Angus, who’d adorned his bed with tasseled pillows, keep that portrait as the last thing he saw each night?

  The sense of evidence eluding notice resurged, and along with it, a repugnance for the task Michael had set himself.

  The search here must be thorough, so Michael started with the wardrobe, intent on working his way around the room. Angus was well dressed, his shirts beautifully made, his boots a testament to the quality of goods available when a man had coin. Formal clan attire hung on the inside of the wardrobe door, proof Angus meant to attend the next day’s gathering.

  And yet, something was off.

  The wardrobe was a massive piece, as wardrobes tended to be. Nearly as high as the ceiling, several feet wide and several feet deep. The floor of the wardrobe was a good foot higher than the rug upon which it sat, however, suggesting…

  The false bottom came up easily, revealing a space packed the way a sailor might stow his goods in a trunk. Every inch of the compartment was used, and every article positioned for ease of access. To one side, Michael found yet more books, including what looked like sketchbooks.

  A cold foreboding slithered through Michael’s guts, a certainty that this was a central piece of the puzzle that must be put together if Michael was to make his castle a home for those he loved.

  Somebody moved about below stairs, a door closed—Hugh, nosing around among the pipe smoke and ledgers. Michael was abruptly glad that whatever lay in the bottom of Angus’s wardrobe would not be revealed to any save Michael.

  On closer inspection, the wardrobe held journals, the entries in the same tidy hand as all the ledgers in the office. Michael took a sketchbook off the bottom of the stack and crossed the room to a cushioned window seat, the better to see what he’d found.

  He pushed the drapes wide and flipped open the book to a page at random. The images on the page, the precision and skill in them, gave Michael a momentary reprieve from absorbing what he was seeing. When his mind caught up with the evidence of his eyes, he endured the sensation of a great mean fist squeezing his lungs, until his very vision dimmed, and his ears roared.

  Hugh found him in the window seat, an indefinite while later. “Laird?”

  At some point, Michael had thrown the sketchbook halfway across the room, and he saw now that it lay open on the rug before the empty hearth, a stash of letters having come free of it as well.

  What was needful was that Michael get up, gather those letters, and close that damned sketchbook, so nobody would ever see its contents.

  He could
not move.

  “Something amiss?” Hugh asked, hovering in the doorway. “I found nothing in the family parlor but more sketches of you, your sisters, and Brenna as a child, more cutwork and some framed embroidery. Not a very manly decorating scheme, but then I suppose a dower property—”

  Hugh’s words landed in Michael’s awareness like so many crows chattering from the parapets high above the bailey, while Michael’s every certainty about life and about himself lay shattered like Lachlan’s pretty platter in the dark confines of the butler’s pantry.

  “Laird?”

  “Don’t call me that, and don’t you dare look at the damned book.”

  So, of course, Hugh glanced down at the open sketchbook. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph.”

  The holy family, the very last invocation Michael might have chosen, given what was revealed in Angus’s drawing.

  “I said not to look.”

  “I’m not looking,” Hugh said, toeing the book closed as if it were a source of contagion, which it most assuredly was. “You did, though. You looked at every page?”

  Michael managed a single nod, and the remains of his breakfast threatened a reprise. Fortunately, Hugh was a father, a privilege Michael would never know, which was likely why Hugh could speak calmly even in the grip of fierce emotion.

  “Where did this piece of excrement come from?” Hugh asked, gathering up the letters scattered on the rug.

  “Bottom of the wardrobe. I want to wash my hands, Hugh.”

  And he wanted to kill his uncle. A small desperate hope remained that Angus had drawn those pictures from imagination, that Brenna hadn’t been made to pose without her clothing for an adult male’s perverted pleasure, that were Michael to read Angus’s journals, he’d find a recounting of crops harvested and calves born.

  Hugh shoved the sketchbook back where it had come from, replaced the floor of the wardrobe, and latched its doors. “Take this.”

  A handkerchief, the plain farmer’s variety, sporting a half-inch tear and a small clumsy embroidered bouquet likely done by wee Annie.

  Annie, whom nobody had allowed near Angus.