“The countess could be very pretty, but she doesn’t seem to care, does she? All those very boring dresses. Black and white, as if she’s afraid of the tiniest bit of color.”
“She’s just come out of mourning, I understand.”
“That’s another thing, she’s exceedingly gloomy to be around. All she talks about is Scotland and Gairloch. I quite want to yawn around her.”
“I believe she just wishes to tell you about Gairloch, Miss Loftus.”
“And ghosts?” Miriam laughed. “How can she expect us to believe in ghosts? Does the woman have any sense at all?”
“It is Scotland, after all, Miss Loftus.”
The voices were growing stronger.
Shona went to the fireplace and pushed the brick just below the end of the mantel on the right side. A section of wall opened soundlessly. She slipped inside and pulled down the iron torch holder to close the door.
Three hundred years ago, several defenses had been built into the castle. One was the Upper Courtyard, one was a well in the larder, and another a series of secret passages connecting the Laird’s Chamber with important rooms throughout the castle such as the library and the Clan Hall. The labyrinth of passages connected at one point toward the west, then began to slope downward in a steady descent, the angle of the passage mirroring the ground above it.
She’d used the passage dozens of times, as familiar with its contours as she was her own bedchamber. At the end of the tunnel Gordon would sometimes be waiting, reaching out one hand for her. Her hand in his, they’d laugh together, then race to their meeting place.
She’d never been afraid of the dark, never considered that there might be things in the darkness that could harm her. A good thing, since there was only a small slit of light around the opening of the passage door.
The sound of scrabbling paws reminded her that she’d not been a good chatelaine of the castle. In her mother’s day, vermin were effectively eradicated, a process that involved a dozen maids, a fair share of poison, and constant efforts at cleanliness.
She hadn’t given orders for boiling water to be used to scrub the kitchen floor. Nor had she placed small tubs of water beneath the bedposts. The smell of dust was another reminder of what she hadn’t yet accomplished. Every room needed to be swept, the tapestries on several of the walls carefully shaken, the paintings with their ornate gilt frames treated with a bit more care. And here, in the passages, normally kept as clean as possible, she’d done nothing at all.
The Americans had the money to hire enough staff to care for each and every item at Gairloch, each precious reminder of her heritage. Was it possible to be grateful to her saviors at the same time she loathed them?
A breath of air swept across her cheek. A reminder that the passage connected with other secret corridors in the castle.
She stood on tiptoe, peering through the opening into the Clan Hall. Miriam stood in the doorway, laughing. Amusement no doubt at Shona’s expense. What was she ridiculing now? Her hair? Her manner of speech? Her nose?
No, she really didn’t like the woman.
She could tolerate remarks about herself, but it seemed pointless to ridicule a place and rude to denigrate an entire country.
Miriam Loftus was simply young and spoiled. The girl was in a foreign country, among strangers.
Had she acted the same once? Had she believed that anything she did or said would be forgiven?
“Can you imagine anything so backward,” Miriam was saying. “Ghosts? Poor thing if she really believes in such things.”
What did Miriam believe in? Only money? Or perhaps adulation?
“I can’t begin to tell you what she said to me. I would have thought a countess would have more breeding.” Miriam laughed, a tinkling little laugh that went straight to Shona’s spine. “But I do admit that the thought of Gordy naked is a tantalizing one.”
Oh, that was just too much.
Throwing her shawl over her head, Shona reached up with her right hand and pulled down on the bottom of the torch holder. When the wall slid open, she raced out of the opening, arms outstretched, hands curved into claws, yelling Gaelic at the top of her voice.
Miriam took one look at her and screamed.
For that perfect second in time, it was worth being foolish and childish and silly.
Miriam, however, clutched her bodice with both hands, and sank to her knees, her mouth still open. For a moment, Shona could only stare at her as tiny little shrieks emerged from Miriam’s open mouth.
Elizabeth knelt at her side, patting her back gently.
At least the floor was clean.
Shona pulled the shawl off her head and stood staring down at the woman in amazement. Now Miriam was rocking back and forth, hugging herself, tears streaming down her face.
“Oh bother,” she said. “There’s no reason for hysterics.”
She doubted anyone could hear her over Miriam’s loud sobbing. Certainly not Elizabeth, who was murmuring something soothing. Not Helen, who’d come racing in from somewhere. Or Gordon, who stood in the doorway with the oddest expression on his face.
Heat traveled up her spine as ice pooled at the base of it.
“What were you screaming at her?” Elizabeth asked. She was now fanning Miriam’s face, which had paled to an alarming shade, something resembling plaster.
“Is there something wrong with her?”
Elizabeth met her gaze. “She’s excitable.”
Too excitable—a comment she was not about to make, especially since everyone was looking at her as if she’d done something horrible. Very well, it wasn’t very mature, granted, but it hardly merited this act of Miriam’s.
“It was a scone recipe,” Gordon said from the doorway.
Elizabeth blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”
“Shona was yelling a recipe for scones,” Gordon said dryly, his gaze flicking over her as he entered the room.
“It was the first thing I could think of,” she said in her own defense. “It’s not as if I speak Gaelic every day.”
Fergus arrived to make her humiliation complete. He said something to Gordon, and Gordon relayed the events of the last few minutes. Gordon looked as if he was holding back his amusement.
Fergus, however, wasn’t.
Embarrassment had her taking a few backward steps out of the room. Fergus’s gaze would have pinned her there, but she had no intention of remaining in the Clan Hall. Miriam was being coaxed to one of the benches, and now Gordon—Gordon!—was comforting her.
He might have been rude to her earlier, but he was exceedingly solicitous of dear Miriam now. Would she like something to drink? A restorative? Would she like him to fetch her smelling salts? Would she like his escort to her chamber?
“She doesn’t believe in the ghosts of Gairloch,” she said, hearing her own voice and wincing at both the whiny tone and the idiotic explanation.
What had come over her?
Helen was coming to her side, her eyes filled with confusion. What could she say to her companion? That she’d suddenly become twelve again? That hearing Miriam disparage Gairloch was like inflicting a wound? Worse, she’d admitted that
Gordy
fascinated her.
She really had no idea the woman was so easily frightened.
“It was just a jest,” she said, looking at the circle of stony faces.
No one said a word.
When she slipped from the room, not one person was paying any attention to her. Instead, they clustered around Miriam, Gordon the closest of all.
Chapter 14
G
ordon laughed all the way home.
His conscience chastised him for making fun of an incident that had caused Miss Loftus a great deal of distress. But the look on Shona’s face when she’d been caught reminded him of too many other episodes in their shared past.
She’d been fifteen the last time he’d seen that wide-eyed acknowledgment of her own stupidity.
The younger Shona had had a habit of tossing her head, as if in defiance of his words, her parents’ dictates, or society at large. She’d learned, over the years, to deliver a look of such penetrating disdain that the object of it immediately understood Miss Imrie’s thoughts. Nor had she measured her words to determine which ones were appropriate for the circumstances.
He’d thought the younger Shona gone, but she’d been hiding. Today, he’d seen her again. In addition, she hadn’t lost that ability to skewer him with words.
Yes, I pleased him in bed. You were a good teacher.
Words that irritated like a burr in his boot.
A carriage was in his drive. He wasn’t expecting company, unless Rani had changed his mind about staying at Rathmhor. As he dismounted, one of the stable boys came up to attend to his horse.
“You’ve a visitor,” Mrs. MacKenzie said at the front door, her round face flushed. “A very important man from the looks of it,” she said, following him into the house. “Very important entirely, Sir Gordon. I’ve put him in the front sitting room.”
“He’ll have to wait until I’m settled,” he said, looking down the hall as if he could see the visitor through the walls. “Did he state his business?”
She shook her head.
“Give you his card?”
Again, she shook her head.
“Why, then, do you think he’s important, Mrs. MacKenzie?”
He stripped off his hat, gloves, and coat, leaving them on the chair in the front hall.
“He’s a military man, Sir Gordon, with more medals than the general.”
An important man, indeed, and an emissary from the army was the last person he wanted to see.
He considered telling Mrs. MacKenzie that he’d been unavoidably detained—for a year or two. But if he refused to see the man, they’d just send someone else.
“Have you offered our guest refreshments, Mrs. MacKenzie?” A testament to his distraction that he didn’t realize the question was offensive to a woman of his housekeeper’s dedication until she replied.
“A bit of tea and some pastries,” she said, her voice curt.
He nodded, knowing he’d have to make amends for implying she’d been negligent.
The front sitting room was exactly twenty-three paces from the front door. He made the journey counting each of his steps, concentrating on the slats of the well-polished floor beneath his boots.
He stood on the threshold, meeting the other man’s gaze. The man seated in the overstuffed chair and finishing up the last of Mrs. MacKenzie’s pastries was possessed of a bearing the equal to his father’s. If it could be said that General MacDermond had a mentor—or even an idol, if he were to ascribe such an emotion to his father—it would be General Horace Abbott. Tall, lanky, with graying hair, an angular face, and a gravelly voice accustomed to giving orders, Abbott was of sufficient rank that Gordon hesitated at the doorway.
The War Office must be worried.
Mrs. MacKenzie had been right. General Abbott was in full military regalia, complete with an impressive array of medals.
If you eat your porridge, darling, I’ll give you a pastie.
His long-dead mother’s voice made him wonder, suddenly, if medals were the army’s equivalent of a pastie. The more medals a man had, the more obedient he’d proven himself to be?
At least they hadn’t sent one of his father’s subordinates to plead their case. No, this man had the ear of Prince George, the Duke of Cambridge, who’d become the commander-in-chief of the army a few years earlier. As such, General Abbott was often courted, endlessly praised, and continuously feared.
“I’m not interested in going back into the army,” he said, before the other man could speak. “So if you’ve come for that reason, I’m sorry you’ve traveled all this way. If you’ve come to extend your condolences, consider them extended.”
“I haven’t come for either reason,” General Abbott said.
He didn’t think so. “Why are you here?”
“For a very important matter, Gordon. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have disturbed your retreat.”
The fact that the man called him Gordon, conveying a camaraderie the two had never shared, didn’t bother him as much as the fact that Abbott was smiling. Nothing good could come from General Abbott’s smile.
“I’ve resigned,” he said flatly, closing the door with more force than it required. He didn’t sit, but began a slow pace in front of the chair, from the fireplace to the window, now darkening with night.
Abbott didn’t say a word, either to urge him to sit or calm or listen, another clue that this wasn’t a normal visit. General Abbott was an autocrat. His men were terrified of him because he demanded it. No doubt the general reasoned that terror and deference were brothers.
After several moments of silence, the only sound the thump of Gordon’s boots on the polished floorboards, he spoke again.
“It’s not a retreat, General. It’s my home.”
“I beg your pardon, Gordon. I only availed myself of the term your father used.”
“My father considered Rathmhor a place to come between wars,” he said. “I don’t.”
Abbott nodded.
“Why are you here?” he asked, tired of being patient. He wasn’t Abbott’s subordinate anymore. He didn’t have to worry about being sent off to some god-awful duty because he’d annoyed the great general.
“To ask a question, and convey a request.”
Had Abbott always been cryptic? They’d never actually spoken at length before, since being a colonel didn’t put him in the upper echelon of the British Army. But he’d been forced to listen to Abbott’s speeches, addressing his line officers, and he’d heard of him often enough from his father.
“Ask your question, General. And your request.”
“I understand you’re working on a secret formula for an explosive.”
It wasn’t surprise that halted him, but the amusement that came from being right. Slowly, he resumed his pacing, his gaze never leaving the other man.
“My father,” he said, after two passes across the floor. “My father told you.”
Abbott nodded. “Was he incorrect?”
“He was wrong to tell you,” Gordon said. “He violated a trust in doing so. But, no, he wasn’t incorrect.”
Abbott drew himself up, a commanding position despite still being seated. “What use do you have for such an explosive?”