Not if Fergus had anything to say about it.
They might starve to death, but Gairloch would remain inviolate.
Helen threw back the covers from her side of the bed. There hadn’t been time to ready two chambers last night, so countess and companion had shared a lumpy mattress in a stale room. Helen stared at the floor as if trying to come to grips with the reality of dawn. With her hair arranged in one fat braid, she looked a great deal younger than once she was dressed all proper and prim.
“We’ll make what we can for breakfast,” she said, smiling at the other woman. “When that’s done, we’ll begin cleaning.”
Helen nodded. “It will take my mind from my hunger.”
She hesitated at the screen and turned back to Helen. “Thank you,” she said.
“Whatever for?”
“For not grumbling about the task. I know you were not hired to be a charwoman.”
Helen shrugged. “One must do what one must do,” she said. A smile trembled on her lips. “You’re a countess, and yet I’ll wager that you work as hard as anyone today.”
“There’s no other choice,” she said. “Old Ned seems useless. Fergus will insist on helping but shouldn’t tax himself.”
Helen slid from the bed. “Then we’ll have to be enough,” she said.
Once dressed and fed—such as it was—they began in the Clan Hall.
The room was cavernous, taking up the whole of the middle of Gairloch. Its mirror was the Family Parlor, reached through a tall arched doorway in the middle of the far wall. Here, however, was where the members of the clan had congregated to adjudicate disputes, pay their yearly rents, or meet before battle.
The room had not been furnished for comfort but for gatherings. In the corner, on a small pedestal barely a foot high, sat the laird’s chair. Constructed of wood that had once been painted but was worn and dark now, it had two broad arms, and a tall back inscribed with the clan’s badge: five upward pointing spears gathered by a ribbon on which were written the Gaelic motto:
Be afraid of nothing
.
She stared at it for a moment, wondering if any of the lairds of the past faced what she did now—a penury so encompassing that she worried about food.
Two round tables with accompanying chairs sat on either end of the room. Other than a series of benches arrayed against each wall, there was no other seating. Comfortable chairs, settees, and lamps were reserved for the Family Parlor.
The echoes of war seemed to linger in this room, and it had always been odd to her that no one had ever sighted any of the ghosts of Gairloch in the Clan Hall.
“I think it would be best,” she said, looking over the room, “to begin from the top down. We’ll lower the chandelier, clean it first, then dust, and lastly sweep and wash the floors.”
“A masterful plan of attack, my general,” Fergus said from the doorway.
She turned, surveying him from head to toe. His clothing was wrinkled, but that was to be expected. His hair was brushed, however, and he’d taken the time to shave. Neither Fergus nor Gordon wore beards, so at odds with fashion that she wondered if it was a small rebellion of theirs.
His eyes, however, were clear, and if he leaned a bit too heavily on his cane, she wouldn’t mention it.
“Did you use the back stairs this time?” she asked, arranging the buckets, brushes, and rags as if they held more interest than her brother’s health.
“I nearly slid down them,” he said.
She quickly glanced up to see the smile he and Helen exchanged.
“I care about you,” she said, annoyed. “Or I wouldn’t ask.”
“You care too much, Shona,” he said, entering the room. “One would think you were my mother. Not my younger sister. My much younger sister.”
His look was steady and this time she glanced away first.
“We left toast for you,” Helen said.
“Found it, ate it, and looked about for more food. Shouldn’t we solve that problem before we begin to clean?”
“I’ll solve the food situation,” she said, handing Helen a bucket and some rags.
Inside the bucket was a jar of ashes to be used to brush into the carpet in the Family Parlor. If they could finish the almost monumental task of cleaning the Clan Hall, they’d move on to that room.
“We could live here,” Fergus said. “We’ve the forest for wood and there’s plenty of game. You could set the kitchen garden to rights. Who cares if there’s only the three of us, plus Old Ned, rattling around?”
He could barely walk. Now he was talking of hunting and chopping wood?
She pushed down her impatience, remaining silent as if she was entertaining his idea. He didn’t know that she’d spent many, many sleepless hours trying to figure a way out of their dilemma. The lamentable fact was that the three of them were woefully unequipped to fend for themselves, even at Gairloch.
“Have you come to help?” she asked.
When he nodded, she smiled, having figured out a task that would leave him his pride and not exhaust him.
She went to the doorway, pointing to where a rope was wound around a pair of iron spikes set into the wall.
“If you’d lower the chandelier, please,” she said, “Helen and I will clean it.”
She walked away, determinedly not looking to see if he needed assistance. The chandelier was heavy, and even with the rope on a pulley, it would be a chore. But the effort would require his arms, not his wounded leg, and use enough strength that Fergus wouldn’t feel she coddled him too much.
What a delicate thing was a man’s pride.
She grabbed her bucket and walked to the other side of the room. Fergus swore, then swiftly apologized. Neither Helen nor she looked in his direction. He would just have to manage. If he asked for her help, she’d be at his side the next second. However, the creak of the pulley indicated that he was managing quite well.
“Damn heavy, Shona,” he said, before apologizing for his language again.
She looked up at the lowering chandelier.
For months, worry had filled every moment, but for a few short minutes, it was pushed aside by regret. And, perhaps, grief as she stared at the cobwebs that swept from the corners to tenuously perch on the chandeliers, and then draped from shield to claymore to dirk. A message that the past was dead, given a dust shroud, and decorated by industrious spiders.
Helen’s stomach growled, the sound embarrassingly loud in the silence. When she excused herself to go and fill the buckets, Shona turned to her brother.
“I’ll have food here by this afternoon,” she said.
The villagers of Invergaire would be more than happy to assist them, since all their ancestors had been clan members. But she wasn’t about to go door to door, explaining their plight. The shame of even having that thought was painful.
We’re poor. We’re beyond poor. We’re destitute, and we’ve nothing but Gairloch.
Hardly words she’d utter aloud.
The minister, however, had been a friend of her parents. In addition to officiating at her parents’ funeral, he’d married her in the church at Invergaire. This afternoon, she would travel the short distance to Invergaire and beg, because begging was what it would be.
Helen should never have asked Gordon for help. He’d aid Fergus, perhaps, but she couldn’t even be sure of that. Not once in the six months since they’d returned from India had he written.
And have my letters returned?
She wouldn’t have done that. A still, small voice whispered that she might have. She had no reason when it came to Gordon.
The black dress she was wearing was one of her oldest, so she wasn’t concerned about its welfare. She used one of the longer rags to bind her hair. After Helen returned from filling up the two buckets, she did the same.
The chandelier, an elaborate ring of interlocking circles, held sconces for two dozen thick pillared candles. In the last century, glass shields had been placed around the candles so that the hapless visitors standing under the chandelier wouldn’t be showered with hot wax.
She’d thought to bring a knife from the kitchen and it was the first tool she used, scraping off dried puddles at the base of the candles.
“Are there any more candles in the pantry?” she asked, turning toward Fergus, who was tying off the rope now that the chandelier had been lowered.
“Is that my new task?” he asked.
“That, and making sure the stove is lit,” she said, smiling.
He only nodded and left the room, leaving her and Helen to their chore.
By the time he returned, they’d finished scraping and polishing. The iron would never be attractive, being a dull gray cast, but the glass shields sparkled.
“We’ve only got three candles,” Fergus said.
With the remaining five, they would provide some illumination. Perhaps the Americans would see the dimness of the Clan Hall as atmospheric. A true Scottish castle, complete with shadows and hints of other times.
Raising the chandelier took more time and effort, but once again, she refused to assist Fergus. Nor did he call for help. Instead, she and Helen made quick work of dusting the rest of the furniture, and what weapons they could reach.
Please, God, let the Americans purchase Gairloch.
The last task remaining in the Clan Hall was to sweep and mop the floor. Helen swept while she went into the kitchen. The well was located in the corner of the kitchen, topped by a surround of bricks a foot high. She knelt, filled the buckets, and heated some water in one of the large pots hanging over the table. After the buckets were filled with hot water, she carried them one by one into the Clan Hall.
The stone floor was sufficiently hard—and dirty—that she had little to think about other than her chore. Helen worked beside her, with Fergus periodically replacing their dirty water with clean.
When she reached the wall, she moved to the side to help Helen.
“Now that’s a sight. The Countess of Morton scrubbing.”
She stopped, frozen to the spot, on her hands and knees with a scrub brush in her hand.
Of course, it was Gordon. Colonel Sir Gordon. What a ridiculous title. Of course, he’d arrived now, when perspiration was rolling off her forehead and her dress was uncomfortably damp under her arms.
Of course, she was filthy.
She didn’t look up and she didn’t comment. Let him say what he would, a response wouldn’t get the floor clean. He said something to Fergus that she couldn’t hear, but when both men laughed, she gritted her teeth.
Miserable man.
She glanced at Helen. If she looked as bad as Helen, she was in a deplorable state indeed. Since she didn’t hear anything further, she risked a glance behind her. Both men had disappeared from the doorway.
“Do you think he’s brought food?” Helen whispered, looking as hopeful as Shona suddenly felt.
“If he has, then he can say anything he wishes about me,” she said, rising to her feet.
She glanced down at her dress. In addition to water spots, it looked as if she’d scrubbed the floor with the skirt. Her fingernails were brown, her face warm and no doubt flushed. She probably had streaks of dirt on her face as well, and she knew her hair was a mess because some tendrils had escaped the rag she’d used.
Stiffening her back, she looked around the room.
“We’ve done as much as we can do here,” she said, as Helen finished up her section of the floor and stood.
“Perhaps we’ll have a small tea?” Helen asked.
Shona’s stomach rumbled at the thought.
She nodded, leading the way to the Lower Courtyard, praying that Gordon had indeed brought provisions.
Provisions?
He’d brought the whole of northeast Scotland with him.
The wagon he, Fergus, and Old Ned were offloading looked to be filled with enough baskets, jars, and canisters to feed them all for a month. In addition, there were two sides of beef.
Did he think they were starving?
Her initial relief was tempered by a dawning awareness that he’d known, exactly, what sort of difficulty they were facing. Embarrassment began a march from her toes, warming her skin as it traveled upward to blossom in her cheeks.
She should have refused his largesse and sped him from the courtyard with a word or two to let him know that she wasn’t to be pitied.
There were others to consider, however. Fergus, who’d not yet fully recovered from his wounds. Helen, who’d been rescued from poverty and hopelessness only to be thrust back into it again as her companion. She’d not been able to pay Helen for months now, and the other woman’s only comment was that she was happy to have a roof over her head and sustenance.
Sustenance she hadn’t even been able to provide.
When he mounted the steps, a side of beef slung over one shoulder, she moved aside. Any comment she wanted to make, was desperate to make, was silenced by his generosity.
She would have to thank him, and not only did that thought rankle, but it was something she’d have to practice.
Would her lips even form the words in his presence?
Seven years earlier, she’d been dependent upon his charity. She hadn’t liked it then any more than she did at this moment.
She closed her eyes and prayed for patience and restraint, neither easily accomplished since Helen moved to stand beside her, relaying the inventory in an awe-filled whisper.
“It looks like a canister of chocolate, Shona. Chocolate! Do you know how long it’s been since we had chocolate?”
“At least two years,” she said, opening her eyes. It did, indeed, look like a canister of chocolate sitting atop a barrel of something that Old Ned was pulling down from the wagon bed.
Evidently, Old Ned had slept the night before and abjured the use of the bottle to scare off the ghosts. Was he more reassured since the three of them had arrived? Or had Fergus simply taken his whiskey away?
Life was so much easier in Inverness. It wasn’t better; it was just easier.
She left the courtyard in favor of the Family Parlor, Helen ghosting her.
“We need to work in here,” she said, hoping that Helen wouldn’t ask about food for the moment.
Evidently, the other woman heard the resolve in her voice—it wasn’t the hint of unshed tears—because Helen didn’t say a word, merely stepped over the wet spots on the floor, grabbed her bucket, and followed.