Authors: Christina Dodd
At first, Enid applied herself exclusively to her meal, discovering that when she finished one item, three more appeared on her tray, each more appetizing than the last. It had indeed been a very long time since breakfast. Finally, replete, she had to lean back and wave away any further offerings.
Lady Bess had been observing her closely. “You’ve got a good appetite, I’ll say that for you. Glad to see you’re not one of those modern damsels who’ll sacrifice a rib to possess a tiny waist.”
“After the week I’ve had, my waist is as tiny as it’s going to get,” Enid said.
“Hm.” Lady Bess tapped her cigar into an ashtray and smirked. “Aye, my son cares not for a tiny waist.”
Irritated by the unwarranted assumptions everyone seemed to be making, Enid said, “I don’t care what MacLean cares for.”
“Don’t you?” Lady Bess gestured toward him.
MacLean looked relaxed as never before. He stood among a group of men, waving a strawberry as he
spoke. The men guffawed, even Jackson, whom Enid had thought a proper stick of a valet. Apparently Scotland had loosened him up . . . and frightened Mr. Kinman, who followed MacLean as if they were sewn together with a fancy stitch. When the outer door opened, two men walked in and went to MacLean, shaking their heads.
“Ah, too bad, they found nothing.” Lady Bess sighed. “Still, it’s grand to see Kiernan back. I’m a fair manager until the men fight, and then I want to knock their heads together until they ring. Kiernan can listen to their silly arguments and make good judgments, and they’ll not grumble.”
“They don’t grumble aboot ye, either, m’lady.” Donaldina drank a swig from the cup set before her and smacked her gums together.
“They’re afraid of me. They respect MacLean.” Lady Bess lounged in her chair. “Look. The MacQuarrie must have roused himself from bed to hustle over here and pay his respects to Kiernan.”
“Th’ auld fool,” Donaldina said affectionately. “He’ll be wanting t’ spend th’ night in my bed, I expect.”
“I expect you’ll let him, too.” Lady Bess turned to Enid and pointed her cigar at the man who shook MacLean’s hand. “See the elderly man with the hair that looks like seaweed? That’s the laird of the MacQuarries. They didn’t survive the troubles nearly as well as the MacLeans, so Kiernan has helped them with a loan or two.”
Donaldina snorted into her mug. “I ha’e half a mind t’ tell the MacLean where th’ money came from.”
“Never you mind that, Donaldina,” Lady Bess said firmly. “Now look, Catriona has come down.”
Donaldina turned to watch as the crowd around MacLean gave way for a lady older than Lady Bess and dressed in the finest and most modern fashion. “Do ye opine she’ll ha’e one o’ her fits?” Donaldina asked with interest.
“He’s bearing bad news, so aye.” Lady Bess told Enid, “That lady with the gray hair is Lady Catriona MacLean, Kiernan’s aunt and my husband’s sister-in-law.”
Enid frankly stared. So that was Stephen’s mother—a sweet face, round, dimpled cheeks, a button nose. Yet a perpetual frown puckered her brows.
Lady Bess continued, “She has seen great sorrow in her life. Her husband died before the birth of their son, and that son disappeared over a year ago. We all knew Stephen had found trouble when he didn’t come home even to borrow money.”
“Amen.” Donaldina sank further into her drink.
Lady Catriona approached MacLean timidly, as if she were afraid he would reject her. Her trepidation surprised Enid; everyone respected MacLean, but no one else seemed the least intimidated by him.
Lady Bess watched her sister-in-law without fondness. “Kiernan, who suffers from an overdeveloped sense of familial duty, went to find Stephen.”
“I wonder where he got th’ overdeveloped sense o’ duty, m’lady,” Donaldina interjected.
“I said we weren’t going to talk about it anymore, Donaldina.”
“Aye, m’lady.” Donaldina turned to Enid. “But we know, don’t we?”
No, Enid didn’t know, but she was curious. Curious about Lady Bess, and intent on watching Stephen’s mother to see how she would respond to the news of her son’s death. Stephen had spoken of his mother with open contempt. How did Lady Catriona think of her son?
“Kiernan disappeared for over ten months,” Lady Bess said. “I assume from Kiernan’s scars he found Stephen, eh?”
Enid nodded her assent.
“Too late to save him, I’d deduce, and Kiernan got injured trying to get that feckless boy out of trouble. Eh?”
Enid nodded again, her gaze glued to the drama taking place in the middle of the great hall.
When MacLean realized his aunt stood there, he gestured her over. She hugged him with what appeared to be coy affection, hung on his arm like ivy, and spoke.
Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, he escorted her to a chair. Kneeling beside her, he shook his head, and said only a few words before she burst into tears, knocked him away, leaped up and fled the room.
“Weel, there it is.” Lady Bess puffed at the noxious cigar until smoke wreathed her head. “It’s not kind of me to say so, but Stephen’s death is no great loss. Catriona indulged the lad dreadfully. Thought everything he did was perfect. And cling! She never gave him room to grow into a man. No wonder he turned out to be a wastrel and a coward.”
How very interesting. From Stephen’s comments about his mother, Enid had deduced that very thing.
“If Stephen had gotten my son killed,” Lady Bess
continued, “I would have chased him to hell to kick his arse.”
Enid stifled an inappropriate laugh. “Someone needed to kick his . . . um . . . arse.”
Lady Bess straightened her shoulders.
Donaldina sat upright.
They exchanged glances.
In a cordial tone that didn’t fool Enid, Lady Bess said, “You know, dear, I’m an auld woman whose hearing’s not too good, and I don’t recall hearing your name.”
MacLean hadn’t given her name, as Lady Bess knew very well. But Enid couldn’t put off this terrible moment; it had to be faced with courage. So in a clear voice that carried halfway down the table, Enid declared, “I’m Enid MacLean. I’m Stephen’s widow.”
Everyone had gone to bed except the little contingent of Englishmen. Kinman, Jackson, and five of Throckmorton’s best men sat before the fire, legs stretched onto the ottomans, smoking cigars and waiting their turn to speak with MacLean.
Before he got to them and answered their impatient questions, he had one more conversation. His mother sat alone in the master’s chair. A cigar smoked in the ashtray beside her, and she shuffled playing cards and laid them out in tidy piles in preparation for solitaire.
She had always loved cards. When Kiernan was a child, she had taught him all sorts of games, games that sharpened his skills at adding and subtracting, then at strategy and intelligence. She taught him how to read his opponent, how to win graciously, and how
to lose without obvious regret. He utilized those skills every day.
Yet he never played cards with her anymore.
She rose as he strode toward her; he pressed her down and pulled out one of the benches beside her. “You’ve earned your place at the head of the table,” he said. “I heard about Torquil and Eck and their fight over the long-eared racehorse.”
Waving an indolent arm, Lady Bess said, “ ‘Twas nothing. Took no more than the wisdom of Solomon to make them see sense.”
MacLean knew them. She did not exaggerate. “They’re stubborn men, both,” he acknowledged.
“Stupid men . . . but aren’t they all?” She poked fun at him, as she always did.
She said things to him she would never say to another soul, things that made him want to say things best left unsaid, for she was not without sin, blast her. But she was his mother, and worthy of respect, for she had done a marvelous job tending his estate. “You know what I came to ask,” he said.
“That’s why I stayed here when your English gentlemen are chomping at the bit.” She smiled at Kinman, who was peering around his chair at them.
Kinman blushed and ducked away.
“Where’s my sister?” MacLean demanded.
His mother ground out her cigar. “It’s not good news this time.”
“When is it ever?” He thought savagely of Caitlin, long-legged as a colt and just as wild.
“This is the worst.” Lady Bess looked down at the cards. “She’s gone off to avenge you.”
MacLean hoped he hadn’t heard properly. “Avenge me? What do you mean, avenge me?”
“We feared you were dead. Caitlin was broken-hearted, and so enraged that she ran off, determined to trace your footsteps and punish your killer.”
“No.” Not that he didn’t believe his mother. Only that the thought of his little sister out in the world looking for trouble made him ill. “How does she think to avenge me? No—please don’t tell me. Just tell me you’ve searched for her.”
“She wrote us from London. She said nothing of her quest to avenge you, and I want to think she went to that great city and abandoned her mad idea.” Blindly, Lady Bess moved a card.
“I want to think that, too.” But he didn’t, and in truth, neither did his mother. Caitlin was as stubborn a lass as any to be found, and she had the persistence of a bulldog. “What is she doing in London?” A new worry sprang to mind. “How is she supporting herself?”
“She’s not still in London. She found a position through the . . .” Lady Bess reached into her cleavage and pulled out a well-folded sheet of paper. “. . . Through the Distinguished Academy of Governesses.”
Hope glimmered. “That is the agency which found Enid her position with Lady Halifax. A respectable agency. They would not send her into danger.”
Leaning forward, Lady Bess gripped his arm. “Truly? You know this?”
For all her indolent appearance, she was, he realized, deeply afraid for her daughter. “Truly. Have you written them?”
“I sent them a letter, and I got a polite letter in return from a Lady Bucknell. She said Caitlin seemed sensible enough, had good references, and claimed to be twenty-five, which she is, so Lady Bucknell sent her out on a job in the Lake Country. She said she would write Caitlin and ask that she contact me, but that she couldn’t demand the child return.”
“The child is a woman.” Leaning across his mother, he moved a red queen onto a black king.
Lady Bess lightly slapped his hand.
“It doesn’t sound as if she’s in danger. Did Lady Bucknell give Caitlin’s location?”
“In the island nation of Rasnull. I sent a messenger to find her when we discovered you were alive. Perhaps that will bring her home.”
“Yes.” He stroked his chin again, and in a low voice, said, “And perhaps she will stay where she is and there find happiness.”
Moisture shined in Lady Bess’s eyes. “Kiernan!”
For the first time, he said what they both knew. “My lady mother, she can’t find contentment here. No matter how hard we try to protect her, everyone whispers about the scandal and she hears it.”
“I know.” Lady Bess laughed without humor as she considered her own scandal. “I do know.”
But you deserve the whispers and the slander.
He didn’t say it, for Caitlin deserved the whispers and the slander, too. She had been the spoiled daughter of the clan MacLean, and she had wantonly thrown away her good name on a viper, a scoundrel . . . a man he had cherished like a brother.
“So, for the moment, we will assume that all is well
with her.” Lady Bess picked up the cards, reshuffled, and laid them out again. “You have grown great in wisdom.” She seemed serious, then she smiled at him, mocking him in the old, familiar way. “A man as great in wisdom as you must recognize that it’s time you married.”
Slowly he leaned back. “You think so?”
“Taking care of matters while you were gone showed me I’m too old for the burden of such responsibilities.”
“You’re not too old,” he snapped. She wasn’t. She had given birth to him when she was but sixteen, and he never remembered a time when he hadn’t thought his mother a beautiful woman. Also outrageous, burly, difficult to live with, and a frequent embarrassment.
“Weel,
you
almost are.” She shook her head over the cards and gathered them up once again. “There’s not many women who’ll want to marry an auld geezer like you, especially one who’s not been broken in by a first wife.”
“Do you have anyone in mind?”
“Let’s not play games, son.” Lady Bess rapped the deck against the table. “You made your claim on Enid clear tonight.”
“Does it not bother you that she is my cousin’s wife?”
“Stephen’s
widow
, and obviously she is none of the terrible things he claimed. He lied to keep Catriona happy.” Lady Bess’s lip curled with the scorn she always showed when she spoke of his aunt. “Catriona would never allow another woman in her son’s life.”
MacLean remembered how Catriona had struck him aside as he’d tried to comfort her on the loss of her son.
The woman had adored Stephen with a zealot’s fervor. As it was, even in his death he had brought them disgrace. “I know.” He fumbled for his mother’s hand. “So you . . . like Enid?”
She squeezed his fingers. “Marry her and give me grandchildren, and I’ll adore her.”
A wisp of warmth curled in his gut. He shouldn’t give a damn what his mother thought. He should just take Enid and make her his wife . . . he took a breath. Ah, so that was his plan. He had to have Enid, so he would marry her.
“Will you do that?” Lady Bess asked.
And he wanted Lady Bess to like Enid. Obviously, she did or that plain-spoken woman would have made her feelings clear. “Enid doesn’t care for me much right now.”
“Not that you’ve ever had to bother before, but you could court the lass.” As she rose, she ridiculed him with her smile. “Ask me if you need advice.”
“I will not.”
“You would never ask your wicked old mother for advice.” She touched his cheek. “The more fool, you.”
MacLean watched as she drifted through the great hall toward her bed, attracting the gaze of every able-bodied man still awake.
Damn the woman. She poked fun at him, and he responded with instinctive defiance every time. She always raised his hackles, she always laughed at him afterward, and he always felt the fool she called him. No, not a fool—a child, chided by his mother for not seeing through to the truth. But he knew the truth about her . . . didn’t he?