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“If he doesn’t have the courtesy to make proper conversation with you, then perhaps you might draw it out of him by engaging him as we discussed.”
Avaline glanced over her shoulder. “What questions?”
“I can’t give you specific ones,” Bernadette said. “You must allow the conversation to guide you.”
Avaline turned from the window, looking confused. “Meaning?”
“Just...questions, Avaline,” Bernadette said impatiently. “Any entry that will give him leave to talk about himself. You might ask where he attended school. Did he have tutors, what is the name of his dog, does he enjoy hunting or riding.”
“What if he doesn’t enjoy riding or hunting?”
Bernadette’s patience was hanging by a tiny thread. She realized this was a difficult situation for Avaline, but could the girl not construct a few logical thoughts in her head? Did she truly have no sense of how to make conversation with a gentleman? “The point, darling, is to simply ask questions to promote conversation. Ask if he had a favorite governess, if takes his meals at Balhaire or his home, what is his favorite activity—questions.”
“Yes, I see,” Avaline said quickly, always eager to please, whether she knew how or not.
Bernadette sighed. She sat on the arm of the settee, her hands braced against her knees. “Like this,” she said, softening her voice and, hopefully, any outward sign of her growing frustration. “You might ask him ‘Do you often sail with your brother?’ And he might answer you completely, or say something quite curt, as he is wont to do, such as no. Then what do you say?”
Avaline shook her head.
“You say something like ‘I had my first voyage here, and I found it quite pleasing, although I took a bit seasick when we were in open waters. Have you ever experienced it?’”
Avaline blinked. “No, I was quite all right during the voyage, but Mamma took ill.”
“Avaline!” Bernadette cried.
“I mean, yes, yes, I understand.”
She understood nothing. Bernadette stood up and crossed the room to her charge. She put her hands on Avaline’s shoulders. “Avaline—you really must be prepared. I can’t always be there to help you.”
“What?” Avaline exclaimed, her eyes widening. “Of course you will! You’ll be beside me Friday evening to help me—”
“I don’t think I should go,” Bernadette said. “You rely on me far too much, and in this, you really must make your own way—”
“Bernadette!” Avaline grabbed Bernadette’s hands from her shoulder and held them tightly in hers. “I can’t possibly bear an entire meal without you! I need you!” She leaned forward and whispered, “You are my only hope. You know my mother is no help, my father doesn’t care—”
“But I can’t—”
Avaline suddenly let go of Bernadette’s hands. “You must attend! I insist!”
“Avaline—”
“I insist,” she said again, quite sternly, and much to Bernadette’s great surprise.
“Well then,” Bernadette said. It was high time Avaline stood up for something she wanted, even if that something was not what Bernadette desired in the least. “Naturally, I will do as you bid me.”
Avaline looked slightly stunned by her victory. She sniffed. She twirled a curl at her nape. “I only insist because I need you.”
“I understand.”
“Otherwise I would not insist.”
“As you said,” Bernadette agreed.
“It’s just that—”
“Not another word of apology,” Bernadette said, smiling. “You are allowed to speak your mind.”
Avaline released a long breath. “I feel as if my mind is always wrong,” she said morosely. “Thank you. I mean that truly, Bernadette.”
She didn’t have to say it. Bernadette knew that Avaline loved her, and more than what was reasonable to love a servant of her household.
* * *
BERNADETTE, AVALINE AND Lady Kent spent the better part of Friday afternoon preparing Avaline for the evening, and Bernadette thought their efforts were rewarded—Avaline looked like a princess in her butter-yellow gown and stomacher. Bernadette had put up Avaline’s golden hair in a tower that made her look taller than she was and had adorned it with tiny gold leaves. She couldn’t fathom how Mackenzie might look at his fiancée and not be at least a bit smitten with her.
Avaline’s preparations left precious little time for Bernadette to dress herself. She chose the gown of scarlet she’d worn to a Christmas feast two years past. There was no time to dress her hair, and she bound it simply at her nape. She looked quite plain in comparison to her charge.
At least she didn’t look as plain as Lady Kent, who had, for reasons that escaped Bernadette, chosen a drab brown gown that made her pale, slight frame look even smaller. Perhaps she meant to fade into a wall, for she’d dressed perfectly for it. Lady Kent often reminded Bernadette of a leaf scudding across the courtyard at Highfield—without substance and in a permanent tremble whenever her husband was about.
Bernadette was taller than both women and larger in frame, and she did not tremble in the presence of men, for which she owed her father grim thanks. He’d been a tyrant, not unlike Lord Kent in his way, and Bernadette had learned at an early age that weakness was to be exploited, and therefore, it was far better to stand tall and proud than to cower.
She thought it only through the grace of her grandfather and Albert that she hadn’t learned to despise all men. Her grandfather, God rest his soul, had been the kindest person she’d ever known. He would take her and her sister for long walks around Highfield, would invite them to his little house on the estate’s grounds and make them mince pies and sing songs to them. She had loved him so, had mourned him deeply when he’d died from an ague in his seventy-second year.
And, of course, Albert, the son of a shop merchant. Albert had wanted to study law, and he’d worked in his father’s dry goods shop until such time he could afford the schooling. He was bright and curious, thoughtful and tender with Bernadette, and he’d never said a cross word to her.
Albert and Grandpappa had taught Bernadette that there were men in this world who loved and cherished those in their lives. They were good, decent and loving men, both of them gone now, survived by men like Lord Kent and her father.
No, men didn’t intimidate her. No one intimidated her. She was an island unto herself, an untouchable, damaged bit of flotsam in a vast sea. Occasionally, she bumped into this ship or that buoy, but she would always spin away and continued on with her solo journey through this life.
It was past time to depart when Lady Kent and Avaline made their way downstairs to join his lordship and Bernadette. Lord Kent reeked of wine. He was impatient and made cross by the wait. He’d dressed in formal clothing and a newly styled and powdered wig. His shirt was trimmed in lace that dripped from his coat sleeves, and his neck cloth was tied so ornately it was small wonder he hadn’t choked himself in the process.
With one leg cast out, his hand on a staff that he carried for effect, he surveyed the three women before him and frowned slightly. “It will do, I suppose,” he said, and gestured for them to carry on, out the door. “Make haste, make haste, we’ll be tardy as it is.”
The ladies were ushered into the coach, and Kent put himself on a horse. Lord Ramsey was not attending this evening. According to Bernadette’s friend Charles, a footman, Ramsey had fallen into his cups far sooner than his brother and was too sodding drunk to travel. Charles was fond of Bernadette and often sought her out to regale her with news of the household. In fact, two months ago, it was Charles who told her that she would be sent to Scotland as the lady’s maid of Avaline.
“To Scotland,” she’d repeated disbelievingly. “Leave England?”
“You’ve not heard?” Charles asked, clearly exuberant in having the news before she did. “Miss Avaline is to marry one of the Highland brutes.”
Of course she’d known that Avaline was to marry a man from the Highlands, but Bernadette hadn’t, until that moment, imagined he was actually from the Highlands. She’d rather imagined a lord of some sort, with lands there, someone civilized, for everyone had heard that the Highlanders were brutal, traitorous people, and it had taken the English army to rout them.
“It’s surely temporary,” Bernadette said, thinking aloud. “I’ll be meant to settle her.”
But Charles, who had attended Lord Kent and Lady Chatwick when she and her husband had come to broker the marriage, shook his head. “You are to stay with her, as am I. As are a few more,” Charles confided. “He told the lady he’d not leave his only daughter in the hands of such primitive people.”
Wasn’t Lady Chatwick herself married to one of those primitive people? “And what did the lady say?” Bernadette asked.
“She said it was a kind thing he did to think so tenderly of his daughter, but that he could trust she would be well cared for.”
“There, you see?” Bernadette had said, walking away from Charles. “It’s only temporary.”
It was not, as it turned out, temporary. Lord Kent meant for her to stay on here with Avaline. Bernadette’s father meant for her to do the same. While she did not relish the thought of being banished to Scotland, she did realize that the farther she was from either of those men, the better.
The Kent party loaded into the coach, and it lurched forward, starting on the tortuous journey of four miles. Bernadette would have preferred to walk. In the last few days, she’d taken to walking the many paths around Killeaven. It was beautiful scenery and physically invigorating—and she’d yet to meet another person. She felt herself growing stronger, too, going farther afield every day.
She wasn’t entirely sure of how to walk to Balhaire, but she would have liked to try. It was a fine evening, and surely it couldn’t be any more taxing on the body than this coach. Or perhaps they might have gone on horseback? She honestly didn’t know if Lady Kent had ever been on the back of a horse, but Bernadette was a passable rider, as was Avaline. Unfortunately, his lordship did not think it proper for ladies to travel by horseback, not until they’d birthed all the children they were meant to have.
He had many odious opinions.
When Bernadette was certain she couldn’t bear the ride another moment, the coach reached the village on the outskirts of Balhaire and began to move up the high road. The fortress looked so foreboding as they approached it, as unwelcoming as its son.
In the bailey, three stray dogs trotted over to have a sniff of them all, and two men who looked equally astray were on hand to greet them. The unsmiling Frang wordlessly showed them to a room near the great hall, where the Mackenzies were waiting.
Bernadette was surprised to see Avaline’s fiancé dressed in a plaid blanket that fell just above his knees. He wore thick wool socks and shoes with it, a waistcoat and coat over it. It was such a peculiar dress, but it was, Bernadette had to admit, rather enticing, particularly as she could see just how muscular and long his legs were. She wondered if Avaline had noticed the same.
The room where they’d gathered was smaller and more intimate than any of the other rooms Bernadette had seen on her first visit to Balhaire. The walls had been covered with tapestries to ward off the chill that seemed to permeate the castle, but the effect was stifling, and Bernadette felt a little as if the walls were closing in on her. She stood near the door, where at least there was a bit of air.
Lord Kent herded his daughter and his wife forward to greet their hosts. Lord and Lady Mackenzie, their sons, their daughter, Miss Catriona Mackenzie, and another daughter they’d not yet met, Mrs. Vivienne Mackenzie. Lord Kent gestured absently to Bernadette when those introductions had been made. “Miss Holly, our daughter’s maid,” he said.
Bernadette curtsied.
“Welcome, all,” Mrs. Vivienne Mackenzie said in a lovely, melodic voice. “There are more of us, aye? My husband has gone to bring our bairns to say good-night—” She hadn’t even finished her thought when five children burst into the room and raced for their mother and their grandparents. The oldest, a girl, looked to be thirteen or fourteen years old. And the youngest, a boy, perhaps eight years of age. The children were raucous and gay, and they caused Bernadette’s heart to squeeze painfully. Children, especially young children, always had that effect on her—they reminded her of her own loss. A loss so wretched that even after all these years, she could not escape its clutches at the most inopportune times. Even now, she felt flushed and had to look down at her feet to regain her balance.
The children were talking all at once, eager to be seen, eager to know their guests. Bernadette could well imagine that Lord Kent was nearly beside himself—he did not believe in mixing children with adults. She watched the children wiggle and sway about on their feet, unable to keep still. One boy carried something in his pocket that caused it to bulge, and Bernadette felt a smile softening her face. She would never know the pleasure of having a child that age. She would never feel the pride in watching one grow. When she’d lost her child, she’d almost died. She’d survived, but her ability to bear children had not.
When the children had received kisses from their family, Mrs. Mackenzie sent them out with a maid, and Bernadette happened to look up from them and realized with a start that Avaline’s fiancé was watching her. She felt as if she’d been caught in a private moment, and awkwardly rubbed her nape, unnerved at having been caught in the act of admiring children. She turned her back to him and walked to a small table in a corner, where she pretended to closely examine what she could only imagine were some sort of artifacts.
A moment later, his deep voice rumbled behind her. “I thought you fearless, yet here you stand, cowering in the corner.”
Ah, how lucky for her! The beast had followed her. Bernadette had managed to trap herself in the corner, and couldn’t escape him without causing a scene. His presence felt too large, too powerful, and she shifted closer to the wall. “I’m not cowering. I’m admiring these artifacts. What are they, some sort of ancient weapon?”
He leaned across her body, the arm of his coat brushing lightly against her bare forearm as he picked one up. He held it up to her. “This is a rock. One that my nephew has collected.”
Artifacts! She gave the rock a disapproving look as if it had deliberately misled her. Her cheeks bloomed with embarrassment. “I should have paid closer attention to my archeology lessons.” She wished he would move, step aside. He stood so close that she could feel the power and bad humor radiating from him.
Of course he didn’t move, as that would have been the polite, civilized thing to do. He kept his gaze locked on hers as he returned the rock to its place, and he looked entirely suspicious of her. What did he think, she had come here for nefarious reasons? The idea almost made her laugh.
“If you donna stand apart from fear, then given our previous conversation, I might only surmise you believe yourself superior to a few Scots.” He waited for her to deny it.
Bernadette smiled slowly. “The only Scot I believe myself superior to is you, Mr. Mackenzie.”
One corner of his mouth turned up. “I would expect no different of the Sassenach.”
“Of what?”
The dark smile spread across his lips. “English,” he said.
“If being English means that I believe in civility and manners, then yes, I suppose you should expect it of me.”
His smirk deepened. “I advised you no’ to attempt to shame me, Miss Holly.”
“And I advised you not to try to intimidate me.”
“You advised me no’ to threaten you, lass.”
He would quibble with her now? He could quibble with Avaline all that he liked, but not with her. There was a limit to what Bernadette would do to help this marital union, and speaking to him beyond what was absolutely necessary exceeded that limit. She thought about advising him of that, but decided that she would do best to keep her mouth shut and remove herself before she said something untoward. “Please excuse me.” She stepped around him and walked into the center of the room.
“Miss Holly, will you join us for wine?” Lady Mackenzie asked, spotting her.
“No, thank you,” Bernadette said politely.
“Rabbie, darling, will you?”
Rabbie. That was the first that Bernadette had heard his given name said out loud. Funny, but he didn’t seem like a Rabbie to her. That name belonged to someone congenial and hospitable. He was more like a Hades. Yes, that suited him. Hades Mackenzie, the rudest man in the Scottish Highlands.
“Aye,” he responded to his mother, and accepted the glass of wine Frang held out to him. Bernadette nudged Avaline and whispered she should speak to her fiancé. Whether Avaline took her advice, Bernadette didn’t know, because she walked away, putting as many people and as much space between her and that ogre as she could.
In doing so, she quite literally bumped into Captain Mackenzie.
“I beg your pardon, Captain!” she said, alarmed that she had inadvertently stepped on the man’s foot as she’d glanced over her shoulder to see where the ogre was now.
He caught her elbow and steadied her. “Good evening, Miss Holly,” he said pleasantly.
“I’m rather surprised to see you here tonight. I thought you’d be at sea by now.”
“Aye, as did I. Alas, our ship needs a wee bit of repair. I’ll be a landlubber for a time.” His eyes twinkled with his smile.
Bernadette was again struck by how different these brothers were in mien.
“You’ve met my sisters, have you no’?” he asked.
“I have, indeed.”
“You are acquainted with every Mackenzie of Balhaire, then,” he said with a chuckle.
Unfortunately.
He suddenly leaned forward and whispered, “Have you a verdict on Miss Kent’s fiancé? Does he suit her, then?”
Bernadette could feel herself coloring. What was she supposed to say to that? “Ah...well,” she said, and paused to clear her throat. “It’s all so very new, isn’t it? I suspect they will take some time learning about each other.”
Captain Mackenzie blinked. He slowly cocked his head to one side, his gaze shrewd, and smiled very slowly. “Aye, then, you donna esteem him.” Bernadette opened her mouth to deny it, but he waved his hand. “Donna deny it, lass—it’s plain.”
“I scarcely know him. I’ve not made any judgment.”
He chuckled at that bold lie, sipped his wine, then put the glass aside. “Donna believe everything you see, Miss Holly. My brother is a wee bit hardened, that he is. But he’s suffered a great loss and has no’ come easily back to the living. On my word, the lad is a good man beneath the hurt.”
A loss? Hurt? She tried to imagine what sort of loss might make a man so unregenerate, but couldn’t think of a single thing. She’d lost her husband and her baby, and she wasn’t so hardened. What possibly could have happened to him?
