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My love, I will soon be on board and ready to set sail. I pray I find you waiting.”
‘Much too young,’ he said again.
‘Not at all, it’s a good age to mould a wife,’ Senga insisted. ‘That was the age gap between your papa and me.’
‘What era are you from, Mama?’ Fraser shook his head. ‘All right, yes it worked for you and Papa, but you were one of the few couples I saw content and happy with each other. But generally? An eighteen-year-old innocent?’ Well she was. ‘I was thirty and had explored everything all young men do. I just did my duty and escorted her when I had to.’ He had to pretend it was just a holiday friendship and no more to save his sanity.
His mother blushed. ‘Fraser, consider my sensibilities.’
‘Mama, if you’ve pulled a stunt like this, I’m not sure you have any.’ Fraser began to pace the room. Really, could things get any worse? ‘Now I’m seven years older with all that entails.’ Not a lot considering He’s worked hard, and played very little. ‘That apart, think of a lamb and a wolf. If and when I decide to wed, my wife would need to be my equal, not a chit hardly out. I do not want to mould anyone.’
‘Well you should,’ Lady Napier said resolutely. ‘How else can they be what is needed for Kintrain?’
Natural talent? Sense?
He didn’t answer her out loud. If he opened his mouth he might say something he regretted later. No might about it, it was a given. Fraser counted to ten. Twice.
‘And I do think the younger sister, Murren, is a lovely…’
‘Enough,’ he ground out and held his hand up in the air.
His mama blinked and took a step backwards to sit heavily in a nearby chair.
‘That age gap is nigh on twenty years,’ Fraser went on. ‘No more, Mama. No matchmaking and if you want me here whilst they are, you’ll be wise to remember it. They are your guests, this is your home, but I’m its master. And if I choose not to be part of your, your visitors’ entertainment, I won’t. Plus, if I hear one word, just one word,’ he emphasised, ‘that makes me think that child assumes I will make her an offer, you will wish I hadn’t. This is my home, I’m the laird and remember if I choose to decide that only I and no one else lives here, you will be in the dower house before you can say I do.’
Lady Napier opened her mouth and shut it again immediately.
Fraser nodded. ‘Very wise. Plus you would be sensible to remember I have other estates to visit soon. It can be now as easily as next week or month. When I go is my decision, but you and your behaviour can influence it. I hope nothing, and I mean nothing at all, has been said to that young lady to make her think that I might consider her suitable as the Lady of Kintrain.’
‘Ah, er no.’ But his mother didn’t sound too sure. ‘After all why would there have been?’
Oh for the Lord’s sake. ‘Exactly.’ He deliberately spoke harshly and felt bad when his mama blanched. He understood that in her own way she was only trying to help him. ‘Now if you will excuse me, I need to see the factor.’
He didn’t; he’d already spoken to him earlier that day, but as an excuse it sounded plausible.
Now my need to go to Stirling is even more imperative.
Chapter Two (#ulink_92027696-8b91-526f-b81e-a0938de0f94a)
‘At the risk of sounding a moaning monster, Mama, are we there yet?’ Murren winked at Morven who hid her smile. She of course knew exactly where they were, and that there had been no need to stop for lunch. It was but five miles to the castle. They’d just passed The Lake of Menteith, the only proper lake in Scotland. As she’d been told on her previous visit, the other so-called lakes were all artificially made. An early cartographer who translated the Gaelic for low-lying land as “lake” only called this loch a lake due to a mistake. It had fascinated Morven, especially when Fraser had explained it was shallow enough for it to freeze over on occasion, and curling matches—a Bonspiel—would be held on the ice.
‘It’s so romantic,’ Murren went on in a dreamy voice that made Morven choke with laughter. Their mama looked at each of them in suspicion but didn’t comment. ‘You know that Mary Queen of Scots stopped in the priory for a few weeks when she was tiny? It was a safe haven for her after a horrible battle. Then they smuggled her out of the country to France.’
‘Murren, enough,’ the duchess said sternly. ‘You don’t want to be seen as a bluestocking; your sister is bad enough, and look where that left her.’
‘On the shelf,’ Morven said cheerfully. ‘It suits me.’ She hoped her voice didn’t sound as hollow as she knew her words were. It had to until she discovered what she was.
Why didn’t he ask me to go with him?
‘You’ll never get a man like that, either of you,’ the duchess said huffily. ‘I swear, I despair of you, Morven, but I beg of you do not put such ideas into your sister’s mind.’
Morven swore she heard her sister mutter under her breath something along the lines of ‘you almost tempt me’. Perhaps she did have a backbone after all.
‘It’s not long now.’ Morven decided it was time to butt in and do her best to restore harmony. It would never do to arrive at their destination with them out of sorts with each other. ‘An hour I would say, seeing as we have to go up the pass to the castle. Then we can relax.’ And if she believed that, she would also believe kelpies lived under the brig.
Her mother frowned. ‘Is it so close? I, ah, thought it further,’ she said unconvincingly.
‘It’s not,’ Morven replied and smiled as her mama coloured a little. ‘I’m sure you’ll be relieved, Mama, to know we are almost there. After all, this journey has been long and tedious has it not? I know you’ve suffered.’ As have we all.
‘Ah yes.’ Her mama’s redness increased. ‘Well as you say, almost there now and then we can unwind.’
You might be able to; I fear I’ll be as tense as a wound-up spring. Why on earth had she agreed to accompany her mother and sister? The castle held mixed memories. It was simple. Her mama had given her no choice, and with her brother busy elsewhere she had no one to agree with her plea to stay in Rutland.
He handed me into the carriage and bade me have a good journey. I never thought I’d be happy again. I was not too young to know my mind.
‘So,’ Morven said in an attempt to deflect her mind from things best not thought about at that time. After all, perhaps a face-to-face meeting would help her to know her own mind? ‘How long is it since you have seen Lady Napier? I forget.’
‘Senga? Oh a year perhaps, just under. She was in London just before her husband died and I came up for the funeral.’ The duchess sighed dramatically. ‘Poor Senga. Her son, the heir, was in Barbados and she was all alone.’
‘Apart from her younger children?’ Morven asked mildly. ‘I thought there were several?’
‘Ah, yes, but young,’ her mother blustered. ‘Such a hard time. Of course Fraser was not able to return in time to see his father buried.’
Morven remembered that. She’d thought she might get a letter or a note but had received nothing. It was as if she no longer mattered.
Perhaps just as well.
‘Then it will be good for you to be together again,’ Morven said in a composed voice. ‘I suppose the laird is away? The new laird.’
‘What?’ Her mother blushed and didn’t make eye contact with either of her daughters. ‘No, I believe he is now home.’
‘Was he away again?’ Morven asked straight-faced. ‘Or has he not returned since his…’ She hesitated. Banishment sounded much too harsh, and it hadn’t been that. She just felt it was. ‘Sojourn in the Indies,’ she said finally.
‘Er, I think he returned, went to do some estate business elsewhere and now is home. Tell me, do we need to stop in the village to freshen up?’
‘No,’ both her daughters chorused together.
‘Let’s just arrive and then freshen up, Mama,’ Morven said. I need to get it over and done with. ‘I assume we are expected today?’
Their mama blinked. ‘Ah, yes of course we are. Very well, let’s just head to the castle.’
‘As we have for the last goodness knows how many days?’ Murren said sotto voce to Morven. ‘On and off.’
Morven nodded. There wasn’t really anything else to add on the subject. She was on edge and worried that if anyone said anything even slightly controversial she would break down and scream.
The coach trundled along the tiny village street linked to the castle and the estate. A few locals watched as they drove past and one urchin whistled and shouted. ‘Aww, bonnie horses, fair braw.’
Morven chuckled. ‘That child has sense.’
‘I’ll never get the hang of the dialect,’ Murren said, despairingly. ‘Did it take you long?’
Morven shook her head. ‘No, but I have an ear for voices. And you won’t be here long enough to need to understand everyone, will you. After all Mama will want to be back in London in time for your coming out.’
‘Oh but…’ The duchess took one look at Morven and stopped speaking abruptly. ‘Ah yes, but who knows what will happen by then?’
‘We’ll be eaten by midges and smell of garlic,’ Morven said sweetly. ‘And hope to lose the marks and bites before Murren’s ball. She is having one, isn’t she? I’m sure Brody agreed. At the town house no less.’
‘I haven’t asked your brother yet, but…’
‘That’s fine,’ Morven said firmly. ‘I did and he said of course.’
Her mother opened and closed her mouth like a codfish. ‘Are we there yet?’
Morven couldn’t help it. She began to laugh. ‘Almost, Mama, almost.’
It wasn’t much more than half an hour later that the horses began the final pull up the pass, their hooves thudding in a steady rhythm on the dusty road. Ahead of them, the castle showed starkly on the skyline. Morven leaned forward to see it better, and even though her heart beat over-fast and her skin crawled with tension, she couldn’t help but be awed by the sight.
It had been the same all those years ago. Although then a red-haired giant had thundered down the hill on a black horse to greet her. This time there was no such welcoming committee. However, the wrought-iron gates were open and the coachman turned the equipage through the gap and past the crested gateposts, and urged the tired animals on.
‘It’s big,’ Murren said in an awed voice. ‘I never thought it would be so enormous. It rather scares me. I hope I’m not in one of those towers or turrets or whatever they are called. I wouldn’t sleep a wink if I was.’
Her mama stared at her and frowned. ‘Really, Murren, do not be silly.’
‘I’m not,’ Murren replied peevishly. ‘But nor will I be at ease in a place like that. Why did we have to come?’ She sounded close to tears. Morven frowned. Murren might be timid but this display seemed somewhat affected to her. However, evidently not to their mama, who sighed.
‘As you wish. I’m sure the castle has a basic room for you in a part of it you do appreciate. However, remember, the laird is a prominent person around here, to be…’ she coughed and cleared her throat ‘…to be looked up to.’
And if that is what she was going to say I’ll eat my hat.
‘I can look up to him from a basic room as well as a prison,’ Murren said stubbornly, and shot a sideways glance at Morven. Did she wink? ‘After all, he is a passing acquaintance, no more.’
‘Well of course he must be revered,’ Morven said as their mama took a deep breath, presumably to prepare herself to upbraid Murren. ‘Just like Brody at home.’ Something caught her eye and she leaned even closer to the window aperture to look out. ‘And as hands-on as Brody as well.’ She sat back and waited for her mother to twig.
‘Hands-on? How?’
Morven nodded towards a barn a few fields away. ‘Unless he is no longer red-haired and over six feet tall, I believe by helping to put a new roof on a barn.’
The figure she thought to be Fraser was standing, bare-chested on a cross-beam and helping another man lower a long heavy piece of wood into its allotted place. Her mouth went dry and her inside muscles clenched as she feasted her eyes on the one man who had ever mattered to her. The man she had given herself to gladly, and who had forgotten her.
‘Good Lord he might kill himself,’ the duchess gasped. ‘What on earth is he thinking?’
‘That he is more likely to die of boredom if he’s not allowed to help,’ Morven said percipient as ever. The Fraser she had known would have always been in the thick of it, and she was sure seven years on his family’s tobacco plantation wouldn’t have changed that.
And good Lord even at this distance I can feel him. As all those years ago, her body had clenched at the thought of Fraser. Of him next to her, holding hands, of saying to her in his deep gravelly Scottish voice, “My Morven, will you plight your troth?”
****
Fraser’s plan for a ride into Stirling had been thrown to the wind, when, not long after he’d got up and broken his fast—alone as he preferred these days—a message had arrived about the roof on one of the barns used to store fodder. Somehow the thatch had come loose and it needed to be repaired there and then with new hazel rods to secure it. Could he give the thatcher the go-ahead once the men had secured the beams?
Fraser told his factor that he’d be at the barn within the hour, changed into clothes more suited for a day in the fields—or clambering around on a roof—left a message for his mama to say where he was, and exited the castle. This had to be dealt with. He’d let the problem of his marriage or non-marriage slide for seven years. A few more days wasn’t going to make any difference.
Less than an hour after he’d discarded his jacket, he was shirtless and sweating. With his neckerchief around his forehead like a bandana he clambered around and over the building along with the workmen of the estate. Fraser believed in being hands-on whenever possible. How could he ask someone to do something he himself wasn’t prepared to try?
Oh he knew certain things—like thatching—had to be left to the experts, but others? He had no intention of standing back and keeping his hands clean.
Hence his present position—doing the mucky jobs—whilst his more experienced staff did the important ones. Fraser carried timber and chocks, nails and hammers and did as he was told, before he sat with his back resting on the wall, bandied words, laughed at sallies levelled at his lack of fitness and enjoyed a glass of ale and a thick cheese and onion sandwich.
Half an hour of food, drink and banter later, they stood up and clambered onto the roof once more.
God he ached, although he would never admit it, especially to his men who worked twice as hard. No doubt by the end of a few months he’d be used to manual labour once more. After all in Barbados he’d been very hands-on, but since returning to Scotland his lifestyle had become considerably more sedentary. That needed to change. He winced as his back protested at the angle he insisted it hold, and thought longingly of a hot deep bath.
Soon. Fraser stretched and prepared to work again.
‘There’s a carriage coming up the drive, my lord,’ Archie Retson, his factor, exclaimed some half an hour later, as they both balanced on a cross-beam. ‘Posh equipage and all.’
Fraser looked towards the drive and swore under his breath when he saw the smart carriage. So it was all about to kick off? That phrase, he thought, suited this situation perfectly. Whatever he discovered when he finally got to Stirling, life was not going to be plain sailing from now on.
‘Friends of my mother’s, up for a visit,’ he said to Archie insouciantly. ‘It will do Mama good. She is still a little down.’
Liar, she is more than a little meddling. Down has nothing to do with it.
‘Aye, it was a hard blow to her, the old laird going so suddenly, and not a sign he wasn’t good for another ten or twenty years,’ Archie replied sombrely. ‘Not that you aren’t filling his shoes proper like, but well. He was a one was the old laird, and he and your mama fit together.’
Fraser understood what the other man meant. He nodded and checked the last hazel rod they had secured. ‘He is a hard act to follow. If I manage half as well, I’ll be happy. There, do you think that will do for the winter?’
Archie studied their handiwork with a professional and critical eye. ‘I reckon so.’ He picked up the tools they’d been using. ‘And for your information, just one more thing…’
Fraser stared at him as he reached the top rung of the ladder to take him to the ground. ‘Yes?’ What now? Please not more roofs to fix. As much as he liked manual work, the weeks since he’d returned to Britain had seen little of it in his immediate orbit, and his muscles told him so in no uncertain terms.
‘You’ve got more than halfway there already,’ Archie told Fraser roughly. ‘He’d be proud.’
Those simple words put a lump into Fraser’s throat. It took several seconds before he felt able to reply. Even then it was only with the most mundane: ‘Archie, thank you.’ Fraser swallowed several times. ‘That is a compliment I’m proud of. Now I best get on. I want to go back via the village and check if old Russell has sorted that well out properly. If he isn’t bothered about clean water, the rest of his family is. He’s a lazy so and so.’ Not only that, as a former traveller, he’d know when the gypsies would be back to sell their wares.
And I can ask that all-important question.
‘Best catch him before he wanders to the inn, then,’ Archie suggested. ‘Now his gout isn’t as scuppered by the weather as it has been lately, he’ll pop along after lunch for an hour or so.’
And no doubt whilst Jessie—his daughter, who kept an eye on him—was busy elsewhere. ‘At least I’ll know where to find him if he’s not there,’ Fraser said once he’d ducked his head and torso in the nearby stream and dried as best he could on a scrap of material Archie gave him.
‘He’s a chancer, and I’d bet a lot of pheasant poults somehow make their way into his larder, but I canna help but like the rapscallion.’
Fraser pulled his shirt over his head and sniffed his sweaty and odorous neckerchief before he shoved it in his saddlebag. ‘Best not to produce that anywhere near a female until it is washed and ironed.’ He slid his arms into his jacket and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘That’ll do.’
Archie grinned as he donned his own serviceable tweed jacket. ‘Aye, I reckon so.’
Fraser saluted him with a wave of one hand and saddled his horse once more. He really ought to go and greet his visitors, for whatever he said to the contrary they were as much his as his mama’s, but he needed time to decide what to do and how to react. He didn’t want to face Morven without an idea of how they stood. A visit to Russell might help him plan. With a mental wince at the look his mother would bestow on him, not to mention the dressing-down she would ring over his head given the opportunity, he turned his horse away from the direction of the castle and headed down the pass towards the village.
Whilst he was there he might just check if the dower house was ready for occupation. It might be time to take his castle back and arrange it as he wanted it. Married or not.
