His Convenient Highland Wedding

by Janice Preston

  ‘No, thank you, Muriel. I shall breakfast with Mr McNeill.’

  The maid bit her lip. ‘The master is nearly finished his breakfast, my lady. He said there’s been a change of plan and you and I are to go home to Lochmore.’

  Flora stared. ‘And what will Mr McNeill be doing as we travel home?’

  ‘He said something about the early train to Edinburgh, my lady.’

  The rebellion that had awoken inside Flora erupted anew. She leapt out of bed and poured the remainder of last night’s water into the basin on the washstand, oblivious to its chill as she splashed her face. She snatched up the towel to dry herself.

  ‘Help me dress, Muriel. Quickly now.’

  She refused to be left wondering what she had done wrong, scared to speak out in case it angered her husband. She was angry now. With him. And she refused to be sent back to Lochmore in a state of ignorance, while he... Lurid images cavorted through her mind. She thrust them aside. While he did whatever it was he intended to do in Edinburgh.

  She stormed from the room, straight into Lachlan, who had one hand raised ready to knock on her door. He grabbed her by her shoulders to steady her.

  ‘I am coming with you.’

  ‘I am...what did you say?’

  ‘I wish to come with you to Edinburgh.’ She would set out her demands while her blood was up. This was no time for delicate diplomacy—if she gave him any opportunity to naysay her, she might lose her nerve entirely. ‘If you have meetings to attend, I shall be perfectly happy visiting the warehouses and shopping.’

  His brows snapped together. ‘My time will be fully occupied by business,’ he growled as he spun her around and urged her back inside her bedchamber. ‘Muriel—give us five minutes will you, please?’

  Muriel scurried from the room, casting an apologetic glance at Flora as she passed. But Flora was too fired up to need her maid for moral support. She strutted to the window, then whirled around to face her husband. There was a look of something like panic in Lachlan’s dark eyes and suspicions swirled through Flora. He was hiding something from her. What, if not business, was it that so preoccupied her husband? Could Cousin Sarah have been right and he was involved in something criminal? Or could it be another woman keeping him from her bed? He had bedded her once in three and a half weeks of marriage, and had spent much of the time away from home, despite his declared priority of building up the whisky business. Could he have a mistress? How mortifying, if that was the case. She didn’t want to believe it but, if not another woman, what on earth could it be?

  She folded her arms across her chest and waited, her lips pursed.

  ‘You will be bored.’

  ‘I have only travelled on a train once before,’ she countered. They had travelled from Glasgow to Edinburgh by train last year to attend the Caledonian Rout last October. ‘I should like to do so again. In fact, I cannot imagine anything I would rather do today.’

  Lachlan consulted his pocket watch, swept a hand through his hair and paced across the room and back again, halting in front of her. Towering over her.

  ‘You have not even eaten yet. Nor are your clothes packed. The train leaves in half an hour.’

  ‘I am not hungry and Muriel will pack my bag in no time, I assure you.’

  She raised her brows at him. He sighed. Loudly. It was a very male, very put-upon sigh.

  ‘Do not blame me if you are bored,’ he snapped before striding from the room.

  Flora smiled in triumph and followed him to the door to summon Muriel.

  ‘God preserve me from stubborn women,’ she heard Lachlan mutter as he entered his own bedchamber.

  * * *

  The train was waiting when they arrived at Queen Street Station. Lachlan handed Flora into a carriage and pure excitement coursed through her as the train pulled away from the platform and steadily built up speed.

  ‘How fast can trains go?’ She gazed with awe as the countryside flashed past.

  ‘Almost forty miles per hour on level stretches of track, I believe.’

  ‘So fast! It is almost unbelievable, is it not?’

  She sensed that her husband wanted to remain angry with her for her defiance, but she could not bottle up her excitement. After several morose responses to her comments Lachlan told her about the efforts to join the Scottish railways to the English network. The number of companies involved in developing the early railway lines meant many tracks in Scotland had to be relaid because they had—rather short-sightedly—been laid in different gauges.

  * * *

  On arrival at Edinburgh’s General Station, they took a hackney to Douglas’s Hotel on St Andrew Square where Lachlan reserved a private parlour.

  ‘I need to go out immediately,’ Lachlan announced as he escorted Flora to the parlour. ‘I shall arrange for refreshments to be served and I shan’t be very long. A couple of hours at the most.’

  As soon as Lachlan quit the room, Flora turned to Muriel. No longer would she timidly accept whatever treatment was meted out to her.

  ‘Can I trust you to keep a secret?’

  The maid nodded.

  ‘I intend to follow Mr McNeill. There is something I do not understand about my husband and it is burning inside me here.’ She placed the flat of her hand to her midriff. ‘I must know the truth, for only then can I decide how to deal with it.’

  ‘Milady...’ Muriel’s eyes were huge in her round face ‘...are you sure you should? If the master catches you he will be so angry...with the both of us.’

  The guilt she felt at embroiling Muriel in her affairs was not enough to change Flora’s mind. ‘We will ensure he does not see us, Muriel and, if the worst comes to the worst, I shall say I gave you a direct order. Come, now. We must make haste if we are not to lose him.’

  Muriel peered from the door and then beckoned Flora. They hurried to the front door, through which they could see Lachlan climbing into a hackney. As it drew away from the kerb, they exited the hotel.

  The concierge touched the brim of his hat. ‘Hackney, my lady?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  He hailed a passing carriage.

  ‘Where to, my lady?’

  ‘Please instruct the driver to follow that cab.’

  The concierge’s eyebrows rose and Flora fumbled in her bag for a coin, which she pressed into his palm.

  ‘My husband need not know, need he?’

  He touched the brim of his hat again. ‘No, my lady,’ he said before helping her into the carriage.

  Flora’s heart sank as Lachlan’s hackney headed south, away from the New Town, with its streets laid out in a rigidly structured gridiron plan and its white sandstone Georgian buildings, across Princes Street and into the medieval herringbone street pattern and dark granite buildings of the Old Town. If Lachlan was heading for one of those narrow alleys, Flora would never find the courage to follow him on foot.

  Luck was with her, however. Lachlan’s hackney finally halted in a narrow but accessible street just off Cowgate. Flora’s hackney stopped on the wider thoroughfare, from where Flora had a clear view of Lachlan as he climbed from his cab. He consulted a piece of paper and then stood looking up at the upper windows of a tall building with dull, grimy windows. The slump of his shoulders made him look, somehow, defeated and concern softened some of Flora’s anger. Her suspicions, so believable earlier, now seemed ludicrous. If he had a mistress, she would not live in such a place.

  As Lachlan hesitated, a woman emerged from the house. On seeing Lachlan, she approached him and rubbed up against him, her lips to his ear, her hand on his arm. He jerked away, shaking his head. She shrugged and walked away.

  Flora reached for the handle of the carriage door.

  ‘Don’t get out, milady. This is no place for decent women.’

  Flora felt queasy. She knew exactly what Muriel meant and she knew exact
ly what that woman had been offering Lachlan, but she felt strongly that he was in need of her support...whatever his reason for being here.

  She wavered too long, however, and the delay was enough for Lachlan to disappear inside the house. She could not follow him inside—too afraid of what she might find and what she might see. Her heart quailed as she took in their surroundings and the people, including barefooted children, so very many of whom were scrawny and grubby and dressed in ill-fitting and ragged clothing. Did people really live in such conditions? She felt shame she had not realised quite how poor some people in the cities were and she understood better the zeal with which Tessa and William’s guests had debated the need for reform.

  She turned to Muriel. ‘I shall wait here until Mr McNeill comes out.’

  * * *

  Lachlan trod up the creaking bare boards of the stairs, his emotions battened tightly in place. When he’d entered the dim hallway a bald man with a battered nose and accompanied by an offensive cloud of body odour had emerged from a back room and barred Lachlan’s way, holding out his hand for cash. Reluctantly, Lachlan paid up and asked for Catriona—the name by which Anna was known here, according to Delaney.

  After one touch, he avoided the banister, the sticky surface giving him the urge to wash his hands thoroughly. How far he had come since his days on the convict ship and in the colony in New South Wales—there had been no place for fastidiousness then. For the first time he wondered whether Anna had been any better off than he. Yes, he had been incarcerated and transported, but had she really had any better or easier choices?

  The air was thick with the stench of smoke from coal fires, stale cooking smells and other odours he did not care to identify. As he passed each landing, noises he would rather not hear—the grunts and the groans of sexual activity—filtered from behind the closed doors despite it being mid-morning. He passed a man descending the staircase—a respectably dressed merchant type, who ducked his head to the side so Lachlan could not see his features even as his hands busied themselves refastening his trousers.

  Nausea clogged Lachlan’s throat, but he swallowed it down and continued to climb. A new sound penetrated his consciousness. That of a child sobbing. He quickened his step.

  He recognised her the second he entered the room—it was as though his mother stood before him. His sister turned from the small pallet on the floor, upon which lay a small, still whimpering child, and her mouth fell open as their eyes clashed.

  ‘Anna!’

  With two strides, he reached her and wrapped her trembling body in his arms. She was so thin. Her shoulders bony knobs, her arms like sticks.

  ‘Thank God I’ve found you. I’ve been searching everywhere.’

  ‘Lachy!’ His name ended on a muffled sob. She pushed his chest and Lachlan released her.

  ‘I thought you were dead.’ Her brown eyes swam with tears, tearing at his heart as he took in her dull hair and skin.

  ‘And I feared you were dead! Pack your belongings. You’re coming home with me. You and the bairn.’

  Deep lines bracketed her downturned mouth as she shook her head in defeat. ‘Hopkins won’t let me go. Not until I’ve paid what I owe him.’

  ‘Is that him downstairs? How much? I’ll pay whatever it takes.’

  She laughed then, bitterly. ‘Aye, that’s him. But you can’t pay him enough. It’s never enough. I thought I could work off my debts, but the interest piles up and then the interest on the interest.’ She turned away. ‘I thought nothing could be worse than ending up in the poorhouse. I was wrong.’

  Guilt layered upon guilt. He could have saved her. He should have returned immediately. He hung his head. ‘I let you down. I am sorry.’

  ‘No!’ She spun to face him and it was the first sign of the sparky sister he remembered from their childhood. ‘You didna let me down.’ She swung back to the pallet, scooped up the child and returned to Lachlan. ‘Life let me down. The fact I am a woman let me down. Circumstances let me down. But not you, Lachy.’ Her hand rose to touch his face. ‘I ken better than anyone what you sacrificed for me and Ma.’

  ‘I should’ve come home sooner. But I’m here now and you’re coming home with me.’

  She buried her face into the angle between the child’s neck and shoulder. ‘He willna let me go.’ Her voice was muffled. The child squirmed and let out a grumble. ‘Hush, Davy.’ She kissed his cheek before looking up at Lachlan. ‘Hopkins threatened to get rid of him if he makes a noise. It puts off the...the...’ She shrugged hopelessly.

  ‘Davy? He’s a lad, then? How old is he?’

  ‘He’ll be three next April. I named him after his poor da. How did ye find us, Lachy?’

  Lachlan cupped her cheek. ‘I hired a detective who tracked you down—it was he who discovered you were married.’

  ‘Aye, that I was, to the foreman at the cotton factory where I worked. We had a good life until he was killed in an accident, three months before Davy was born.’

  She slumped on to the bed, Davy still clamped in her arms. He lay quiet and listless, as though the energy to even move was beyond him.

  ‘I couldna go out to work, not with a newborn. I took in some sewing, but could never earn enough and I got into debt. But I tried to keep going... I did try!’ She turned tragic eyes to Lachlan. ‘If I’d gone to the poorhouse, they’d have taken Davy from me... I couldna bear that, Lachy. I couldna. But I got deeper in debt and we would have been on the streets but this...this woman I knew—for she was no friend to me—told me Hopkins would help me. She said he’d pay off my debts and give me a job in Edinburgh, where I could start again.’ She stared around her in disgust. ‘I was a fool.’

  Her bitterness tore at Lachlan again. ‘You were desperate, Anna.’

  She hunched one shoulder. ‘It makes no difference now. Once I was under his control, my shame was complete.’ She stared at Lachlan. ‘You look prosperous, Brother. I am a fallen woman. There is no hope for me, but...here.’ She surged to her feet and thrust Davy into Lachlan’s arms. ‘Take him. Please. It is not too late for him.’

  ‘No! A bairn belongs with his mother. You will both come with me—it is not too late for either of you.’ Lachlan freed one arm to hug Anna. ‘It is never too late.’

  She pulled back and stared up at him, hope dawning in her eyes.

  ‘Could ye help me get away, Lachy? I go out most afternoons to run errands for Hopkins. He lets me take Davy for the fresh air.’ Her eyes sheened. ‘That’s what Ma used to say, even when she was so ill. “Get ye outdoors and breathe some fresh air.”’ Her laugh choked off into a sob. ‘Never mind that the air outside was filthier than the air inside that room we called home.’

  Lachlan’s heart ached at the memory of his mother. All she had wanted was to return to their croft in her beloved Highlands. His father had longed for the same. But they had been turned off with nothing and their home burnt behind them. And they had both died, in poverty, in Glasgow. The familiar anger rose inside him at the injustices in the world.

  ‘I’ll do more than help you to leave here, Anna. You will come home with me. Now. Both of you.’

  She backed away from him, shaking her head, fear in her eyes. ‘No. Not now. Hopkins...you don’t know what he’s capable of, Lachy. I canna risk Davy getting hurt.’

  Lachlan could see the sense—if they went downstairs together, Hopkins would hear them and be ready for them. He’d do nothing to put Anna or Davy in harm’s way. Not now he’d found them.

  ‘Very well. I’ll wait for you on the corner of Cowgate. You’ll come home with me—there’s plenty of room for you both at...at my home.’ He could not bring himself to admit he lived in a castle and had been living there for the past year while his little sister had been in hell. ‘And there is fresh air and countryside for young Davy to run around in and grow strong.’

  Davy had grown heavy in his arms and a glance show
ed the child’s eyes were closed, his breathing soft. Lachlan put him back on to the pallet and, as he straightened, Flora’s image arose in his mind’s eye. There would be explanations required. She had demonstrated her stubborn streak this morning, but he prayed she’d understand why he hadn’t been honest with her from the start. The thought of admitting the truth of his past to his beautiful wife was almost enough to unman him. How could he bear it if the dawning affection he had glimpsed in those lovely green eyes changed to scorn?

  ‘And you, Lachy? Have you bairns of your own? A wife?’ Anna laughed that bitter laugh again. ‘No, of course not, for no decent woman would have a creature like me in her home.’

  ‘Don’t say such things.’ Lachlan clasped her shoulders and shook her, but gently, because she was so slender, so delicate, he feared she might snap. ‘I do have a wife—we have been wed less than a month, but you will leave Flora to me.’ He couldn’t help but add, ‘She is the eldest daughter of the Earl of Aberwyld.’

  ‘A laird’s daughter? She willna want the likes of me sullying her home, Lachy.’

  ‘You are my sister and Flora will accept you...she has a good heart.’

  ‘She must have if she’s lowered herself to marry a lad from the slums and an ex-convict.’

  ‘Ah.’ He grimaced. ‘She doesn’t know.’

  Anna’s eyes widened. ‘None of it?’

  ‘No. And I shall only tell her enough for now to explain about you, Anna, so I’d be obliged if you’d keep the conviction and the transportation to yourself.’ Jessica’s reaction still haunted him. ‘She has no need to know about that.’

  ‘And do ye mean to tell her, Lachy? Ever?’

  He said, with more confidence than he felt, ‘When the time is right, I shall tell her. She will understand.’

  The sound of footsteps clumping up the stairs reminded him of where they were.

  ‘What time will you go out?’