by Karen Ranney
“The better part of three years, miss. Still, I’m the newest here.”
She finished eating while Lily flew through the room dusting all the surfaces and rearranging the items on the bureau, nightstand, and vanity, chattering all the while. Mercy answered all her questions as she ate.
Yes, New York was large and filled with people. No, she had never before visited Scotland. Yes, she thought the scenery was awe-inspiring. She’d never seen the like. No, she wasn’t chilly and didn’t need a fire lit.
When she was done with breakfast she thanked Lily for bringing the tray as well as straightening the room, but declined any help dressing.
Once the maid was gone she went to the armoire and selected a blue-striped silk dress with a snug bodice and puffed sleeves. Her grandmother couldn’t say that she was improperly attired. Except for hats. She hadn’t wanted to bring along her collection of hats—that would have been too much luggage. As it was, she had a trunk and three valises while Ruthie had only one small bag.
After dressing she worked on her hair. There was nothing she could do about the bandage, but she gathered the rest of her hair into a dark blue snood. She was just going to have to look odd for a little while.
At least the circles beneath her eyes weren’t as dark as they’d been yesterday. Plus, her face seemed to have a little more color.
She gave herself a final look in the pier glass, made a face, and opened the door, heading for the servants’ stairs, hoping she could remember which room was Ruthie’s. She found it on the second try, grateful that the first room had been empty of an occupant.
Ruthie called out for her to enter and when Mercy did she found the other woman sitting up in bed, her head tilted back against the headboard, eyes closed.
She blinked open her eyes and smiled wanly at Mercy.
“You’re in pain,” Mercy said.
She’d forgotten, until just this moment, to ask if the Macrorys owned a donkey and hoped Ruthie didn’t remember. She would rectify that oversight the minute she left the room.
“Just a little, Miss Mercy.”
“Were you able to sleep at all?”
“Some.”
The breakfast tray on the nightstand was barely touched.
“I should send a message to Lennox that we need some more of his tincture,” Mercy said.
Ruthie closed her eyes again and leaned her head back. “That would be nice.”
“Perhaps Mrs. West has something for pain. Is it your arm?”
“I’m sore all over, Miss Mercy.”
“I’m going to find you something and then I’ll come back.”
Ruthie only tried to manage a smile again.
Mercy found her way down to the kitchen, thanks to two friendly maids she encountered along the way. Each of them greeted her with a smile and answered her question with a beautiful lilting accent. She wanted to engage all of them in further conversation just to hear them talk.
She peeked into the housekeeper’s office, found it empty, and went to the small dining room attached to the kitchen.
Two women sat there.
Mercy blinked, but it was no use. There were two Mrs. Wests sitting in front of her, both of them with brown hair, their blue eyes watching her with an expression of puckish humor.
“We’re twins,” both women said together.
She nodded, having come to that conclusion.
“We’ve met before,” the one on the right said. “Mrs. West.”
“She’s Jean,” said the woman on the left. “I’m Irene.”
Even now she could barely see any differences between the two women. Their smiles were identical. They had the same strong faces, the same square jaw and prominent noses.
“How does anyone tell you apart?” she asked.
Both women smiled at the same moment.
“I don’t work here,” Irene said. “Only Jean does. I work at Duddingston Castle, but I’ve come today because of you.”
“Me?”
The other woman nodded before pulling the letter out of her dress pocket. Mercy walked forward and took the letter.
“Lennox wanted me to give it to you,” Irene said.
Both women looked at her expectantly, so she opened the letter in front of them, read it, folded it back up, and placed it in her own pocket.
Instead of talking about the letter’s contents, she said, “Does the family own a donkey?”
The twins looked at each other and then back at her.
“I don’t believe so,” Mrs. West said. “What would you be wanting a donkey for, miss?”
She explained Ruthie’s belief in folk remedies and added, “She’s in pain this morning.”
“We’ve no donkeys, but we do have some medicine she could take. Would you like some of that?”
“I would. Thank you.”
Mrs. West stood and left the room, leaving her alone with Irene.
“He’s a good man,” she said, looking at Mercy’s pocket. “Once you get to know him you’ll figure that out well enough. It’s getting to know him that’s the difficult part.”
“I can assure you that I have no intention of getting to know him.”
Irene sighed. “He’s offended you, then. Now that’s a pity. I’m thinking that you could go back to America with tales of the handsome Scottish earl you met.”
“Earl?”
Irene nodded. “He’s the Earl of Morton. I forget if it’s the eleventh or the twelfth. It’s one of those. A lot of history behind that title.”
“He certainly doesn’t act like an earl,” Mercy said, having met her share of titled Englishmen. New York was occasionally visited by aristocratic young men eager to be feted and adored by a title-loving American population.
They pranced, these English dandies, affected a certain manner of speech, and were filled with knowledge of their own uniqueness.
Lennox Caitheart had been as dissimilar as a bird was from a fish.
She was torn between wanting to know his story and being irritated at the man. He’d insulted her in his three-sentence letter. How dare he call her vain?
“He was very concerned about your wound, miss.”
“I don’t know why,” she said.
“He studied as a physician in Edinburgh.”
That was another surprise. First an earl and now a doctor?
“Why doesn’t he practice?”
“He didn’t finish. Robert died and he came home.”
She pulled out a chair and sat, giving in to her curiosity.
“Why does he hate my family so much?”
“I don’t think he actually hates them,” Irene said. “Maybe he’s jealous. Or a touch resentful. It’s an old story, one you hear often enough. Mary Macrory and Robert knew each other as children. She went off and married a man by the name of Thomas Shaw. They had a daughter and when he died Mary and Flora came back to Macrory House. That’s the way of the Macrorys. When there’s trouble, they come home just like your grandmother and your aunt.”
She didn’t say anything, mulling over Irene’s words.
“When she returned, Robert visited that very day to express his condolences. Soon enough they fell in love.”
Mercy remained silent. She was not going to beg for the rest of the story, however much intrigued she was.
Thankfully, Irene continued without being coaxed.
“Douglas was all for Mary remaining a widow, I think. Flora might have felt the same, but I’m not sure. Mary had other ideas, however, and the two of them left one spring morning without a word to anyone. They never came back.”
“What happened to them?”
“The carriage overturned. A common enough tale. A sad one in this case. Robert died immediately, but Mary lived a few days. Long enough for Douglas and Flora to reach her.”
“I’ll never forget how they looked when they returned,” Mrs. West said, entering the room carrying a dark brown bottle. “It was as if life had been sucked right out of them.”
“The two of them weren’t just eloping,” Irene said. “They were escaping.”
“Escaping?” Mercy asked.
Irene nodded. “What other people wanted them to be. Robert had always been known as a man who was responsible for raising his younger brother, for caring for the castle. He was responsible to a fault and yet in this one thing, this one act, he wasn’t.”
“And Mary didn’t want to remain a widow,” Mrs. West said. “Love changed them.”
The two sisters looked at each other.
Thankfully, they didn’t expect her to comment because Mrs. West handed her the bottle and gave her instructions as to its use.
“I wouldn’t leave it in her room, miss. People get confused when they’re in pain. She might take another dose before it’s time and that would be dangerous.”
Mercy nodded. “Thank you, Mrs. West. I’ll keep it with me.” She looked at both women. “Thank you for telling me the story, too.”
She was almost to the door when Irene spoke again.
“Douglas and Flora had each other, but Lennox lost the one man who’d been a rock and an example to him. When Robert died, I thought Lennox would never stop grieving. It’s only been in the past few months, with his airship, that he’s been more like himself. I think you would like him, miss, if you got to know him.”
Mercy only nodded. Lennox was blessed to have someone who believed in him the way Irene did. But he hadn’t sent Irene a nasty letter, one that irked Mercy the more she thought about it. She was going to dispense with the turban of bandages and perhaps her wound would heal faster.
He didn’t have to know that she’d taken his advice, however.
Chapter Fifteen
After spreading out the sail on the floor of the Clan Hall and examining it in minute detail, Lennox decided that it was better to err on the side of caution and replace it. He didn’t want to end up crashing on his next flight. It had been a small miracle that he hadn’t been injured last time.
Thoughts of his landing led to thoughts of her. He wished the woman would stay out of his head. He had more important things to think about.
“I don’t know what you wrote in your letter,” Irene said when she returned to Duddingston a week ago. “But it didn’t please her one bit.”
Maybe he should have taken out the part about Mercy’s vanity.
“Don’t worry, Irene. She won’t be here long enough to make an enemy out of her.”
Irene huffed. “She’s not leaving all that soon. She has a care for that Ruthie of hers. She hasn’t let the girl do a thing this past week. So Ruthie stays in her room except for a few hours when she comes down to the kitchen.”
“Where Jean solicits information from her,” he said.
Irene looked like she was considering various ways of answering his question. Her brow was furled and her lips pulled to the side. He almost rescinded the question when she spoke.
“Aye, she does, but Ruthie’s as loyal to Miss Mercy as Miss Mercy is to Ruthie. We’ve learned a bit about the house in New York, though. Ruthie called it a mansion and it sounds equal to or bigger than Macrory House.”
“So Miss Mercy is a wealthy American.”
She nodded. “That she is, but she doesn’t act it. I’ve never heard her talk about money like some do.”
Like Flora, for example, who knew how much each of her dresses cost and lost no time telling anyone who would listen.
Surprisingly, Irene hadn’t said a word about Mercy in the past week. The silence was unlike Irene who had a comment about almost anything, from the morning fog to his red eyes when he chose to work late into the night.
Summer in the Highlands encouraged you to stay awake longer. By the time it got dark it was early morning. Sometimes, he simply stayed awake, especially if he had an idea for a new wing or an invention or two.
He went ahead and wrote the seamstress in Inverness, ordering a new sail. The replacement wouldn’t be ready immediately, which meant that he had an opportunity to test out another design. This one was potentially more dangerous than his first airship. For that reason, he made copious notes. Connor could forward those on to the men with whom he communicated if anything happened to him.
This morning would be a perfect time to carry out the test of the new airship. That is, if he could get Connor’s attention.
The other day, when he and Irene had gotten into a spirited discussion about Irene’s claim that she needed another frying pan, Connor hadn’t injected a calming note into the conversation. Nor had he appeared to hear anything they said. Instead, he sat staring off into the distance—in the direction of Macrory House—with a lovelorn look on his face.
Lennox and Irene had stopped talking about the frying pan, the truce brought on more by their confusion over Connor’s behavior than any agreement. Yet Lennox knew he’d lose that battle eventually, like all the battles Irene championed. He was only a thrall in Irene’s kingdom. When he said as much to her, she only laughed, agreeing without a word spoken.
Whenever Irene returned from Macrory House Connor made a point of asking about Ruthie. Lennox had a suspicion that Irene was acting as a go-between for the young maid and Connor.
According to Irene, Ruthie was healing well. The pain she’d experienced in the first few days had disappeared. She would, no doubt, be pampered until it was time to remove the bandaging from her arm. Perhaps he should offer to do that. At least, then, he could be assured that it was done correctly. From what Irene had said, McNaughton had a habit of being ham-handed.
Ruthie wasn’t a Macrory servant, but he wasn’t sure that Connor would be allowed to call on her once she was feeling better. Not that anything good could come from the situation, but just because Lennox was a hermit didn’t mean Connor had to be.
The fresh, moist breeze blew Mercy’s hair back from her cheeks, bathing her skin with the scent of morning in Scotland. This, this is what she’d wanted when she left home. A sense of peace. Moments in which she could be alone, be herself, perhaps even discover who she was down deep.
She’d escaped Macrory House with a sense of desperation.
Flora had followed her around for most of the past week engaging Mercy in conversation at every possible juncture. She’d heard the girl’s plans for her trip to Edinburgh, her hopes to meet with a famous seamstress and milliner, not to mention all the entertainments planned for her by Douglas, who seemed not only a fond grandfather but an indulgent one.
Not once had Flora asked her a question. Mercy served as a listener and only that. If she responded to a remark Flora made, the girl simply ignored her comment like it was so much wind and nothing else.
Macrory House was a stage on which Flora performed. The other inhabitants were merely ancillary characters of little importance to her cousin. Even Douglas, doting as he was, merely acted to satisfy Flora’s wishes and wants.
The other woman would probably be surprised to discover that Mercy considered her exceedingly boring. The only topic Flora wanted to discuss was herself. Or, when she was coaxed to talk about something else—like the history of Macrory House or the Macrory clan—she did so only until she could turn the conversation back to her plans, her wardrobe, or her hairstyle.
“I can’t believe you came all that way from America by yourself,” Flora said just this morning. “I would have been terrified.”
“I wasn’t actually by myself,” Mercy said. “I had Ruthie with me.”
“I would still be terrified. And to think you had an accident when you were almost here. I would have been terrified about that, too. Not to mention having to deal with the Earl of Morton.”
“He was very nice to us,” Mercy said.
“My grandfather thinks he’s quite daft.”
She hadn’t had a rejoinder to that, but her participation was rarely required in a conversation with Flora.
“Just think, my mother would have been a countess if they’d lived. I would have been the daughter of a countess.”
She stare
d at Flora, amazed that the girl had been able to make Robert and Mary’s deaths about her, too.
“I am sorry,” she finally said. “It must have been awful to lose your mother.”
Flora’s smile slipped. “It was. She was the loveliest person, Mercy. Always laughing or smiling. She shouldn’t have died that way.”
Mercy expected Flora to speak further about her mother, but her cousin only shook her head, causing her red curls to tumble over her shoulders, then paused in front of a mirror they were passing.
“Oh, well, grieving is not good for the complexion, is it?” she asked, smiling at herself. “Grandfather says I have the most beautiful complexion. Don’t you think it’s lovely?”
Mercy murmured something appreciative, enough to appease her cousin.
Unfortunately, Flora was the only person who made an appearance in the morning hours. Aunt Elizabeth remained in her room until afternoon, telling Mercy that she preferred to work on her needlework, a task that required concentration.
Seanmhair preferred her room in the morning as well, never venturing out until the day was well advanced.
Thankfully, their paths never crossed.
However, her grandmother held court at dinner, pronouncing her opinions on a variety of topics. For someone who kept to herself every day, she was extraordinarily conversant with what happened at Macrory House.
When she could escape Flora, Mercy headed for the kitchen or the housekeeper’s office, either spending time with Ruthie or Mrs. West or both of them with the addition of Irene from time to time.
Unlike her conversations with the rest of her Scottish family, these talks were often lively, filled with laughter, and questions and answers from both sides.
Ruthie was feeling better, to the extent that she had begun quoting superstitions once more. She told Mrs. West that burning two lamps in the same room was a bad omen—someone would die by the second night. A whistling woman pushed away good fortune.
Mercy had heard them all and more. Mrs. West, thankfully, had a kind heart so she never lectured Ruthie about the foolishness of her beliefs. Her only comment was that the Irish had as many sayings as the Scots.