The Lady and the Laird

by Maura Seger

  Until the carriage rolled to a halt before the main entrance and the coachman got down to help them dismount. He was a loyal servant of Lady Margaret, dispatched with stern orders to see them safely to Innishffarin. His duty done, he would clearly have preferred to be anywhere else.

  "I went just as you said, miss," he said as he assisted Katlin down. "This must be it for there's nowhere else near about. Surely you can't mean to—"

  "You did splendidly, John," Katlin assured him. "We'll find someone to help us and we can begin settling in."

  She marched briskly to the enormous front doors-two doors of ancient oak banded in iron that were twice the height of a large man—and knocked. The exercise succeeded only in leaving her hand feeling rather sore.

  "There must be a bell," she said, but look though she did for a pull of some sort, she couldn't find one.

  "Here then," John said, taking matters into his own hands, "we'll see about this. Isn't proper, you standing about unattended."

  He doubled his fist and pounded resolutely but succeeded only in causing the door to creak open slightly.

  "Not at all what it ought to be," Sarah said, sniffing. She rubbed her posterior surreptitiously, feeling much abused after the long carriage ride, and looked down her upturned nose.

  "I'm sure we'll find someone," Katlin insisted. She pushed the door open a little farther and entered. Immediately beyond, she stopped and stared.

  Directly before her was an immense hall of gray stone and roughly hewn beams rising fully fifty feet above her head and large enough, by her own estimate, to enclose the cavernous ballroom of Lady Margaret's London town house at least twice over. Except for a dozen or so pieces of very large, very old furniture—including an enormous table with two chairs that resembled thrones—the hall was empty. Ratlin's steps rang on the flagstone floor as she walked a little distance within.

  "Hello," she called, "is there anyone here?"

  Silence but for the echo of her voice fading gradually away.

  "Disgraceful," John muttered. He brushed aside a cobweb near his head and kicked at a pile of unidentifiable rubbish. "Can't say much for the servants, whoever they are."

  "I met several of them at the reading," Katlin said, "they seemed good enough sorts."

  "Well, they aren't around now," the coachman said. "I'll look belowstairs, but I think we're going to find we're on our own."

  "Oh, no," Sarah moaned. "All this way for such a poor welcome. It's a sign, it is. We shouldn't have come."

  "Hush," Katlin said, "we shall manage perfectly well. John, I'll look belowstairs, you see what can be done with the baggage. Sarah, find us suitable bedchambers." When the maid hesitated, she prodded gently, "Go on, there's a good girl, there's nothing to fuss about."

  Sarah gave her a decidedly unconvinced look but went to do her bidding. Satisfied that she had things as well in hand as possible, Katlin made her way to the kitchens. She found them well enough at the bottom of a flight of steep stone steps leading from the hall. They appeared to take up a good part of the keep's foundations and were set on a slope so that windows near ground level admitted light and air.

  They did not resemble any kitchens Katlin had ever seen. Indeed, had a hoard of marauding Vikings suddenly needed a place to butcher slaughtered meat, they would have been perfectly at home in the kitchens of Innishffarin.

  The center of the low-ceilinged room—admittedly, the Vikings would not have been able to stand upright—was taken up by a battered table that appeared to have had chunks taken out of it at one time or another. From a rack above it, all manner of sharp and deadly instruments—knives, axes, picks, cleavers-hung ominously in the afternoon light.

  Over to the side was a large stone basin with an assortment of buckets next to it. Apparently, Innishffarin lacked anything so modern as an indoor pump. Nearby was a still room, in which Katlin was gratified to find an assortment of smoked meats, a basket of potatoes, and in a recess in the stone floor a cool container of butter.

  At least they wouldn't starve, she thought, as she made her way out the back door and stood looking around. Someone had planted an herb garden nearby, which was just beginning to come into leaf. But it was the view that most quickly seized her attention.

  From this perspective, she could more fully appreciate Innishffarin's location. It was built not merely on a hilltop but with its back to a sheer drop that ended in a rocky ravine. To the right was the sea and to the left was a steep slope.

  Only the route they had taken was remotely passable, and in times of trouble it could have been quickly sealed off. While that was undoubtedly well and good in the thirteenth century, when, she seemed to remember, the castle had been built, it made no sense at all in the enlightened year of 1807. No wonder Lady Margaret had been so upset by her decision.

  Ah, well, there was nothing to be done but make the best of it. With food in the pantry, the castle clearly hadn't been abandoned. The servants would turn up eventually.

  She would introduce herself and make her expectations clear in a gentle but firm manner. There would be some period of adjustment for everyone involved but she did not doubt that before very long everything would be going smoothly.

  After all, she had been raised to run a great house and to do it in a seemingly effortless manner. Innishffarin would be a challenge, she admitted that, but one she rather thought she would enjoy, on balance.

  Certainly, it offered more diversion than yet another summer making the social rounds, waiting for Charles to formally propose and the rest of her life to begin. Yes, the more she thought about it, the gladder she was that she had come to—

  "Aaaiieee"

  Katlin's pleasant—not to say smug—thoughts shattered at the sound. She turned, gathered up her skirts and ran back into the house. At the top of the steps leading from the kitchen, she found Sarah, white as a sheet, wringing her hands and near to tears.

  "Oh, miss, thank God I found you! The most horrible thing has happened! We've got to get out of here right away."

  Even as she spoke, Sarah seized her mistress's hand and began tugging her in the direction of the door. Katlin dug in her heels and said sharply, "Stop that! Get a grip on yourself and tell me what has happened."

  So unaccustomed was Sarah to any but the mildest expression from her mistress that she stopped dead in her tracks, took a long breath and wailed. "Terrible, it was! Like the touch of death! A creepy, cold thing that will kill us in our sleep! Ooh, miss, we must get away!"

  Without waiting to see who—or what—would follow her, Sarah dropped her attempts to convince her mistress and ran for the door. She smacked into John,

  who was just coming in heavily laden with the baggage, having failed to find anyone to help him.

  Crash. Boom. Thud. Bags and baggage went flying, Sarah landed in a heap, and John took a blow to the head from a small trunk that sent him reeling back against the wall, where his feet went out from under him and he sank slowly to the floor.

  "Well," Katlin said, surveying the wreckage, "here's a fine to-do."

  ***

  An hour later, after much huffing, puffing and cajoling, she had John settled in a room at the back of the second floor with a cold cloth on his head and instructions not to move for the remainder of the day.

  Sarah was downstairs in the kitchens, poised near the back door in case sudden flight should prove necessary, with a hot cup of tea in her hand and a blush firmly planted on her cheeks.

  "I'm sorry, miss," she murmured abjectly when Katlin came down to the kitchens after wrestling the last of the baggage upstairs. Really, she couldn't think why she had brought so much. It was dreadfully inconvenient.

  But still, it was done now and she was feeling an unexpected sense of satisfaction in the way she had handled matters. Now if only she could keep them running on an even keel until the servant problem could be settled.

  "I don't know what came over me," Sarah began to explain. "One minute I was doing just fine looking for a bedroom
for you and the next I was scared out of my wits."

  "Never mind," Katlin said as she helped herself to a cup of tea. "I'm sure that whatever you felt—a cold breeze, most likely—was off-putting, but you have to expect that sort of thing in old houses."

  Sarah shivered and wrapped her arms around herself. "I've lived in plenty of old places, miss. Truth be told, that's all I ever lived in till I met you. But this passes believing."

  "It is rather ancient," Katlin said good-humoredly. She brushed a speck of dust from her nose and looked around to see what ought to be done next. Food, that was the thing. Perhaps she could get Sarah to manage it.

  "There are some potatoes in the pantry," she said. "If you could put them on to boil and slice the smoked meat, we could have a light supper. Then I think we would be wise to make it an early night."

  "I'll do my best, miss," Sarah said doubtfully. She looked around the room. "There doesn't seem to be any water, miss, and you'll have to help me find the stove."

  "There is no stove," Katlin said, "I gather we are supposed to use the fireplace." She gestured toward the large, blackened opening at the bottom of the far wall. "As for the water, I saw a well outside. Come along and I'll help you."

  They managed, by dint of much effort, to lug half a dozen buckets of water inside. That done, Sarah set about laying a fire.

  Katlin looked around for something to put the water in and succeeded in finding an oversized iron kettle. Together, she and Sarah managed to get it onto a stout hook above the fire.

  "Sweet lord," the maid said, "we might as well be with the savages at the end of the earth."

  Katlin privately thought she had a point but she wasn't about to say so and risk setting off another fit. "Never mind," she said, "we're doing perfectly well. You see to dinner while I check on John."

  She found the coachman asleep, which seemed the best thing for him after the exertions of the long and stressful journey. Fortunately, he had unharnessed the horses and made them comfortable in the stables before unloading the luggage.

  Leaving him, Katlin continued along the passage and up a narrow set of stairs to the highest tower. There she found a single room, circular in shape, with windows looking out in all directions.

  She hesitated, surveying the oversized space—was everything at Innishffarin proportioned for giants? She inspected the tattered bed covers, the bare stone walls that exuded dankness and the worn, dusty rug whose design depicted a glaring dragon.

  If she hadn't been so tired, she might have kept looking in the hope of finding something better. But that hope was fading fast and so was the last of her strength.

  Sighing, she dragged her trunk up the tower steps, dusted her hands off and went downstairs to the kitchen. She would have to remember to bring a bucket of water with her when she went up again.

  Sarah would need to do the same. Katlin had found her a snugger and generally more pleasant room at the end of the passage below the tower. The servants, it seemed, rested rather more comfortably at Innishffarin than did the masters.

  The potatoes were boiling by the time she returned to the kitchens, and Sarah had managed to slice the smoked meat. They ate an early supper, sitting at the same table together because Katlin insisted it was foolish to stand on ceremony under such circumstances.

  While it was still light, they washed up. "Tomorrow," Katlin said, "we shall go into the village for supplies. If the servants haven't returned by then, I shall see about engaging new help. In the meantime, I suggest we get a good rest. This had been a most exhausting day."

  With candles in hand, they returned upstairs. Sarah had sufficiently recovered herself to help Katlin undress but she was yawning by the time she dropped the fine lawn night rail over her mistress's head.

  "Go on to bed," Katlin said.

  "I shan't sleep a wink." The maid rolled her eyes. "Lord knows I won't."

  "Try," Katlin said succinctly, "and remember what I said, this is an old house. Anything you hear or feel has a perfectly natural explanation."

  "Do you really think so, miss?"

  "Absolutely, and I'm a Sinclair so I ought to know. Go on, then."

  Sarah gave her a grateful look and scurried off. Moments later, Katlin heard the distant sound of her door close with a resolute thud.

  Left alone, she climbed into the large bed and pulled the pillows up behind her back. Foresight had provided her with a book to read but she was too tired for it to engage her mind. Instead, she lay on the bed, looking up at the hammerbeam ceiling with its elaborately carved rafters, and tried to remember all she could about Innishffarin.

  She had visited there only briefly in the summer of her sixth year while her parents were on holiday in Ireland. The plan had been for them to return to their home in Edinburgh, where Allister Sinclair was making a name for himself as a promising architect and where their young daughter would join them.

  But a sudden freak storm on the Irish Sea had changed everything. Allister Sinclair and his beautiful young wife, Megan, had been lost and their daughter orphaned.

  Katlin still shied away from remembering the terrible pain that had blacked out weeks of her life and even now filled her with trembling. Suffice to say that the next time she was fully aware, it was more than a month after she'd learned of her parents' death, and she was in London with her great-aunt.

  Upon receiving the news, Lady Margaret had swept down upon Innishffarin, informed her brother that it was no place to raise a young girl and carried Katlin off to London to see to her upbringing herself.

  Isaiah had been in no position to argue. Lady Margaret had made the most of her single London season to charm a wealthy mine owner from the Midlands whose services to king and country had prompted the awarding of a baronetcy.

  With money and title behind her, not to mention an adoring husband, she brooked no restraint. Childless, she took Katlin into her home and lavished upon her all the affection of her strong and loving character.

  She had raised Katlin to be what she herself had never quite managed to be—a thoroughly proper young lady. The results had been eminently satisfying to all concerned, at least, that is, until the reading of Isaiah's will and his extraordinary requirement concerning Innishffarin.

  So here she was, Katlin thought, as she stared up at the ceiling, in this uncouth pile of stone on the top of the edge of the sea, with every muscle in her body aching from the unaccustomed labor of the past few hours.

  She should have been furious, or at the very least discouraged. But instead she felt a strange sense of exhilaration and—stranger still—a sense that she had, for all oddity of it, come home.

  "Strange," she murmured as her lids drooped shut. A breeze blew through the high stone windows, redolent of the sea and the sweet perfume of heather.

  Katlin smiled in her sleep. She turned over, nestling more comfortably under the covers, and barely heard the high, haunting cry of the nighthawk circling the tower where she lay.

  Chapter Two

  "What do you mean there's a lady at Innishffarin?" Laird Angus Wyndham demanded.

  "A young lady, sir," the groom corrected, for he was a man for the details if he was anything. "Came yesterday, she did. Her carriage was seen going up the castle road and it didn't come back down, so she must still be there."

  "Has to be the granddaughter," the laird said. "But she wasn't expected this soon."

  "True enough, sir. Maggie Fergus is still over here visiting her sister. Seamus has gone to his cousin at Moraine Bay. The others are still off, too. Nobody thought she'd be here for at least a week, if then."

  "If, indeed," Angus said. He stood in the stable yard behind Wyndham Manor, one hand holding the reins of the big gray he'd been about to take out for a run.

  A tall, powerfully built man with the long torso and muscled limbs of a warrior, he was simply dressed in a white shirt, breeches and his favorite old boots. His black hair was thick and somewhat unkempt. His face, square-jawed with chiseled cheekbones, was overdue
for a shave. Blue eyes glinted beneath arching brows. His mouth curved in a slight smile.

  "I wonder how she's making do without any servants."

  "Badly, I should think," the groom replied. He cast his master a watchful look. "Begging your pardon, sir, but there's a rumor making the rounds that if this Miss Sinclair can't make a go of it at Innishffarin, it's yourself who will be inheriting the property. Would there be any truth to that?"

  His lordship's smile deepened. "I'll tell you truth, Padraic. Isaiah Sinclair was a crafty old devil. He knew right enough that Innishffarin should be mine but he was never willing to admit it in his lifetime. At least in his will, he came close to doing what's right."

  He put a foot in the stirrup and mounted in a single smooth motion. From the saddle, he said, "But fair is fair, Padraic. Get the word out to Maggie Fergus that they're needed at Innishffarin."

  Padraic put a hand through his sandy hair and looked doubtful. "They won't be anxious to go, sir. They'd all much rather the place be yours."

  Angus gripped the reins and turned the gray toward the high iron gates. "But it isn't, not yet, and I expect them to remember their duty. Make sure that's understood."

  "Aye, sir," Padraic said. He stood back as the gray bounded forward.

  Once beyond the manor walls, Angus gave the stallion his head. They raced the wind across the rolling hills. It was a fair day, harbinger of the summer to come. The harshness of winter had faded, life was returning to the land, and Angus Wyndham, master of all he surveyed, laughed aloud joyfully.

  By God, it was good to be alive. Nothing was better than riding his own land on such a day; it made all the responsibility worthwhile. He had accepted as his birthright the burden of so many people dependent on him, and had done so without thought or regret. Still, there were times when he felt the want of simple, careless pleasures other men took as their due.

  Such comforts were not for Angus Wyndham, laird of the clan, chieftain of several thousand men, women and children who looked to him for sustenance, protection and purpose. His was a life of work and service, of the careful wielding of power for the greater good, never simply his own.