by Imani King
"Go on, have a wee bite. The name is much more gruesome than the taste."
And damn if I didn't sit right back down and do exactly what the Laird was asking me to. Even then in the first few moments with him some part of me seemed compelled to do what he wanted. He watched me lift the fork to my lips and then laughed as I chewed slowly for a few moments. It didn't taste like blood at all - in fact it didn't even taste like meat, it was surprisingly mild - almost bland.
"Well?"
The Laird kept his eyes on me, as did Mrs. Clyde, waiting for my pronouncement. When I looked up at them and said: "It tastes...like oatmeal," they both smiled approvingly.
"Yes, it has oatmeal in it, too," Mrs. Clyde said, setting down a mug of hot tea beside my plate.
She and the Laird fell into a conversation I pretended not to listen to as I sat back down to finish my breakfast. There were a lot of references to a Diane and to Cameron, the Laird's four year old daughter and my soon to be charge. Without noticing what I was doing I just went back to looking at the Laird. He was a very big man - noticeably big, tall enough to take note of even if I'd only seen him on the street. Six foot four? Six foot five? Something like that. He was wearing a pair of dress pants and a button down shirt, both of which managed to do an almost painfully good job of revealing the fit, well-muscled build of the man beneath them. When he turned to the counter to take one of the oatcakes Mrs. Clyde was offering I shamefully couldn't stop myself from checking out the rear view: shoulders so wide all I could do was imagine what running my hands over them would feel like and a round, firm ass that looked perfect in the dark dress pants. When he turned back around I quickly looked back to my food, terrified he'd seen me looking.
He didn't show any hint of having noticed my ridiculous behavior, though.
"I'll see you again tomorrow, Miss Robinson, when Cameron returns from London."
"Yes. It was nice to meet you..." I paused, realizing I had no idea how to address him.
"Darach," he said, "I know you Americans aren't ones for formalities and to be truthful neither am I. Darach will do."
Then he was gone and I had to do my best to keep any hint of disappointment out of my expression so Mrs. Clyde wouldn't notice it.
"Aye, he's a handsome one isn't he, Jenny? You'd best not pay any heed to how fair he is lassie, because he's in no position to be looking for a wife - he's already got one down in London and she's a handful."
Ugh. Of course. That must be who Diane was. I did my best to eat the rest of my breakfast but it was too much. Mrs. Clyde seemed pleased anyway, smiling at me as she cleared away my plate:
"Well done. That'll help you get over the jet-lag. I've got a few more things to do for dinner tonight but when I'm done I'll show you a little of the house if you like."
I smiled at her repeated insistence on calling Castle McLanald a 'house' and accepted her offer of a tour. She told me that in the meantime I could go for a walk in the grounds and I decided to do just that - the sunlight was too warm and inviting and I was eager to get a feel for the place that would be my home until September.
Chapter 3
I ran into a groundskeeper in muddy boots as I was wandering rather aimlessly around the garden that sat in front of Castle McLanald and asked him how far I could walk without leaving the property. He laughed out loud.
"You'll not be leaving the property, not for a good few hours of walking, at least."
A few hours. So the McLanald's didn't just own a castle, they also owned all of the land I could see sprawling out around me.
The castle itself was set on the highest point of the landscape and surrounded by carefully tended gardens. As those gardens came to an end the land turned wilder - it was down a narrow footpath into one of the less-groomed areas that I turned, woken up by Mrs. Clyde's tea, my fresh-aired surroundings and, probably most of all, my encounter with the Laird. Handsome men aren't exactly a complete rarity in New York so I wasn't sure what exactly it was about the Laird that had me so intrigued.
Darach. Darach, yes, that's what he'd asked me to call him. Even his name felt exotic and thrillingly foreign to my mind. He had presence that went beyond his Viking-like good looks. It could have been his position or his money but it felt like something specific to him, something that would be there whether he had five dollars to his name or five billion. And why was I already daydreaming about someone I'd just met - my married employer, no less?
Typical. Go abroad to experience a new culture and a new country and within twenty-four hours I was already focusing on a man. I did this during my freshman year at college, too, with my first real boyfriend - Jordan. Classes, studying, exploring the city - all of it had taken a backseat to a relationship that ended up being embarrassingly unworthy of my attentions. When my grandmother got sick it took Jordan less than a week to decide he "couldn't handle" the situation and bolt. Ever since then I'd worried about my tendency to get too attached to people - well, to men - who simply weren't very attached in return.
Hell, one of the main reasons for coming to Scotland was to learn to be more self-reliant - more comfortable with being alone. The last thing I needed was a schoolgirl crush. What would my grandmother think of this place? What would she think of me in this place, reverting back to old habits before the jet-lag had even worn off?
The thought of her caught me off guard, the way it always, always does and I felt the threatening sting of tears in my eyes. Damnit, Jenny. Get yourself together. Why are you even here if you're going to spend all your time wallowing, which you could have done just as easily back home?
The sound of footsteps yanked me out of the threatened spiral of self-recrimination and I looked up to see a young woman walking towards me. Unlike me, though, she seemed to fit into the landscape around her - she was dressed in a long, thick skirt that billowed out in the wind that was also blowing her blonde hair around her face. She smiled as she got closer to me and I almost did a double-take at the similarity between her and Darach - it was immediately obvious that she was a relation of some sort.
"You must be...Jennifer? I'm Anne McLanald."
I took her outstretched hand and shook it, nodding that yes, I was Jennifer.
"Have you met my brother yet? The Laird? He was supposed to be in London until tomorrow but Mrs. Clyde said he came back early?"
I replied that I had met her brother. Anne was eerily like him - she even held her body the same way he did, with the same nonchalant ease that I'd seen earlier in the kitchen. It occurred to me that the two of them had probably looked like twins as children, before puberty had hardened his jawline and broadened his shoulders at the same time that it softened her into the tall, slender and quite beautiful creature I saw in front of me. She was giving me a look I couldn't quite decipher.
"Did you - did my brother hire you?"
"Er," I paused, not sure what Anne was asking me, "well, yes, I'm going to be here until the end of the summer."
"No, no," Anna waved her hand at me slightly impatiently, "I mean, did Darach hire you himself? Did he do the interview? Or did Mrs. Clyde do it?"
"Mrs. Clyde interviewed me on Skype. I only met Darach this morning."
"Really?!" Anne seemed surprised by my response - I caught it when she held back what was going to be an amused eye-roll. "Hmm. Alright. Are you coming out here to see the loch?"
Anne changed the subject quickly and kept going before I had time to respond:
"I've just been to see it - it's such a beautiful day isn't it? Do you want me to show you where it is?"
At the time I didn't know what a 'loch' was but Anne seemed so enthusiastic and so eager for me to get a look at it that I just nodded and followed behind her as she turned and started leading me back down in the same direction she'd come from.
"So you met my brother?" Anne called back to me without bothering to turn around as we walked.
"Yes." I tried to keep my voice as neutral as possible - already getting the feeling that Anne was fishing fo
r information.
"He's quite a sight, isn't he?"
Well, there was no obvious response to that question, so I didn't give one. Anne stopped in the middle of the path and turned to me with a knowing smile on her face:
"What? You didn't notice? My brother has been breaking girl's hearts since he was twelve years old - and he's been known to have...certain tastes."
That was twice now. Both women I'd met at Castle McLanald had made a point of noting Darach McLanald's good looks. Why? I was starting to get the distinct impression of the Laird as a golden boy of sorts, a favored son doted on by women young and old, related or not. I've never really gone for that kind of thing, especially in a grown man, and the look on Anne's face felt slightly presumptuous. What of it if the Laird was smoking hot? Was I being made fun of? That seemed like bad manners - and it put me a little on the defensive.
Anne saw the look on my face before I replied and immediately changed her expression to one of contrition.
"Och, Jennifer, I'm sorry! I'm not implying anything about you! If anything I'm implying something about my brother."
WHAT about your brother? I wanted to ask, in much the same way I'd wanted to ask Mrs. Clyde when she brought up the Laird's dashing features - and his apparent lack of availability. Yes, he was handsome. Yes, I had definitely noticed. No I was not planning on begging him for a proposal - fantasist or not, I have my pride.
Anne continued: "Never mind me. I'm just - well, let's say I know my brother's predilections, is all."
I didn't know the Laird's 'predilections' but at that point I was damned if I was going to ask about them. We kept walking in - at least on my part - a kind of perplexed silence, until the path suddenly turned to the left and a small lake with dark blue water that looked unfathomably deep came into view. It was beautiful enough to take my breath away and sweep all thoughts of the Laird from my mind.
"Wow."
"It's lovely isn't it?"
I could hear the pride in Anne's voice.
"See that little waterfall over there? You can slide down those rocks and straight into the water - only on a really hot day, of course, because the water in the loch is absolutely arse-freezing."
The water did look cold. It also appeared that word 'loch' meant lake. I was glad I wasn't going to have to ask anyone about it and risk looking like a stereotypical insular American.
"Jennifer, I'm sorry if I was too familiar earlier. I really didn't mean anything by it - it's really lovely to have someone new here for the summer and I think you're going to love Cameron. I'm going to the south of France for the summer and she needs a solid female presence in her life."
We walked back to Castle McLanald together, Anne peppering me with questions about America and me peppering her right back with questions about Scotland. By the time we walked through the front doors I had a feeling we could easily become friends - all the weirdness of the earlier discussion of her brother had dissipated and I assumed it was probably the jet-lag and the unfamiliar surroundings making me a little sensitive.
Chapter 4
I was roused from deep sleep the next morning by the distinctive sound of a helicopter. A helicopter? I sat up in bed and rubbed my eyes, confused and certain I was misinterpreting the noise. But it was a helicopter - I looked out the window just in time to see it slowly lowering itself behind one of the castle walls until it was out of sight.
Up until that point it hadn't really occurred to me just how wealthy the McLanald clan was, or how different the lives of its members must have been compared to mine. I'd seen the castle and taken in the huge swathes of land surrounding it but somehow it hadn't quite sunk in that Laird Darach owned this place. He and his sister had both seemed surprisingly normal and neither of them was anything like the idea I had in my head of a European aristocrat - snooty, unfriendly and, perhaps most importantly: old. Anne was no older than twenty-five and Darach looked to be around thirty, maybe thirty-five at most.
My thoughts were interrupted by a knock at the door. It was Mrs. Clyde.
"Jennifer! Are you awake? Wee Cameron is back from London - I've got breakfast ready if you'd like to come down?"
"Yes! I'll be right down!" I called back through the door, jumping out of bed to get ready.
I hadn't been expecting the child to arrive so early in the morning, so I rushed through my shower, threw on the first clean clothes I found and hurried downstairs as fast as I could, worried that I'd screwed up by not being ready earlier.
"Don't worry, lassie, there's time," Mrs. Clyde reassured me as I almost ran into her on her way out of the kitchen. "The Laird is playing in the courtyard with Cameron, you don't have to be there right away."
I didn't want to eat breakfast, because I'm never hungry when I wake up too quickly, so I made my own way through the castle's halls and out to the courtyard. No one was around except Darach and Cameron - who I could see had inherited her father's pale blonde hair - so I held back for a few moments and watched them, slightly nervously. I've spent a lot of time around children - babysitting was my main source of income from the ages of fourteen until I went away to college but this wasn't a neighborhood toddler. This was the heiress to Castle McLanald and her sexy, self-assured father. I desperately wanted to make a good impression.
"Jennifer!"
Darach had spotted me hanging back behind one of the archways. Oh, God. Heat rose in my cheeks as I walked out into the courtyard to meet Cameron.
She was adorable - a tiny little sprite in a white summer dress - and the spitting image of her father and her aunt. At first she sat shyly on Darach's lap, hiding her face against his broad chest and refusing to look at me directly when I greeted her. She soon warmed up, though, when I started asking her questions about her life - how old she was, where she lived, what her favorite food was. In fact within a few minutes she'd squirmed her way over to my lap and was busy twisting one of my dark curls around her fingers and taking her turn to ask me questions:
"Why do you sound like that, Miss Robinson?"
She'd obviously been told how to address me. I wanted to ask her to call me Jenny but the Laird was right there and I was worried he might disapprove, in spite of his earlier statement about disliking formality.
"Because I'm not from Scotland. I'm from America."
She turned to her father, eyes wide:
"Daddy, I went to America!"
"Yes you did, Cameron."
Darach was attentive to his daughter, but sitting there next to him on fountain's stone ledge, I could feel his attention was also on me. I didn't acknowledge it because I didn't know what it meant - it was probably just the interest a good parent takes in the relationship between his child and her new nanny - but having his eyes focused on me was both nerve-wracking and strangely enjoyable. It was the first time I'd been so physically close to him, too, and the proximity actually made me feel small. I'm five foot eight and blessed with the kind of lush, generous curves that make some girls insecure and turn other girls into huge show-offs. I was neither of those things, but feeling petite next to a man was a new experience. I liked it. I liked it more than I should have. When the Laird told me and Cameron he had work to do I was almost relieved when he left, exhaling slowly when he was out of sight and relaxing for the first time in over an hour.
"Did you see the loch Miss Robinson?"
I told the little girl I had seen the loch the previous day, but that I wanted to see it again with her and she happily slipped her small hand into mine and showed me the way.
Over the course of the next two days Cameron McLanald became my little shadow. Even when I was off-duty she insisted on being with me, which I didn't mind due to both my own lack of companionship and a certain fragility in the child that brought out my protective side. I told myself it was just that I hadn't been around little kids for a few years but the truth was Cameron was the most nervous four year old I'd ever met. When I told her she would be going to London the next weekend, to see her mother, she reacted by
bursting into tears and wrapping her small body around me, repeating through jerking, sobbing breaths that she didn't want to go. It wasn't my business to pry into the circumstances of her family life and it isn't what I intended to do, but she seemed to be genuinely inconsolable and it made me suspicious. What kind of child reacted that way to being told they were going to spend a whole weekend with their own mother?
We were in the courtyard again, armed with small nets and searching the murky waters of the fountain for salamanders when she fixed me with her blue eyes, already brimming with tears, and said:
"Miss Robinson, I don't want to go to London this weekend. Can I stay here with you and Daddy?"
I thought the Laird was away, for how long I didn't know, but he'd left on the helicopter shortly after introducing me to his daughter. Part of me thought her clinginess was about his absence - and I had no idea our conversation was being overheard.
"But your Mommy misses you, Cameron. She'll be sad if she doesn't see you. Don't you want to see her?"
That question pushed the tears glimmering in the child's eyes over the edge and she started to cry in earnest as they slid copiously down her cheeks.
"No. I don't want to go. I want to stay here. Please can I stay here with you?"
When I scooped her up onto my lap her whole body was trembling and something inside me just took over. There was no good reason for a four year old to be trembling with fear over the prospect of seeing someone - especially her own mother. Her sadness made me angry. Surely she'd expressed herself to other adults? Had they just ignored her? I pulled my head away so I could look her in the eyes.
"Cameron, why don't you want to see your mother? Are you scared?"
Her lower lip wobbled as she nodded her response.
"Why are you scared?"
"I don't like Mummy. I like you. I want to stay here. Please, Miss Robinson. Please don't make me go."