by Julia London
No matter what Arrandale had said of him, Daisy rather liked Somerled’s company. He was solicitous, and he didn’t look at her as if he wished to devour her. He laughed at everything she said and complimented her too much. Her hair, her eyes, the smoothness of her complexion, with or without the benefit of the parasol. Her son was well mannered, and therefore she must be a wonderful mother. Auchenard had been turned quite completely around, and therefore she was a competent house manager.
Daisy could take no credit for the color of her hair or her eyes or her complexion. She was a middling mother at best and was not the house manager at all—she couldn’t imagine the shambles Auchenard would be were it not for Uncle Alfonso. But she enjoyed his compliments all the same.
And he helped her forget about Arrandale for a bit.
Rowley came down to summon her. “Lord Chatwick requests you presence,” he said. “He has something he should very much like to show you. He is just outside the garden walls,” Rowley said and took the parasol she handed him.
Somerled and Daisy made their way up the grassy slope—now mercifully mowed by a pair of goats her uncle had purchased—and around the garden wall to the field where Daisy had twice encountered Arrandale.
The MacDonalds had joined Arrandale and Ellis, and they were tossing tree limbs that looked freshly cut. Fergus MacDonald was attempting the throw, arching his back and leaping at once to catapult it into the air. The limb soared in an arc, then bounced once before disappearing in the tall grass.
And Ellis... Ellis...laughed and raced across the meadow to where the limb had come down, gesturing for the men to follow. He was ebullient, and Daisy’s heart soared with gratitude.
“It must seem passing strange to you, aye?” Somerled said. “’Tis a game played among Highlanders.”
“A bit,” she agreed.
It was Ellis’s turn, and Arrandale had selected a smaller limb for him. He helped Ellis hold it correctly, and with some encouraging words Daisy could not hear, he urged Ellis to throw. Her son’s throw went awry and very nearly struck Arrandale. Had it not been for his quick reflex, he might have been hit squarely in the head.
Ellis tried again. This time, the thing scarcely left his hands, but the men applauded all the same. “Did you see, Mamma?” he called out to her.
“I saw!” Daisy said. “A fine throw it was, darling!”
There was some discussion between the MacDonalds, and Arrandale handed the limb to Ellis again. Then came more instructions and even a repositioning of Ellis’s grip of the limb.
“Milady?”
Daisy turned away from the limb tossing as Rowley walked into the field. “Shall I serve luncheon?”
“Yes, I think—”
“Ow!” Ellis cried out.
Daisy whipped around; her son was on all fours, and then he rolled onto his hip to examine his knee. His face began to crumble, and Daisy picked up her skirts, dashing the short distance to his side. “What happened?” she asked, falling to her knees beside him.
“I fell,” Ellis said, his bottom lip trembling. Daisy gingerly touched his knee through the rip in his breeches. Blood was smeared across his knee, and she could see what looked to her like a gash.
“Oh dear God,” she said. “Rowley? Rowley! We need a bandage! Oh dear, Ellis—”
“Allow me to help you,” Mr. Somerled said.
“Yes, thank you,” Daisy said. “Come, darling, let’s take you in and have Belinda clean it.”
Ellis nodded. He didn’t speak; he bit his lower lip to keep from crying.
Somerled helped Daisy to her feet as Arrandale lifted Ellis to his. “It’s naugh’ but a scrape, lad,” he said jovially. “You’ll be no worse for it, aye?”
“But it’s bleeding,” Ellis said, dangerously close to tears.
“Blood is the mark of a champion,” Arrandale said.
Daisy put her arm around Ellis’s shoulders and pulled him away from Arrandale. He limped as they walked out of the meadow.
“You mustn’t fret, darling. Belinda knows precisely how to bandage knees,” Daisy said, soothing him.
“Mamma...did you see how far I threw the caber?” Ellis asked. “I threw it quite far.”
Daisy glanced down at Ellis. This was not the boy she knew—the boy she knew shied away from play, was fearful of other boys and of being hurt. And in the event he was hurt, he moped. But the boy limping beside her now was smiling, his thoughts obviously on something besides the gash in his knee.
“Perhaps you ought to wait for the toss until you’re a wee bit bigger, aye?” Somerled suggested.
No, he should not wait—could Somerled not see how happy Ellis was? Daisy tried to erase the image of Arrandale’s frown as she’d led Ellis away. As if she were doing something wrong! She supposed he would rub the boy’s knee with grass and have him go again.
But she couldn’t deny that she had never seen her son quite as happy as he was now, with his bloodied knee and dirt on his coat and the glory of having thrown a part of a tree.
CHAPTER TEN
THE FOLLOWING DAY, Cailean met Aulay at Balhaire and the two of them sailed to Newark on the River Clyde to sell some of their misbegotten wine and tobacco.
Hamish Gib, the “agent” they generally bargained with, was a stout Glaswegian with ears that looked like a pair of sails on either side of his head. “Have you any gin, then?” he asked as he counted the gold pieces he owed them, having made quick work of the negotiation over their cargo.
Aulay looked at Cailean. Aulay very nearly had been apprehended on his last trip to Calais, as the cove they’d used to hide from passing ships had been discovered and raided by the Royal Navy. But as Cailean had explained to Lady Chatwick, they would take their chances. They were Highlanders—they did not act from a place of fear, and even now, with the stakes mounting, a look of understanding flowed between them. Aulay said, “We can get it, aye.”
“I can sell as much as you can carry,” Hamish Gib said.
When they’d been paid, they walked outside the ramshackle office and onto the busy dock. They paused there, shoulder to shoulder, and looked down at their ship. “Abbot’s Cove is lost to us,” Aulay said in Gaelic.
“Then we’ll sail to Inverness and take it over land. Rabbie can meet us with ponies.”
“Our ships are known to them. Perhaps we ought to let the route cool for a time.” He glanced at his brother. “I’ve found a man willing to trade from Bergen.”
“Norway?” Cailean asked. The Norwegians were notoriously proprietary with their trade.
“Lumber and salt,” Aulay said. “Glasgow is building at such a pace we could make a nice profit. In the meantime, the English think they’ve won.”
It was a good idea, Cailean agreed. It was at least worth going to Bergen to have a look.
The brothers carried on—there were things they needed to transport back to Balhaire, such as wool, and furnishings for Arrandale. Cailean was thankful that he had something to occupy his hands and his mind. Anything to take his thoughts from the lady of Auchenard.
If his brother noticed his distraction, he didn’t say so, but Cailean felt almost as if he had an ague, in spite of being as fit as any man. He knew what ailed him, because he’d felt this way once before in his life—it was his bloody rotten luck to have been bedeviled by his neighbor. Only this time, the bedevilment by a woman didn’t fill him with anxiety and restless thoughts. He was too old for the unchecked desires of a young man. This time, the bedevilment merely haunted him.
He couldn’t keep the barmy woman from appearing in his thoughts. Images of her, with that fiendish little sparkle in her eye, or a memory, such as the creaminess of her skin, or the way she felt against him when he’d kissed her, would creep up on him at the most inopportune time. He kept hearing her laugh, particularly in c
rowds, and once he’d even turned about, certain she’d somehow found him in Glasgow.
Or course she hadn’t.
That laugh and those green eyes were for Spivey, however, and that knowledge raged in Cailean’s heart. It was entirely irrational—it was not as if he’d lost her to Spivey. And he didn’t know Spivey. What he knew was that it was likely Spivey’s desire was to see Cailean and Aulay in a dungeon somewhere, and probably hanged, if rumors of what happened to smugglers was true. But for all Cailean knew, Spivey could very well be a decent man.
And still, that did not ease him. He was quite cross with himself for dwelling on it. Disgusted, really—this was not the sort of man he was. He did not occupy his thoughts in this manner. But God help him if he could quit it.
They’d been gone ten days or so when Cailean collected Fabienne at Balhaire, and with Rabbie’s help, drove two wagons of furnishings to Arrandale, which they stored in one of the finished rooms. Cailean was bone weary and ravenous, and he’d come home to an empty larder. When he’d seen Rabbie off, Cailean picked up his fishing tackle, whistled for Fabienne and walked down to the loch to catch his supper.
The air was thick and heavy that afternoon, and a bank of clouds had formed over the hills. Cailean guessed he had an hour, maybe less, before rain fell.
He was not having any luck. He kept moving along the shoreline, casting his line again and again, hoping for a nibble, and receiving nothing for his trouble.
The first distant rumble of thunder frightened Fabienne, and she darted away, bound, in all probability, for the dark corner of the kitchen where she generally waited out storms. Damn fish—would none of them be attracted by his lure? Cailean kept moving, kept casting, his focus on the water, on any sign of movement beneath the surface. He was startled by the sound of voices and glanced to his right. A boat was coming around a tree-lined bend in the loch’s shore. There were two people on board, one of them a woman holding a parasol. He groaned—there was only one person that could be.
He watched as the boat glided toward him. The man rowing the boat had his back to the shore, rowing blind like a fool. Who rowed her about like a queen? She was lounging on pillows, he noticed, the parasol dipping with the occasional breeze.
As his boat glided closer to shore, he saw it was Somerled who rowed her about. Diah, the man must have debts up to his ears. There was something else—Somerled was wearing a wig. A wig.
“Lord Arrandale!” Lady Chatwick called out to him, waving as if he hadn’t seen her.
The small rowboat was moving too fast, Cailean realized. “Have a care, man! You’re headed for—”
The boat slammed into a rock outcropping. Somerled must have realized it a moment too late, for he leaped to his feet and tried to stop their collision with an oar to the rock. It snapped cleanly in two, and Somerled toppled out of the boat and into shallow water. Lady Chatwick shrieked. She dropped her parasol and grabbed onto both sides of the boat, somehow managing to keep from tipping out herself.
Somerled gained his feet, the water being only thigh deep where he stood. Lady Chatwick took one look at him and laughed quite gaily.
Somerled did not.
Cailean moved to pull the boat onto shore with Lady Chatwick in it. “Oh dear, the oar has broken,” Lady Chatwick said as he helped her out of the boat. “Will one suffice?”
“You have none,” Cailean said as he helped her onto higher ground, then pointed to the loch, where the second oar was floating serenely with the current, on its way to the sea if it was not caught by the shore.
“We’ll have to carry it,” Somerled said stiffly as he splashed out of the loch. He avoided Cailean’s gaze, his cheeks flushed with the shame.
“What good fortune that we would find Arrandale here to help us,” Lady Chatwick said and smiled up at Cailean. “It’s a great surprise,” she said sunnily. “I thought perhaps you’d fallen off a hill or had been eaten by wolves for we haven’t seen you at Auchenard in an age.”
“I’ve no business at Auchenard,” he reminded her.
“No one has business at Auchenard,” she said, “and yet Mr. Irving MacDonald and Mr. Somerled have been kind enough to call.” She glanced at Somerled, who returned a tight smile.
“Then you’ve been well occupied and didna need my call at all, aye?”
“Oh, I have been very well occupied,” she said pertly, her gaze narrowing slightly. She turned away from him. “We were just rowing in,” she said. “Mr. Somerled says it will rain. Will you come and join us for tea?”
“No.”
“No?” she echoed over her shoulder, clearly surprised someone might possibly refuse her invitation.
“I need to fish.”
“But Mr. Somerled can’t carry the boat on his own. And we’ve plenty of fish!” she exclaimed. “My uncle is quite obsessed with it, and every morning he returns from the lake with a string of them.”
Did her smile have a hint of challenge in it?
“Perhaps the laird has other things he must attend to, aye?” Somerled suggested.
Well, then. Cailean slowly turned his head to Somerled, who stood soaked from the crotch down. “No, I’ve naugh’ to attend.”
“Wonderful!” Lady Chatwick said happily. “Shall we, gentlemen?”
Somerled clenched his jaw and turned around. “I’ll take this end,” he said, gesturing to the boat.
They hoisted the small rowboat above their heads and walked around the bend and through the trees the short distance to Auchenard. They stored the boat in the small inlet where it was kept. By the time they’d secured it, Mr. Kimberly was striding down to the water’s edge.
“Uncle, look who has come!” Lady Chatwick said brightly as she dabbed at her chest with a handkerchief. “We had a bit of an accident. The oars were lost.”
“The oars were lost!” her uncle echoed loudly.
Another rumble of thunder sounded closer, and a gust of wind lifted the hem of Lady Chatwick’s gown.
“Oh, and Lord Arrandale wasn’t able to fish,” she said, ignoring the worsening sky. “Surely we’ve enough to share with our neighbor?”
“I salted some very fine trout this morning,” her uncle said proudly. “Come up, then. The sky looks as if it will open at any moment.”
Lady Chatwick looped her arm through her uncle’s and began to walk up the lawn to the lodge, chattering about the boat, the loch, the crash and broken oar as if she’d read the tale in a novel, while the two men trailed behind.
Somerled stalked along behind her like a sullen lad. Cailean mentally kicked himself for having let his pride get the best of him, but he was enjoying Somerled’s pique so much that he carried on, bringing up the rear.
Rowley met them on the terrace with Lord Chatwick, who stood shyly with his hands behind his back. Somerled ignored the lad altogether, but Cailean smiled down at him, put his hand on his shoulder. “Have you practiced your caber toss, lad?”
Lord Chatwick shook his head. “I’ve no one to help me.” He glanced warily at Somerled, who was speaking to Mr. Kimberly, almost certainly explaining how it was not his fault the oars were lost.
“Mr. Somerled had an unexpected swim,” Cailean muttered, and Lord Chatwick smiled.
Miss Hainsworth emerged from the lodge then, hanging out the door as if afraid to step onto the terrace. “Come in, all of you! It will storm at any moment and you’ll all catch your death!”
They wouldn’t catch their death, for heaven’s sake. One did not live in the Highlands of Scotland and escape rain or water. Nevertheless, Cailean followed the others, and as he closed the door behind him, thunder cracked so loudly over their heads that it shook the rafters of the lodge.
Mr. Kimberly stoked the fire in the great room’s hearth. A brilliant flare of firelight was followed by another deafening crack of thunder, and Lord
Chatwick grabbed his mother’s hand.
“That was very close,” Miss Hainsworth said. “How fortunate we are to have these hills surrounding us, as that would have surely struck the lodge. Lightning is one of the most common causes of fires, you know.”
Cailean tried to recall even one home lost to fire caused by lightning.
“Bring whisky, Rowley,” Kimberly said as he settled onto the settee. “That will settle the nerves.”
As they waited for the butler to pour, the rain began to fall. As he passed the drams of whisky around the room, the storm began to rage in earnest; winds whipped the tops of the trees and the rain came down in a deluge, torrents of it running down the windows. “We must have something to pass the time,” Lady Chatwick said nervously.
“It willna last long,” Cailean said. “Storms that crop up in the late summer are ferocious, but almost always short-lived. It will pass quickly enough.”
“She’s right,” Somerled agreed with Lady Chatwick. Unsurprisingly. Predictably. Pathetically. “Shall I read, then?”
“Read?” Lady Chatwick sounded surprised by his suggestion. No doubt she had in mind something far more diabolical, something that would pit her two callers against each other. “We’ve very few books—”
“Aye, but you have a Bible,” he said, pointing to a desk and the two books there.
She blinked, looking almost as if she’d never noticed it before. She gave Cailean a quick, sidelong glance, and then said with an enthusiasm he knew very well she did not feel, “Thank you, Mr. Somerled. We will all be made the better for it. Won’t we, Arrandale?”
He gave her a withering look. She smiled pertly.
Somerled picked up the Bible. He turned several pages, found something that he deemed suitable and began to read. “From Exodus, nine two four. ‘So there was hail, and fire flashing continually in the midst of the hail, very severe, such as had no’ been in all the land of Egypt since it became a nation...’”
Cailean listened politely for a few minutes—he was not an utter heathen—but his mind began to wander, and he mentally listed the things that needed to be done at Arrandale when he was not frowning at Lady Chatwick, who kept flashing tiny, pert little smiles at him. He watched Rowley and Mr. Kimberly slip from the room. He watched Lord Chatwick doze off, his head propped on his mother’s shoulder. He watched the lad’s mother’s lids grow heavy, too, because she was an utter heathen, and this sermon, or whatever it was Somerled was attempting to do to impress her, served her right for being so coy.