“You are well?” Isla repeated. “No burns? No smoke in the lungs?”
“I lost a bit of eyebrow,” Mrs. Macrae said briskly. “And three pairs of stockings. I will forgive the fire the stockings. They had holes.”
Isla huffed a shaky laugh. “And the others? Mhairi? Tam?”
“We’re living,” Mrs. Macrae said. “That’s more than I thought I’d be saying when the east wall went up like tinder. The staff are scattered in the meantime. Dugald’s taken three of the lads, Mrs. Henderson’s sleeping half the maids on her parlor floor. It’ll do till …”
“It will not do at all,” Isla cut in. “They should not be sleeping on parlor floors while there are beds standing empty in the family rooms. We will bring them all back in.”
Mrs. Macrae frowned. “There’s no space …”
“There is,” Isla insisted. “We have guest suites we never used even when the house was full. We have rooms in the north wingthat have been shut since Grandfather died. Open them. Air them. We will cram people two to a bed if we must, but no one from this house is sleeping on straw in a byre while I breathe.”
Mrs. Macrae’s eyes softened. “Aye. There’s your mother in you. She said the same when the old west tower fell in that storm. Very well, then. I’ll set the girls to it.”
“Good,” Isla said. “And if Alistair complains, send him to me.”
“Gladly,” Mrs. Macrae muttered.
She moved off, already barking orders. Isla turned to another cluster: kitchen maids lifting pots into a cart, the scullion boy whose name she should have remembered but would not pretend to know, the old gardener’s grandson holding his grandfather’s tools like trophies. She asked after each in turn, brushed ash from a cheek here, squeezed a shoulder there. They straightened as she passed. Some smiled, briefly.
“You should rest,” Edward murmured at her elbow. “You have ridden hard to get here.”
“So have you,” she said. “Yet I see no chaise drawn up for Your Grace to recline in.”
He smiled faintly.
“Ravenscroft!” Alistair called. “If you are done admiring my sister’s managerial skills, there’s a beam here that thinks it’s a tree.”
Edward shrugged out of his coat the rest of the way and slung it over a wagon wheel. “It has been a while since I wrestled with obstinate timber,” he said. “I am out of practice.”
“You can practice on Strathmore’s spine,” Alistair said grimly.
They went inside. Isla stood a moment, watching Edward disappear into the dark of the ruined wing, then turned back to the flow of staff. She worked for what felt like hours, though the sun had not yet begun to sink when Mrs. Macrae steered a pair of maids toward the north wing and declared that anyone who did not sit and drink something soon would be no use to anyone.
“Aye, that means you, Your Grace,” she added, when Isla protested. “You wan’ to fall over? I’ve no time to pick you up.”
Isla surrendered, finally aware of the way her legs trembled and her throat burned from smoke and talking. She found herself standing near one of the carts, watching as two footmen eased down a large, blackened chest.
“What’s that?” she asked.
“Old tea chest from the attics,” one man grunted. “We thought it’d gone, but it were wedged in a corner. Near took skin off my hands getting it out.”
The chest had been painted once, flakes of color clung stubbornly to the charred wood. One side had partially collapsed. The lid hung askew, its hinges warped.
“Set it down,” Isla said. “Gently.”
They obeyed, lowering the chest to a patch of relatively dry ground near the stable wall. Something rattled faintly inside. Curiosity pricked through the fog of exhaustion.
“What was in this?” she asked. “Do you know?”
“Old papers, likely,” one of the footmen said. “Your mother stored things up there. Didn’t like clutter in her parlors.”
Her chest gave a little twist at the mention of her mother. “Let us see.”
She knelt beside the chest. The charred boards creaked under her hand. The lid, already half-loose, came away with less resistance than she expected. She caught it before it toppled, set it aside, and peered in.
Inside, miraculously intact, sat a tin. It had once been a bright thing, painted with flowers. The paint was blistered now, the lid warped at one corner.
