“Me.”
She felt a sudden lurch in her stomach. “You? You’ve been in charge of the building work? But you’re the laird?”
“Aye. Are you saying I’ve not been doing a bonny job?”
“You’ve been doing an appalling job. On your watch the laborers haven’t bothered mixing the lime mortar right. Your battlements have crumbled and you’ll be lucky if they survived the winter. The roof of your chapel is about to collapse and as for your keep? If I were you I’d be pulling the whole thing down and starting again.”
“My father designed this keep,” he said, his voice quieter than before. “I only want to finish what he began.”
“Then you need someone to supervise the building work. That’s what a master mason does.”
“I know what a master mason does. How do you?”
“Rory was telling me all about it.”
“So tell me.”
She told him everything she’d told Rory. She told him how they could use the stone dug out of the earthworks as rubble infill. She told him if he got this right, the laborers he was paying to do little could get the work done in months and get started earlier on Pluscarden abbey which she’d read in the guidebook he wouldn’t found until 1195.
She told him how with the makeshift repairs his battlements would still dominate the landscape until spring when they could be rebuilt properly. She told him how to create a camber on the roads leading up to the castle to help with drainage. She told him how his enemies could easily undermine the place in any siege unless he got everything fixed quickly. There had not been the time to wait for his approval. It had to start at once.
Through it all he sat and listened quietly, not saying a word.
She only stopped talking when she realized someone was standing in the doorway. She looked up at the same time Andrew did to see Derek moving from the shadows into the room.
“How long have you been skulking?” Andrew asked.
“Not long,” he replied. “I didnae want to interrupt the lassie. Sounds like there’s some work to be done.”
“What do you want, Derek?”
“You sent for me.”
“What? Oh, aye, I did. Gather the men in the great hall. I need to talk to them.”
“All the men?”
“Actually, on second thoughts leave those who are working for Beth.”
“Working for her?” Derek’s eyebrows raised momentarily before lowering again.
“Aye. Now on you go. I’ll be down presently.” He waited a moment before turning his attention back to Beth. “I hate how he walks around without making a sound. It’s unnerving. Now, lassie, I wonder whether you’d consider being master mason of the castle until this work is done? I’d want you to rebuild my old hall too, if we can spare the wood for it.”
Beth couldn’t help it. She burst into tears. She tried to stop them but she was unable to do anything but let it happen.
Andrew was across the room in a moment, his arm on her shoulder. “What’s the matter, wee lassie? What ails you?”
“It’s nothing,” she replied, feeling the heat of his hand through her dress, wanting it to go and stay in equal measure.
She couldn’t tell him the truth. What good would it do? How could she tell him about her love of masonry and architecture? How it was the only thing she’d ever wanted to do? How her father had tried to tell her it was a man’s job and she needed to set her sights on something more realistic? How she had to take a job to support her mother instead of going to college at the same time as everyone else from her school? How she’d finally started studying and still worried no one would give her a job? How many people out there thought it was just a man’s job?
Yet here, in the era most people would consider far more sexist than her own, she was being offered the highest possible position a laird could offer apart from steward. She would be in charge of the entire rebuilding of the castle, maybe the old hall too. “Was the old hall all wood?” she asked, wondering about something as she sniffed loudly.
“Aye. Why’d you ask?”
“In my time it was stone vaulted.”
“Never been vaulted in stone. Perhaps it could be if you took on the job?”
She almost cried again but managed to stop herself. She noticed his hand was still on her shoulder and he was leaning closer to her. She looked deep into those eyes which reflected the fire beside her. “I thought you’d be angry with me for starting work already. Then you act like this. I don’t understand you at all.”
“Maybe you could get to understand me better.” He was leaning closer still. Another inch and his lips would touch hers. She yearned for him to do it, from deep inside all she wanted was to feel his lips on hers. He was going to do it. He was moving closer. She held her breath, leaning forward in her chair.
“The men are ready, my laird,” a voice said loudly from the doorway.
At once the expression on Andrew’s face changed. He stood up and was once again the brutish angry giant she’d first seen. “Good,” he said, nodding to Derek who was looking from her to the laird and back again.
He left without saying another word, leaving Beth to sit in the solar and stare at his bed. She looked at it without moving for a very long time, lost in thought.
