“Ye are excused.”
Darragh did not see the man bow or leave as he covered his eyes with his palm, but he heard the creak of hinges and the snap of a bolt.
When he opened his eyes, the steam from the soup had permeated the air, painting the room in a hazy mosaic. It drifted to him, and he rose and backed away as if it were some contagious disease. It might as well have been, seeing the way his stomach reacted to it.
The sudden motion turned the throbbing in his skull to cymbals, a ringing in his ears that pressing his hands to either side of his face could not quell.
This was what happened when one abandoned a life of debauchery and decided on a whim to pick up the habit without easing into it. He had drunk the usual lot to get drunk. But the usual lot would also have him gingered in a boxing ring or the backyard of Minister Harrison’s parish, puking away his virility the next day.
Minister Harrison… His daughter would have been serving him a chilled glass of sweetened lemonade at the moment.
Darragh looked out forlornly. That was what he needed: something sweet, something cold.
He pushed off the seat, careful not to be caught up in the steam, headed to the window, and threw it open. The parish stood out from the rest. Its grandeur was nowhere close to McGhee Castle, but standing at three stories high with terracotta slate roofing, it dwarfed the neighboring buildings. It had fresh white paint, courtesy of the magnanimity of the people, reminding him of his own failure as Laird.
He rested against the windowsill, gulping in the fresh air. The cold chilled the heat in his veins and calmed the turmoil in his stomach.
It was particularly drafty that morning. The air was thick with the smell of petrichor. Fog rolled in, shadowing the walls of the keep as it usually did before a storm.
If he did not send a letter, Mrs. Goodwill’s chickens would run amok as they always did before storms—they spooked easily, and she had yet to find a pen for the jittery things—and he would be forced to spend a sunny afternoon bird calling in the hope of finding the creatures before some tenant took a bird in their backyard as a blessing and cooked it. It had happened one too many times.
He would also have to remind his mother to stock up on milk for the next two to three days. The farmer’s incompetence was also one thing he could anticipate.
Dread coiled in his gut as an image of the aftermath of a storm flashed through his mind: flooded canals, drainage blocked by debris and fallen tree branches, dislodged roofs. The roads churned with mud because of years of neglect, and he could only imagine their state after the storm hit.
Potholes eroded day by day, and it irked him how he did not yet have the funds to mend them. A tenant had once come upon a pile of boulders within the keep. If Darragh had the money back then, he would have employed stonemasons to break them down and then built proper drainage systems.
There was a hole in the outer wall that currently required fixing, and the roads… He could have covered up so much of the clan’s shame with proper roads. Without the funds, he had been forced to sell some of the rocks to the man to finish building his workshop. He had made less than he would have had he used the rocks himself. The money was not much, but he had someone who could foresee a future in the keep for so long that he set it in stone.
His tenants were growing tired of the constant thieving because of the gap in the fence and the frequent visits to fix their carts. He had had to employ Jenson’s help to convince the minister not to abandon them just yet.
The soup had cooled by the time he returned to it. There was an expensive looking victoria sitting in the courtyard. He knew he had only moments before a caller would disturb him. The carriage must have been sitting there for a while, as a knock sounded at the door just then.
He considered letting the footman wait as he ate, but the unappetizing meal had become even more unappetizing. Imagine what horrors it would do once consumed, especially in haste.
He summoned the footman. The slender man came into the room and stepped aside, revealing an even more slender man. He was tall, dressed in a dark velvet jacket, a plain white shirt hidden behind a dark blue tie, and sensible trousers.
Darragh rose as the man came into the room.
“Mr. Ayaan Turnbull,” the footman announced.
“Pleased to meet ye, me Laird.”
The man walked like a woman, sauntering and swaying hips he did not have. His belly was round and full despite his stature. A scar on the left side of his face dragged from his lip to his cheekbone, pinching his face in a way that left him with a permanent smirk. The smirk stretched out in a smile as he regarded him, and the silver streaking his brown hair almost seemed to fade.
“To what do I owe this visit?”
The man’s grip was weak, and his palms were soft.
He has never known a hard life.
Upon closer inspection, Darragh noticed the creases beneath and around his eyes, betraying his age—he could not be younger than thirty-eight—and the lines wrinkling his lips.
Ah, a smoker.
“It has taken me a while to pay me condolences on the death of yer cousin. Ye see, I was traveling, and I only received the news once I returned.”
“I appreciate yer condolences, but me cousin and I werenae particularly close. Ye shouldnae have troubled yerself with the journey.”
