Caitlyn gave her mother the oatcake and milk. “Your breakfast is coming in a moment, Mammy,” she said as she straightened the bedclothes. “Is there anything else you need?”
Eileen shook her head. “Only that you two should go and enjoy your breakfast.”
“Milady.” Alastair bowed and left the room, leaving Eileen and Caitlyn alone for a moment.
Eileen took Caitlyn’s arm and pulled her daughter towards her. “He is smitten with you!” she whispered. “I can see it! Use all your feminine wiles and get him to marry you—he is a fine man.”
“He will decide if he wants me or not, Mammy—now let go!” She pulled her arm out of her mother’s grasp and rubbed it. “I have no claim over his heart.” With that, she turned and left, leaving Eileen staring after her, smiling. Denial was the first sign that she was in love.
Caitlyn went down to the dining room, her stomach rumbling. She had expected to find Alastair there, but he was nowhere to be seen. Presently the breakfast was brought in, and just as she was wondering whether she should begin to eat, he entered. He was carrying a large leatherbound maroon book, and as he poured himself some ale he placed it on the table beside him.
“About our kiss yesterday,” he began awkwardly, but he could not help but smile. “It was only meant to be a little peck, but I—”
“Not apologizing again, M’Laird?” Caitlyn’s eyes were twinkling. “It was not even a proper kiss and you meant nothing by it.”
“Ava tells me you would like to hear about some of the rogues in our family?” he smiled.
“Yes, I would.” She was delighted. “Ava has told me so much about them!”
“Eat first,” he ordered. “One of these days we will be able to go to Communion without fasting, but I doubt it will be in my lifetime!”
She laughed. “It does test your faith,” she agreed, spooning some salmon into her mouth.
There was silence for a moment while they ate, then he spoke again. “My family is not what one would call exemplary, so try not to be too shocked. We were a nefarious bunch in the past.”
She laughed. “Well, we were all very God-fearing and normal. I look forward to hearing about yours.”
Alastair fell on his food then, eating heartily till everything was finished. He then helped himself to more and finished that too, and seemed to be contemplating a third helping when he caught the amused glint in Caitlyn’s eyes.
“I have never seen so much food disappearing so fast,” she laughed.
“There is a lot of me to fill,” he replied, mock-defensively. “But I think even I have reached my limit. Come and walk around with me and I will show you the Rogues Gallery. These are the Dangerous Duncans!”
She laughed, loving him in this mood.
He opened the door for her and they walked out into the entrance hall, then he began to take her on a journey down the various rogues and assorted ne’er-do-wells that made up his family. She was very conscious of the fact that they were very close together as they pored over the book, their heads almost touching as they went through its pages. She could feel herself flush but he appeared not to have noticed.
They looked at the first portrait, a florid-looking man with the bulbous red nose of an alcoholic. “This is Uncle Iain McGuire, a famous drunkard,” he began, looking down at the book. “It is said that when he got drunk he knew no fear and had the strength of ten men. I seriously doubt that is true, but he did have many injuries from a hundred fights. There was hardly a bone in his body that had not been broken at least once. He died when he fell down a flight of stairs and hit his head on the newel post at the bottom. Because everyone was so used to seeing him lying around drunk, nobody realized he was dead for three days, until the body started to smell.”
“Ugh!” Caitlyn said disgustedly. “How awful!”
“Now who else was there?” He frowned, moving onto the next painting and poring over the book again. The likeness was of a middle-aged woman with penetrating brown eyes, sharp features, and graying red hair severely pulled back in a bun at the nape of her neck. “Ah! Maisie! There was nothing scandalous about her—but her profession was a little odd. Noble ladies do not often work, but this one spent all her time making shrouds.”
“Did she make her own?” Caitlyn asked, fascinated.
“No,” Alastair replied, somewhat sadly. “She dropped down dead with a needle in her hand, and someone else had to make it. She was eighty years old and it was said that she had made ten thousand shrouds in her sixty-five years of needlework, but somehow I doubt it was quite as many as that!”
“That is truly amazing. Your family is extremely odd.” Caitlyn laughed, shaking her head in wonder.
Alastair laughed. “We have far more black sheep than white ones in my family.” He made a grim face, and she giggled.
Why can he not always be like this?she thought.
They moved on to another painting, that of a corpulent, gray-haired man in his forties who had bright blue eyes with a lascivious glint in them. “My Uncle Peter, my father’s brother, was a famous womanizer. It was said that he had more than twenty bastards, and denied every one of them. He could have gotten away with that, except that he had a huge purple birthmark on his stomach, which was perfectly round, and all his children inherited it. He had to pay up for every one of them, which is why he was so poor when he died.”
“How did he die?” Caitlyn asked curiously.
Alastair smirked mischievously. “The pox,” he replied. “He went mad at the end, and it served him right!”
