“Young Sean says he wants to be a fisherman someday.”
“Och, the lady wants him to be educated. He already has a tutor, and he so small. He takes lessons at Clachan Mor when the lady visits.”
“Is his mother the baroness?”
She set Sean down at the water’s edge and tapped his bottom to send him on his way. “Did he say mother? Och, that lad! Just a kinswoman, she is.” She shrugged.
Dougal glanced toward the lady in the swimming costume, who now floated in gentle waves, wide straw hat shading her face. Along the lacy edge of the surf, Margaret strolled, lifting her skirt hem to splash along. He was sure she was ignoring him in particular.
“Aye. She will hire tutors for his cousin, Baby Anna, when she is older,” Thora said. Elga followed them as they walked, now carrying the plump fair-haired baby. “It is generous to educate them, but then they might want to leave the island when they are older. We have a good life on Caransay. The baroness made us safe here as her tenants, free from the land clearings that have gone on elsewhere. We make a good living from fish and lobster, and from the kelp and salt and birds’ eggs we collect and trade to the mainland. We have nothing to worry about nowadays but the weather.” She laughed.
“Wicked, our weather is,” the old one said. “Have you been caught in a storm, Mr. Stoo-ar?”
“Sometimes,” he answered.
“I knew it!” Elga said.
“It is truly a paradise, your island,” he said.
“You like Caransay,” Elga said. “You like the ocean.”
“Oh, aye. When I was a child, I swam like a fish.”
“I knew it!” Mother Elga grinned and shifted the baby on her hip.
Puzzled, Dougal held out his hands, thinking the child was a burden for so old a woman. “Shall I carry the little one for you?”
“You shall not have our babies!” Mother Elga snapped.
Startled, Dougal wondered if he had offended her by offering to take the weight of the baby off her old bones. Was there some island taboo against men holding children? Perhaps they had misunderstood his English.
The boy ran in and out of the lapping surf, going back and forth to Margaret. Out in the mild waves, the other lady’s head, capped in a wide straw hat, bobbed on the surface like a buoy. “I hope the baroness will give me a little of her time,” Dougal said.
“You must not disturb her!” Thora said. “She is a proper lady and does not want to be disturbed on her holiday.”
“Ah,” he said. “Perhaps I could call on her before she leaves the island.”
Mother Elga stepped closer, studying his face, then poked at his arm with a stiff finger. “Man of the sea,” she said. “Will you return?”
“She does not like visitors. Leave the lady be, sir,” Thora said.
“Go back to your rock, water-man.” Elga seemed to examine him, walking around him, carrying the baby. She stared at his booted feet, wet in the foamy surf. “Do you have webbed feet?”
Good lord, what a question. She was clearly eccentric in her old age. “No, madam. Perhaps you both could tell the lady that I will visit another time. Tell her I am not the ogre she believes.”
Elga spoke in Gaelic, and Thora answered. Elga grinned. “Kelpie!” She pointed to him.
“I will try, sir,” Thora said. Dougal wondered if she meant to help or hinder him.
He saw Margaret walking up the beach, calling to the boy. Behind her, the woman in black surged out of the water like asmall glossy whale. He had not pictured Lady Strathlin to be quite so mature, Dougal thought tactfully.
“Turn away your eyes, sir,” Elga said. “She is not wanting a man to see her now.”
“Of course,” he said, turning.
Thora snatched up a blanket from the sand and hastened to meet the woman in the bathing costume, wrapping her in the covering. They walked together, pausing to talk to Margaret, who stood watching Sean, playing in a rocky tidal pool. Margaret looked toward Dougal then.
His gaze met hers. She stilled, and he sensed a message there. Wary. Fearful. That explained her reluctance to come near him. He had to find time to speak with her before too long. Just now, he was preoccupied with Lady Strathlin’s rejection—and his need to return to the rock soon.
