“I doubt he even knows she’s here. She doesn’t belong at Glenlorne. She should be in London, making her own connections on the marriage mart.”
“Megan will make her come-out next spring. Lady Caroline is helping her learn what she needs to know. Would you have her stop now? Megan will need to know how to speak proper English, how to dance and flirt and behave if she’s to have any chance of success. Caroline has agreed to teach them some French as well, in fact—an added skill.” She got to her feet.
“Sophie can help them,” he said.
“Sophie doesn’t speak French, and she cannot play the piano like Caroline can.”
She read the frustration in Alec’s eyes and wondered at it. Why should he care whether Caroline Forrester stayed or went? It was, she decided, an attempt to usurp the small amount of power she had, and she wouldn’t stand for it.
In the few short weeks he’d been at Glenlorne, he’d lit a spark in the people. She’d never seen such hope, such joy. She’d woken this morning to the sound of pipes somewhere in the hills.Pipes!It was as if he were William Wallace come again. Clansmen she hadn’t seen for years had come to pay their respects, to bend their knees to him and pledge their loyalty to Alec MacNabb. Brodie would never inspire such awe, such hope. Brodie was an ordinary man. She understood ordinary men, the kind driven by lust and greed. She had no idea what drove Alec. He was like his grandfather, honorable. She recalled the old man’s bluster over honor and the pride of the MacNabbs. While Alec would try to save the world, Brodie wouldn’t quibble about governesses or land sales or sheep. He’d leave all that to her.
She took a last stitch in her needlework and tucked the needle into the linen, and got to her feet. “Lady Caroline is useful to me—more so now I know of her family connections—and to the girls. She stays.”
Without a backward glance, as if her stepson were already dead, she swept out of the room.
CHAPTERTWENTY-NINE
The hills were beautiful in the rain, Caroline thought, walking through the glen, skirting the loch, climbing the path until she stood overlooking the whole valley, which spread out before her, half shrouded in the mist, mysterious and soft. The chimneys in the village smoked, and the tower’s yellow stone glowed against a pewter sky. The loch was moody and gray, the same color as Alec’s eyes. She turned away and kept walking. It was threatening to rain any minute, which was probably why she hadn’t met anyone else on the path.
The girls were looking over pattern books with Sophie, and Caroline had excused herself as Sophie offered a lesson on the subtle differences between Belgian lace and French lace, stunned the girls didn’t know already. Mostly, Caroline left because she knew they needed time to get to know their new sister-in-law.
After the ceilidh, she had decided it would be for the best if she left Glenlorne before the wedding. She would go to Edinburgh and look for employment with another family that wished their children to learn English. She had come out today to say farewell to Glenlorne.
She stopped at the top of the craggy hill on the opposite side of the loch from the castle, and stared at the gray stone, memorizing every detail. The castle had come to feel like home in the short months she’d been here, though she knew it was not. It was Sophie’s home, or it would be in a week, when the wedding took place in the old chapel. She avoiding looking at the chapel, and turned away to take the path over the hill and down through the woods. She came upon a house in a clearing. The old place hunched among the trees, a dowager with good bones fallen on hard times, drawing a ragged shawl of ivy around her. The driveway was badly overgrown, the roof sagged, and the shutters were crumbling for want of paint. It must have been beautiful once, here among the pines. Caroline drew closer, leaned on the stone wall that surrounded the garden, and peered at the front door, which was barred firmly against intruders. She felt a moment’s sadness that the old place had been abandoned and forgotten. A flagstone path led the way into a tangled garden. There were roses struggling through the wildflowers—English roses. Caroline smiled at the heavy pink heads, gaudy among the white and yellow weeds. They were like the ones in her mother’s garden, and she’d often gone out to cut them to bring the heady scent indoors on a summer afternoon. Caroline slipped past the broken gate, and bent to sniff one of the roses. She shut her eyes at the familiar fragrance.
“Ye can’t mean to leave, lass,” a voice said, and she jumped. A thorn bit through her glove and into her finger. She pulled her hand away. The old gentleman from the ceilidh stood watching her.
“You startled me,” she said, and tried to move past him toward the gate. “Forgive me. I fear I’m trespassing.”
“No ye’re not. If anyone has a right to be here, you do. D’you know what this place is?” he asked. She turned to look at him. “It’s Lullach Grange, lass. Your grandmother lived here once, long ago.”
“It seems so sad,” Caroline said.
“Aye. No one has lived here for a very long time. I thought she belonged here, in Scotland, at Glenlorne, but others didn’t agree.” His thick white brows drew together. “And now you mean to leave as well.” He looked as sad as the house, and she felt the sting of the thorn, and looked down at the spot of blood on her glove. “I thought maybe you were meant to make your home here, to stay for good.”
Caroline felt the prickle of tears behind her eyes, as sharp as the thorn. “Will you excuse me? I must get back to the castle,” she murmured.
“Do you love him?” he demanded as she reached the gate.
“Who?” Her voice shook as his face filled her mind’s eye.
“Och, ye know who I mean. Alec, of course.”
Her response hovered on the tip of her tongue. Of course not. But she did. She found she could not speak the lie without crying. Instead she shook her head, and watched his face crumple into sorrow. The breeze shook the petals from the rose, and they fell at his feet, pink and white against the black stone, and it began to rain.
Caroline pulled her hood close and hurried up the path between the trees. When she turned to look back, the garden was empty.
CHAPTERTHIRTY
Alec looked at the records in frustration. Glenlorne hadn’t had a good harvest in twenty years. The books showed the people who’d died and been born, and the expenditures during his father’s time as earl. Dougal had sold nearly a third of the land the MacNabbs had once owned, using the funds to benefit the folk in the castle. Devorguilla’s expenditures on clothes were astronomical.
There were notices and letters from his father’s man of affairs in Inverness, years old, warning his father of mounting debts. There were also petitions from the clan chiefs to their laird, and from ordinary clansmen, asking for an extension on their rents, or a bit of food to help them through a harsh winter. Conditions had grown steadily worse after his grandfather’s death, nearly twenty years ago. And still Devorguilla’s spending had gone on. Six casks of wine, smuggled from France at exorbitant cost, a piano, a down mattress made in England, four dozen yards of costly silk. How could she, with so many mouths to feed, so much to take care of? He had a lot to put right. He ran his hand through his hair and wondered where to begin. His father’s gambling debts alone ran to thousands of pounds. It wouldn’t be long until creditors began beating a path to his door, demanding payment that was long overdue. Sophie’s dowry would be sucked up in no time, he realized. Even that astronomical amount would not be enough.
Muira rushed in. “There’s an army of coaches comin’ up the glen. Are we being invaded again? Surely they’re English. Local folk come on foot, or by pony or cart. Should we bar the doors?”
Alec crossed to the window, and looked at the dark stream of vehicles pouring over the lip of the valley, parting the heavy veil of rain, heading for the castle, and felt a moment’s surprise. “What now?” he muttered, and turned back to Muira.
“Best prepare tea for now, I think, boiling oil later. It’s probably nothing more sinister than a parade of English modistes and mantua makers summoned by Lady Sophie to outfit her for the wedding.” The word “wedding” stuck in his throat.
