Mia Marlowe (9 page)

“Steward, eh? So such simple duties as giving your master a shave is beneath you, I suppose.”

“Ye may be me lord, but ye’re no’ me master. However, milord is correct.” Farquhar gave a dignified nod. “A steward doesna give shaves.”

There was a bell pull next to the commode and Alexander considered ringing for the valet to return, but all the guests were dressing for dinner now. That meant every available servant was trotting in circles trying to keep up with their demands. He spared a moment of sympathy for the poor lady’s maid who was assigned to Hester MacGibbon.

Alex picked up his razor and began to strop it on a bit of leather to hone the edge.

“Och, I see milord isna the sort who’s too fine to do for himself,” Farquhar said approvingly. “That bodes well.”

“It bodes well for servants who think they’re too fine to serve,” Alex muttered as he put the razor down and began to lather up his brush. “I assume since you rushed here from Bonniebroch—say, where the devil is Bonniebroch?”

“The fair estate of Bonniebroch is situated in a fine arable valley, surrounded by a forest filled with game. It rests in a declivity between two of the loveliest peaks in the Highlands. It’s watered by the River Tay and—”

“No, I mean how is it situated in relation to anyplace that’s civilized?” Alex said. “Not that Edinburgh counts especially, but let us reckon from there.”

Farquhar frowned at this. “There are those who think the limits of civilization end at Hadrian’s Wall.”

Alex laughed in agreement. The old Roman fortification had been built to contain the warlike Picts, the predecessors of the Scots, who resisted the conquering force’s efforts to bring them niceties like a legal system, a written language, and plumbing. Finally, the Romans threw up the wall and contented themselves with keeping the woad-daubed tribes behind it.

“You’ve the right of it there,” Alexander said, contorting his mouth to one side, the better to scrape the day’s growth of beard from his cheek. “Hadrian showed a good deal of sense when he drew a line between the savage and the civilized.”

“I fear ye’ve missed me meaning, milord,” the old man said. “The civilized side lies to the north of the wall.”

Now it was Alex’s turn to frown. “At least on the southern side, an estate steward does not insult his lord.”

“My apologies. No insult was intended, since I merely spoke the truth,” Farquhar said, not looking the least apologetic. “I see your valet has laid out the wrong ensemble for this evening’s festivities. Surely milord will want the belted plaid ye have stowed in yon trunk.”

“How didy—” It was plain to see how the steward knew about the blasted kilt. Callum Farquhar was a world-class snoop and had already visited his new laird’s chamber without permission. “No, Farquhar. Leave the plaid. I’ll wear the trousers and jacket.”

“With the
MacGregor
sash, at least.”

“Not tonight.”

The man’s shoulders slumped. He gave every appearance of releasing a long-suffering sigh, but Alexander heard no snort of breath. For tuppence, Alex would give him the sack, but he needed to see the lay of Bonniebroch’s land before he made any changes in personnel at the estate.

“If ye willna heed my advice on the matter of yer wardrobe, how else may I serve my lord?”

“Aside from giving me a shave?” Alex paused before starting another stroke from his chin to his cheekbone.

“Aye, aside from that.”

Alex scraped the razor over his skin. “Well, I suppose you’re here to give an accounting of your stewardship. Let’s hear it then.”

“No, that’s no’ why I’m here. No’ exactly,” Farquhar said with an intense gaze. “Mostly I came to see what sort of accounting
ye
would give of yerself so we’d know what kind of laird Bonniebroch might expect in ye. If I may make so bold as to enquire, how is yer health?”

Alex arched a brow at him. “Barring a few bruises from trying to ride that devil with four hooves called Badgemagus, I’m fine. Healthy as a horse. At least, I’m a damned sight healthier than that one will be if he continues to fight me.”

Farquhar made a tsking noise. “Language, milord. Damnation is no light matter. But ’tis glad I am to hear that ye enjoy good health. We at Bonniebroch hope ye’ll be with us for a good long time, it being unsettling to everyone when we have to break in a new baron. The last one wasna with us verra long.”

Alexander shook his head in disbelief at the man’s cheekiness as he swished the razor in the soap-scummy stand of water in the basin. “Heaven forefend I should discomfit the help.”

“Aye, that’s good of ye, milord,” Farquhar said, obviously missing the irony dripping from Alex’s tone. “And yer sleep. How is that? No disturbing dreams, I trust?”

Alex’s head snapped up sharply at that. He’d told no one about the dream of the weeping woman. He’d been plagued with visions of her every night since he became laird of Bonniebroch, but not even Clarindon knew of the recurring nightmare.

“A man’s dreams, like his thoughts, are his own,” he said stonily.

Farquhar rolled his eyes. “Verra well, but I canna help ye, if ye dinna trust me. On to other items of interest. I understand yer mother was a MacGregor—”

“That’s of no import,” Alexander said, irritated that the little man seemed to know so much about him already. “In fact, you will never bring up the subject of my mother again or you’ll be seeking other employment.”

“’Tis worse than I feared,” Farquhar muttered, rubbing one of his temples as if to ward off a headache. “Still, we must work with that which we have been given.”

Farquhar folded his hands before the sporran dangling from his belt. It was out of proportion with the old gentleman since it appeared to be fashioned from the skin of an entire badger.

“I understand felicitations are in order. Congratulations on taking a bride from the Campbell clan. A Miss Lucinda MacOwen, I believe. These are happy tidings indeed, milord.”

“Perhaps for you—ouch!” A small bead of red blossomed on Alexander’s chin. He held a cloth to the wound to staunch the bleeding. “But don’t count on me bringing a Lady Bonniebroch with me when I come to claim my own. The wedding’s not set in stone.”

Farquhar chuckled. “Aye, lad. And the trout thinks the hook is no’ set either just afore he finds himself flopping on the riverbank. But it makes no never mind. All will be in readiness for ye and yer new lady to celebrate the merriest of Christmastides at Bonniebroch.”

“There’s no need for you to go to any trouble.” Alex lowered the cloth and inspected his bleeding chin. The wound wouldn’t require stitches but it was a near thing. “Besides, I thought Scots didn’t give Christmas more than a nod and a wink.”

“Mayhap in other places that’s true, but we at Bonniebroch celebrate it with a good will.”

“It makes no difference,” Alexander said, wondering if this botched shave was worth the effort. “I won’t be heading for Bonniebroch till after the new year.”

A flat smile widened Farquhar’s lean face. “We’ll see ye when we see ye then. But we at Bonniebroch will keep the Yule log burning for ye and yer missus in any case.”

Alex dabbed the cloth in the water basin, but another strange flash of light made him glance sharply back to the mirror.

Callum Farquhar was no longer standing behind him.

Alex turned quickly, but the fellow was nowhere to be seen. There was no place for him to hide in the chamber either. Alexander had heard neither the clack of a boot heel on hardwood nor the snick of the door latch. The Scottish steward simply wasn’t there any longer.

Farquhar was wickedly fast for such an old gaffer, Alex decided. Sneaky as a cat.

The man definitely needed a bell around his neck.

And Alex desperately needed a valet. He nicked himself again with the razor before deciding it was time to give up on a shave.

But it was not time to give up on his freedom. Farquhar could burn all the Yule logs he wanted. Alexander was not going to arrive at his new Scottish estate with a Lady Bonniebroch in tow.

And that was final.

In the round chamber at the top of Bonniebroch’s tower, white light poured from the long stretch of silvered glass. Before the shaft of brightness flared and the flash blinked into nothingness, Callum Farquhar stepped through the mirror and back into the room.

“Ah, there ye are, sir,” Lyall Lyttle said. “Welcome back. Did ye find Lord Bonniebroch?”

“Aye. I went to London and Oxford and a bawdy house in Brighton before I ran him to ground right here on Scottish soil. He’s at Dalkeith.”

“I must say, I had me doubts ye’d find him. ’Tis a long step to all those places and back,” Lyttle said, mopping his furrowed brow.

“Nonsense. No’ so far at all by this method.”
Now that he was with the estate’s butler, Farquhar could simply project his thoughts. If Lord Bonniebroch only knew how hard Farquhar had worked to send an approximation of a human voice to his ear. He might have been far more sensible of the honor done him by Farquhar’s visit.
“Unlike the workings of man, there are no moving parts in the realm of the spirit which may break down. Even though I’ve had no call to use them in a hundred years, the secrets paths from mirror to mirror run smooth as . . . well, smooth as glass.”

Of course, there was always the chance that some living person might shatter a mirror and destroy the spiritual conduit from that place to others. There was a risk to any ghost who traveled those invisible byways that the mirror through which he’d entered the system might be compromised while he was in another location. If that happened, he’d be forever barred from returning to his point of origin. To Farquhar’s mind, the penalty of seven years’ bad luck for breaking a mirror was extremely light.

“And you’re sure no one saw you at Dalkeith?”

Of course, Farquhar had been careful not to step through the looking glass into Dalkeith when there was another soul actually in the room. He’d inspected Lord Bonniebroch’s personal effects before meeting the man because there was no better indicator of what was important to a person than the carefully chosen items with which a body elected to travel. Farquhar had been cautiously hopeful when he found the belted plaid in the trunk.

After meeting Alexander Mallory, he had his doubts.

“What’s he like? Will he do, d’ye think?”

“He’ll have to,”
Farquhar said wearily.
“We’ve no time to wait for another. The curse is coming to a head one way or another and there’s no help for it.”

Farquhar settled himself at the writing desk and picked up his quill. Since Lyttle was the only one in the castle who could see and hear him, he communicated his wishes to the rest of the Bonniebroch staff through detailed instructions in his daily log.

His personal fears and hopes he kept in another private journal. After he made each entry, he squirreled that one away behind a loose brick in the fireplace in the laird’s bedchamber.

“How is the mood of the staff?”
Farquhar asked as he began to assign duties for the upcoming Christmastide festivities.

“Hopeful,” Lyttle said as he peered over Farquhar’s shoulder at the neat script rolling from the tip of the ghost’s quill. “Worried, too.”

“His lady?”

Farquhar allowed himself a small smile.
“Aye. Lord Bonniebroch is set to wed on Christmas Day. And even though I’ve no’ met her, she’s the reason I’m optimistic. Nothing like a woman to show a man what he’s made of, aye?”

Lyttle rubbed his hands together in glee. “We haven’t had a Lady Bonniebroch for, oh, I forget how long.”

There was silence for a few beats. Lyttle didn’t have Farquhar’s aptitude for original thinking. Farquhar had to be careful not to overwhelm his living assistant with the knowledge it had taken him centuries to accumulate.

“All right,” Lyttle finally said. “Let us hope the new laird is willing to heed the looking glass of his lady.”

“Amen to that,”
Farquhar said.
“In the meantime, set the girls to sweeping the place clean. Tell Mrs. Fletcher to prepare the goose. Have the lads scour the wood for the biggest Yule log in Christendom. I mean for us to celebrate this Christmas in the jolliest way possible.”

Farquhar waited for Lyttle to leave and close the door to the tower room behind himself before he added,
“For it may well be our last.”

 

 

Bagpipes squealed out a strathspey tune. The first floor ballroom at Dalkeith Palace was a blur of color as a set of four couples stepped lively to a reel. Lucinda MacOwen and her sisters, along with one other Scottish lady, tripped along in time with the music. Some of the more intrepid members of the English contingent were willing to give the raw Scottish dance a go for the pleasure of bouncing around the room with such comely partners.

Sir Bertram Clarindon was the first to volunteer. He invariably turned the wrong direction and trod on his partner’s toes, but all the dancers seemed to enjoy themselves.

Alexander Mallory was not among them.

Instead he’d been roped into sitting with Hester MacGibbon along the edge of the dance floor. In truth, it wasn’t terribly onerous duty. Once he convinced a footman to lace the old lady’s tea with a generous dollop of spirits, all he was required to do was make an occasional grunt of agreement with her. Hester was capable of pontificating on everything under the sun unassisted so long as she was given occasional encouragement.

No one who knew Hester MacGibbon wanted to be pulled into her garrulous orbit if they could help it. But the enforced social isolation gave Alex a chance to observe the crowd without interruption and take the measure of the local nobility who’d turned up to welcome the English envoys.

There were Beatons and Frasers and Bruces galore. But the Scot who surprised him most was Darren MacMartin, representing the Cameron clan. Now styling himself simply as “Sir Darren,” he had no reason to remain in Scotland, unless he was up to no good.

Alexander hadn’t thought much of the fellow when he bested him on the
Agatha May.
A man who could hold neither his cards nor his temper when he lost was not to be trusted.

Alex really didn’t like the way the man was holding Lucinda either. The fact that MacMartin was her dance partner and the close holds were required made no difference to the clenching in Alexander’s gut.

Her face was flushed that becoming shade of peach again. Her green eyes sparked with such inner fire he couldn’t blame Darren MacMartin for being drawn to her. She was as light on her feet as a faery dancing on a dew-spangled flower stem.

Alex gave himself an inward shake. He wasn’t usually so fanciful.
Faeries and flower stems. Clarindon would have a field day with that.

The occasional flip of Lucinda’s skirt revealed slender calves.

Alex forgot about faeries and wondered absently what her skin would taste like if he were to trace a circle around her delicate anklebone with his tongue. He closed his eyes and attempted without success to drive that idea from his mind. He tried actually listening to Hester to distract himself, but since she was waxing poetic about the efficacy of a new bunion cure, he gave that up in a heartbeat.

The couples on the dance floor moved in intricate patterns. When the dance called for the couples to move into yet another close hold, Alexander’s gut tightened again.

Just because he didn’t want Sir Darren to have Lucinda, didn’t mean he wanted her.

Lord Rankin strolled by. “That’s your new fiancée among the dancers, isn’t it, Mallory?” Rankin said with the hint of a malicious giggle in his tone. “You see now why I insisted on adding a bit of local color to our gathering.”

“Local color, is it?” Hester stopped Rankin cold with a clawed hand to his forearm. “I’ll have ye know the reel is a Highland tradition, no’ just
local color
.” Her face twisted into a horrifying grimace. “I’ll no’ have ye denigrating the reel so. This dance was old when me grandmother was a girl and—”

“Lord Rankin, allow me to offer you my seat so Mrs. MacGibbon can further illuminate you on Highland customs.”

Alex stood and held the chair for the man in a move that made it impossible for him to refuse. Rankin shot him an evil glare as he settled his bulk onto the sturdy seat. Alex nodded to Aunt Hester and excused himself with a wider smile than the old harridan deserved.

“I assure you, madam, I meant no disrespect. No indeed,” Rankin sputtered as Alex beat a hasty retreat. “Perfectly delightful country dance, what? When His Majesty visits next August, I’m sure he’ll be charmed by it.”

Alex prowled the perimeter of the ballroom, keeping Lucinda in sight. At one point he tripped over a long train that one of the ladies had draped artfully before her. He righted himself before he ended up in her lap, but it was a near thing.

Alexander swallowed back a curse. What was wrong with him? He wasn’t normally so clumsy.

He’d been forced to apologize more in these last few days he’d been in Scotland than he had in the previous ten years.

“Outstanding, Mallory,” he chided himself as he moved on more cautiously. “You’re making a buffoon of yourself over a girl you don’t even want.”

Then the music stopped with a final wheeze of the pipes and Lucinda fell into Sir Darren’s arms with a laugh. A red haze settled over Alex’s vision and he started toward them. Before he reached the couple, the music began again in a slower tempo and Clarindon claimed Lucinda’s hand for the Scottish version of a minuet.

Sir Darren withdrew from the ballroom floor and cast a sheepish grin at Alexander. With Lucinda safe in Clarindon’s hands, Alex decided to have a few words with MacMartin.

“I’m surprised you didn’t return to London, Sir Darren,” Alexander said. “Not much for you here now, is there?”

“Your new station as Lord Bonniebroch has made you look down on we lesser mortals, I see,” the Scot said, his brogue less pronounced than in most of the other Gaelic voices around them. “Let me stand you to a cup of the execrable punch they’re serving here and you can tell me how you’re finding your new holding.”

Sir Darren was far too cheerful for a man who’d lost a barony. Still, Alex couldn’t think of a reason not to drink with the man he’d bested so thoroughly. It would be churlish to refuse.

“In truth, I haven’t found Bonniebroch at all yet,” Alex said. “You might have warned me when I won the estate that a betrothal came along with the barony.”

Sir Darren laughed. “Consider your bride an added gift. I’m not ready to face the parson’s mousetrap myself.” His pale-eyed gaze followed Lucinda around the room for a moment. “Though if I’d known the MacOwen lass was such a comely bit of muslin, I might have played my cards differently.”

Alex cut a sharp glance at the fellow. He was almost suggesting that he’d lost Bonniebroch on purpose. “I intend to leave Dalkeith to inspect Bonniebroch after the first of the year.”

“Not my place to say so, but I wouldn’t wait that long if I were you.”

“Really? Why is that?”

Sir Darren pulled a silver flask from inside his waistcoat and sweetened his punch with a generous dollop of amber liquor. He offered the flask to Alexander and the strong scent of spirits wafted toward him, but Alex declined the whisky with a shake of his head. If MacMartin had lost Bonniebroch on purpose, it wouldn’t do to lower his guard around the man until Alex figured out his game.

“I suggest you ask Farquhar why you shouldn’t wait,” Sir Darren said. “Of course, you’ll have to actually go to Bonniebroch to see him.”

“No, I won’t. The old fellow turned up here in my chamber this evening.”

MacMartin choked on his punch and Alex had to thump him soundly on the back to get him to stop coughing.

“Callum Farquhar was here? The steward of Bonniebroch. He was here and you saw him? In Dalkeith?”

“Yes.” Why was that such an astounding thing?

“You’re sure it was him?”

“That’s how he introduced himself.” Alex slanted a dubious gaze at the man. “My eyes have never given me cause to doubt them before.”

“That can change, believe me.”

The bagpipes weren’t playing for this dance, so Alex was able to catch MacMartin’s muttered reply. Yes, indeed. The man knew a great deal more than he was saying. Alex wished for a few minutes locked in a room with the fellow. He was adept at dragging information from the unwilling.

Sir Darren gave himself a small shake and then fixed Alex with a pointed glare. “You know, you look a good bit less rested than you were when you beat me in that poque game. A bit drawn and tetchy. Sort of like I was at the time. Tell me, milord, how’ve you been sleeping since you became Lord Bonniebroch? Any disturbing dreams?”

This time it was Alex who choked on his punch. Why did everyone in Scotland seem to want to know about his dreams?