Scottish Brides (2 page)

Hadden's drink halted halfway to his mouth, and his fingers tightened on the cut-glass sides of his goblet. “Castle Mac-Nachtan is two hard days of riding from here,” he muttered.

“That's true,” Lady Valéry acknowledged. It had taken her courier two days to get there, one day to search out Andra's housekeeper and get an answer to her letter, and two days to get back.

“The roads are mud. The crofters are poor, the castle's disintegrating, and it was none too fine a castle to begin with. And Andra MacNachtan is destitute and proud as the devil in spite of it, and so vain of her honored Scottish ancestry that she can't see what's right before her nose.”

Lady Valéry smiled at Hadden, knowing she had well and truly set the hook. “So, dear boy, a noodle-brained woman like Andra MacNachtan
is
of no consequence?”

He stood, over six feet tall, a blond giant, handsome, irresistible, and so bristling with irritation at Lady Valéry that he almost forgot his displeasure with Andra. “She damned well shouldn't be.”

“When will you leave?”

“Tomorrow morning.” Standing, he tossed his whiskey into the fire and watched the flames blaze up. “And the tale of this marriage kilt had better be true, Your Grace, for if I go all that way to make a fool of myself, I'll hop a ship to India and make another fortune, and you'll not see me for many a long day.”

“You'd break an old lady's heart?”

“Not if she's a truthful old lady. Now if you will excuse me, Your Grace, I will go pack.”

She watched him stride out, dynamic, overbearing, and so virile he made her long to be fifty years younger. “Oh, I am truthful,” she murmured to herself. “About the marriage kilt, at least.”

Andra stared at the still-dripping end of the pipe that carried water from the well to the kitchen. It
was
a miracle it hadn't broken before, and she'd run out of miracles about two months ago.

“It's created a dreadful flood,” Douglas added unnecessarily.

Andra lifted her foot out of the three inches of water sub-merging the floor of the subterranean dungeon she euphemistically called the wine cellar. “I noticed.” She noticed more than that. When the pipe had broken, it had sprayed the barrels of salted meat and soaked the bins of barley and rye. An almost-empty barrel containing the last of their wine listed drunkenly from side to side.

The Clan MacNachtan had reached its lowest ebb, and she had no idea how to raise it from this depth of poverty and despair—or, rather, how to raise herself, for she was the last of the family. She wanted to give up—she would have already given up—except for Douglas, sixty years old and really quite good at repairing misfortune after he'd finished bellyaching; and her housekeeper, Sima, the only mother she'd had since her own had died when she was eleven; and the cook and Kenzie, the half-blind ostler; and the crofters and all the folk who depended on her to keep them safe from madmen and Englishmen.

And when she'd done just that, refused to agree to a crazy Englishman's contemptible demand, they'd acted disappointed or troubled or irritated according to their natures. As if she, the last of the MacNachtans, should actually marry a lowlander. Bad enough that she had—

“Mistress, how are we goin' t' pump all this water out o' here?”

She took a quivering breath but couldn't answer. She didn't know how they were going to pump the water out.

“An' how do ye want me t' fix the pipe?”

She didn't know that, either. She just knew that life, always lonely, always hard, had recently grown so difficult that she didn't know how she could bear to continue to lift her head off the pillow in the mornings.

Plucking the sweaty kerchief off her head, she used it to wipe her neck. She'd been helping boil the laundry in the kitchen when the water suddenly stopped; she looked like the lowest, poorest crofter who inhabited the ancient Mac-Nachtan lands, and she ached in every bone. She would hate to have anyone see her like this, certainly not—

“That guid young man Mr. Fairchild would know what to do,” Douglas said. “Seemed t' me he knew a lot about plumbin'.”

Andra turned on Douglas so quickly, she made waves. “What do you mean by that?”

Her steward looked surprised and exorbitantly, suspiciously innocent. “Why, nothing, but that he seemed knowledgeable about every little thing. Even pipes.”

She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of the wizened old man's amusement. She shouldn't have reacted to the sound of Hadden's name, but Douglas had been nagging at her ever since . . .

“He's not here, is he? So we'll have to do without him.” She kept her tone level and her voice soft, two things she had had trouble doing these last weeks.

Douglas nodded approvingly. “At least fer a change ye're not shriekin' like a kelpie.”

And Andra felt her ready irritation rise. She turned her back, ostensibly to study the pipe, and found her attention caught by the true scope of this disaster. An entire section had burst, ancient copper worn thin by a hundred and fifty years of water flowing through it.

Burst. Broken. Worn out. Like everything else in Castle MacNachtan. She and everyone under her care were living in a crumbling relic, and day by day matters were getting worse. Everyone looked to Andra for salvation, but what could a twenty-six-year-old spinster do to repair stone or to grow crops?

Behind her, she heard the patter of Sima's footsteps down the stairs and the swish of Douglas's stride through the water. She heard the whisper of their voices, and she swallowed hard to clear the lump from her throat. A lump she experienced far too often these days.

“Mistress,” Sima called, and her voice sounded softer and kinder than it had for many a day. “Dinna fash yerself about this now. Ye've had a hard day. Come on up t' yer chamber. I've fixed ye a nice, warm bath.”

“A bath?” To Andra's shame, her voice wobbled. Resting her hand on her throat, she steadied herself before she spoke again. “It isn't even time for supper.”

“It will be by the time ye've bathed, and it's a guid supper we're plannin', too. Some o' Mary's potato scones, hot off the grill, and a wee chicken in the pot. Maybe I'll make yer favorite.”

Later, Andra realized the chicken should have offered her the clue. The only time Sima usually allowed a chicken to be killed was if someone were sick, or if the chicken was.

But at that moment, all Andra wanted was warm water and the illusion of comfort. “Cock-a-leekie soup?” Turning, she stared at the spare, iron-faced woman who had been her nurse.

“Aye, the very same,” Sima assured her.

So Andra allowed herself to be herded upstairs to her bed-chamber, bathed with the single, hoarded bar of French, rose-scented soap. Her sole pair of white silk stockings was offered and donned, as were her garters with the lacy flower by the bow. Her fresh white petticoats rustled as Sima tied them around her waist, and she raised her arms as Sima slipped her best gown of rose dimity over her head. Her length of straight black hair was coiled atop her head in the most elegant style Sima knew, and, as the finishing touch, Sima wrapped a Belgian lace shawl around Andra's shoulders.

Andra permitted all this without protest, imagining that she was being cosseted like a child.

In truth, she was being trussed like a sacrificial lamb.

And she realized it when she walked into the flame-lit dining chamber with its intimate, linen-draped table set with two places, and saw him.

Hadden Fairchild, scholar, Englishman—and her first, her only, her lover.

Two

 

 

 

Andra didn't quite hiss when she saw Hadden's broad
shoulders propped against the mantle, but she allowed herself a little puff of exasperation mixed with defensiveness. He stood there, showing no signs of the hard journey, impeccably dressed in a jacket, trousers, cravat and waistcoat bearing the stamp of London sophistication. The man himself, big, braw and hearty, gathered the fire's glow and magnified the light in the gleam of his blond hair, the warmth of his golden skin, and the luminescence of his heather-blue eyes.

Damn him. Did he have to challenge her with his stance, his vigor, and his obvious ability to make himself at home in
her
castle?

Sima put her hand in the middle of Andra's back and gave her a push, and Andra stumbled into the room and almost fell to her knees.

“Please,” he said, his tone frightfully superior and his accent very English, “you don't have to kneel. A simple curtsy will serve.”

Automatically she dropped into the common Highland intonation she hoped would annoy him. “Ye're insufferable.”

“Aye.” He could do a Scottish accent even broader than hers. “As bad as a lassie wi' no more guid sense than Fairie Puck.”

He looked as if he should be more ornamental than useful, but he could do everything better than she could. Change a wheel, deliver a babe, dig a well, soothe a child's fears, write a letter, love a woman past any qualm . . . no doubt he could also repair a pipe. But she, Andra MacNachtan of the High-land MacNachtans, didn't have to stand here and have her face rubbed in his endless, exasperating competence.

With a flourish, she tossed the shawl around her neck and turned away, prepared to stomp back to her bedchamber or the wine cellar, or anywhere Hadden Fairchild was not.

She found herself facing Sima. Sima, who had taught her everything about hospitality and manners and now shook such a stern finger that Andra found herself cowed. Reluctantly obeying that mute and powerful mandate, Andra turned back to her company, expecting to see Hadden grinning at Sima, wordlessly thanking her for making Andra submit to courtesy's demand. But he was not grinning, and he certainly was not looking at Sima. His attention remained fixed on Andra, like a man-wolf who scented his mate.

But just because her body recognized and welcomed him on a primal level, that did not mean she was his mate. This softness, this trembling, this desire to run to his arms and seek shelter there—these were nothing more than a wee bit of weakness at the sight of the man who had taught her passion. Never mind that he wordlessly commanded her; Andra MacNachtan was no one's fool, and she would not obey.

Shaking off her lassitude, she spoke, her voice weighted with insincerity. “Mr. Fairchild, how pleasant to have you visit us again. What brings you back to my corner of the Highlands, and so soon after your last visit?”

He straightened up, away from the mantel, and took a step toward her. “You lied to me.”

His blunt accusation shook her. Of course she had; it had been a matter of self-preservation. But how had he discovered it? “What are you talking about?”

“I'm talking about the marriage kilt.”

Hidden in the folds of her skirt, her hands clenched, then relaxed. “The marriage kilt. The MacNachtans' marriage kilt?”

“Do you know of another?”

“No,” she said reluctantly.

“And there is one?”

With even greater reluctance, she admitted, “Aye.”

“Would you tell me why, when you knew I came on Lady Valéry's behest to gather the traditions of Scotland and record them, you failed to tell me about the marriage kilt?” He walked toward her on silent feet, his shadow falling on her, the smoke of the fire chasing after him as if it wished to caress him. “You told me about the stone on the hill, reputed to be placed by giants, and about the wishing well from whence the ghosts rise on All Hallows' Eve—things so common to Scotland, they were not worth writing down. But the marriage kilt—you said nothing of that.”

Of course she had said nothing. The four days he'd spent with her had been a time set aside from reality and duty. For four brief, enchanted days, she had cared little about shouldering her duties as a true leader of her people should. She had cared only about Hadden and the way he made her feel.

Not love; she knew about love. That was what she had felt for her uncle before he'd been put to the horn, and her father and her brother before they'd fled to America, and her mother before she'd died of grief.

This had been a different kind of emotion—carefree, full of laughter and unexpected passion. She hadn't cared that he would inevitably walk away; she had only cared about grasping one perfect moment before it was too late and she died an old maid worn down by her burdens.

“The marriage kilt?” he prompted.

She lifted her chin and looked at him. He stood too closely. She could see each strand of his hair, trimmed and combed and damp, smell the scent of heather and leather and soap, sense his outrage fed by the need for her that smoldered in him. Every hair on her skin lifted, but she wouldn't step away, and she dared not look away. She didn't remember him being so tall
,
and she had never thought she would be afraid of him.

But she was.