Mia Marlowe (16 page)

Mention of the looking glass triggered a memory. “Oh! What did he look like?”

“I may have seen him in Alexander’s mirror . . . on our wedding night.”

“Hmph! Peeping in on the happy couple, eh? And ye felt the need to warn
me
that ye need yer privacy! If I catch up to that blighter, I’ll—”

“Never mind about that now. The other ghost didna stay long. But ye still havena answered my question.” And she wanted to forestall any questions Brodie might have about how happy or unhappy she was in her marriage. “How did ye find yer way to Bonniebroch?”

Brodie smiled.
“Same way that other spirit did. Through the mirror, o’ course. Tailed him all the way here, I did. I never knew it, but there’s a whole other world behind that silvered glass, a web o’ connections between looking glasses where those of us who’re unencumbered with flesh can travel quick as a thought.”

“Truly?”

“But ye dinna mean to leave me, do ye?” Panic tightened her gut. She didn’t think she could bear to lose him again. “I mean, no’ the now that ye’re here and all.”

“I’m no’ defenseless. Ye should have seen the way Alexander pulled out his pistol this evening when he thought I might be in danger.”

“Hmph! I’ve yet to be impressed by yer new husband.”
Brodie’s lip curled.
“Especially as I just caught ye cryin’ when ye think no one sees. I know ye’ve a high opinion of yer laird, but, I dinna think yer Alexander is equal to the darkness I’m sensin’ here in this Bonniebroch.”

“Darkness? What do ye mean?”

Brodie screwed his face into a scowl.
“I dinna ken exactly. ’Tis more a feeling than anything else, but so strong it is, I canna shake it. There’s an old evil here in Bonniebroch. Something lurking in the dark corners and under the eaves. And to make matters worse, it’s waitin’ for something.”
Brodie shuddered so that his spectral image wavered like a disturbed reflection on a pond.

A superstitious tingle raked Lucinda’s spine. This mysterious entity had to be fearsome indeed if it gave a ghost pause. “What is it waiting for?”

Brodie shook his head.
“That I havena figured out yet. But one way or the other, I mean to see ye out of this castle before whatever it is breaks free.”

The hall rang with laughter and song. The celebratory feast started with a rich cock-a-leekie soup, followed by tatties and herring, grouse and songbird pie, and a great haunch of venison with side dishes of rumbledethumps and curly kale. For dessert, a luscious Dundee cake was presented along with a sweet, sticky trifle called a “Tipsy Laird.”

Alex had expected to see haggis, but nothing remotely like a sheep’s intestine made its way to his plate. He began to revise his opinion of Scottish cuisine.

Mrs. Fletcher and her minions kept the meat and drink coming until the diners cried for mercy. The company was merry, as befitted the night before Christmas, and against all expectation, Alex enjoyed pleasant conversation with Lucinda while the meal ran through its many courses.

She was beautiful, decked out like a queen from an age gone by. Or a faery princess, who might vanish at midnight since one so fair was surely enchanted and couldn’t remain in the mortal realm forever.

Alex snorted under his breath and gave himself an inward shake to banish such wayward thoughts. There he was off on another flight of fancy over his new wife. It wasn’t at all like him.

He tipped back his horn and blamed it on the drink. In addition to the excellent wine served in pale green goblets, he was given an ancient drinking horn, all studded with silver work and intricately wrought. The footman who stood behind him never allowed either vessel to become empty for longer than a blink or two.

Still, there was no denying that his bride’s eyes sparkled. Her laughter was a pleasing tinkle in his ear, not a nervous twitter or a mannish guffaw. After the way he’d treated her, it was a testament to Lucinda’s pleasant character that she could bear his company at all, let alone laugh with him.

He was an unworthy wretch, but every man in the hall must think him the luckiest devil on earth to have such a wife.

Alexander found himself wishing he could take her hand under the table. Or better still, run his palm under her hem and up her leg. He’d sink his fingers into her wetness and pleasure her secretly with the whole of Bonniebroch none the wiser. He loved to hear those desperate little noises she made when he’d touched her. It would be exquisite torment to watch her try to stifle them. When he reckoned she could bear no more, he’d swoop her up and carry her off to—

Alexander drew a deep breath and forced that fantasy from his mind. He tried to focus on the epic poem being recited for their entertainment, but he’d lost the thread of the story somewhere between his imaginings of Lucinda’s knee and her sweet secret spot.

There’d been so many toasts raised in his and Lucinda’s honor that his lips buzzed. And of course, he was expected to drain either the horn or the goblet for each one. Maybe that’s why his thoughts were darting around like a school of herring, flashing this way and that. The poem ended to thunderous applause and yet another toast was offered to the new laird.

“They act as if I’m Arthur come again,” he said under his breath before he tipped back the goblet and swallowed it all to the accompaniment of renewed cheers and palms pounding on the long tables. The ale served at Bonniebroch was rich and yeasty with an alcohol content higher than most brews. But the wine was truly magnificent, full-bodied and complex with a bouquet that went straight to his head. The footman behind him refilled his goblet.

“Dinna compare yerself to King Arthur,” Lucinda corrected. “He was an English king. Ye should aspire to Kenneth MacAlpin, the first king of Scots, or perhaps Robert the Bruce. He certainly put the fear of God into the English oppressors.”

“Are we back to English oppression again? You’re going to have to accept the fact that I’m half English, you know.”

“As soon as ye accept that ye’re also half Scottish,” she said with maddening sweetness.

Earlier that evening, his valet had been adamant about laying out his
MacGregor
plaid, but Alexander overruled him. The tartan sash was a mere token of his Highland roots, but it was more than enough.

Anger boiled under his skin. Why did Lucinda insist he embrace the part of him he loathed most?

“My only claim to Scottish blood is through my mother,” he said with a forced even tone. “And she ran to madness.”

“I know.” She nodded, her green eyes sad for him.

No, damn it, he didn’t want her pity. He wanted her to understand so she’d leave him alone about it. So she’d realize why he held her at arm’s length, why he wasn’t any good as a husband and never would be. It was about more than the risks he ran in the service of his government or exposing her to them. It was about him and the broken bits inside him that no one but he should have to bear.

“I’m sure your mother loved you all the same,” Lucinda said.

“That shows you don’t know as much as you think.” He downed the rest of his ale and signaled for a refill. The buzz had left his lips. He couldn’t feel them at all anymore. “My mother loved her family so much she hung herself in Bedlam on my fourth birthday.”

Lucinda flinched at the bitterness in his tone.

He never intended to tell her that. His father had hushed up the particulars at the time, but he made certain over the years that his sons learned every last gruesome detail. Alexander had never told anyone how she’d died.

Not even Clarindon.

It must be the drink,
he reasoned, swiping a hand over his eyes. But perhaps it was best that he spill the whole sordid tale now. It certainly wasn’t getting any prettier for being pent up.

“She might have gotten well, you see. My mother might have returned to us, if only she’d tried. But she
chose
to leave us.” His father’s words poured out his throat, scalding and bitter. Then he added softly, “To leave me.”

Lucinda laid a hand on his forearm. “I ken ye’ve been hurt, but I dinna think yer mother meant to hurt ye. Madness is a terrible sickness. It makes a body do things they’d never consider were they in their right mind.”

Or my mother weighed her options and considered her family wasn’t worth coming back to.
Alex drained his goblet and lifted it slightly so the footman would refill his glass.

Lucinda continued in a soft tone. “To do such a thing, she must have been in such unbearable pain, she felt there was no other way through it.”

What of his pain? He’d been a child, a spare heir left to the untender mercies of a father who cared for no one but Alexander’s elder brother. Young Alex was relegated to an ill-paid nanny who skimped on his food, pocketed most of the money for his clothing, and forced his growing feet into shoes two sizes too small. Then she’d switch Alexander with a stinging clump of birch whenever she knew his father was about to make one of his rare passes through the nursery. The marquis invariably found his younger son fussing and fretful and he stayed away even more.

His earliest memories were hazy, but he knew in his heart that things hadn’t been so when his mother was there. The last bit of softness and ease in Alexander’s life fled away on the day his mother was yanked from him. The fact that she hadn’t even tried to come back for him was an ulcerated sore that never healed.

“I lost my mother when I was young too,” Lucinda said gently. “Not in the same way as ye. Mother died bringing my sister Mary into the world. But a loss is a loss and none know the weight of grief but the heart that bears it. I only tell ye this, so ye know that a grief shared is a grief halved. As yer wife, I’ll help ye bear it.”

He snorted. As if he expected anyone to bear anything for him. He’d learned early that he was alone in this world. It was better not to love. Not to depend on anyone but himself. Part of him knew it was unreasonable to be angry with a dead woman, but rage was a safer emotion than grief. It simmered in his chest, ready to erupt into a full boil at any moment.

“Ye have a new life here, Alexander. A fresh start,” Lucinda went on. “A whole castle full of Scots who have taken ye to their hearts. Ye’re their good laird and they want to love ye. If ye let go yer stiff Englishness and embrace yer Scottish self, if ye choose joy—”

“You mean delirium, don’t you?” he said loudly. “That’s the true legacy of my Scottish half, not joy. You want to know about my
MacGregor
pedigree? Here’s the sordid truth. My mother was a bloody selfish lunatic who died raving and soiling her night rail while she took her own life. Now, isn’t that a heritage to be proud of?” He was shouting by this time, but he didn’t care. “There’ll be a snowstorm in hell on the day I count myself a Scot.”

Alexander became suddenly aware that the hall had gone quiet enough to hear a mouse fart. Every eye was turned toward the dais, a look of horrified fascination frozen on each face.

“Mr. Lyttle,” Lucinda said with a catch in her voice as she dabbed her lips with her napkin and rose to her feet. “Would ye be so good as to light me to my chamber?”

The butler moved to do her bidding with all speed but no one else twitched so much as an eyelash. As the sound of her retreating footfalls faded, the weight of eyes on Alexander grew oppressive.

“Eat,” he ordered as he scooped up another spoonful of the Tipsy Laird.
Singularly appropriate,
he mused with a grimace.
As God is my witness, I will never mix ale and wine again.
“You heard me. Eat!”

No one moved.

“You, boy.” He pointed to the lad in the corner who’d been torturing a set of bagpipes off and on all evening. “Play something.”

The boy stood and put the pipe to his lips, but all he managed was a shaky wheeze.

“What?” Alexander demanded of the assembly. “Are there no more songs? No more dances? No more bloody interminable epics to recite? And here I’d heard the Scots were a race of warrior poets.”

There was nothing warlike in the gazes that greeted him. He’d have welcomed that. He’d have picked out the biggest bloody Scot in the place and challenged him to fisticuffs on the spot. Instead, each face was fearful, filled with nameless dread.

Was he laird of a castle full of cowards?

Alexander could stand no more. He rose to his feet, swaying only slightly, and stalked from the hall. He hoped he could find his way to his chamber because he damned well wasn’t going to ask any of them for help.

“Be merry, blast you,” he shouted when the buzz of whispered conversations behind him began humming like an upturned hive. “Don’t you know it’s Christmas?”

 

 

Mr. Lyttle rang for Jane and Janet to help her ladyship to bed before he left Lady Bonniebroch at her door. Then he made a beeline for the tower, taking the winding stone steps two at a time. It was a measure of his distress that he didn’t wait long enough to knock and receive Mr. Farquhar’s permission to enter. He burst in as soon as he unwarded the door, wringing his hands.

“Och, this is terrible,” Lyttle said, his chest heaving. “’Tis disastrous. Did ye hear—”

“Aye.”
Farquhar didn’t rise from his writing desk. He blotted the page with sand and shook the excess out as if nothing troubled him at all. As if all their fates didn’t hang on the events of the next few days.

Lyttle knew the steward was preparing the roster of duties for everyone within the keep for the morrow, but they didn’t have time to spare for such mundane things now. Not when their last hope was fading so quickly.

“I hear everything that passes in this castle, whether I wish it or no’,”
Farquhar said with maddening calmness.
“I take it his lordship is a bit in his cups.”

“He is,” Mr. Lyttle admitted, “but that’s a wee bit our fault. Ye gave orders that he was to have double portions of both ale and wine, the stoutest we have in the cellars. I’m thinkin’ that were a mistake. All it did was make him angry.”

“Nae, he isna angry. He’s finally letting himself feel his old hurt and that’s all to the good.”
Farquhar released his quill into the air and it floated over to the inkwell on its own.
“Like reopening a wound to let out the poison. Pain experienced fully has a way of purifying, of burning out old damage.”

“But he said he’d never—”

“He didn’t say
never,” Farquhar corrected.
“He said there’d be a snowstorm in hell on the day he counted himself a Scot. That’s not never.”

“As near as makes no difference.”

“But we aren’t Viking raiders,” Lyttle pointed out.

“Ye might be surprised if ye were to go back far enough in yer family tree. But, no matter. His lordship is thoroughly foxed. Strong drink makes a man say many things, but contrary to the old saying, there isna always veritas in vino. What his lordship
says
is of no import.”

“No?”

“No. It’s what he
does
as will make a difference for us.”

Lyttle paced the room like a caged lynx. “So ye still have hope?”

“There is always hope, Mr. Lyttle,”
Farquhar said.
“To that end, might I suggest that the castle inhabitants leave the hall and gather in the chapel? ’Tis almost midnight and prayers are always heard on the night before Our Lord’s birth.”