The Laird Takes a Bride(23)

Mairi sat huddled in her velvet cloak, her little dog on her lap, her mother’s arm snugly around her.

And there was Wynda, on her face once more a rather bovine look of ennui.

She looked again at Alasdair. She liked how he had, before the return journey began, gone over to talk a little with both Wynda and Mairi. Irritating he might be, but he did have good manners. Goodness, how red his hair looked in the bright sunlight!

She heard a faint little clucking noise, and realized it was Cousin Isobel, sitting alone in one of the pretty carts. With her graying curls flying loose from her coiffure, she was having a conversation—an argument?—with Duff MacDermott who rode alongside her, and he alternately chuckling and gesticulating frowningly. Isobel, in turn, looked rather like a plump little hen pecking at him.

A wry smile curved Fiona’s mouth. Now there was a well-suited couple, each of them, evidently, equally itchy. All that was needed was for him to scratch her arms, and her to scratch his beard, and it would be a match made in heaven.

When her amusement at this silly notion faded away, Fiona’s thoughts drifted on without direction.

Her visit to the stables, early in the morning, had been a fruitful one, for she’d been pleased to see that they were well-kept, well-staffed; the Douglass horses were well-tended. And the head groom, a grizzled, barrel-shaped fellow named Begbie, had stoutly promised to rid her carriage of fleas.

When it was time, Cousin Isobel could travel home in comfort.

Home.

Was she herself looking forward to being back there? To the massive old keep in Wick Bay, always turbulent with Father’s shifting moods, ever filled with the shadows of her own disappointment?

She heard in her mind Alasdair Penhallow’s voice:

Here again we find ourselves discussing age. Why is that, I wonder?

Was it possible that she was, in fact, rather jealous of Janet Reid? So young, so lovely—so attractively plump—and with so many years of promise, of potential, ahead of her?

Fiona rolled this unpleasant idea around in her mind.

Good heavens, had she somehow become a sour old maid?

She was only twenty-seven.

Or, stated another way, she was all of twenty-seven.

Were the best years of her life behind her?

You face in the wrong direction, lady, you stare at the moon, ever changing.

The solemn, eerie voice of little wall-eyed Sheila now insinuated itself into her head.

You look but you do not see. Turn about, lady, turn about.

Despite herself, Fiona shivered a little in the brisk breeze that swirled about her, playing with the hem of her gown, the white ruffles at her wrists.

Her slender—bony—wrists.

My! You have quite the appetite, don’t you? And yet you’re so very slim! One might almost call you skeletal!

She really shouldn’t have teased Janet Reid like that. Father was right about her sharp, sharp tongue.

Janet, boldly jumping off that high stone wall, landing as gracefully as a bird.

Sheila’s eerie voice, directed toward Janet:

You leap, but should not. You go, but you ought not.

Fiona’s shiver turned into an involuntary shudder, and she turned her eyes again toward the head of the cavalcade, to where Alasdair Penhallow rode next to Janet Reid, whose emerald ear-bobs glittered so brightly in the sun that it almost hurt to look at her.



There was a tour of the castle one afternoon; then, on a warm halcyon morning, a walk through the gardens, which were exquisite, followed by another picnic, this one by the river. Those who cared to could fish, and nearby, from a gracious old oak tree hung a wide wooden swing, on which Mairi joyfully allowed herself to be swung back and forth until suddenly she got nauseous, and had to lie down with her head in her mother’s lap.

On the next day, they all visited an impressive waterfall.

The day after that, the men went shooting while the ladies hung back and watched; later, there was an archery competition on one of the wide lawns, and here the men were to watch while the ladies drew their bows.

Fiona looked over at Janet who, wearing a charming gown of snow-white lawn, was inspecting a cluster of arrows laid out on a table. Here, she thought, might be an opportunity to improve relations between them. She joined Janet and said in a pleasant tone:

“Which do you prefer, Miss Reid, those blue ones or the white ones?”

Janet turned on her a sparkling look of challenge. “Why? So you can have the ones you like better?”

Rise above, Fiona reminded herself. “Some people favor broader fletches. I was wondering what you’ve found most effective.”

“It’s hardly information I’d like to share, Miss Douglass.”

Fiona tried another, more neutral tack. “You’re from the Lowlands, I believe? I’ve heard archery is very popular there.”