Poor dear Fiona, trapped in a loveless marriage to that great hulking red-haired man! (Who had the misfortune of being the nephew of that detestable Duff!) It was dreadfully sad how things had turned out. And there was so little she could do to help her poor suffering cousin!
Isobel ran her shammy along the fluted edges of the cabinet’s middle section, a narrow mahogany shelf gleaming with satinwood inlay. It was then she observed that beneath the shelf was a row of little doors, which could be opened by means of shiny oval knobs set with black onyx. How strange that she hadn’t noticed them before.
Surely no one would mind if she just peeked inside?
Her heart pattering in excitement, Isobel sank to her knees and cautiously pulled on one of the knobs.
The door opened easily, almost as if it wished to reveal what lay inside.
But there was only a big, dusty book, bound in faded and cracked leather.
Normally Isobel didn’t care for books. She had never been much of a reader. But the vanquishing of dirt struck an instant chord. It seemed to be, in a very small way, something she could do to be helpful. How gratifying.
Isobel pulled out the book—so big and heavy that it took much of her strength—from the dark recesses of the cabinet, and ran her shammy across its binding. Gracious, it even had cobwebs clinging to it. She brushed them away, and read the words now more clearly visible in gilt—or was it actual gold leaf?
Laws of the Eight Clans of Kilally.
She stared at it. “Laws” did not sound the least bit interesting. And yet—
And yet a kind of irrepressible curiosity flickered within her.
Isobel looked over her shoulder, as if she was about to do something that was forbidden and needed to make sure she was alone (which, thankfully, she was), then reached down, and slowly opened the great hoary Tome.
While Isobel was opening up the Tome, Duff MacDermott stood before the round mirror that hung on a wall in his dressing-room. He turned his face this way and that, inspecting it. Not bad for a middle-aged fellow, if he did say so himself. A few wrinkles, a few gray hairs, but a truly magnificent beard, the epitome of masculine vigor. To be sure, he’d gained a few pounds over the years, but that only gave him added stature. Really, he didn’t know what Dame Isobel had been muttering about last night. Himself an aging roué? A feckless profligate?
She obviously didn’t know a dashing bon vivant when she sat right opposite him at dinner. The poor aging spinster-lady. Why, she was probably so overwhelmed by his masculine charm that she could only sputter and cluck around him! He’d be sure to behave more kindly toward her in future. They were of an age, he reckoned, but she was so fragile, so delicate, when compared to his own robust state. Perhaps he might offer a strong arm when escorting her up some stairs, or pick up her handkerchief when she dropped it. That sort of thing. Chivalry, he thought contentedly as he smoothed his mustache, was not dead, at least not while Duff MacDermott was around.
Humming under his breath, Duff now shrugged himself into one of his nicest jackets. Earlier, he’d run into his nephew, been greeted cheerfully. Not only that, Alasdair willingly agreed to meet him at the Gilded Osprey for a nuncheon. Things were coming along just as they should. A long, hearty meal, a bottle or two of port, extended flirtations with the serving girls. Yes, it was going to be a good day.
While Duff was putting on his jacket, little Sheila and her grandmother Margery stood before a table in their cottage, which lay just at the edge of the heather meadow. Sheila was rinsing potatoes in a bowl of water, and passing them to Margery, who patted them dry and peeled them.
Sheila sang little snatches of an old tune as she worked, and Dame Margery shot a measuring glance her way. The child’s pale blue eyes showed none of the opaque, absent look they got sometimes, but the old lady did observe upon her narrow face a faint look of mischief, and upon the hem of her dress a trail of clinging cobweb.
“You were up early today, sweeting,” she said to her grandchild, accepting a damp potato and enfolding it in her cloth. “Where did you go?”
“I had something to do at the castle, Granny, that’s all.”
“What might that be?”
“Oh,” answered Sheila vaguely, “nothing, really. Granny, didn’t Dame Isobel make me the prettiest doll in the world? Oh, Granny, your hands are bothering you, won’t you let me peel the tatties?”
Margery’s look sharpened. “You’ve not been to the castle to stir up trouble?”
“Never, Granny, never!” swore Sheila, with such fervor that the old lady relented, and said:
“Aye then, you may peel, for my fingers do pain me this morning. You’re a good lass.”