Chapter 13
Madelyn
leaned on the sink and stared at herself in the mirror.
Almost twenty-four hours of sleep, yet she still felt like a zombie.
Her wet hair dripped down onto her shoulders, hung around her face.
She tugged, watched it spring back, and wished she had the energy to straighten it.
Maybe after she’d gotten rid of the dark craters that were her eye sockets.
Who knew how long that would take? Probably not before she’d gone home and lost potential jobs due to her appearance.
Too much stress, too little sleep. It was no wonder she looked so bad. Of course, two days in the local jail cell hadn’t done much for her, either. She’d threatened to sue so often she’d started to sound like Bentley.
And where was that foul piece of primordial slime? She didn’t know, she didn’t care. She just never wanted to see him again.
The other person she could do without encountering was that Hamish Fergusson.
If she’d had to listen to him rant about the MacLeods one more time, she would have lost it.
What was his problem? So the MacLeod she knew best was good-looking, well-off, and quite charming.
Was that any reason to hate him and his kin so ferociously?
Now, if he’d imparted any decent tidbits about Patrick or his family, it might have been interesting, but all he’d done was complain about their money, their looks, and their fast cars.
It had been, on the whole, a very forgettable two days.
She’d never been so glad in her life to hear a friendly voice as she had been to hear Patrick coming in like an avenging angel. It had made the previous bit of hell almost worth it.
But what to do now? She rubbed her eyes and sighed.
Things did not look good. She was for all intents and purposes quite destitute, quite devoid of her passport, and no longer in possession of her plane ticket.
She might as well be invisible as far as her identification went.
Her options were few and quite clear-cut.
She would have to get a new passport and that would require calling some family member to overnight her some kind of identification.
And that family member certainly wouldn’t be either her mother or her father.
Maybe Sunny would be willing to go through the files sitting in her parents’ garage and find the necessary items. Sunny would exact a price for it, but it would definitely not involve any verbs, and that was a price Madelyn was willing to pay.
She supposed she would also have to get back to London to get her replacement passport, and who knew how long that would take, or how she would get there.
The embassy had to have some kind of emergency procedure for renewing passports immediately, didn’t they?
And the airline would have some sort of pity procedure for those unlucky enough to have their purses stolen, wouldn’t they?
A girl could hope.
She splashed water on her face, then left the bathroom in Jane MacLeod’s flannel rainbow jammies.
She went and sat on the bed. At least she was sitting more easily.
She looked around the cheerful yellow room, grateful beyond measure for the kindness of strangers and mortally embarrassed to have to take advantage of it.
Accepting aid was not her strong suit.
She caught sight of a large shopping bag sitting just inside the door. There was a piece of paper sticking up from it. She closed her eyes briefly and swallowed her pride. More gifts from people she didn’t know. She made a vow right then that she would return the favor by helping someone else.
But it didn’t make any of Jane’s generosity any easier to take.
Well, hand-me-downs from Jane had to fit better than hand-me-downs from Miriam MacLeod. She got up, walked over to the bag, and took the note.
Madelyn,
A thing or two to get you by. I daresay this falls under necessities. . . .
Patrick
Madelyn reread the note, but it still said the same thing. She lugged the large bag back to the bed. Maybe Marks & Spencer really meant Marks & Spencer. She pulled out—in her size, no less—clothes that were definitely inappropriate for court.
The man might not be willing to punch Bentley in the nose, but he knew how to shop.
A couple of bulky, luscious sweaters, three pairs of jeans, several shirts, a handful of warm socks, and a beautiful tartan skirt that flowed to her ankles.
There were flannel jammies in lime green and two shoeboxes with “not sure about size” scrawled on the tops.
Boots came out of one box, boots suitable for Highland hiking.
Out of the other came loafers that were buttery soft and fit like a dream.
And in the very bottom, tucked discreetly under a warm corduroy dress, were underclothes wrapped in tissue paper.
She clutched the underwear to her chest, sat down in the middle of a new wardrobe, and began to cry.
If she hadn’t been so pathetically grateful, she would have cried with more enthusiasm.
As it was, all she could do was sit there and let her eyes leak copious amounts of tears.
This was really the last straw. How could she ever repay this?
And it wasn’t just the money, though she could readily add up in her head what the cut-off portions of the tags likely had said.
It wasn’t even the kindness of a decent wardrobe.
It was the gift of clothes she loved immediately and the effort, however small, that had gone into choosing something she would have liked.
Not an ounce of polyester in sight.
She dragged her sleeve across her eyes, got up, and blew her nose, then went back to the side of the bed and looked down at Patrick’s shopping spree. Well, she might be poor, but she was going to look great while she was at it.
She dressed in jeans and a sweater and didn’t bother doing anything but running her fingers through her hair.
It felt wonderful.
She left the haven of Jane’s cheery yellow guest room and went downstairs barefoot.
She would do the dishes. That would be a good start on repaying MacLeod kindnesses.
Jane could probably use some baby-sitting as well.
Patrick could use a construction crew, but she’d work on that later.
She could at least use a broom and dustpan and make inroads over at his place.
She knew how to be useful. But that didn’t really solve her cash-flow problem at the moment.
She didn’t want to think coming to Scotland had been a bad idea.
She was having a hard time coming to any other conclusion.
She paused on the stairwell. She had no choice. She would have to bum money off her parents. Maybe she could make that phone call right after she’d called to beg her sister to do the dirty work of finding her identification for her.
But later. She wasn’t going to ruin her last good day in Scotland with either of those phone calls. They could wait until evening. She continued down the stairs and followed her ears to where the most racket was being made. It sounded like breakfast was in full swing.
“Sarah, love, cereal goes in your mouth, not onto the floor,” Jane said patiently.
Madelyn walked in to see a little girl now flinging her breakfast onto her mother’s head. Jane looked up from where she was kneeling in front of her daughter’s high chair. Oatmeal dripped down onto her nose.
Madelyn couldn’t help herself. She laughed.
Jane wiped the food off with the back of her hand. “Oh, yeah, it’s hysterical,” she agreed darkly. “She’s experimenting with gravity.”
“So I see,” Madelyn said.
Jane wiped up the floor, then stood and looked at her kids. “I think a bath for the both of you is in order.”
Alexander did not like the idea at all and began to protest loudly. Sarah took the opportunity of motherly distraction her brother’s complaints afforded her to dump her entire bowl of oatmeal onto the floor. Jane pushed flaming red hair out of her face with an oatmeal-covered hand.
It looked as if they all three should go have a bath.
“I’ll deal with this,” Madelyn said, taking the sponge from Jane. “You have your hands full.”
“Thank you,” Jane said, sounding disproportionately grateful. “You don’t have to—”
“Are you kidding?” Madelyn said. “Piece of cake compared to what you’re up against.”
“You have a point.” Jane looked at her son. “No bath, no Legos. We don’t play with sticky hands.”
As Madelyn had already learned, Legos were a big thing in the MacLeod household. Alexander abruptly stopped protesting. He looked at his mother with enormous blue eyes.
“I yike Yegos,” he said seriously.
“Of course you do,” she said, unstrapping Sarah from her high chair. “And you like them clean, so let’s get ourselves equally as clean so you can play with them. Maybe you can show Madelyn how they work after your bath.”
Alexander looked at her expectantly.
“I’m there for you,” Madelyn said readily, hoping she would be equal to it. How bad could it be? She’d already heard one small story about red blocks pinning blue and green ones in an impenetrable fortress. She could hardly wait to hear what he would come up with later.
“Upstairs,” Jane said, turning Alexander around and pointing him in the right direction. “Thanks, Madelyn. Help yourself to breakfast.”
Madelyn watched them go and paused briefly to examine the fact that the thought of playing with a three-year-old didn’t sound completely horrible.
He was darn cute and she suspected he wouldn’t throw any oatmeal in her hair.
Sarah, though, was an unknown quantity. Maybe Madelyn would do well to put her hair up before bathtime was over.