Chapter 8
April 12, 1803
Caelan was working his way through a snarl of estate accounts when he heard a carriage scrape over the gravel drive. Fiona would never come over this early, which suggested that Mrs. Gillan hadn’t slept all night.
He stood up and stretched with a groan. He’d been working for hours, and his desk was as cluttered as it had been when the sun rose.
Thankfully, when he walked outside, his mother-in-law wasn’t sobbing; once she launched into a fit of tears, she didn’t find her way out of it for an hour or more. Instead, she stood on the far side of the moat, staring down at the flowers. “Isla’s flowers are doing well,”
she said by way of greeting.
He walked across the moat and bowed. “Good morning, Mrs. Gillan. Would you care to enter the castle and have a cup of tea?”
She shook her head so violently that the black veil she’d thrown back from her bonnet trembled. “The place where my dear Isla died? No. Besides . . . it’s known to all that you’re having trouble keeping staff. If you had a housekeeper, I’d be glad to give you a scullery maid. I could spare my housekeeper’s daughter, but with you a single man and she a maiden, I couldn’t do it in good conscience.”
Was his own mother-in-law implying that he might take advantage of the lass?
She caught something in his face, because she started clucking like Wilhelmina and talking about the scullery maid’s reputation. When he didn’t respond, she took a fresh breath and said, “I’ve no wish for tea. I’ll remain here, next to the exquisite blooms my beloved daughter planted. Isla had such an eye for beauty.”
Caelan nodded.
“I thought about the service and our conversation all the night through, laird. Your sister is right. You must have an heir.”
Her reddened eyes flicked to the boulders lying by the south tower. “Your grief mustn’t result in Isla’s beloved home falling to ruin.”
He cleared his throat. “Well—”
“As I said, the state of your castle is gossiped of all the way to Edinburgh. My cracked heart and my sensibilities cannot stand in your way. A man needs a helpmeet, as the Good Book says.”
Caelan frowned. “I doubt—”
“I have a request.”
She put a hand on his arm. Mrs. Gillan had lost so much weight since her daughter died that her fingers curled around his forearm like little claws. “You and I both know that you will never recover from Isla’s loss. Yet as my husband reminded me last night, a laird has a responsibility to his land.”
Caelan held his tongue. He’d have done damn near anything to shake his reputation as the grieving widower. Getting remarried was sounding better every minute.
“Just don’t take up with a local woman!”
Mrs. Gillan burst out. “I couldn’t bear that, I really couldn’t. To see another Highlander usurp my Isla’s place, living in her castle, with the man she loved so much. She told me when she was eight years old that she meant to marry you, remember? And then she did.”
Her voice cracked, but she managed not to break down.
“She was so proud when you singled her out from all the lasses. ’Twould break her heart to see you pair yourself with the likes of Helen Inglis or Rebecca Frasier. They were always jealous of her beauty, you know.”
Since he’d never met a woman living nearby whom he’d care to marry, the promise was easily made.
“Nor one of those women who come to the kirk of a Sunday!”
Mrs. Gillan added.
At that, Caelan frowned. He wasn’t what one might call a religiously observant man, but his mother would turn in her grave if he didn’t make his way to the top pew and sit opposite old Lord Bufford, an English lord tolerated for his long roots in this area.
Mrs. Gillan caught his expression. “I’m not saying you should become a godless fiend,”
she gasped. “There’s Isla waiting for you on the side of Jesus. It’s just that those women throng the kirk every Sunday hoping that you’ll notice them, coming from three hours away, as far as Inverness—”
“You must be jesting,”
he muttered.
Her hand fell away, and a smile wreathed her face. “You haven’t even noticed those bold wenches, have you?”
Bloody hell. “I have not.”
“No more than you entertained that hussy from the Mclean family who had the effrontery to pretend to be married so she could become your housekeeper!”
Mrs. Gillan bared her teeth at that memory. “I had words with her mother, I promise you that!”
He cleared his throat. “I haven’t met anyone in the locality whom I’d wish to marry, Mrs. Gillan.”
“You will never feel the urge to welcome another woman to your home, laird.”
Though he had entertained the same thought, the words struck a sour note.
“When a heart is truly broken, it never mends. The best you can hope for thereafter is a civilized arrangement. I have a suggestion that you might take amiss, but it’s worth consideration.”
Her hand clamped on Caelan’s arm once more. “I think you should get yourself a wife from England.”
He blinked, stunned by the local shift from seeing England not as a powerful neighbor but as a hothouse of available spouses.
“You know how we all thought Lord Bufford had made a fool of himself when he took that young wife?”
Mrs. Gillan asked.
“Aye.”
“I’ve changed my mind. A Scotswoman would have felt threatened by three previous wives, but the new Lady Bufford is cold as ice. She’s a good wife to Bufford, partly because she doesn’t care about those who came before.”
Caelan tried to pick his words carefully. “His lordship is elderly but seems fit enough.”
“I didn’t mean you should wait for Lady Bufford to be widowed! Lord knows, Bufford might live to be one hundred. You need an heir, and there’s no bairn in that house. Mayhap she’s not fruitful.”
According to Isla, Lady Bufford had eschewed the marital bed, which explained her lack of children.
“My point is that an Englishwoman won’t care whether you love her, the way that the young Mclean did. Scotswomen are passionate, and your second wife might wither on discovering that your heart is in the grave with Isla.”
Caelan cleared his throat again. “My sister also suggested an English bride.”
Fiona had been jesting. Perhaps.
“There, I knew that Lady McIntyre couldn’t be as cruel as she seemed when she blurted out your need for a wife,”
Mrs. Gillan exclaimed. “Not the lady whom Isla counted as a dear friend and sister.”
Caelan was at a loss for words.
“We could ask Lady Bufford,”
Mrs. Gillan mused. “Unfortunately, someone told me her only sister is a viscountess.”
“Right.”
“There, that’s settled,”
Mrs. Gillan said.
“It is?”
“You’ll marry an Englishwoman with a stony heart, and the fact that yours is broken won’t bother her. Anyone can tell that Lady Bufford doesn’t give a fig about being the fourth of her husband’s wives. She’s not the love of his life, but that’s irrelevant to her.”
“Indeed?”
Caelan asked.
“If there’s one thing that you and I understand, it’s that deep love—the kind that Romeo and Juliet, and you and Isla, experienced—comes only once in a lifetime, and most people don’t experience it at all.”
“Hmmm.”
“As I said to my husband in the middle of the night, thinking on that image of you stretched over my darling’s grave, we must be grateful to the Almighty that you didn’t take your own life from the agony of your grief. You showed courage and restraint, knowing you’ll suffer your entire life.”
“I don’t think I’m the type who would ever take my life,”
Caelan said, startled.
“Of course you wouldn’t, because that would threaten your afterlife with dear Isla! I shall speak to Lady Bufford about her acquaintances,”
Mrs. Gillan said with sudden energy.
Apparently his former mother-in-law meant to personally shove him down the aisle to wed a stonyhearted woman with an English accent.
“You’ll have to go back to wearing breeches,”
Mrs. Gillan added. “No Englishwoman will appreciate a kilt, any more than Isla did. It isn’t clothing fit for a lord.”
Caelan almost made the point that a laird is not the same as a lord but thought better of it. Isla had adored being addressed as Lady MacCrae. She had wanted him in breeches and a cravat, mincing around his holdings in polished shoes.
They had been furthest apart in those moments, since he was a man who cared nothing for appearances, and his wife emulated Marie Antoinette. To put it another way, he preferred reality but Isla, fantasy.
He stood watching as Mrs. Gillan’s carriage rocked its way toward the pass leading to Lavenween, wondering why two women were searching out a wife for him, although he’d clearly informed both that he didn’t want to marry again.
It was perplexing. His crofters tended to treat him with respect, and if he made his wishes clear, they took notice.
On the other hand, Mrs. Gillan seemed more cheerful than he’d seen her in two years. He turned away with a sigh. In addition to his estate responsibilities, he had to make it through the monthly accounts, meet a crofter with a leaky roof, drop in at the mill and find out why Ross the Younger hadn’t paid the multure owed for grinding his corn. Then there was a parcel of bullocks due to be sold off, and that crofter had sent a message telling him to come take one animal in lieu of rent on his holding.
No time for fishing. No time to write, nor even to read a page or two of the new books delivered from Edinburgh.
Sitting down to the accounts, he caught sight of a scrap of paper he’d overlooked: he was due to sit in judgment over a small meadow claimed by two crofters, one as a matter of inheritance and the other through marriage.
That meant that both sides would show up at the castle, bellowing about dowries, jointures, and their respective fathers’ attachments to that patch of land.
Bloody hell. He’d have to put off the bullocks.
He didn’t have time to find a wife.