Chapter 15
When Clara returned to the castle after dispatching Caelan’s mother-in-law to the village, she was in possession of several new facts, not a single one of which made her happy.
“The rot in the castle is the outer sign of the laird’s grief,”
Mrs. Gillan had told her several times, catching her breath between sobs. “It’s the wrapping around a broken heart.”
The sturdy man whom Clara saw fishing in the stream hadn’t seemed anguished, but what did she know? She was a fool who thought she saw a spark of desire in the eyes of a man who had married the most beautiful woman for a hundred miles.
“The laird married my daughter for love. She was no more than a village lass, without a dowry to speak of. But the laird—his lordship—scarcely danced with another. He described Isla as a willow bough in spring.”
Eccentric Clara, with breasts and other curves, could never compare to that willowy beauty. Thankfully, Caelan had no idea she was attracted to him.
“Isla loved being called Lady MacCrae,”
her mother continued. “The title meant the world to her. I wouldn’t be surprised if he started living like a peasant because of that, because his lady isn’t with him any longer. You will clean her castle?”
She only left after Clara promised repeatedly that Isla’s castle would be restored to its former glory.
But not before Mrs. Gillan told Clara that hardly more than a week ago, Caelan had thrown himself down on the bluebells he’d planted on Isla’s grave. It sounded like something that happened in a novel, a depressing one. It was hard to imagine the laird in such agony, but perhaps that was because she didn’t like to think of Caelan in pain. He was already a friend, after all. No one wanted their friends to suffer.
When she walked back into the kitchen, Elsbeth and Maisie were on their hands and knees, scrubbing at the blackened stone around the fireplace. Clara stopped long enough to remind them to take a tea break after they finished that foul task before she climbed the tower steps. She needed to get a sense of the task ahead.
When she reached the top floor and opened the door, her mouth fell open. She had anticipated dust—but not grandeur. The floor was covered by a silk rug woven into a pattern of birds in flight. Given its tattered appearance, mice had been raising babies in luxurious nests.
To one side of the door, a gilded cabinet lacquered with fantastical beasts stretched all the way to the beams. Clara gently rubbed a griffin with a handkerchief, and its blue eyes promptly fell out. She guiltily pocketed them, hoping that she could glue them back in. The wood itself was pockmarked with holes, as if a flock of tiny woodpeckers regularly searched it for breakfast.
Apple-green curtains hung around the enormous bed, the damask dulled by grime, the sheets gray with dust. A draped dressing table was topped with a gold-trimmed looking glass, tarnished silver candlesticks, and a crystal bottle that must have held perfume. Clara couldn’t help thinking of the tragic young queen Marie Antoinette taking a last spritz before being marched away to the tumbril.
But this tragedy was Isla’s, not a French queen’s.
Her throat tightened at the thought. The bed had no coverlet; Caelan hadn’t been sleeping here. Likely he couldn’t bear to be in the chamber he shared with his wife. She had a feeling that the door had closed behind Isla and never opened again. Wax had run down the candlesticks and puddled on the dressing table, and no one scraped it off.
She blinked away tears and had turned to go when a pair of malevolent yellow eyes caught hers. She shrieked before she could stop herself—and instantly heard Caelan pounding up the stairs.
“Clara?”
His eyes were wild. “Is there another rat?”
“I’m sorry,”
she cried, hand on her thumping heart. “I caught sight of that bird, and I lost my composure.”
He followed her gaze to the stuffed owl perched on a shelf over the door. It was falling apart, one wing hanging loose at its side.
“God, that’s revolting,”
Caelan said. He reached up and grabbed it by one leg. A trail of feathers followed him as he walked to the window, unlatched it, and unceremoniously tossed the bird into the moat. “Queen Marie Antoinette reportedly had a stuffed crane, and Isla desperately wanted a bird. The owl was the best I could find.”
“I apologize for being in your bedchamber,”
Clara said.
“You have every right to be here.”
His mouth crooked into a wry smile. “You’re my housekeeper, remember?”
“Of course!”
Clara said hastily. What did one say about such a bleak room? “Do you happen to know when the bed-curtains were last taken down and washed?”
“Never.”
“Do you know what made these small holes?”
She pointed to the dressing table.
He grimaced. “Worm rot. The piece will have to be burnt to stop the worms from spreading.”
He didn’t seem distraught at the prospect as he peered closer at the wardrobe. “This one, too.”
Clara cleared her throat. “Did you inherit the furniture from your parents?”
“No.”
Isla must have chosen them. “The room needs a thorough cleaning.”
She walked over to the bed and wiggled one of the bedposts back and forth. “I want to be sensitive to your feelings, but I don’t think this bed is sound.”
“Sensitive to my what?”
He glanced around. “Jesus, it looks like the chamber of a beheaded queen.”
“I thought the same thing! There’s a story—”
Clara caught herself.
“Did a bed come alive and swallow Her Majesty?”
“Thankfully, no. A princess fell asleep for a hundred years. I would guess magic kept the termites and woodworms away.”
“One would hope,”
he agreed. “Is she the one who fell asleep in a glass box?”
“Rather like your bathtub,”
Clara said, giving him a lopsided smile.
“Considering the dearth of magic in this castle, I should have climbed the steps to this room now and then.”
He gave one of the bedposts a gentle push. It groaned and leaned in, releasing a billow of dust from the brocade gathered above.
“Good thing you tied up your hair this morning,”
he said once they both stopped coughing. “You’d have never got it clean without plunging into the loch.”
Clara patted her head, giving him a rueful smile. “Elsbeth and I compared it to a wild animal this morning.”
“True, you could be hiding anything under that scarf,”
Caelan said, eyeing her.
“Household staff should be neat and clean at all times,”
she told him, a giggle escaping. “My mother would chide the housekeeper if even a strand of hair escaped a chambermaid’s cap.”
“In your case, a curl has fallen down your back and now it’s as tarnished as the candlesticks.”
He turned her around and poked it back into the fichu. “I like your hair better when it’s not all bound up.”
“You do? Never mind!”
she added quickly. “As I said, I don’t know if the bed is safe. That bedpost seems rickety.”
Caelan reached out and gave it a proper shove. Naturally it collapsed, dragging down another bedpost and ripping the bed canopy in half.
This time Clara retreated out the door to escape the cloud of dirt. “Did you have to?”
she asked, shaking out her skirts.
He followed her out onto the landing. “Yes.”
“Like the wardrobe, the bed will have to be replaced.”
“Would you suggest that I get another one like it?”
“Well,”
Clara said awkwardly. “What if your next wife—if you take one—is not very tall? Personally, I’d have to climb that bed like the mast of a boat.”
His mouth twitched. “Your husband would volunteer to be the mast.”
Clara peered at him. “Was that an uncouth jest?”
“Yes,”
he admitted unrepentantly. “Perhaps you might clean my study instead? I never noticed the dust before this morning, but now I see the room differently.”
She let out a crow of laughter. “Every lord should be forced to clean his own house at least once.”
He snorted. “Could we say the same about ladies?”
“I saw people working, but I had no real idea how hard it was,”
she agreed. “I thought that pot last night would never come clean.”
“After you, Mrs. Potts,”
he said with a sardonic wave of his hand.
Something in his gaze made Clara hurry down the circular stone steps, past the nursery where she had slept the night before. On the next level, Caelan reached over her shoulder to push open the door.
“Oh my goodness,”
Clara said faintly.
“I sleep in that bed.”
The laird nodded toward a narrow bed to one side. Taking her expression for horror, he added defensively, “I change the sheets weekly. They’re stacked over there in the corner.”
“Like the pans,”
Clara murmured, moving into the room.
“It’s easier.”
His life must be very easy, because everything was stacked on the floor: papers, sheets, a pile of quilts, shirts, breeches, mugs . . .
Books.