Chapter Three
The moaning and groaning, crying and complaining, anger and spite, and looks of incredible maliciousness lasted four days.
That was all the longer Lisle could put up with every last one of the ungrateful, back-against-the-wall remnants of the MacHugh Clan.
She announced as much over a tasteless dinner of broth.
That was what the ham had been reduced to; a flavoring of such little impact.
Any barley the soup still contained tasted flat and bland, and you couldn’t detect what the soup was flavored with even when standing atop the pot inhaling the steam.
They all knew it was her fault. She didn’t need anyone remarking on it.
They didn’t. Their looks were enough. Lisle looked from her own bowl of barley-enhanced, steamed water to the cold fireplace, which wasn’t making her feel as guilty.
That was probably because the weather had decided to change, bringing chilled mornings followed by brilliant sunshine, followed by freezing nights, making not only Aunt Fanny, but her frail twin, Aunt Grace, ill again.
In fact, Fanny was so ill she didn’t seem to have the strength to cough, just so she sat there, her body jerking with the motions. Lisle put down her bowl and stood. “All right. All right! Stop looking at me like that!”
“Like what, Lisle?” It was Aunt Mattie.
“Like I’ve taken everything from you and without reason. I have a reason. I doona’ want him in this house. I doona’ want to sell out to the devil!” I doona’ wish to suffer through the strange sensations he makes me feel!
“We’re tired of hearing what you want.”
Lisle’s mouth dropped open at the insult from her eldest stepdaughter, Angela.
“Stepdaughter” was a stupid title, since Angela was larger, sturdier, and the span separating their ages was less than six months.
But Angela was still the child, while Lisle was the parent.
She raised her head, put her hands on her hips, and faced them with both eyes, although the injured one wasn’t quite opened to its full extent.
“I’m not deigning to answer that, Angela, and you’d best be grateful that I’ll not send you to your room, either.”
“Good thing, for I wouldn’t have gone.”
“Hush your mouth, Angela!” Angus championed her.
Lisle gave him a smile, and then she had to force it to stay in place as he continued. “The lass has something to say to us, and I, for one, think it’s what we’re waiting to hear. Go on, lass. Say it.”
She gulped. “It’s not my fault.”
“He dinna’ come when he said he would, did he?” Mattie asked.
“Well…nae, but—”
“And there was nae more logs, and nae more food, and nae more letters of offer left, either, was there?”
“That is not my fault, either!”
“What is your fault, then?”
“That I dinna’ read what he wanted when I had the chance! I’m going to correct it, though. That man is not getting away with this!”
“How are you going to do that?”
“By marching over there on the morrow and finding out why he dinna’ come when he said he would, and what he wanted. That’s how!”
The entire assemblage brightened. Lisle watched it with a detached part of her she could learn to dislike.
A wall of non-emotion rose, making her feel like a bystander, instead of a participant.
It was easier to deal with it that way, she decided, watching everyone smile and chat and look at her with pleasure instead of the black looks they’d been using.
She couldn’t hear a thing they were saying for several moments as her heartbeat rose to cover the noise.
That was probably a good thing, too. “I’ll find out what he wants, and if it’s not so dire, I’ll consider it,” she said.
“Doona’ sell him the loch. Nae clan can exist without such.”
That was Angus. He was helping himself to another bowl of the broth, and acting like it was thick with ham, barley, and every sort of delicious, nutritious vegetable.
“What if that’s what he wants?” she asked.
He set the bowl down and looked at her. All of them had the same expression, too. Pained. They knew it was going to be dire and hard to live with. At least it would be living. The only thing worse was starving to death.
“Make him pay triple what it’s worth, then,” Aunt Matilda said quietly. “I hear that’s what he does. He doesn’t understand the value of his gold. He treats it like it’s wheat chaff, and worth as much. The man’s a fool.”
“I won’t let him get the better of me. Never you fear. I’m a MacHugh, aren’t I?” Lisle asked.
They all chorused that she was, making her feel very welcome and very needed. The emotion carried her into the sleepless night lying beside Nadine and her full sister, Elizabeth, in the ancestral bed that she should have been sharing with Ellwood MacHugh, and not his fatherless daughters.
The weather held. That was a good sign. Lisle had two things left from her trousseau: one was a traveling ensemble, made of velvet-trimmed, sky-blue satin that matched her eyes, and the other was her own wedding gown.
She’d had the traveling one designed in the French fashion, the material snug across her bodice, although it was much tighter now than it had been when she’d last worn it, on the lengthy day she’d arrived and become a MacHugh, and then a widow.
Her waist had also gotten longer; it had to have.
Lisle was an expert needlecrafter. The stitches were so tiny and meticulous that they were difficult to spot, and the fit had been exact when it had been made.
Now the waist was an inch or more above where hers was, and consequently the hem was barely reaching the tops of her boots.
She grimaced down at them as she waited at the crossroads near Old Leanach Cottage for any type of conveyance that would save her what promised to be a very lengthy, hot walk.
The cottage still stood, mutely testifying to the horrors that had taken place in the barn.
Lisle shivered in the predawn light. Everyone knew what had happened there; how the Sassenach had found the wounded clansmen and chieftains hiding there after the defeat at Culloden, and how they’d bolted everyone inside and then they’d torched it.
Lisle swallowed and told her own imagination to hush, although she said it softly. Ghosts didn’t take well to loud voices.
She focused on her boots. That was better than imagining that she heard screams and groans.
She’d shined the best pair she had left, using a paste of water and soot, which was all that was left of Monteith’s missives, and still her boots looked like what they were: well worn, old, and tired.
There were even three tiny buttons missing from the top of the left one.
She wondered how that had happened, and also if she’d be better served hunching down a bit when she finally reached the Monteith stronghold, in order for her skirt to cover it over.
She heard the creak of wagon wheels before she saw it, and started waving as the farm cart came into view.
It was the miller, and the bed of his cart was loaded with sacks bulging with flour, the like of which the MacHughs would be salivating over.
Her mouth filled with moisture she had to swallow around in order to beg a ride.
It was going to be a gloriously sunny day, and her luck was holding as the miller took her nearly to Inverness itself. She didn’t tell him she was going to Monteith Hall. She didn’t want anyone to know. She was thinking that kind of knowledge wouldn’t get her any kind of assistance with anything.
He only asked her once where she was heading in such a fine dress.
She lied and told him that she was checking in Inverness for employment deserving of a lady of quality, like herself.
That had stopped his chatter briefly, but he wasn’t able to stay silent long, and soon was regaling her with all sorts of tales from his farm, his animals, his missus, and the seven lads he’d sired that helped him with all of it.
Lisle had ceased listening, and was nearly dozing, when he stopped, letting her off near an overhang of cliff that lined one side of the inlet known as Moray Firth.
Lisle waved until he was out of sight, then turned back the way he’d taken her.
The road turning into Monteith property had been passed some time earlier.
The farmer had pointed it out to her, with a tone of envy in his voice.
It should have been obvious. He’d told her that the Monteith laird didn’t know the value of gold.
Lisle decided that he obviously didn’t have the sense to keep it hidden, either, for there were four stone pillars on either side of his property, a lion statue at their tops, and a gleaming iron gate between the closest two.
The gateposts were attached on either side, to a wall of stone that had looked to be chest high from the wagon. Now that she was walking along it, she realized it was actually over her head. He must think everyone wanted what he had, to fence himself in like this, she thought.
It was stupid. Nobody wanted anything to do with him.
He didn’t need to build a fence the size of a castle wall in order to keep anyone or anything out.
She pushed on the gate and it swung open easily and with a well-oiled efficiency that either proved its newness, or the amount of maintenance he was willing to expend on it.
It was both. She had the answer to it as she walked up his road, which was covered with perfectly fitted and aligned stones. It wasn’t possible to twist an ankle with the fit of the stones. It would probably feel like flying, if one were riding on horseback, or being driven in a coach.
The amount of funds he had to have expended on it was jaw-dropping. As was the army of groundskeepers it looked like he employed, all of them studiously applying themselves to grooming a tree, or a shrub, or doing anything other than watching her walk by.