Chapter 24
Donald Tulloch, Laird of Kilmarin, had arranged for this meeting to take place in Kilmarin’s chapel. Perhaps the atmosphere was meant to act as an impetus to any confession Douglas might wish to make. Or perhaps Donald thought himself God.
The chapel had been recently constructed, which in Kilmarin terms, meant in the last hundred years.
Evidently, the Tullochs had only recently come to an understanding with God.
Plain and unadorned, the chapel was Calvinist in nature.
Not one statue, like those found at Chavensworth, deflected the penitent’s attention from his pleas to God.
Not one brilliant stained-glass window colored the air.
Even the pews were rough-hewn, no doubt leaving splinters in the behinds of any supplicant.
Douglas stood straight and tall, his hands clasped at his back. He knew, only too well, that this meeting was an inspection of sorts, and he was damned if he was going to fail it.
The Laird of Kilmarin was a crusty old demon, one who knew how to intimidate those who might challenge his command. But there was also a glint of humor in his eye, as if he knew only too well that he was being an ass about this meeting.
Donald sat at a table in the front of the chapel, not far from the altar itself. Douglas wouldn’t have been surprised if the laird had chosen to use the altar as a desk. Again, the comparison to God occurred to him, and he knew it was one Donald encouraged.
“Sit,” he finally said.
Douglas slid a chair forward by hooking it with his foot, and sat, resting one ankle on the opposite knee and loosely clasping his hands in his lap.
“Does Sarah know you’re here?” Donald asked.
“She doesn’t. It was your request to keep our meeting secret.”
“Not secret,” Donald said, “just not something to be gossiped about. Women always speculate, have to whisper about everything.” He sat back in his thronelike chair, one similar to those in the dining hall, and studied him from beneath bushy white brows.
“It’s my opinion that woman are similar to men in that regard,” Douglas said. “Give a person enough information, and he will not have to speculate.”
“Are you given to sharing your opinion all that often?”
“Relatively often,” Douglas said. “It depends, of course, if I find myself in a friendly country or one ruled by a despot.”
Donald snorted and leaned back, pushing himself up on one side, as if the hip pained him.
““Robert tells me you’re from Perth.”
“I am.”
“Who’s your family?” Donald asked, eyes narrowing.
“No one you would know,” Douglas said. “They died from cholera when I was eight. Any family they had is scattered.”
“Yet you somehow managed to marry the daughter of a duke.”
“An event I will forever treasure,” Douglas said, looking straight at the older man. He had no intention of telling the old demon of the circumstances of his marriage.
Donald didn’t say anything for a long while, but if it was a test, Douglas was more than ready for it. He’d stayed some months at a monastery, where the rules of silence were rigorously obeyed. He had no difficulty with the Laird of Kilmarin’s petty tyranny.
“You’re as arrogant as any duke,” Donald finally said.
“Am I?” Douglas smiled.
“It wasn’t a damned compliment.” Donald rearranged himself on the chair again.
A few more minutes passed while Donald looked him over.
“Did you know my daughter?” he finally asked.
“I didn’t have that pleasure,” Douglas said.
“Is she happy? My granddaughter?”
Douglas stared at the altar, stymied as to how to answer that question.
Sarah had everything a woman would need to be happy—a magnificent estate in which to live, adequate food, and clothing.
Someone to love her? Someone to love? He’d have offered himself up to her had he been certain she’d be willing to have him.
Last night, perhaps, but passion died with the dawn and was sometimes replaced by regret.
Did she regret her wedding night?
“I don’t know,” he said finally. Perhaps his honesty would prove to be too blunt an answer.
The old man levered himself up from his chair.
“I’ve asked Linda to take Sarah on a tour of Kilmarin,” he said. “I’ll have Robert do the same for you.”
“It’s not necessary,” Douglas said. “I doubt I’ll be this way again.”
“Do you know your Gaelic, Douglas, or have you forgotten it like the fact you’re a Scot?”
“I’ve never forgotten I’m a Scot, Donald,” he said, calm in the face of the older man’s gibe. “It’s in my blood. As to my Gaelic, I’ve probably forgotten most of what I knew.”
“Then here’s a Gaelic word you should know,” he said. “Sealbh. It means fortune or luck. Providence. Some things are meant to be. Some are not.”
Douglas couldn’t help but wonder why the old man’s words sounded like a warning.
Sarah would have liked to spend some time thinking about her grandfather’s revelation, or at least his supposition as to why Morna had never returned to Scotland. Unfortunately, her cousin was intractable, insisting upon showing her Kilmarin, because, of course, Donald Tulloch requested it.
After only a few minutes, however, she found herself enthralled by the tour of her mother’s family home.
Kilmarin was easily four times the size of Chavensworth, a complex of ten buildings all linked by porticos.
The first castle had been built atop a circular mound, but now fingers of buildings stretched outward over the hills and toward the River Tay.
In the last hundred years, the walls of the oldest courtyard had been rebuilt, emplacements for ten guns had been added, and a new courtyard added to the area north of the towers.
Linda led her to one of the ancient towers of Kilmarin. The circular space was saved from total darkness by the narrow arrow slits high in the six-foot-thick walls. Sloping, treacherous looking steps, their centers worn down by generations of Tullochs, led to the top of the tower.
“Shall we?” Linda asked, moving to the base of the steps.
“I would rather not,” Sarah said. “It’s not important that I explore everything, is it?” She waved her hand in the air when Linda would have spoken. “Grandfather will just have to be satisfied with what I’ve seen.”
Linda’s face froze into lines of distress, but she didn’t comment.
The Tullochs made their own cloth, weaving wool from the sheep that grazed on the sides of the hills adjacent to Kilmarin, and milled their own flour from the power of the River Tay. Kilmarin even had a dungeon, although she’d chosen not to explore it, either.
At the beginning of their tour, Sarah had managed to restrain her reaction to all the wonders of her mother’s ancestral home, but at their noon meal, taken on a small terrace overlooking the River Tay, Sarah finally asked, “How on earth do you manage it all?”
For the first time, Linda seemed a little less confident than she’d acted all morning. “I don’t,” she said. “I’ve nothing to do with Kilmarin. I want nothing to do with Kilmarin.”
Perhaps that was why, when Sarah had begun to contribute what she’d done at Chavensworth to control mice, Linda had cut her off with the comment, “You need to tell Grandfather.” When she’d dared to tell her cousin how she’d rid the rooms of a wet smell after a storm, Linda had said the same thing.
By the time Linda complained about the shortages in the larder or the problem of the warped floors in the east wing, Sarah had learned her lesson and remained silent.
Their meal had been pleasant enough, consisting of a hearty lamb stew. The terrace on which they sat was adjacent to the dining hall and built to give a visitor a view of the River Tay through the balustrade.
The small square table where they’d taken their meal was as rough-hewn as the dining table, but its surface was not as dark, and the pine scent it gave off was an indication that it had been recently constructed.
At the conclusion of their meal, Linda remained silent, staring at the river for so many minutes that Sarah was left without knowing what to say or do.
Her cousin turned finally and, with an apologetic smile, addressed her. “All your suggestions were good ones, cousin. But Grandfather is the one who dictates what happens at Kilmarin,” she said. “The rest of us simply obey.”
Sarah raised her hand, as if to push the words away. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to cause any discord by coming here.”
Linda smiled. “You haven’t. We’ve been at odds for months, he and I. Your presence has given me a respite, if you must know. I’ve been excused from lectures for two days.”
They sat in silence for a moment before Linda spoke again. “Do you like being married?”
Sarah looked at her cousin. It was such a strange question that she wasn’t sure how to answer.
“I should think,” Linda said, before Sarah could formulate a response, “that being married to the man you love is the most wonderful feeling in the world.”
Sarah didn’t quite know how to respond to that remark, either, especially after last night.
“Perhaps some people are simply luckier than others.” Linda drew herself up and smiled at Sarah.
The expression didn’t look the least bit sincere.
She didn’t know her cousin well enough, wasn’t certain if she would be rebuffed, but Sarah asked the question anyway. “Whom would you marry, Linda?”
The other woman didn’t answer for a moment. When she did respond, it was in a tone that warned Sarah that confidences wouldn’t be forthcoming. “Does it matter, cousin? What Grandfather wants is what will happen.”
Douglas left his meeting with Donald Tulloch, and, while waiting for Robert, took advantage of the fair day to explore more of Kilmarin. The whole of Kilmarin was less beautiful, perhaps, than Chavensworth, but built for the rugged land on which it sat.
He began to climb, feeling a need to find the highest point of land, a feeling he’d known as a boy desperate to escape the filth and despair of his surroundings.