Chapter 3
Ashbourne had a look on his face as though he smelled something unpleasant. Kenna assumed it was all the fresh air. God only knew they didn’t have much of it in London.
“I cannot see why this is relevant,” he said tersely.
Laird Callahan spread his hands wide, not betraying so much as a hint of annoyance at Ashbourne’s high-handed rudeness.
“If ye wish to work with the clans, ye will have to ken a bit more about how things work here in the Highlands,” he said coolly.
“And much of our life has to do with our land and our horses. Some of the mounts we have now, we can trace their lineage back generations. Ye should ken more about that, too, about how we conduct our business. We’ll take a ride. ”
Even Ashbourne couldn’t miss the iron determination in Callahan’s words.
Kenna hid the skip in her step as they headed down to the stables. She hadn’t ridden in ages. And while she technically didn’t have evidence to support this she felt strongly that Scottish horses were more fun to ride than English horses.
She evidently hadn’t hidden her pleasure well enough, however, because no sooner had the stables come into sight than her husband pronounced, “We shall be taking a carriage, of course.”
She had been trying not to pay any attention to the guard. Whatever fancies might have consumed her the night before, she had too much going on to let herself get distracted by a pair of fine eyes.
But she still noticed the way he exchanged a smirk with Declan Callahan at Ashbourne’s declaration. Even steady Laird Callahan looked distinctly unimpressed.
He didn’t argue, though.
“As ye prefer,” he said mildly. He raised a hand to the grooms, gesturing to them to go ready the carriage. They, too, looked doubtful, but they didn’t question their Laird.
Kenna was beginning to suspect that the Laird used that mildness like a knife. She could appreciate such skills, having been forced into all kinds of subterfuge herself when it came to navigating her husband’s tempers.
It didn’t take long for retribution to come Ashbourne’s way in the form of sticky, sucking Scottish mud.
When the carriage slowed, then stopped, Ashbourne, who had been looking dispassionately out of the window, began banging on the ceiling.
“Driver!” he shouted. “Driver, what is happening?”
When there was no immediate answer, he went back to banging furiously.
It was noisy and pointless. Kenna closed her eyes against the headache that threatened to bloom. Maybe she had become a fluttery English girl. Or maybe her husband truly just was that infuriating.
The door was wrenched open; Declan Callahan stood there, his usual good humor apparently strained.
“Pardon, my laird,” he said tersely. “But the wheels have gotten sunk in the mud. We’ll have to help ye out. We need to lighten the load to try to get it out of the mud.”
Kenna could mark at least three mistakes in this statement, for which Ashbourne would hold a grudge. Her husband enumerated them himself, however.
“I am a lord, not some provincial backwater laird,” he sneered. “I have been welcomed before Their Majesties the King and Queen of England. And I do not need help getting out of a carriage, you insolent fool.”
Declan’s eyes went briefly distant, as if he had to distance himself from the scene to keep his comportment.
“As ye say, my lord,” he said, exaggerating the round, plummy vowels of the English aristocracy. “If ye would come out then, please.”
Watching Ashbourne nearly fall face-first into the mud would become one of the most cherished memories of Makenna’s life. He saved himself at the last moment, but, alas, a person couldn’t have everything.
The look Declan gave her was so dry, so pointedly emotionless, that Kenna had to bite down hard on her tongue to keep from laughing.
“Can I help ye down, my lady?” he offered, extending a hand.
“Aye,” she agreed, for once not bothering to hide her accent or her dialect. “Thank ye, Declan.”
And to top it all off, Ashbourne was too busy acting like a puffed up chicken to notice.
The horses quickly grew restless, and it became increasingly apparent that they were more likely to hurt themselves than they were to assist in pulling the carriage free from the muck. The grooms busied themselves detaching the tack and soothing the mounts.
“What are you doing?” Ashbourne seethed. “Are you all idiots? Do you think you are stronger than horses? How do you plan to lift out a carriage by yourselves?”
The grooms just ignored him, which, of course, only made him angrier.
“How can you people live like this?” he demanded. “You foolish, useless savages! You do not deserve the kindnesses my people have shown you! You would fall into disarray without our civilizing efforts!”
Kenna felt her temper reach its limit. She simply could not stand here and listen to this any longer, pretend that she didn’t object, or stay quiet and therefore encourage others to think that she agreed with her husband.
The road where they had gotten stuck wound alongside a valley dotted with purple heather, a thicket of trees on the far end merrily swaying in the breeze. It all looked so peaceful compared to the chaos that was Ashbourne behind her.
Before she could think better of it, she was wandering through the meadow, her fingertips trailing over the pink and purple flowers that had sprouted in the warm summer sun.
She was doubtless causing all kinds of snags on her fine muslin day dress, and she would probably end up with three inches of dirt on her hem. Ashbourne would be furious.
She couldn’t care. For right now, she just could not care.
She inspected the trees at the far side of the meadow, not ready to return back.
The carriage was still clearly stuck in the mud, based on a quick glance over her shoulder, and it wasn’t as though she could be of much help in getting it free.
There was just one apple tree, standing strong and alone. Kenna pressed her hand to its bark.
Things had likely gotten very bad, if she felt such kinship to an apple tree, but she had been so lonely for so long.
Anna was wonderful, but Kenna didn’t dare confide in the woman too much.
She didn’t want to do anything that would put the maid’s livelihood at risk.
She had no close friends among the Society women, as she was too Scottish to merit their attention.
She was just so desperately alone.
There wasn’t any fruit on the tree yet; it wasn’t the season.
But the apple blossoms were in bloom, fragrant and lovely.
Kenna, seized by another impulse, found herself knotting her skirts to one side with her sash, putting her slippered foot to a sizable knot in the bark, and hoisting herself up into the limbs of the tree.
These shoes were utterly useless for climbing—they were utterly useless for almost everything.
She assumed this was by design. One good way to stop women from doing all the things they weren’t supposed to do was to give them inadequate footwear.
She persevered, however, even when she banged her knee hard enough that it sent tremors of discomfort up to her hip and down to her ankle.
She kept going. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t endured worse.
And the results were more than worth it. When she hoisted herself to sit on one of the low boughs, she found herself in a world that was all flowers. She smiled, her first real smile in ages, then let it turn into a quiet laugh. Everything was white and pink, soft and gentle, lightly scented.
God, Kenna could stay here forever.
Except her life never went that way. She had only gotten a few restorative lungfuls of the floral perfume when she heard Ashbourne.
“Makenna! Where are you?”
Her peace shattered like a pane of glass struck with a hammer. She jolted and slipped right off the branch. She had just enough time to wonder if she was going to break a leg or an arm when she crashed, not into the ground, but into a set of arms.
“Oof,” her savior grunted as he tumbled to the ground beneath her.
Kenna had to blink for a second, her head spinning from the impact, even reduced as it had been. Then her gaze focused again—
And she saw amber.
“Arran,” she said softly. There was that tickling feeling at the back of her mind again, as if the answer was just beyond her reach. She shook her head. She was just being fanciful. It was another case of her loneliness getting the better of her.
She recalled herself and pushed hastily to her feet. “I am so sorry. And I-I thank ye. You. Thank you for catching me. How were you here?”
She was flustered, disoriented. She shouldn’t be talking to him at all, especially not while her husband was watching.
“I followed ye,” he said. “It isnae safe for an English lass in these savage lands, ye ken?”
Her gratitude vanished. He had gotten what he wanted; he had gotten the chance to insult her. She would rather not show him how badly that particular barb stung.
She gave him an icy smile—one that she had, indeed, learned in London ballrooms.
“And did it never occur to you to think,” she asked, each word sharp as a knife, “that perhaps I came over here precisely to get away from savages like yourself?” She hesitated just a fraction of a second, then gave him a pitying frown, one dripping with sarcastic sympathy.
“Except, silly me, I can’t imagine that it occurred to you to think at all. ”
Then, without another word, she turned on her heel and limped back to her husband. She might not be happy. She might still be alone.
But at least her damned pride was still intact.
“Ye have gotten proper boring, ye ken?” Declan complained as he dragged Arran through the doors of the tavern that evening.
“I dinnae ken what ye are whinging about,” Arran protested, barely hiding the humor in his voice.
He hadn’t wanted to come to begin with, it was true, but Declan had this irrepressible way about him. It was how he had dragged Arran into friendship all those years ago, when Arran was lost and afraid and alone. Over the years, he’d become the brother Arran needed.
“I am here with ye. Just as ye wanted.”
“Aye, but ye dinnae have the right attitude about it, now do ye?” Declan said, slinging an arm around Arran’s shoulder until Arran aimed some playful jabs at his ribs. “And now ye abuse me. I have other friends, ye ken.”
“Then why aren’t they out with ye tonight?” Arran returned.
Declan shot him a rude gesture, which earned him a shouted reprimand from the tavernkeeper’s wife, a stout, unshakeable woman who had known Declan since he was a bairn.
“None of that, wee Callahan!” she called.
Declan placed a hand over his heart. “A million apologies, Isla, me love. Can we have some ale for Burns and me over here, if ye please?”
Arran tried not to flinch at the sound of his false surname. No matter how many years he lived under a false identity, he never lost the longing to shout that his name was Arran Lennox, damn it all. He was the last of the Lennoxes.
She gave him a wave of acknowledgment, and Declan and Arran took their usual seat, back by the smoky, peat-fueled fire.
They were halfway through their second round of Isla’s admittedly very fine ale when he heard the first whispers.
“Them fancy footmen what came along with the English said that MacBrae practically sold his daughter to the old English bastard,” one of the men gossipped, clearly trying to keep his voice down but a little too far in his cups to manage it properly.
One of his companions, who bore a long scar along his chin, chortled. “Ach, well, he had to have done, hadn’t he? Why else would a pretty young bit like that agree to wed an old fool like him?”
Arran met Declan’s gaze, finding his friend looking as grim as he felt. Declan gave a minute nod, indicating that he was listening, too. Arran clenched his hands around his tankard, resisting the urge to defend Makenna Ashbourne. Why should he, after all?
That didn’t mean that he didn’t want to hear what they had to say, though.
“I dinnae think old Laird MacBrae cared much what the lassie wanted. MacBrae wanted English steel and Ashbourne wanted a wife young enough to breed.” The first man was clearly feeling very impressed with himself for having all this information.
Arran assumed he would drink free on this gossip for weeks, at least.
“The hell did MacBrae need more weapons for?” asked a third man, who had wandered closer to listen. “He’s the fire, is he nae? Clan full of fighters and all that?”
“Och, indeed,” said the first, leaning back smugly in his chair. “He is. But how else was he meant to defend all them Lennox lands he’s taken over, after the other clan fell?”
Arran took a deep, deep drink to avoid reacting.
He had known, vaguely, that MacBrae had expanded into his dead neighbors’ territory after the explosion that had wrecked the clans.
But he hadn’t realized that it had been quite so organized as this, that MacBrae had traded away his daughter to get enough swords to make certain that he retained the stolen holdings.
Arran kept drinking until he got to the bottom of the tankard.
Fire had taken his family.
They had burned, and MacBrae had thrived, dancing on the ashes of everything that Arran had ever loved.