Chapter 2
The Ladies’ Marriage Prospects Bulletin
"What do ye mean he’s gone?"
The door creaked as he stepped inside the empty crofter’s cottage, the sound echoing too loudly in the hollow space.
Dust motes danced in the sunlight slicing through the window, catching on the edges of a battered table pushed against the wall.
Six chairs remained, empty of the once boisterous family who’d lived here.
The hearth was cold, its ashes long settled, the massive pot that used to hold stews gone.
Shelves that once stored bowls or tools now stood bare.
The air still held the faint scent of smoke and something older, earthy, lived-in, now abandoned.
It was a room stripped of life but still bearing its shape, like a body without a soul.
Seamus had taken over the ownership of the croft and the running of this particular part of Gavan's property from his father, who had passed away last year. He could still remember Seamus’s father, stooped, proud, loyal.
And now the house was empty. The sheep still grazed, but they had no shepherd, abandoned.
Just like his own estate had become slowly neglected, room by room, field by field, as his father aged.
The man had refused to hire more help, refused to admit the land needed more than legacy to sustain it.
His father had spent more time at the club or hunting than keeping up with his lands and taken the estate down with him.
God rest his soul, Gavan’s father had held on too long, too sick and too stubborn to let go, leaving the estate to crumble around them one failing field at a time.
Seamus was a young man and known to be popular with the ladies. But it hadn’t been on Gavan’s purview that Seamus was looking to leave.
"Immigrated to Canada, my lord."
"What do ye mean he immigrated to Canada?"
Gavan had been trying to keep his crofters from doing just that. There had been a mass migration of Scots to Canada, leaving lands unattended, the sheep abandoned.
To his left, the hillside rolled gently into a wide stretch of open field, golden-green beneath the mocking morning sun.
The sheep dotted the land like tufts of wool scattered like a game of knucklebones, their thick coats catching the light as they grazed.
A few lifted their heads lazily, blinking toward him with that blank, trusting calm that made his chest ache.
They had no idea their keeper was gone. No sense of what had been lost. The grass was rich, the breeze soft, but the silence felt different now, hollow, like a Scottish ballad missing its melody.
A thistle had pushed up through the stone path at the front of the croft, defiant, sharp. Nature reclaiming what man had abandoned. He’d seen more of that lately. Shuttered windows. Weeds in the troughs. Silence where there should have been shouting, laughter, life.
Even now, he could look out into the field and see that the sheep were there. He stared at Seamus’s cousin, who had been in the fields.
"Fell in love." The cousin shrugged.
"Fell in love?" Gavan frowned. What would make a man fall in love and then leave his own country, leave his duties, behind?
"What does falling in love have to do with going to Canada?" he asked. "He could’ve fallen in love here."
"The lass he was matched with was from Canada."
Gavan didn’t know why his ears perked at the word matched, but they perked all the same. He glanced down at Seamus’s cousin, eyebrows raised.
"Matched?" he asked.
The cousin shook his head, looking down at the ground.
"It was all rather sudden, my lord."
"Explain."
"Well, he met the young Canadian lass at a local dance. And he was smitten. So, the lady arranged for the two of them to meet."
Gavan’s ears perked once more. This was starting to sound all too familiar to him.
"The lady?"
"Aye, Lady Ava."
Of course, it was Lady Ava. He could already imagine her reaction. Innocent, wide-eyed, utterly unrepentant. She always acted as if she were helping, as if she’d gifted him something, not pulling out a crucial thread from the fabric of his land.
Already, his estate was at risk of economic and social demise. He’d already had three crofters already immigrate to Canada recently. He couldn’t afford to lose Seamus too.
If his father had allowed him to take the reins sooner, just a few years earlier, maybe things would’ve been different.
Maybe they could’ve invested in improvements, repaired the crumbling roads, offered more than meager wages and aging livestock.
But by the time Gavan had taken over, the cracks were already deep.
Gavan was always a hands-on landowner, but he couldn’t run the farms himself. The crofts depended on the people. Seamus’s land was one of the vastest that he held, and Gavan depended on the land and the sheep for income to help feed the rest of the people of his lands.
"When did he leave?"
"Just yesterday, my lord."
Just yesterday. The words hit like a blow. Seamus had walked these fields days ago, and now he was gone, as if ripped from the land like a weed.
Had he truly not trusted Gavan enough to say goodbye? Or had he known Gavan would try to stop him, and hadn’t wanted to face him?
"And why did he no’ come to see me?"
Perhaps that was the thing that irritated him most of all as well, that Seamus never came to say goodbye or ask permission or let him know that he was abandoning the land and his duty.
"I think he was afraid ye’d convince him no’ to go," his cousin said.
Gavan nodded. That was entirely true. He would’ve convinced Seamus to stay on. Now he was left with an empty croft, and three down the road.
This couldn’t happen again. Ava needed to stop her meddling. She was going to ruin him. And why did she seem to be picking on him? All this matchmaking that she was doing was coming from his lands.
Except, of course, the two who had just gotten married last week.
In addition to his now four missing crofters, Ava had orchestrated the miller’s daughter who helped to collect for the mill which paid a tithe to Gavan, just last month, had married a bootmaker from Inverness after one of Ava’s country weekends.
Before that, the stonemason’s son who had been assigned to rebuilding the left turret of his castle, had been bundled off to Edinburgh with some heiress Ava swore was “perfectly suited.” He wasn’t sure what that meant, but it usually translated to someone with soft hands and high demands.
She was expanding her little enterprise, it would seem, to those of the common class. Had she gotten bored meddling in the lives of nobles?
“Ava,” he muttered under his breath, like it was a curse and a prayer all in one. How was it that missing crofters, a wedding, and now an entire patch of land all led back to her?
Gavan’s frown deepened. He needed to go talk to her. To tell her to cease with this ridiculous hobby.
The problem was, every time he and she ever spoke, an argument always ensued. Case in point, the wedding yesterday. He could almost hear the smug lilt in her voice now, the way her eyes lit when a plan came together.
But even if it was an argument he was about to have, it was one that needed having.
He couldn’t risk losing another one of his crofters to her matchmaking schemes.
The more he lost, the more risk there was in him having to sell off parcels of his land in order to pay his taxes and be sure the crofters and their families who remained would be able to feed themselves through the long, cold, harsh winters.
This wasn’t just about losing a man he’d respected.
A family he’d known since his own boyhood, or a simple servant.
This was about the livelihood of every Douglas on his lands.
This was about the ones who stayed and looked to him for protection, for vision, for purpose.
Was he doing enough for them? Was it only a matter of time before they saw what Seamus apparently saw, a sinking ship masked in tartan and tradition?
Gavan was only one man, and even if he denied himself sleep, he couldn’t care for four crofts on his own.
He couldn’t collect what was owed from the miller.
He couldn’t rebuild his castle alone. He needed his clan, his people.
He wasn’t just trying to preserve land or sheep.
He was trying to hold together a way of life that was slipping through his fingers like cold water.
And Ava, with her whims and matches and pretty smiles, didn’t understand the effects of what she was undoing.
He wanted to blame Ava. It was easier. Cleaner. But the truth scraped at him like grit beneath the skin, if Seamus had believed there was a future here, he wouldn't have gone to Canada. No matter who introduced him to a pretty Canadian lass.
Ava’s meddling wasn’t the only thing that had sent them away. But the promise of more; more land, more freedom, more hope. Things Gavan wished he could offer but couldn’t.
It wasn’t as if she actually even cared about the people anyway.
This was just a distraction to her, a little game of humans that she could play with.
Marionettes on strings that she could partner up and toss away.
She was infuriatingly effective. Even now, the idea that she could coax a man from his land halfway across the world. ..
Gavan had known Ava since they were children.
Even then, she loved to match people, her governess with the stable master, a maid with a footman, even her dolls had arranged marriages.
She got a special glee from putting people together in matches.
As if seeing their love and happiness gave her some sort of thrill.
Back then, it was harmless. Now it was hemorrhaging his estate, and only saints knew what else.
Was it kindness or arrogance that made her so certain she knew what was best for everyone? She wasn’t cruel, exactly. Just... detached. Like she was writing a story in her head and everyone else were characters on a page. Even him.
What the lady needed was a match of her own. Maybe that’s what he would do in return to get her to stop meddling with his people, find her a husband.
Maybe if she poured half as much energy into her own love life as she did everyone else’s, she’d be managing a nursery instead of a matchmaking empire.
And his lands would be safe from her ridiculous actions. While she hosted teas and plotted dances, he was calculating wool yields and praying for rain. Did she ever stop to think what happened after the vows were spoken? After the cart rolled off to Canada with another one of his crofters in it.
He’d tell her to stop. He’d make her stop. But part of him wondered if she wasn’t doing what he couldn’t, offering people a way out. A future that didn’t look like toil and sacrifice and silence.
He clenched his fists. He wasn’t just angry, he was afraid. How many more would leave?
How long until there was no one left to leave?
Sometimes he wondered if he’d already failed, before he’d even begun.
He hadn’t inherited a thriving estate. He’d inherited a mess held together by habit and hope, a shell of something once prosperous.
His father had meant well, had loved the land fiercely, but love alone didn’t mend fences or keep families fed.
Gavan stared at the croft, the silence pressing against him like a judgment.
Seamus was gone. And more would follow if he didn’t do something.
While he wanted to blame Ava, deep down, the guilt sat heavy in his gut.
If Seamus had felt seen, valued, needed, would he have stayed?
Had Gavan given him reason to believe in this land, this future?
He wasn’t sure anymore. What he did know was that he couldn’t afford to lose another soul.
Not to Canada. Not to Ava. Not to the truth that he might be failing his people.
He’d talk to Ava. He’d talk to his people. Hell, he’d talk to the sheep if it meant finding a way to hold this land together. Someone had to stand guard at the gates while everyone else was looking for a way out.