2. The Art of Scrubbing
The Art of Scrubbing
“M
y name is Sukie,” the old woman announced, setting off at a surprisingly brisk jog.
“Call me that. Not Mistress, or lady, or anything like that. If ye have any troubles while ye are here—bullying, sickness, troubles at home, troubles from lecherous lairds—then ye bring them to me, ye understand? The serving women and maids are my domain. And needless to say, if ye make trouble or defy me, ye are out. That is my choice, who stays and who goes.”
“I am not here to cause trouble,” Catriona panted, hurrying to catch up to the woman. “I only want to earn some coin for my parents. Times are hard, and—”
“Save me yer sob stories. We all have a tragedy behind us. The wages here are good and paid on time. Do yer work, and ye’ll have the coin to show for it. Servants here are fed well, too, and ye will have a comfortable place to sleep.”
Catriona nodded tightly. The woman—Sukie—led the way through a vast, bustling kitchen, packed with smells and people and a few dogs slinking around their ankles, keen for scraps. They went straight to a wide scullery, jammed with mops, brushes, and buckets, and smelling faintly of damp.
Sukie took out a bucket, soapy water still slopping inside, and handed Catriona a mop.
“Start on the second floor,” she instructed. “One of the ladies up there has taken a bath, and there’s water everywhere from when we brought up the buckets.”
Catriona frowned at the mop. “I hoped to wait at the Laird’s table. They dine soon, don’t they?”
There was a beat of silence. Sukie blinked at her incredulously, then threw back her head, laughing raucously and revealing rotted teeth at the back of her head.
“Oh, lass, ye are going to be a laugh a minute, aren’t ye?”
Catriona reddened at her mistake. “I only meant that I’ve waited on tables before, and I—”
“Ye will mop, and ye will do it well. Do it poorly, or leave dirty streaks, and I’ll have ye scrub it all on yer hands and knees.”
She swallowed, eyeing the mop. It looked like an old one, bristling and dirty.
“I thought I was going to see the master.”
“Aye, ye are. Ye will serve Laird Kenneth sooner or later. Did ye think he would drop all matters of state to interview a new maid? Nay, lass. He trusts me to put the new girls to work, and he’ll see ye when he can. Now. I believe there’s an unmopped floor with yer name on it, so get going, eh?”
Catriona sighed, reluctantly taking the mop handle. Splinters dug into her palms.
“Aye, Sukie. Right to work, then.”
Sukie’s gaze slipped over her, missing no detail.
Suddenly, Catriona was glad that she wasn’t wearing Ma’s ring on a necklace around her neck.
The old woman would notice that, to be sure, and then what?
Would she take it? Comment on it? It was a valuable piece, and no doubt there’d be thieves aplenty in the Keep.
Mopping it is, then.
Sure enough, the old mop seemed to add more dirt than it took up. Sukie had mentioned spilled bathwater, but the dirt that came up with each sweep of the mop made Catriona wonder whether the lady in question had bathed in manure.
The long, wide hallway would take hours to mop. She’d already been working for a full hour—reduced to relying on the torchlight glowing from alcoves in the walls—and barely a tenth of the distance was covered.
I’m going to be scrubbing all night, she thought mournfully, straightening up with a sigh and rubbing the back of her hand across her forehead.
“Ahem. Ye have left a wee smudge on yer head there.”
The voice came out of nowhere, sudden enough to make Catriona leap nearly out of her skin with a squeak. She spun around, equal parts surprised and furious.
There he was. Of course it was him, wretched man.
Niall MacLeod lounged against the wall some ten feet behind her, grinning from ear to ear.
“I hope I didn’t scare ye,” he said sweetly. “Put ye to work already, did they?”
“And ye found me already,” she muttered, frowning. “If ye will forgive me, I have work to do. And I’m meeting the master soon, I’ve been told.”
Perhaps a mention of this master would scare Niall off. At the very least, his presence was distracting her from mopping.
I need to speak to a man with real power. Somebody who can make changes.
Somebody who can help put my family back together again. And that man is not Niall MacLeod.
It can’t be.
And so, he had better go away so that she could concentrate on doing well in her simple task, the better to impress Sukie. Impressing Sukie was the way to get herself into places where she might be noticed. Places like a feasting hall, places where lairds might linger.
That thought brought her right back to the very pressing issue of Niall MacLeod and how urgent it was that he should go away.
She should have known better. He straightened up, pushing off the wall, and moved towards her.
“Don’t worry, I’m not going to step on yer clean floor,” he chuckled.
“It’s hardly clean,” she muttered, despite herself. “Sukie has given me a bucket of dirty water, I’m sure of it, and a dirtier mop.”
“Aye, she likes to test out her new maids on this floor in particular,” Niall agreed, tapping the stone flags with the toe of his boot. “I don’t believe these floors have ever been clean. When my cousin and I were young, we once—”
“Bothering the maids again, Niall?”
Both of them flinched at the new voice. Catriona spun around, clutching at her mop.
A man stood in a doorway, watching them with cool indifference. He could not have been more different from Niall—shorter, slimmer, dark-haired, and dark-eyed—and he resolutely did not smile. Instead, his stare intensified.
“I had hoped ye would find other hobbies, Niall,” he continued, flicking a quick glance over to Catriona.
“N-nay it’s not what ye think, sir,” she managed.
The man moved forward, walking on velvet feet, and now she knew why she hadn’t heard him coming. Did he have felt sewn to his boot soles? The man made less noise than a cat.
“Ye ken how to spoil all the fun, Kenneth.”
Kenneth MacLeod. The Master.
“I’m the steward of this Keep, and so I must overlook all the servants. I heard tell that it was ye that invited the lass to take up a position. Is that true?”
She glanced over at Niall. A small smile still played over his lips, but the wide grin was gone. Something about his cousin’s presence had made him withdraw into himself.
It’s not fear, certainly not that, Catriona thought, drawing her brows together. Not uncertainty, not envy. Something else.
“What if it is?”
Catriona felt tension in the air. Would a fight break out between them here and there? She stepped forward, interrupting their glaring. She briefly considered lying, then decided against it.
“Aye, Master. He told me that there was a position available for me at the Keep,” she conceded, glancing uncertainly at Kenneth.
He watched her closely. Did the man even blink?
Is this a man who could help me?
That was an interesting thought. She would have to be careful, though, in case Kenneth thought that she was flirting with him.
“I see,” Kenneth grunted, narrowing his eyes at Niall. “Cousin, yer father may be laird, but do not forget that I am steward. I don’t expect ye to bring yer affairs into the Keep.”
Wait. Niall is the heir, so why is he not steward?
Niall only snorted, shaking his head. He took a step forward, folding thick arms across his chest. His shirt rode up around his arms, revealing corded forearms.
“And I don’t expect ye to give me orders, cousin. Order the maids and menservants around if ye like, but don’t mistake me for one of them.”
“Don’t step into my sphere, Niall, and I won’t step into yers,” Kenneth shot back, voice cool, clipped, and even icy. “This maid is my business, and ye had best not interfere with her.”
“Come, lad, I don’t interfere with anyone who doesn’t want to be interfered with.” Niall laughed, taking another step towards Catriona. “And ye are attributing wrong motives here. This lass said she needed respectable coin, and I told her how she could earn some. And here she is.”
When his gaze fell on her, a shiver rolled down Catriona’s spine. He glanced away more quickly than before, and the moment seemed strangely fractured.
“But as ye said,” Niall continued brusquely, walking away. “I’ll not trouble her as she works. Good day to ye, cousin. And…” He paused, turning back, brow tightening. “I never asked yer name, lass.”
Catriona bit back a smile. Why was she smiling? What was funny about this, about any of this?
This is serious, she reminded herself angrily. This is about me and my family. It’s about John and Marion and my scattered sisters.
Maybe I’ll see them again, after all. Even though they never came for me. They should have come for me.
Painful thoughts again. She pushed them aside—practice made perfect, after all, she’d had twelve years of forgetting what she wanted to forget—and concentrated on here and now.
Kenneth pursed his lips, eyeing his cousin with displeasure. Something was clearly going on between them, something that Catriona did not understand.
“This floor is filthy,” Kenneth stated shortly, barely dragging his gaze from his cousin. “If ye cannot mop properly, how can ye expect to work here? Life in a Keep is hard, heavy work.”
It’s pitch-black outside. What will I do if I’m put outside, left to trudge all the many miles home to John and Marion? How disappointed they would be.
Oh, they’d do their best to pretend they were pleased, glad to see her back.
But after the initial shock of her departure, surely they would have started thinking about what her extra coin could buy.
And without her mouth to feed, Marion could eat properly.
Oh, they’d miss her, she knew that. They loved her, they cared for her, but the fear of hunger… well. It was a powerful thing.
I’m doing this for them as well as for me, she promised herself and put that steel into her gaze. It was Kenneth she needed to convince, surely. It was Kenneth that had the power. Kenneth who could help her.
So why do I find myself looking at Niall?
She met a cool blue gaze, tilting her head up to meet Niall’s eyes.
“I’m a hard worker, sir,” she said bluntly. “I don’t cause trouble. I have aged parents to support. And for what it’s worth, this mop is old, and the water is filthy.”
Niall gave a brief snort of laughter. “That’s an old trick of Sukie’s. She always says that a poor worker blames their tools, but I’ve yet to know anybody who can get a floor clean with a dirty mop.”
Catriona felt a smile tug at the corner of her lips. She fought to bite it back, fought for her composure. She had to…
“Enough,” Kenneth barked, an edge in his voice. “Niall, the Laird wanted to see ye, I believe. Now.”
Niall’s eyes flickered. A shutter seemed to come down over his face. The smile never wavered but turned fixed, somehow.
“Well,” he said lightly. “I cannot keep my father waiting, can I?”
He glanced briefly at Catriona, one sandy eyebrow flickering. “Good luck,” he added in a murmur, and turned on his heel.
They stayed quiet for a moment, both her and Kenneth watching Niall depart. He didn’t look back, and for some reason, that bothered Catriona.
Ye are a fool. Do not forget why ye are here.
Silence hung heavy between them. Catriona turned her gaze back to Kenneth. He was staring after his cousin, lips pursed with displeasure, eyebrows low over his eyes.
Perhaps sensing her eyes on him, he glanced at her, and his expression tightened.
I shouldn’t have been looking at him. I shouldn’t have seen him glaring after his cousin in that way.
Too late now. It was easy enough to read emotions in a man’s face when he didn’t think he was being observed, and what shone quite clearly in Laird Kenneth MacLeod’s eyes was envy.
“As for ye, lassie,” Kenneth snapped, tucking his hands behind his back and taking a step towards her.
“Defiance is not something I expect from my servants. I expect hard work and closed mouths. I won’t go so far as to accuse ye of flirting with my cousin, but I should warn ye that he flirts with everybody.
Ye are not special. Ye are a servant here, and I’d advise ye to remember that.
That will be yer first lesson here—learning to remain unobserved.
Now, if ye want to keep yer position here, ye had better follow me. ”