Chapter 8
Catie slipped into Miss Burnett’s room and leaned against the door, struggling hard to keep her conscience at bay.
They’d all returned from the party, and too worked up with happy memories to sleep, Catie settled herself in her window seat and stared dreamily out at the dark night.
Her feet ached from dancing and she was stuffed full to bursting with food.
Oliver had been the first to ask her to dance, and she wished she could have spent more time with him, but Miss Burnet explained she couldn’t show favoritism to anyone too soon or people’s tongues would wag.
And Miss Burnet seemed to think she could do far better than Oliver Cliffstone, had in fact introduced her to Lady Hollingsborn and her son Edwin, who was going to have some grand title one day.
Catie couldn’t remember which but Miss Burnet was plenty pleased by it.
It had been a perfect night, and she wanted to savor it before she went to sleep, but then she saw Miss Burnett tiptoeing around from the back of the house, looking up and down the street, then scurrying off in a great hurry.
It had set her curiosity to spinning, making her think of the message Miss Burnet received before they all left for the party.
A few minutes later, Quinn exited the front door and made his way more casually down the street, probably to gamble away the money he’d just won that night.
The more she thought about her brother, the angrier she got at him.
He’d been on edge lately. She could tell something was wrong, even though he was putting on a charming face for Lady Amberly and Miss Burnet.
He wasn’t himself, and hadn’t been since Lachlan died.
He’d say he had to be different now that he was in charge, but it was more than just added responsibility.
He was keeping something from her, and that was why she decided to search his room.
That hadn’t touched her conscience one little bit.
She was sick and tired of being treated like a child, coddled and kept in the dark.
Lachlan had done it, her Auntie Gwen did it, and now Quinn.
The only way she’d ever learned anything was finding it out on her own, and she’d been listening outside doors and sneaking looks at things she wasn’t strictly meant to look at since she was a wee lass.
If they bloody thought she was old enough to get married, they could bloody tell her if something was going on with the clan.
It wasn’t as if they hadn’t had troubles before.
When she crept into Quinn’s room and turned his things upside down, she found a message from home.
They’d only been there a few days, so the messenger must have rode day and night from the moment they’d left.
Sure enough, something was wrong and Quinn was wanted back at home.
She was taken aback to find they hadn’t wanted Quinn to come with her at all, and felt betrayed and treated like an outsider.
Did her own family and friends, people she’d known all her life, consider her only by her English half, counting the days until they could be rid of her?
Her heart sank further at the thought of Quinn leaving.
As much as she wanted to hit him a good lot of the time, and as lovely as her new English auntie was to her, she didn’t want him to leave her.
Well, whatever happened, all she could do was have a stiff upper lip about it.
She recalled Miss Burnet’s words on her first day here, how she could choose whoever she wanted, due to her fortune.
Her resolve solidified as she looked down at the message from Quinn’s advisor, a person she thought loved her, who she thought of like another brother.
Pretty much telling Quinn to abandon her and race home to settle some dispute.
She decided there and then to marry the person she liked best, title or no title, and to hell with what Quinn or any of her other so-called family thought about it.
When the crops went to hell, maybe she’d send them a few bags of grain.
Maybe she’d invite them to her estate one day. Maybe she wouldn’t.
After she was done being outraged at the message from home, she dug around some more, to find something so strange, she had to sit down on the edge of the bed.
It was a letter written in her brother Lachlan’s own hand, giving a load of detailed instructions to Quinn on how to handle the farm, and the clan, and even her.
The end puzzled her most of all. It begged Quinn’s forgiveness, and if Quinn should tell Catie the truth, he prayed she would forgive him as well.
The truth about what? Why should he need her forgiveness?
Her hands shook so badly, she had to place the page on the bed to read it through again.
Questions flew through her mind like screaming crows, jostling one another for her attention, but she couldn’t focus on any one thing. It was all too confusing.
Her brother had been killed in a fire that had been set during a battle.
He’d married Isobel Glen, the daughter of their perpetual enemy, and subsequently became laird of that clan after her father died.
Lachlan’s death had been sudden and unexpected.
When did he have time to write all these instructions?
She realized there was more on the back, and not sure she could take any more, stared at the wall for a few moments before gathering her wits to read it.
What she read so shocked her, she stood and paced the room, completely forgetting she was trespassing and needed to be mindful of the time.
Her brother could return at any moment and then she’d be in trouble.
Her shock turned to anger as the worry about Quinn’s return set in.
Let him find her with the letter. She had loads of questions for him.
What could he possibly say to her that would explain what she’d read?
The back of the letter had the strangest and most frightening instructions, what seemed to be a spell for moving around in time.
It involved chanting words Catie didn’t understand, a variety of herbs, and the worst, the most horrible, the blood.
It seemed like the darkest witchcraft. Had her beloved brother Lachlan gone mad before he died, and was Quinn following in his footsteps?
Quinn had his faults. Some might say he was a bit degenerate, but he’d always seemed of sound mind and good character to her.
His gambling and occasional drinking were just ways to blow off steam from the extreme amount of pressure Lachlan always put on him when he left on his raiding or hunting expeditions.
She knew in her heart he was a good man.
Both her brothers were. Weren’t they? What she’d seen on the back of that page froze her to her bones.
Blood and chanting and time travel? Her mind reeling, she realized she needed to get out of there and hurriedly put everything away the way she’d found it.
And now she was about to ransack her chaperone’s room.
Her anger and confusion had settled in her chest and she wasn’t quite sure how she’d managed to justify to herself the reason for searching Miss Burnet’s things as well as Quinn’s.
If she was caught, they’d send her back to Scotland without blinking.
Just a few days earlier that would have been fine by her, but now she quite liked London.
Her kind new aunt would be so ashamed, and she’d never see her new friend Oliver again.
The thought of Oliver, and his smiling, kind eyes, almost made her turn around and go back to her own room to try to sleep away the disturbing things she’d learned.
It was the recollection of Quinn and Miss Burnet’s many exchanged looks to one another that kept her heading up the stairs.
It was possible they were only flirting.
It was completely probable given Quinn’s reputation, but now that Catie had the seed of suspicion rapidly growing in her mind, it shadowed any sensible thoughts that might have made her turn back.
She wouldn’t put it past Quinn to have chosen Miss Burnet for reasons other than merely guiding her through the morass of society. Perhaps they were in cahoots together!
She’d worked herself into a fine frenzy of indignation and only felt the slightest twinge of guilt when she opened Miss Burnet’s small wooden jewel box.
Disappointment welled when all that it held were a few pieces of cheap jewelry.
She rifled through the book on the bedside table and carefully sorted through the chest of clothes, finding the most bizarre and spectacular pair of shoes she’d ever seen.
They were wispy, with tiny silver buckles and thin shiny straps, and the highest, most tottering heels she’d ever seen.
Her foot was way too big as she compared them against the bottom of her slipper, but she tried one on anyway, holding onto the headboard of the bed for balance as she teetered on the magnificent shoe.
‘Made in Italy’ was neatly written in gold on the sole, and on the bottom of the inside she made out the words ‘Genuine Leather Sole - Balance Man Made’ along with the number 37.
She shook off the fascination with the shoes and put them back under all the other clothes.
She had a mission to find information, not try on all Miss Burnet’s things.
That was creepy, and wasn’t her intent. Pushing down her shame, she lay flat on the floor and peered under the bed.
Her heart raced when she saw a box under there, and reached for it, getting a face full of dust bunnies for her trouble.
The box was wrapped four times with string. Catie made sure to count as she unwound it, feeling like a foreign spy, and realizing with a jolt that was exactly what she was right now.
“This is wrong,” she whispered, her hands poised over the lid of the box. There was still time to turn back and keep a bit of her integrity. “Bugger it all,” she muttered, flipping off the top. There was no turning back now.
All she found were a few tatty old books, mostly plays and a couple filled with musical scores.
Unable to pinpoint why she was disappointed, she started to close the box back up when a bit of bright white at the bottom of the pile caught her eye.
It wasn’t a book, but a folded up envelope.
She turned it in her hand, admiring the crisp, bright paper, then unfolded it and held it for a moment.
If she opened it and read what was inside, she might find out something she didn’t want to know, very much like she had in Quinn’s room.
Or she could just end up invading her new friend’s privacy and be a truly horrible person.
“I’ve gone too far already,” she said, glancing around. There was no one to agree with her, or give her any reason not to do it, so she opened the envelope and slid out its contents.
The paper was odd, with its torn edge dotted with neatly placed holes and blue lines running across it.
The message written on it was preposterous and made her head spin even more than it had in Quinn’s room.
It couldn’t be real. It had to be something to do with the books of plays that were along with it in the box.
Pure fantasy, nothing more. But it was made out directly to Miss Burnet, and her name was on the envelope as well.
Catie sat on the floor, reading it over and over until she’d memorized it, feeling sicker with every pass of her eyes across the page. Who was Miss Burnet? What was she?
Her eyes blurred with tears, she hastily put everything away, too distraught to remember to keep order or count wraps of the string.
She shoved the hateful box back under the bed and staggered to her own room.
The party was now a distant memory, as if it had happened months ago and not that evening.
Catie knew she had to deal with her new information, but she couldn’t make heads or tails of any of it at the moment.
As much as she wanted to find Quinn and make him tell her everything was fine, she knew she could no longer trust him.
If Lachlan was still alive and by some dark magic gone to another time, if Miss Burnet herself was a part of it, neither one of them could be trusted.
When she got to her own room, she collapsed on the bed and burrowed under the covers, dejected and shaking.
A new, devastating idea grew until it surpassed every other bleak thought in her head.
What if Lachlan was in trouble? What if he’d been coerced into leaving them?
She tossed and turned until the sun glowed through her curtains, then finally fell asleep, hating everyone.