Chapter 11
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Again, Beatrice lay awake late in her room at MacSween Castle. Tonight it was not only the strangeness of her environment that kept sleep at bay. There was also the strange affair at dinner, where Laird MacSween had left them so suddenly and inexplicably.
“What on earth got into ye tonight, Leo MacSween?” she asked aloud.
One moment, the laird had been sitting there, eating his food and gazing happily at his child. The next he had been gasping and sweating as though in a fight and barely able to say an audible word.
For Effie’s sake, Beatrice had made a game of it all, saying that her father had eaten too much haggis and now the haggis was having its revenge in the privies.
Thankfully, the child seemed to have accepted this, although she still kept looking expectantly towards the doors as if hoping for his return.
If Tyler had been around, Beatrice would have asked after the laird once Effie had returned to the nursery, but the servants in the Great Hall reported that he had gone straight after his master. Of course he had. Tyler would follow Leo to the ends of the earth.
At least it had been nothing Beatrice or Effie had done that set him off this time.
Had it? There had been small amount of naughtiness in throwing the cabbage on the floor, but Beatrice had seen Laird MacSween smiling at them after that, evidently pleased with how she had handled that small trouble.
Nothing else of note had occurred at all.
“It is a mystery,” Beatrice sighed to herself and rose from her bed, unable to lie still any longer with so much on her mind. “He is a mystery.”
Looking out of the window, she could see again that most of the castle was asleep, although again, a lamp burned in Leo MacSween’s window. It would have been easy, and foolish, to stand there and gaze at that light, wondering what was going on in there. Beatrice refused to let herself dwell on him.
Donning dressing gown and slippers, she instead slipped out into the corridor, taking heart from Shona’s assurance that the laird had made it clear what he would do to any man who bothered her. At this hour, she expected only to meet servants in any case.
Most of the hallways and passages were dark, save for small clusters of candles here and there. Beatrice wandered without aim for some time and then began to walk in the direction of a warm, familiar smell.
At the end of a dark corridor she found a room where firelight crackled from around the partly open door.
Curiously, she peeked inside and found a kitchen, occupied by two older women, laughing together over by the stoves, while trays of fresh baked oat cakes and breads cooled on surfaces around the room.
“Well, we havenae seen a good one like that for some time, have we?” said the stout and grey-haired woman who was holding a mug in her hands, but didn’t seem to be drinking from it.
Her thinner friend, whose gold and silver hair was partly wrapped up with a cloth, rested a hand on the counter, shaking her head.
“Aye, ooh, look at that. Is it a ship? Anyway, can ye believe he just upped and left them at the dinner table tonight like that? Poor lassie, though worse things have happened in that Great Hall…”
Not wishing to eavesdrop, Beatrice cleared her throat and stepped into the room.
“I hope I’m nae disturbing ye,” she said and the two women looked in her direction, then dissolved into more cackles.
“The lady of the castle herself,” said the stout woman holding the mug, coming over to take Beatrice by the arm and steer her onto another stool. “Ye must have nerves of steel sneakin’ around here at night.”
“I couldnae sleep,” Beatrice admitted. “Then I smelled yer oatcakes.”
“I’m sure,” said the thin woman, going over to the oven and taking out another batch. “It’s a smell that makes ye hungry, daenae ye think?”
Beatrice smiled and nodded.
“Well, ye must have some oatcakes and tea with us now ye’re here, lassie,” insisted the stout woman, brushing off Beatrice’s unconvincing refusal. “There’s nothin' like a fresh oatcake to send ye back to sleep.”
She poured Beatrice a cup of tea and then offered her oatcakes on a plate.
“Now, ye must drink it down,” said the thin woman with her hair wrapped up. “We’ll see what we can find in the dregs. Maybe yer fortune will be even better than Mrs. Prinn’s.”
“Me fortune?” Beatrice queried, not immediately understanding.
“In the tea leaves, lassie,” said the stout woman who must be Mrs. Prinn. “Did yer grandma never show ye? Ah well, nae everyone can see things the way we do, can they Annie?”
For some minutes they talked and laughed about tea leaves and fortune telling, especially the mysterious journey by boat that Mrs. Prinn was now anticipating.
“Ye do have a nephew on Arran,” her companion pointed out finally, before returning to the ovens again to turn several trays.
“It was a very big boat for ferryin' to Arran,” Mrs. Prinn answered, her expression dubious. “Now, drink up Beatrice Whitmore and let's take a look at yer dregs too."
Beatrice sipped the last of the liquid away and let Mrs. Prinn take the mug from her hand.
“Ooh, look at that Annie,” she marveled at whatever she saw at the bottom of the mug.
“Aye, well, that says it all,” agreed Annie cryptically.
“I’d say that too and then some,” Mrs. Prinn remarked further.
“What are ye talking about?” Beatrice laughed, as her two companions ratcheted up the suspense as to what they saw in the leaves. “What do ye see?”
“There’s somethin' forcin' yer hand,” Mrs Prinn said, still studying the bottom of the mug. “Ye’re being pushed into somethin' ye thought to escape.”
“Marriage,” Beatrice suggested.
Both women nodded.
“Aye, and there’s more than that,” added Annie, exchanging a glance with her friend. “Ye’ll be married and to the Laird nay less…”
“She kens that already, ye daft old fool,” scolded Mrs. Prinn with a laugh.
“…but nae for the reasons ye might think,” Annie finished triumphantly.
“Family? Debt? Safety?” Beatrice proposed, not really very convinced that these women were doing anything other than passing on likely castle gossip.
“Let me see that,” demanded Mrs. Prinn now taking back the mug, “Nay. Ye’ll be married to him for a simpler reason than ye think, Beatrice."
“For love, lassie,” Anne told her with such great conviction that Beatrice nearly choked on her oatcake, sending the two older women into another fit of laughter.
For love? Nay, they cannae be serious. He doesnae want me love, nor anyone else’s.
“She didnae expect that one, did she?” chortled Mrs. Prinn.
“Nay, I suppose she didnae.”
“I’ve never believed much in fortune telling,” Beatrice told them.
“Ye daenae have to believe for it to be true, lassie,” Mrs. Prinn assured her without offense. “Yer future is there, whether ye believe it or not. Now, take yerself another oatcake and get to bed. That’s me advice.”
Her stomach settled and heart warmed, with tea and laughter if not any belief that she would marry for love, Beatrice thanked them for their hospitality and took her leave.
Back in the dark castle corridors, Beatrice let her mind wander again.
She had never been cynical about love itself, unlike Laird MacSween, but she’d always somehow doubted that she would experience love herself.
Her cousin Eloise had been the lucky one there, and it was too much to hope that Beatrice could have the same good fortune.
Beatrice smiled to herself as she remembered the old ring she and Eloise had once found, and how the superstition tied to it seemed to guide and mirror Eloise’s exact life path once it was in her possession, leading her towards true love. Now that ring belonged to Beatrice.
Fairy stories and tales for children! Eloise fell in love and married, but the ring was just a coincidence. Wasn’t it..?
Yes, it was only a fairy story but no easier to put from her head for that. Her father used to tell her that the truth was the truth, whether she believed it or not. If that old ring was leading her to her destiny, she didn’t need to believe in it. It would happen anyway.
But marrying Laird MacSween for love?! That was too preposterous to entertain. She chuckled to herself as she thought of the two old cooks in the kitchen. Maybe they wanted a fairy story too, where the laird of their castle fell in love and married a beautiful young woman…
While daydreaming, Beatrice found that she had entirely lost her bearings once more. She was now in an entirely foreign hallway. The corridors behind her looked too dark for her to have just come down that way.
“This place is playin' tricks on me,” she muttered, shivering at the sound of her voice bouncing back to her.
Maybe Beatrice should go out into the courtyard and then come back in again? But that would mean explaining herself to the nightwatchman and guards. She walked cautiously down one of the dark corridors hoping that she would find light or familiarity at its end.
Instead, she only heard the sound of a dog growling and it did not sound friendly, or small. With a gasp of horror, Beatrice set off at a run. What if it was a guard dog and the animal took her for an intruder and attacked her? What if it was a whole pack of dogs?
Imagining she could hear the creature behind her, she ran without direction, not knowing whether she was going in circles but afraid to stop and try to get her bearings.
Almost as bad as being savaged by angry guard dogs would be if Leo MacSween found her stumbling around his castle in the night like this. Would this count as dishonoring the MacSween name? Would he throw her out?
What would be left for me to do then but to crawl back to me parents and allow some stranger to make me his wife?
Afraid to run further and afraid to stop, Beatrice thought her legs might buckle. Then, as she rounded another dark corner, that she might easily have passed twice already, she barreled headfirst into a huge figure who stepped suddenly out into the shadows.
“What in God’s name are ye doing, woman?” demanded Leo MacSween.