Chapter 4
Chapter Four
The morning started as it did every early morning since Rowan came home from the hospital: A solid bank of misty gray fog sat on the land, softening the edges of the forest, of our cottage, and of the path up to the research field.
It created a creamy, dreamlike atmosphere, wrapping our part of the world in a gauzy mystique.
Actual dreams came for me. They began when Rowan returned from the hospital and everything seemed to be settling down. They roused me from sleep before dawn, and like the past few days, no matter the hour, today I brushed them off and went to work.
Walking past the field looking ominous and ghoulish, I noted the dew settling on the charcoal remains.
Still nothing had sprouted—no lichen had started to grow, which was the first step in creating new soil.
The field was inert, charred, a barren landscape that allowed my thoughts to drift back to a short while earlier.
This morning, Rowan had gotten up as early as I had. In the kitchen with our mugs of coffee he stood between my legs as I sat on the counter, the one time we were eye to eye. And as it happened, lips to lips. I was still gun-shy about putting his abs to work, but kissing, he said, was fine.
“Yer brother has been keeping tabs on my health, between threats to that same health. He says I’m healed, but I can’t take another blow to the abdomen anytime soon. But I am cleared for sneezing and a good belly laugh.”
“I didn’t hear ‘acrobatic counter sex’ in there.”
“Fairly sure ye never will from your brother.”
“I did hear,” I said against his lips, “PT for recovery in small steps, like this?”
I leaned in and pressed my mouth to his before opening and tasting him and the way he took his morning coffee.
Heavily loaded with cream and sugar like a dessert.
I smoothed a hand over his chest before grabbing a fistful of his sweater to keep him close.
I heard Rowan’s mug hit the countertop; then his hand gripped the back of my head as his other grabbed my thigh as he pulled my body in against his.
Perched against his body there on the edge of the counter, I set down my mug and put my arms around his neck.
With my feet crossed at the ankles, I pressed them into his rear.
I had been with him for over a year, but I still felt in moments like that, it was the first time our lips were touching.
My stomach dropped in that pleasant way a carnival ride thrills and breathed him in.
He was safety, ocean mist, and that organic musk that was all him.
I heard his groan, one of lust and desire and this time, regret.
“Mo ghràdh…”
His eyes were drugged and hungry, and he gave me another kiss, one that was gently reminding me that there were tasks to attend to that morning.
“What?”
His gaze swept over my eyes and cheeks and landed on my lips that felt rough and wet.
“Nothing.” He dove back in, firming his grip on the back of my head, his mouth drowning me in his love and devotion. The ring on my finger warmed as if enchanted by the power of his emotions.
He paused, nose next to mine, and caught his breath. I loved that he could get as blissed out as me, that his loyalty to us, our connection, was as powerful and equal as mine. But I did hate that he tried to be a punctual person.
“I have tae meet Double-A in five minutes, and the trip is fifteen from here.”
I cradled his cheek in my hand and brushed his lips with my thumb. “Go. We’ll have more PT time later.”
He breathed up my neck before releasing my hair, and with both hands on my thighs, he squeezed. “Promise?”
“I promise.”
Alex Alexander, appropriately, if uncreatively, nicknamed Double-A, was a scrappy older man with the perpetual energy of a rechargeable battery.
He was trying to quit smoking every time I saw him.
Something he’d tell me with one hanging from his lips.
And he was the father of my research assistant, Holly.
Alex and his cohorts, all mates from the eighties and earlier, had invited Rowan to a farm out on the border of MacLaoch estates.
The crack-of-dawn meeting was to get their business done before it was time to get to work in the fields and distilleries.
Rowan had a feeling that the older men, most of whom had known Rowan since he was a “wee bairn,” had come together to help find a solution to the foreclosure.
My boots took me up to the castle. I bumped open the main door with my shoulder.
Renovations had gotten underway restoring the historic stained glass above the door that the rescue helicopter had blown out.
I noted that they were saving what shards remained stuck in the frame.
The plastic sheeting covering the window on the outside of the building dulled their colorful shine.
I stepped over the drop cloths under the scaffolding and made my way down to the kitchen.
It was too early for the glass workers and Marion, Flora, and Clive, and I was sure TJ was still asleep where we’d put him, up in Rowan’s old apartment tower. I had the place to myself.
TJ had been underfoot as soon as we returned from the hospital, asking probing questions.
He’d done that for about twenty-four hours before he was set to work.
For some time, Reggie, our head gardener, had needed help, but Rowan could not afford it.
Moving heavy rocks, cutting out stumps, and other large projects had been sidelined, waiting for a strapping young human to make themselves available.
Reggie relayed to me that Tee was just the human for the job.
In general, it was good to see my brother and smash together two realities into one: the reality of my home, heritage, and Southern roots to the new reality of Glentree and Rowan.
Rowan said he received inquiries from Tee daily.
They ranged from the objective, a medical professional asking about Rowan’s condition, to all-out hostile, as my protective older brother.
It was apparent TJ was still wrestling with not being involved in everything from my epic battle-wedding to my living permanently in Scotland.
If it wasn’t something the Baker family would do, then it was ill-advised.
And since everyone in my family was happy with where they were in South Carolina, my being in Scotland was not recommended.
Moving through the castle to the quiet, sleepy kitchens, I started the wood-burning stove.
With its massive, cast-iron glory, it anchored the long, wide, partially subterranean stone kitchen.
In years past, the antique stove would have been left to smolder overnight and then be stoked in the morning to provide heat to the castle (before the furnace was installed) and a hot breakfast and tea for its inhabitants sometime before noon.
Now, it was an unspoken rule that the stove should be lit by the first one who arrived each day.
When the main prep kitchen got an electric kettle sometime in the nineties, making tea became a whole lot easier. This left the stove to warm the castle’s stones, dry out the subterranean kitchens, and stand available to bake cookies for the visitors who paid extra for tea service.
I set the kettle to boil and retrieved a handmade ceramic mug from Marion’s pottery days from the cabinet above, then closed the sticking door with the side of my fist. As I prepared the imported loose-leaf tea that smelled strongly of bergamot and sharp tannins, I looked around for the antique cookie tin.
The wood countertops held extra pitchers, bowls, a kettle, a porcelain cake stand for afternoon tea, and finally, I spotted the lavender cookie tin on the far side of the room.
It had a relaxing country scene painted on the lid and sides.
It was one of those tins that my grandmother might keep buttons in.
I lifted the lid and smiled; it was packed shoulder to shoulder with rectangular shortbread cookies baked by Flora. I retrieved a plate.
As I prepared my breakfast of champions, I thought again of the residual mysteries I’d yet to solve about Mickey, Charmaine, and the Murdoch banker. Without the field to occupy my time, other than it now showing up in my dreams, my focus needed a new target.
How had three people who had given us so much guff in the past few weeks gone totally radio silent?
I’d spent enough time in our family peach orchard to learn about animal nature.
And humans, despite our clothes, were animals.
I knew that when a shooed fox disappeared and it didn’t return to its foxhole, it was behind you.
Rowan had fired Charmaine Chevalier as the estate’s liaison with Casswell, the estate planning and public relations firm that had worked with MacLaoch lands for hundreds of years.
She’d taken it civilly, gracefully even, which made Rowan uneasy.
He’d have been much more comfortable with her outright antagonistic attitude than the new “Yes, sir” human he encountered.
But he also said she looked somewhat shell-shocked as if she’d seen something recently that cracked her brain right in half.
I smiled to myself and thought, I have no idea what that could have been. Lil ol’ Ormr, perhaps?
But then Charmaine had not reported for duty in Glasgow.
A mystery Clive kept Rowan abreast of while in the hospital.
Her boss had contacted Rowan via Clive, asking why the devil he was working her so hard that she couldn’t return to the office.
From what Rowan pieced together, Charmaine had checked in with her boss and sold him a lie that the MacLaoch estate needed more of her time.
After leaving the hospital, Rowan cleared the air.
Mr. Casswell, befuddled by the strange behavior of his prize agent, hung up without so much as an apology for her behavior.
I mentioned that maybe Rowan should fire more than just Charmaine.
Mickey Gillian was also missing. Mickey had not returned the Fund’s calls nor any of mine.
Rowan was clearheaded on the subject: “He took one look at ye, full Viking, and is currently in Saint-Tropez starting a new life.” I tended to agree.
Protecting his lying, cheating hide was always what the so-called archaeologist was good at.
Still…had he gotten what he came for? That unresolved question made me want to take the next six months to do a deep inventory of the castle’s artifacts.
Rowan had checked on the more costly items, and all the exquisitely expensive artifacts were on my ring finger or under lock and key and accounted for.
Through the kitchen window, I heard a rustle.
A bushtit and a black-capped chickadee flitted and strutted in the detritus of the flowerbed surrounding the window placed close to the basement ceiling.
They looked for seeds and tasty breakfast insects.
They called to their friends in the gardens beyond between pecks and wing flicks.
The chickadee’s classic chick-a-dee-dee-dee sound filled the kitchen as the kettle began to whistle.
The morning was waking. Flora and Marion would be there soon.
One fox had begun to show himself. The banker, Murdoch, had started calling again while Rowan was in the hospital, and not via Clive. He’d hang up when I answered, which my Southern manners roiled in a fury over. But since Rowan’s return home, the calls had stopped.
Sunlight began to break through the morning fog and stream into the kitchen.
I waited the allotted time for the tea to steep, then pulled the strainer out.
I promptly dunked my shortbread in. I smiled, thinking of my mother making a hiss of disapproval at my breakfast choice and my unlady-like slurp of the softened cookie.