The Scottish Lord’s Secret Bride. Raven McAllan
‘So,’ Morven said in an attempt to deflect her mind from things best not thought about at that time. After all, perhaps a face-to-face meeting would help her to know her own mind? ‘How long is it since you have seen Lady Napier? I forget.’
‘Senga? Oh a year perhaps, just under. She was in London just before her husband died and I came up for the funeral.’ The duchess sighed dramatically. ‘Poor Senga. Her son, the heir, was in Barbados and she was all alone.’
‘Apart from her younger children?’ Morven asked mildly. ‘I thought there were several?’
‘Ah, yes, but young,’ her mother blustered. ‘Such a hard time. Of course Fraser was not able to return in time to see his father buried.’
Morven remembered that. She’d thought she might get a letter or a note but had received nothing. It was as if she no longer mattered.
Perhaps just as well.
‘Then it will be good for you to be together again,’ Morven said in a composed voice. ‘I suppose the laird is away? The new laird.’
‘What?’ Her mother blushed and didn’t make eye contact with either of her daughters. ‘No, I believe he is now home.’
‘Was he away again?’ Morven asked straight-faced. ‘Or has he not returned since his…’ She hesitated. Banishment sounded much too harsh, and it hadn’t been that. She just felt it was. ‘Sojourn in the Indies,’ she said finally.
‘Er, I think he returned, went to do some estate business elsewhere and now is home. Tell me, do we need to stop in the village to freshen up?’
‘No,’ both her daughters chorused together.
‘Let’s just arrive and then freshen up, Mama,’ Morven said. I need to get it over and done with. ‘I assume we are expected today?’
Their mama blinked. ‘Ah, yes of course we are. Very well, let’s just head to the castle.’
‘As we have for the last goodness knows how many days?’ Murren said sotto voce to Morven. ‘On and off.’
Morven nodded. There wasn’t really anything else to add on the subject. She was on edge and worried that if anyone said anything even slightly controversial she would break down and scream.
The coach trundled along the tiny village street linked to the castle and the estate. A few locals watched as they drove past and one urchin whistled and shouted. ‘Aww, bonnie horses, fair braw.’
Morven chuckled. ‘That child has sense.’
‘I’ll never get the hang of the dialect,’ Murren said, despairingly. ‘Did it take you long?’
Morven shook her head. ‘No, but I have an ear for voices. And you won’t be here long enough to need to understand everyone, will you. After all Mama will want to be back in London in time for your coming out.’
‘Oh but…’ The duchess took one look at Morven and stopped speaking abruptly. ‘Ah yes, but who knows what will happen by then?’
‘We’ll be eaten by midges and smell of garlic,’ Morven said sweetly. ‘And hope to lose the marks and bites before Murren’s ball. She is having one, isn’t she? I’m sure Brody agreed. At the town house no less.’
‘I haven’t asked your brother yet, but…’
‘That’s fine,’ Morven said firmly. ‘I did and he said of course.’
Her mother opened and closed her mouth like a codfish. ‘Are we there yet?’
Morven couldn’t help it. She began to laugh. ‘Almost, Mama, almost.’
It wasn’t much more than half an hour later that the horses began the final pull up the pass, their hooves thudding in a steady rhythm on the dusty road. Ahead of them, the castle showed starkly on the skyline. Morven leaned forward to see it better, and even though her heart beat over-fast and her skin crawled with tension, she couldn’t help but be awed by the sight.
It had been the same all those years ago. Although then a red-haired giant had thundered down the hill on a black horse to greet her. This time there was no such welcoming committee. However, the wrought-iron gates were open and the coachman turned the equipage through the gap and past the crested gateposts, and urged the tired animals on.
‘It’s big,’ Murren said in an awed voice. ‘I never thought it would be so enormous. It rather scares me. I hope I’m not in one of those towers or turrets or whatever they are called. I wouldn’t sleep a wink if I was.’
Her mama stared at her and frowned. ‘Really, Murren, do not be silly.’
‘I’m not,’ Murren replied peevishly. ‘But nor will I be at ease in a place like that. Why did we have to come?’ She sounded close to tears. Morven frowned. Murren might be timid but this display seemed somewhat affected to her. However, evidently not to their mama, who sighed.
‘As you wish. I’m sure the castle has a basic room for you in a part of it you do appreciate. However, remember, the laird is a prominent person around here, to be…’ she coughed and cleared her throat ‘…to be looked up to.’
And if that is what she was going to say I’ll eat my hat.
‘I can look up to him from a basic room as well as a prison,’ Murren said stubbornly, and shot a sideways glance at Morven. Did she wink? ‘After all, he is a passing acquaintance, no more.’
‘Well of course he must be revered,’ Morven said as their mama took a deep breath, presumably to prepare herself to upbraid Murren. ‘Just like Brody at home.’ Something caught her eye and she leaned even closer to the window aperture to look out. ‘And as hands-on as Brody as well.’ She sat back and waited for her mother to twig.
‘Hands-on? How?’
Morven nodded towards a barn a few fields away. ‘Unless he is no longer red-haired and over six feet tall, I believe by helping to put a new roof on a barn.’
The figure she thought to be Fraser was standing, bare-chested on a cross-beam and helping another man lower a long heavy piece of wood into its allotted place. Her mouth went dry and her inside muscles clenched as she feasted her eyes on the one man who had ever mattered to her. The man she had given herself to gladly, and who had forgotten her.
‘Good Lord he might kill himself,’ the duchess gasped. ‘What on earth is he thinking?’
‘That he is more likely to die of boredom if he’s not allowed to help,’ Morven said percipient as ever. The Fraser she had known would have always been in the thick of it, and she was sure seven years on his family’s tobacco plantation wouldn’t have changed that.
And good Lord even at this distance I can feel him. As all those years ago, her body had clenched at the thought of Fraser. Of him next to her, holding hands, of saying to her in his deep gravelly Scottish voice, “My Morven, will you plight your troth?”
****
Fraser’s plan for a ride into Stirling had been thrown to the wind, when, not long after he’d got up and broken his fast—alone as he preferred these days—a message had arrived about the roof on one of the barns used to store fodder. Somehow the thatch had come loose and it needed to be repaired there and then with new hazel rods to secure it. Could he give the thatcher the go-ahead once the men had secured the beams?
Fraser told his factor that he’d be at the barn within the hour, changed into clothes more suited for a day in the fields—or clambering around on a roof—left a message for his mama to say where he was, and exited the castle. This had to be dealt with. He’d let the problem of his marriage or non-marriage slide for seven years. A few more days wasn’t going to make any difference.
Less than an hour after he’d discarded his jacket, he was shirtless and sweating. With his neckerchief around his forehead