Sinful Scottish Laird. Julia London
rel="nofollow" href="#uad27d6f4-5b1e-5ac5-811b-b0fac26312aa">CHAPTER FOUR
July 28—One of the chimneys must be rebuilt, which Uncle assures me that he and Mr. Green will know how to do, but I don’t care for him to be on the roof. He has ignored me thus far and urges me to keep my thoughts to what must be done inside. My thoughts will be much crowded, then, for there are many repairs to be done. Every day we discover something new, which sends Belinda into fits of panic. I have assured her that we will manage, but I confess I spoke with far more conviction than I felt. Ellis is fearful of the deep shadows in the lodge, which cannot be avoided due to the lack of proper windows. But he is happy that he can see the night’s sky so clearly from his room and is busily charting the stars under Mr. Tuttle’s tutelage. The poor boy sneezes quite a lot, and Belinda fears the dust will make him ill. She is quite concerned there is no real village to purchase sundries and frets that she didn’t bring with her enough paints for her artwork, which she is very keen to begin when the repairs have all been made.
I know that Belinda and Ellis are not happy with the lodge, and I do so hate that I was clearly wrong to bring them to such a disagreeable place.
The Scotsman came in defense of Mr. MacNally. He does not care for me, I think it quite obvious, for he does not smile at all and did not find me the least bit humorous. His face is a lovely shade of brown, as if he has been often in the sun. It rather makes the blue of his eyes that much brighter and the plum of his lips that much darker.
I rather like it here in a strange way. It is quiet, and the landscape unmarred. I should think that it would be a lovely place to live, if one could live without society.
IT WAS TRUE that Daisy felt quite badly for having dragged her household here. She’d known the lodge was remote and had been uninhabited for a time—but she’d not been prepared for just how remote and how uninhabited. Because she hadn’t given the matter proper attention when her husband’s agent tried to explain it to her.
The truth about Auchenard was buried in the papers that he’d wanted to review with her shortly after Clive’s death. At the time, Daisy had found the discussion of a remote hunting lodge so dreadfully tedious that she could scarcely keep her eyes open. She’d been exhausted from the details of Clive’s funeral, and Scotland had seemed as far removed from her as the moon. Moreover, the estate had existed for the purpose of hunting—an activity that held no interest for her whatsoever. She had not paid the matter any heed.
Not until she had needed someplace to which to escape.
And now? More than once Daisy had considered putting her son back in the coach and returning to England, no matter how exhausted they all were.
On their first tour of the lodge, she’d been appalled by what they’d found in the lodge—a dim interior, deteriorating furnishings. And the decor! Turkeys and stag heads seemed to lurk around every corner.
“Well, then,” she’d said when they’d seen it all. “There is nothing to be done now but begin work.” She’d said it confidently, as if her occupation was that of a woman who routinely walked into deteriorating hunting lodges and rejuvenated them. “We will muster our little army and work, shall we?”
“Assuming none of us is made ill,” Belinda had said darkly from beneath the lace handkerchief she kept pressed to her nose and face.
In that moment, the prospect of defeat before Belinda was enough to spur Daisy into turning this lodge into a highland jewel.
In the days that followed, Daisy worked as hard as anyone to restore the lodge. She and her household polished and scrubbed, tore down old wall hangings, washed windows and sashes, and carted out unsuitable furnishings. Carpets were dragged outside and beaten, mattresses turned, linens placed on beds. Sir Nevis, who meant to return to England after a week, scouted the area while they worked, and returned with a craftsman to repair the windows. He also returned with information about Balhaire, the large Mackenzie estate and small village where sundries—and, thankfully, paints—could be purchased.
But as the days progressed, Ellis looked more and more disheartened. He and his tutor wandered about looking a bit lost. Ellis was curious to inspect their surroundings, but Daisy would not allow them to venture far from the lodge...the Scotsman’s warnings of others had made her a bit fearful.
She tried to engage Ellis with the lodge itself, but the boy, like any nine-year-old, did not want to beat carpets. So Daisy urged him to continue his star charting. That occupied him until they had charted all that they could. She then commanded him to help her clean windows, but he tired easily.
When Daisy wasn’t struggling to please her son, she toiled from morning to sundown in a manner she’d never experienced in her life.
At first Rowley, Uncle Alfonso and Belinda had tried to dissuade her from it. Great ladies did not beat carpets, they said. Great ladies did not scrub floors. But Daisy ignored their protests—she found the work oddly soothing. There were too many thoughts that plagued her when she was left idle, such as whom she’d be forced to marry, and how the days of her freedom were relentlessly ticking away. Whether or not Rob would reach her in time, what was wrong with her son that he was so fragile, and how cake-headed she’d been to think a journey to the northern part of Scotland could possibly be a good idea, and, of course, what a terrible thing she’d done, dragging her family here.
Yes, she preferred the labor to her thoughts. At the end of each day, she ached with the physical exertion, but the ache was not unpleasant.
But there were times, when she couldn’t keep her thoughts from her head, that Daisy felt a gnawing anger with her late husband. Clive had forced her into this untenable situation, and her feelings about it had not changed with time. She felt betrayed by the man she had respected and revered and tried to love. She’d been a dutiful wife—how could he have had so little regard for her? How could he believe she would jeopardize her own son’s future for her own pleasure?
Sadly, the answers to these questions were buried with Clive.
By the end of their first fortnight at Auchenard, Daisy could see that the old lodge was beginning to emerge, and she was proud of the work they’d done. She began to notice less the repairs that had yet to be made and more of the vistas that surrounded the lodge. It was possible to gaze out at the lake and the hills beyond and forget her worries.
When she was satisfied with the work on the interior, Daisy turned her attention to the garden. Or what she assumed had been a garden at some point. Whatever it might have been, it was overgrown. Vines as thick as her arm crawled up walls and a fountain, and weeds had invaded what surely once had been a manicured lawn. She’d donned a leather apron and old straw hat she’d found in the stables. She’d cut vines and pulled weeds until her hands were rough. She crawled into bed at the end of those days and slept like the dead.
Belinda complained that the sun was freckling her skin and turning her color. Daisy didn’t care.
Each morning she rose with the dawn light, pulled a shawl around her shoulders and sat at the bank of windows that overlooked the lake from the master bedchamber. She’d open them to the cool morning mist, withdraw her diary from a drawer in the desk and make note of the previous day.
She pressed flowers into the book, as well as the leaves of a tree she’d never seen before, and had sketched the tree beside it. She’d drawn pictures of boats sliding by on the lake, of a red stag she saw one morning standing just beyond the walls, staring at the lodge.
Yesterday, Daisy had uncovered an arch in the stone wall that bordered the garden. She dipped her quill into the inkwell to record it—but a movement outside her window caught her eye.
The mist was settling in over the top of the garden, yet she could plainly see a dog sniffing about in a space she’d cleared. Not just any dog, either—it was enormous, at least twice as tall as any dog she’d ever seen, with wiry, coarse fur. She wondered if it was wild. She stood up, pulled her Kashmir shawl tightly around her and leaned across the desk to have a better look. “Where did you come from?” she murmured.
The dog put its snout to the ground and inched