Page 5 of Sadie’s Highlander (Highland Protector #1)
CHAPTER 4
“ S o Dwyn’s gone to fetch her then?”
“Aye.” Alec stared out the bay window of the kitchen overlooking the sprawling expanse of the park which had been left as a peaceful wooded wilderness. Strange how the rugged land of backwoods North Carolina so closely resembled his beloved Highlands. He sent up a silent prayer of thanks to the goddesses. If not for their wisdom in choosing such a place, he sorely doubted he and his family would’ve adapted so well to this strange, chaotic time.
A soft touch lightly patted his hand. “Calm yerself, son. Fretting over what could possibly go wrong steals the joy of the day and poisons hope for the future.”
Alec shifted away from the window and smiled down at his mother. “Easier said than done, Máthair. She’s different and I wish to know her better—not frighten her away.”
“Then you shouldn’t have made it sound as though you wanted her to be your sex slave for six weeks,” came from behind him.
“Esme Danai MacDara!” Sarinda spun about, swooped across the kitchen, and gave the young girl sitting at the kitchen table a stern clip to her shoulder. “Ye are naught but fifteen years old. Where do ye learn such? A lady doesna speak so and ye ken that as well as I.”
“If I’m not mistaken, I believe I heard that certain television channel playing soft and low behind our young lady’s door last night.” Miss Lydia, housekeeper extraordinaire and self-ordained grandmother to the MacDara clan, toddled across the kitchen and plopped down a plate of eggs, bacon, and biscuits covered with a thick puddle of sausage gravy in front of the scowling teenager.
“Do you always have to rat me out?” Esme hissed out a disgusted breath and shoved the steaming plate to the center of the table. “And I told you, I’m trying to lose some weight. I can’t eat that stuff if I’m going to fit in that dress I’ve picked out for Homecoming.”
Alec spun a kitchen chair around. He scooted it close to Esme, straddled it, and propped his forearms across the arched back. It was time to set the headstrong lass straight on the skimpy garment the shopkeeper had shown him. “If it’s the dress Mrs. Croft pointed out to me yesterday, ye’ll not be wearing it no matter how thin ye be. I’ll not have my sweet—barely grown, I might add—sister traipsing around town looking like the king’s favorite whore.”
Esme shoved her chair back with an enraged growl, fixed every adult in the room with a look that clearly said she considered them all to be idiots, then stomped up the back staircase.
“This is yer fault.” Emrys didn’t look up from the biscuit he was carefully buttering, just slowly shook his head.
“Who’s fault?” Sarinda slid another plate piled high with crisp brown sausages closer to her scowling husband.
“Yers.” Emrys speared a sausage with his knife, waving it in the air as though he were conducting an orchestra. “Ye prayed for a girl. Our lads never acted in such a way when they were naught but fifteen summers old.”
“This is a different time, ye old fool. Esme faces more challenges than ye could possibly understand.” Sarinda snatched the knife out of Emrys’s slightly shaking hand, cut the sausage into bite-sized pieces on his plate, then thumped the silverware back down onto the table. “Eat yer breakfast and leave the raising of our daughter to me.”
Alec rose from the table and returned to the window. He was in no mood to listen to the argument his parents had been having ever since Esme had developed into such a strong-willed teenager.
The muffled thud of a car door just below the window caught his attention. It shot a white-hot surge of adrenaline through him. She was here. Sadie Williams was finally here.
He strode across the kitchen and hurried down the winding staircase leading to the main sitting room of the family’s private quarters. Grant, Ramsay, and Ross met him on his way down. He fixed his brothers with the most threatening look he could muster. “Best behavior—the lot of ye, aye?”
All three grinned and waved away his words. “If anything ruins yer wooing of the lass, dear brother, ’twill be yerself,” Grant said with a snorting laugh as he pushed past Alec and followed his brothers up to the kitchen.
“I am not wooing,” Alec declared to his brother’s retreating back. Why the hell would Grant say such a thing? All he wanted was the opportunity to get to know Mistress Williams better. What was wrong with that? Wooing was entirely different. Complicated, in fact. It required long walks in moonlit gardens and figuring out sweet things to tell a lass so she might reward ye with her kisses. He had no intention of scaring this fine woman away by doing such. Dwyn had read him the email she’d sent when she’d finally agreed to their terms. Sadie Williams didn’t trust his intentions. Above all else, he had to prove to her that he’d never meant her any disrespect.
The heavy set of double doors at the front of the family’s private wing of the keep groaned loudly with a squealing high-pitched welcome. Alec refused to oil the hinges. One could never have too many alarms when it came to catching a fifteen-year-old girl attempting to sneak in past her curfew.
The low murmuring of voices echoing up from the stone hallway leading into the main room triggered another surge of adrenaline. It disturbed him no small amount to realize that the mere sound of Sadie’s voice could have such an effect on him. Lore a’mighty. One would think he was mooning over his first lassie.
Alec made the final turn at the bottom of the staircase and came to a dead stop on the wide landing. There she was. In his home. At last. The rustic sitting room suddenly seemed infinitely brighter.
Sadie stood at the edge of the room, her eyes growing ever wider as her gaze took in her surroundings. Head tilting slowly back, she studied the massive chandelier hanging from the highest beam in the vaulted ceiling. It was fashioned out of deer antlers, the tines tipped with long, swirling light bulbs made to look like flames.
Sadie’s silky dark braid slid from atop her shoulder to the center of her back, swinging like a pendulum as her focus flitted from the antler chandelier to the several candleholders made of more antlers lined up on the thick oak mantel of the stone fireplace taking up the entire south wall of the room. She finally turned, her stern look leveling on Alec. “Did you kill all the deer it took to make those?”
Not a timid bone in this lass’s body. Damnation, could she be any finer? But her accusing tone warned Alec that he’d best be quick and choose his next words carefully. Apparently, Mistress Sadie didn’t approve of hunting and wasn’t a bit shy about saying so.
“Nay, lass.” He hurried forward and coaxed her bags out of her clenched fists. She held them with an iron grip. Alec studied her closer. She’d just spoken so bravely, but her body betrayed her. The lass was tensed with wariness. Did she fear him or was she merely nervous?
Sadie folded her arms across her middle, almost hugging herself as she shifted in place. She looked as though she’d rather be anywhere other than standing in MacDara Keep.
He must make her feel welcome . Alec gave her his warmest smile and nodded in the direction of the offensive light fixture and the many candleholders. “Resin. All fake. Every antler in this room. The decorators chose them when we built the keep. Said they would add authenticity. Make the place seem . . .” What the hell was the word they’d used? Rustic. Aye. That was it. “Make the keep seem more rustic.”
And it wasn’t a lie. The chandelier had come from some establishment in Texas and the candleholders had been shipped from some faraway place he couldn’t pronounce. Alec made a mental note to keep the door to the game room closed until they knew each other better. The trophies in there weren’t made of resin, nor were they fake.
Her dark eyes, the rich mahogany shade of well-aged bourbon, narrowed while one brow arched a notch higher than the other. “I don’t have a problem with hunting for food.” The toe of her scuffed boot tapped nervously against the highly polished wooden floor. “But I do have a problem with hunting for sport just so you can have some hideous trophy gathering dust in a room.”
He made a mental note to tell Mistress Lydia to keep the door to the game room locked and bolted until it could be properly cleared and refurbished. Mother had been itching to turn the room into some fancy sort of place to teach the local women about herbs. She could damn well have it now.
“I understand completely.” Alec held up her bags and nodded toward the hallway running behind the wide landing. “And now if ye’ll follow me, I’ll be happy to show ye to yer rooms. Mistress Lydia’s set up the north wing so ye’ll have it all to yerself. It has a private entry to the park, so ye can come and go as ye please and no one will be the wiser unless ye wish them to be.”
Brisk thumps of sturdy heels rattled down the steps behind him, then a firm hand scooped one of Sadie’s smaller bags out of his grip. “My name is Mistress Lydia—well, that’s what the MacDaras call me—you can call me plain ole Lydia or Miss Lydia, whichever suits you. I’ll be showing you the way to your rooms and getting you all settled in.” The silver-haired matron shot Alec a look that dared him to argue, then turned to the uncharacteristically silent Dwyn. “Mr. Dwyn, get that other bag there so we can get this young lady all settled in while Mr. Alec’s checking his morning emails. I’m sure there are all kinds of folks waiting for him to answer them about some such nonsense.”
“I was about to—”
Miss Lydia cut him short, making her trademark sound that could only be described as a cross between a blaring smoke alarm and an engine grinding to a start. Whatever it was, her warning noise effectively shut down anyone trying to argue with her.
The slightest movement in Alec’s peripheral vision caught his attention. He glanced over at Sadie. Was the lass laughing at him? Her shoulders twitched and her lips pressed tightly together; she looked as though she was holding her breath. Her lovely high cheekbones grew even rosier as the corners of her mouth trembled. Eyes sparkling with barely contained mirth, she tightened her folded arms.
“Ye find this amusing, do ye?”
“As a matter of fact.” A snorting giggle finally escaped her and Sadie blossomed with a full-blown smile beneath Alec’s stern gaze. She turned to Miss Lydia and politely nodded. “Lead on, Miss Lydia. I think you and I are going to be great friends.”
Alec watched the ladies head down the hallway with Dwyn obediently following after them with the bags. Just past the landing, Dwyn paused and tossed a look back at Alec. “Ye are doomed, lad. Doomed, I say.”
Aye. That he was.
“But I’m not beaten,” Alec muttered under his breath as he hurried across the room, slid aside a replica of an ancient leather shield, and flipped the switch embedded in the stone behind it. He backed up a few steps, waiting impatiently for the wall to slowly slide open, revealing one of the many passages hidden behind the walls of the keep. Time to take a shortcut to the north wing. He’d be damned if Mistress Lydia had the pleasure of settling their new guest in all to herself.