Page 46 of Somewhere Along The Way (Mackinnon #3)

“I never said simple farmer. Farming, if done with the right amount of wit and devotion, can be quite prosperous. Don’t be forgetting our own prince consort is a farmer.”

“Oh, you mean a gentleman farmer?”

“Yes, and quite wealthy by Scottish standards.”

Annabella frowned. “I still think he’d make a marvelous henchman.”

The duchess laughed. “Goodness, Bella. What a morbid thought.”

“All my thoughts have been morbid of late.”

Her mother climbed into her bed. “Well, try to think of something pleasant, dear, and let’s enjoy our time together. Tomorrow Una will have our things unpacked and mine moved into another room. We may not have this much time to ourselves after that.”

The next morning Annabella was having a bad time of it, for she overslept and when she entered the dining room, she found she was too late for breakfast. “Go to the kitchen and tell Cook to give you something. There’s always a nice cauldron of oatmeal gruel simmering on the peat.

It would be good with some salt herring,” her Aunt Una said.

Annabella went, not for the oatmeal gruel and herring, but on the hope of getting a piece of dry toast and a cup of tea.

Cook, who was a robust woman with a neat brown braid crisscrossed over her head, was thankfully an understanding soul, for she didn’t mention the oatmeal and herring to Bella more than once.

“If you don’t mind, a cup of tea and a piece of dry toast is all I want.”

Annabella had no more than sat down to her toast and tea when the kitchen door flew back and the great, hulking form of her uncle filled the doorway.

“You mean you dare to eat?” he asked in tones that were mildly tender.

“I’d be careful if I were you. Persephone nibbled only a few pomegranate seeds and sealed her fate. ”

If he was trying to intimidate her, that about did the trick, for Bella choked on the dry toast, gasping and wheezing until Cook took pity and whacked her between the shoulder blades and sent the toast crumbs on their merry way, a few dislodged spinal bones along with them.

While Bella gasped for air, the earl shook his head and pushed the door shut with one foot.

He went straight to the teapot and poured himself a cup, his eyes on Bella the entire time.

The toast she was able to finish off in three swallows; the tea she gulped down in two. Her mouth was scalded by the hot tea. As Uncle Barra approached the table, she sprang to her feet.

“You dinna have to take flight like a frightened field mouse,” he said. “I never gobble the heads off anyone over the age of fifteen.”

Cook giggled and the Earl of Seaforth went on to say, “Bless me, but you’re a spindly little thing. Don’t you ever eat?”

Her jellied bones were suddenly infused with a shot of stiff dignity. She lifted her head and said, “Of course I eat.”

Barra laughed. “You need a little meat on you, lass. Maybe then you wouldn’t be so shy-faced. Gain a few stones and you might gain some backbone along with it.”

Cook laughed and mumbled something in Gaelic. “ Cha deanar seabhag de ‘n chalamhan. ”

Barra eyed Annabella for a moment, then threw back his head and laughed. “Bless me, but you may be right.”

“What did she say?” asked Bella.

“She said, ‘You canna make hawks out of kites.’”

Bella wanted to say she had always had a special fondness for folksy platitudes, but she didn’t—not because she was afraid, she reminded herself, it was just that she had been taught to be respectful to her elders. Yes, that was it—respect for her elders.

Cook said something else in Gaelic and Bella forgot her fear and manners. “It isn’t polite to speak unfamiliar languages in front of those who don’t understand,” she said.

The earl’s black shining eyes opened just a bit wider as a slow grin spread across his face. “Weel now, the lass does have a wee bit o’ backbone buried beneath all those layers of English pudding.”

“It doesn’t take backbone to understand when someone is being intentionally rude.”

“Be quiet, lass, or I’ll gag you.”

Annabella fled the room with the sound of her Uncle Barra’s laughter piercing her soul.

Turning down a long hallway, she uttered a small prayer for more intestinal fortitude than the good Lord had seen fit to give her thus far.

A spine with all the hardness of a boiled egg might be sufficient for a gentlewoman in England, but in Scotland it simply wasn’t enough.

The rest of the afternoon Bella spent alone, touring the house and keeping out of the way of her uncle.

The mist had lifted and sunlight poured through the many windows, lifting her spirits and bathing each room in warmth and brightness.

Everywhere she looked she saw magnificent tapestries and paintings by what had to be masters.

French and English furniture as fine as any to be found in England filled each room of the T-shaped home.

As she wandered into the two-story baronial hall with its paneled walls and four fireplaces, she couldn’t help thinking it was the finest country house she had ever seen.

While Annabella wandered about, taking note of the many paneled rooms and ornamental plaster ceilings, her mother was on her way to the library.

By the time Bella went outside to meander along paths bordered by herbaceous shrubs and peeked at flower beds in old, walled gardens, the duchess was deep in conversation with her brother-in-law.

The Earl of Seaforth scowled at his sister-in-law.

“What do you mean, she’s betrothed to the Earl of Huntly ?

” he asked, not minding in the least that his words were harsh and blunt.

“Were you that anxious to get rid of the lass, or did you set out to marry her to the biggest fool in the Highlands?”

“We weren’t anxious to be rid of Bella. Why would we be?

She has always been such a delight—a perfect lady.

As for the other, how were we to know he was a fool?

Alisdair was more interested in making a good match for Annabella to ever consider that a man with such credentials might also be a fool,” replied the indignant mother.

Barra wasn’t the sort of man to be easily put off. “And what about you? You were always a good judge of character, Anne. If my memory serves me.”

“I’m sure your memory serves you very well.”

His eyes lit up, a slow-spreading grin on his face. “Well enough to be remembering that you were not too discreet about your feelings and your objections to me as Una’s husband.”

“That was in the beginning,” Anne said, “and you will remember I did come around…eventually.”

“Aye,” Barra said. “Eventually.”

She gave him a swift, probing glance and smiled.

“I suspect you like me all the better for it, Barra. You aren’t one to be impressed with a woman too easily influenced, or one who doesn’t speak her mind.

Now, back to Huntly. I never pegged him for a fool because I never met the man until the arrangements were made. ”

“So, you betrothed the lass and brought her to Scotland to meet the fool you’d picked. When are you taking her back home?”

“We aren’t. Alisdair thinks it best for her to remain in Scotland. He thinks she will adjust better if she doesn’t return to England.”

Barra’s brows drew together thickly and he stared at the toes of his boots. “Hmmm. Perhaps he’s right.” He looked intently at his sister-in-law. “And this visit to Seaforth was to introduce her to her long-lost kin?”

“No.” She went on to explain that Alisdair and Gavin were in Edinburgh and she had seen what transpired between Bella and Ross Mackinnon from her bedroom window. “So I thought it best to get her away from Dunford—with all due haste.”

“Away from Dunford,” he repeated, “and the duke’s grandson. But not particularly in that order.”

“Well, yes,” said the duchess. “Can you blame me?”

“I dinna know if I blame you or not. I haven’t seen the lad you whisked her away from.

Perhaps the lass has more spine than she shows—betrothed to one man, pining for another, and secreted away to the castle of an evil relative.

Sounds like something right out of a Greek tragedy.

” He shook his head. “So the lad is the Mackinnon’s grandson.

Well, well, well. Tell me, how does the old man feel about this attraction between his grandson and the lass? ”

“Who knows?” Anne threw up her hands and began to pace back and forth. “I don’t know. He is fond of Bella—and his grandson as well. I suppose he would see it favorably, if Bella weren’t betrothed.” She stopped pacing. “Do you know the old duke?”

“Aye, I know him. He saved my life once—a long time ago—and I’ve never repaid the debt.”

“It’s a difficult debt to repay. One’s life does not come cheaply.”

“No,” Barra said. “It does not.” He glanced out the window in time to see Annabella walk into the old pinetum filled with conifers and Douglas fir that lay behind his library.

For a moment his dark eyes, with their quickly veiled interest, regarded the glossy black head that gleamed brightly in the full afternoon sun.

Every debt-owing impulse beckoned him to orchestrate a few moves in the old duke’s favor, while familial ties said to leave it alone.

Family ties won by a hair’s breadth. When at last he spoke, it was of a different vein than his thoughts.

“I can scarce blame Huntly for wanting this match. She’s a comely lass.

But much too refined and beautiful for the likes of him. ”

“Last night you were saying she was shy-faced and spineless. Today you say she’s a comely lass. Have you changed your mind about her?”

“No. She’s still too easily intimidated to make much of a go at it here in the Highlands.”

“You don’t care for her, then?”

“To the contrary. I like the lass. As a lad, I always had a tenderhearted fondness for stray kittens. I brought more than my share of them home and hid them under my bed.”

“Now, that doesn’t sound like you, Barra.”