Page 4 of To Love a Scottish Lord (Highland Lords #4)

B rendan entered Hamish’s room without knocking, but then, Hamish expected it. Brendan could be exceptionally charming when he wished, but now was not one of those occasions.

His brother halted at the threshold, staring at the cannon still sitting by the window. “You’d have more room in here if you moved that thing outside.”

“Ah, but then I wouldn’t have been able to amuse myself by lopping off the tops of trees.”

“Is that what you were doing?” Brendan frowned. “A waste of your talents, Hamish.”

“Who is she?” Hamish asked, changing the topic of this conversation.

“A woman of Inverness,” Brendan answered. “As I told you, a healer with a great reputation.”

“Why do you call her Angel?”

“She evidently saved a little boy on his deathbed. At least that’s the story Iseabal related. She knows of Mary’s talents because of her husband, a goldsmith. Evidently, she and Alisdair commissioned him to make several objects for Gilmuir.”

“She’s married?”

“No longer. Her husband died some time ago, I believe.”

“So you fetched her from Inverness because of Iseabal’s recommendation?”

“Can you think of a better reason?”

In all honesty, he could not. Hamish had the greatest admiration for his sister-in-law. The problem was that he didn’t want a healer there.

“Mrs. Gilly sounds like she will be sorely missed in Inverness. Perhaps you should take her back there with all possible speed.”

“Don’t you want to get better?”

Hamish couldn’t help but laugh at that question.

“I am as good as I will get.” He turned, finally, and faced Brendan, standing unflinching before his brother’s inspection.

He spread one hand out while the other remained at his side, useless.

“This is all that I am. This is what I look like healed. If she can give me back the whole of my body, I would take it. Gratefully. But she cannot.”

“Perhaps she can, especially if she’s as gifted as they say.”

“I need no miracle worker, Brendan. God Himself would have to erase these scars.”

“They’ll heal in time, Hamish, and not be as noticeable as now.”

“But they’ll always be there. Take her back to Inverness, Brendan.”

“I don’t think Mary will go,” he said.

Hamish turned and faced the window again. “Then you must convince her.”

Brendan had been there less than ten minutes and had already made his presence felt in the old castle. Through the window, Hamish could see a wagon piled high with boxes and crates on the bridge, being unloaded by two more strangers.

Mary Gilly was striding across the courtyard toward the castle. The least Brendan could have done was to bring him a healer who was advanced in years, someone with age and wisdom, and missing a few teeth, perhaps. Or a physician, if no old wise woman was available.

A beautiful woman had power of her own. Was that how she healed her male patients? Did she simply will them to health? He wasn’t immune to such blandishments. As the Atavasi had learned, he was all too human.

Had she charmed Brendan? Was that why he’d brought her there?

The twilight graced her with loveliness, the shadows falling over her like an ethereal blanket. She seemed a part of this place, a ghost returning to its home.

“Who are the others?”

“A cook and a carpenter.”

“All I wanted was a few supplies, Brendan. I don’t need a cook, a carpenter, and most especially a healer.”

“I’ve never seen a man who needed one more.”

Hamish sent a swift look to his brother, and Brendan only smiled in response.

Hamish MacRae might be her patient, but it was only too obvious that she wasn’t wanted. After Brendan followed his brother up the sloping stairs, Mary remained where she was, feeling like a parcel Brendan had forgotten.

The ground floor was sparsely furnished. A settle made of planked pine sat to the side of an arched fireplace. Two chairs and a table on the other side of the room comprised the remainder of the furniture.

Long moments passed, but Brendan didn’t return. She could hear the sound of voices, and it disturbed her to be an accidental eavesdropper on their conversation. Turning, she left the tower.

She stood in the middle of the courtyard on a grassy patch of ground with the wind pressing her skirt against her legs and tossing her hair askew.

She was an Inverness woman, born and raised within the city.

True, there were grand sights to be seen there, and places to go that caused her breath to hitch in wonder or sheer pleasure.

However, nothing she’d ever seen before incited her imagination as much as Castle Gloom did now.

Where were the men in arms who’d once patrolled these walls? Where had the cook and all her helpers gone, and the lord of the manor? What had happened to the lady, and any children born here? They’d simply vanished, and she couldn’t help but wonder what had happened to them all.

She turned slowly, thinking that the castle didn’t look nearly as forlorn or forbidding as it had appeared from the road.

To her left was a long, rectangular building backing up to the wall for shelter.

To her right was the tower, midpoint in the long, curving wall.

Behind her was a glorified lean-to that had evidently been used to house the animals, and where she and Brendan had put their own mounts.

Crossing the courtyard, she knelt at the wide stone lip of the well and lowered the bucket, delighted to discover that the water was crystal clear and cold. Placing the dipper back in the bucket, she followed her inclination and headed for the main building.

If she were to stay there, at least for a few days, she must find a place to call hers, a little corner of Castle Gloom where she could command some privacy, arrange her medicines, and treat Hamish. She wondered if Brendan would be able to convince his brother that she could be of assistance.

A stubborn man couldn’t be reasoned into changing his mind.

He must be led to it by example. More easily done in Inverness, where there were a host of cures and enough tales of her successes to bolster a patient’s confidence in her.

But here, in this remote castle, how did she convince Hamish MacRae to trust her?

She pushed open an oak door, surprised that it swung ajar easily.

A short hallway gave way to a large room, surprisingly well lit.

She tilted her head back to see the windows aligned high in the wall.

As if heaven approved of her curiosity, the sun suddenly speared through a cloud, further illuminating the chamber.

The room was barren, but without much imagining, she could almost see the shields on the walls and the banners hanging across the ceiling. This place held the memory of its own history, even if none of its inhabitants was there to speak of it.

The wooden door was heavily notched in places, as if someone had leaned against the frame and nicked at it with his knife in boredom.

The stone floor beneath her feet was pocked and smooth, made that way by generations of well-shod feet.

Yet, for all the emptiness of this place, it wasn’t a sad room.

Instead, it felt merely waiting, as if it were a sentient being and knew, somehow, that its time had not quite passed.

She turned and walked through the hall to a short door set into the wall to her left.

This chamber was filled with shadows, and she didn’t enter it completely, merely stood at the threshold looking inside.

Evidently, the room had once been used for lodging, judging by the number of cots stacked against one wall.

She couldn’t help but wonder if the castle had been used to garrison troops, since a belt buckle and a powder horn sat against the wall near the door.

On the other side of the Great Hall was another room.

Inside, a long wooden table stretched the length of the space.

Dozens of shelves lined the walls, but they were all empty.

Not one pot or pan remained in the kitchen.

Not a butter churn or a knife, bucket or bowl.

Not a jar. The emptiness of the larder buttressed her idea that the exodus from Castle Gloom had been a deliberate one accomplished over time.

As in the Great Hall, windows high in the white walls illuminated the space.

Shafts of sunlight struck the floor in squares, intersecting with each other to form a crisscross pattern.

The ceiling was arched, and whitewashed as well, except for a dark spot over the massive fireplace discolored by years of fires.

There were no clues to the absence of the inhabitants of Castle Gloom, but she’d solved one problem.

If she could find no other room, she’d use the kitchen.

That is, if she was allowed to stay.

Charles Talbot couldn’t believe Mary had left him to run the shop alone. For hours after she’d closed the door behind her, he waited for her to return. When she hadn’t, he’d finally understood that a stranger had taken precedence over him.

His surprise at her desertion had begun to change to anger.

Today, he’d finished his commission for one of the wealthy matrons of Inverness and had carried the tureen to her home himself, needing to get out of the shop for a little while.

When he’d returned, he found two customers standing on his doorstep, neither one of them amenable to waiting, and each wanting to be served at the same time.

If Mary were there, such a situation would not have occurred.

Mary was much more suited to welcoming their customers than she was to traipsing all over Inverness and beyond.

But she never saw that it was a more worthwhile use of her time to cultivate those who could afford their wares instead of spending so much time trying to heal those with no way to pay for their treatment.

He’d told her that sickness would always be with them, and so would the poor, but she’d only laughed in response, as if he’d made a jest.

She was two years younger than Charles despite the fact she’d been married to a man twice her age for a decade. Still, she’d have to learn, once she married him, that he wasn’t as easily swayed as Gordon.

After Gordon’s death, he’d said nothing, allowing her to mourn for a year like a good wife should. For twelve months, he’d hidden his feelings, only to have her say goodbye to him without a backward glance, taking herself off with no thought to her reputation or his concerns.

Charles closed up the shop, taking care to muffle the bell attached to the latch. At night, sometimes a draft would make it sound, and he’d be roused from sleep in his room in the back, thinking that a customer was demanding entrance.

He looked around the shop, pleased that it all but belonged to him now.

The mahogany counters with their etched glass stood at right angles, displaying a few sam ples of his wares.

A scarred bench sat in front of a sloping table.

Here, Gordon had sat hunched over until his shoulders were permanently stooped.

A magnifying glass and an eyepiece he had habitually worn around his neck now sat in a drawer beneath the table.

The wooden floor was gouged in spots but otherwise well polished.

Gordon hadn’t left him title to the place, but Charles felt he’d earned the ownership of the goldsmith’s shop.

He deserved it because of twelve years of diligent labor.

None of the good residents of Inverness understood that yet, perhaps because Gordon had treated Charles as if he’d had no talent.

Not once had the older man ever given him credit for his work.

Charles frowned at the memories, extinguishing the lanterns and moving toward the stairs.

Toward the end, when Gordon had been too ill to sit at his bench, he’d finally given Charles some of his commissions, critiquing every movement of Charles’s chisel and pointed awl from a chair arranged in the corner.

When Gordon gave his grudging approval, Charles knew he’d done his best work.

The McPherson christening cup was one such piece. He’d delivered it himself that evening.

McPherson had approved of it with a great glowing smile, but he’d talked more of Gordon’s design than Charles’s execution of the work.

“An artist. A genius. How will we ever do without him? And Mary? Is she coping with her loss?”

Charles had smiled, rubbing the tips of his fingers together in a gesture he’d borrowed from Gordon.

“She’s doing as well as can be expected.

She misses him each day, I’m certain. Although it’s better for both of us if we don’t speak of Gordon, he’s in our thoughts always.

” He hadn’t mentioned, however, that Mary was feeling so much better that she’d taken off for the Highlands.

He stood at the bottom of the stairs, listening for noises above him. Both Cook and the maid, Betty, were asleep in their room. Their accommodations were almost luxurious compared to what he’d had as a young apprentice.

Gordon had cleared out the storeroom for him, and it was there he still slept.

A few years ago, however, he’d installed a latch on the door, a lock that Gordon surprisingly respected.

Perhaps age or marriage to Mary had mellowed him.

Gordon had been happy toward the end of his life, which was more than many men could say.

He had the respect of his peers and wealth, along with the love of a beautiful woman. What else could a man want?

Charles opened his door with the key on his watch fob.

Despite the fact that the shop was empty, he locked the door as a precaution.

He went to his bed and sat on the side of it, reaching into the bedside drawer for one of his most prized possessions.

A lad with talent in his fingers had sketched Mary’s picture one day at the Inverness market, and Charles had taken it from Gordon’s room when he was ill.

Here it rested, in a place no one ever came, waiting for him.

Every night he pulled it from its hiding place.

Mary was his muse and his inspiration, but now the words he spoke were fueled by anger.

“You need to realize, Mary, that your time of wandering around Inverness is over. You must heed those who say that you take too much upon yourself. But most of all, you must realize that Gordon was lax with you. I’ll be more attentive to your behavior.”

She continued to smile back at him in her sweet and somber way, her eyes sparkling at him as if laughter was trapped in their depths.

He placed the picture back in the drawer, moving something aside so that it fit more easily. He palmed the vial, smiling down at it. The container was another item he’d taken from Gordon’s room when the older man had been too ill to protest.

If Mary balked at his instruction, or his plans, he had another idea. One that would force her to comply.