White Regency 03 - White Knight (20 page)

Grace’s first morning at Skynegal issued
in dark and heavy with rain, the wind blowing, thunder rattling what little
glass remained in many of the windows, keeping everyone tucked away by the
hearth fire behind the castle’s heavy walls. Grace postponed the tour she’d
planned of the castle’s surrounding grounds and McFee and McGee were left to
wait out the weather before they could go in search of the additional stock and
other provisions they would need in the days to come.

The rain did, however, allow them one
occupation— counting the precise number of leaks in the roof of the main tower.
There were seventeen.

Sitting in the great hall wrapped beneath
the warmth of a thick woolen shawl, Grace contemplated the extensive list they
had spent the past hours compiling—the repairs that would be needed and the
supplies to be had from Ullapool, the nearest town nearly a day’s sail away.
Each time they would open one of the doors onto another of the long-neglected
chambers, they would discover something more that needed doing—fireplaces to be
swept clean of the mice who had taken up residence there; gunholes, unneeded
for centuries, to be filled. The work was beginning to appear endless, but not,
Grace thought resolutely, impossible. She focused on the first entry on the
list,
a secure roof,
and called to Alastair where he stood by the fire,
putting on the kettle for more tea.

“I was thinking—are there local men
skilled as masons and carpenters who we might hire to begin the repairs on the
castle instead of sending off to Edinburgh for the workers? It would seem a
more prudent choice, both
economically and to avoid the delay. If this rain
continues, by the time they arrived, we might be living underwater with the way
that roof is leaking.”

“Oh, yes, my lady, there are
craftsmen close by, most within a half day’s journey from here. With the
‘Improvements’ taking place in the north and to the east, a good many of the
Highlanders have had to move from the midlands to the shore and they have had a
hard time of it making a living.”

Grace looked at him, puzzled. “But
why would improvements on an estate force its tenants away?”

“Improvements,
my lady, do not necessarily betoken a good thing in
this part of Scotland. Here it is a term that has come to mean the displacement
of many Highland tenants from their homes. Their leases are not renewed and
thus they must take whatever they can carry and go, leaving their crops, their
homes, their very livelihoods behind. Many of the displaced who can are leaving
the Highlands and are emigrating to New Scotland and America.”

“But if the tenants’ leases are not
renewed, then what is to be done with their previous holdings?”

“They are put to sheep instead.”

Grace stared at the Scotsman, incredulous.
“People are being forced from their homes to make way for sheep?”

“Aye. It is a more profitable means
of using the land for many of the landowners.”

Grace was appalled. She thought of the
feeling of community that had always been so prevalent at Ledysthorpe.
“But do the landowners feel no attachment, no responsibility for the lives
of their people?”

Alastair shook his head dolefully.
“Many of the old Scottish lairds went into exile after the failed Jacobite
rebellion, leaving their people here, dependent upon the strangers who came to
take over their estates. The new landlords—a good many of them English, begging
your pardon, my lady—view their tenants more as an inconvenience than anything
else.”

Grace stood and crossed the room to stand
before the hearth fire. She stared into the flames licking at the peat brick,
twisted inside with uneasiness. She knelt to pour
a fresh cup of tea and
sipped the soothing brew, remaining quiet for some time. She thought of the
people being displaced from their homes, forced to leave all they had known and
loved. It touched a chord deep within her, the injustice of it, the utter
sorrow of it. It was a feeling she had herself been victim to when she had been
made to leave Ledysthorpe for her uncle’s house in London, and then again when
she wed Christian and removed to Knighton House. The only difference was that
she hadn’t been left without a means of survival. She had been provided with a
roof over her head and food on her plate. These poor people had been left with
virtually nothing.

Grace turned to face Alastair once again.
“I should like you to put out a communication asking for anyone in the
vicinity who is interested in working on the castle renovations to come here to
Skynegal. Carpenters, stonemasons, plasterers, woodworkers, all. Any who aren’t
skilled can be taught.”

Alastair’s eyes went wide as they so often
did. “My lady, a good many will come!”

“And we will find work for them.
There is much to be done here, not only the repairs to the roof. It was my grandmother’s
wish that I restore Skynegal to the great estate it once was. But I will need
your help in figuring a fair wage for their work. Once we have a preliminary
listing, I will write to Mr. Jenner in London and instruct him to forward the
necessary funds.”

Alastair’s expression was fixed for
several moments. He just stared at Grace, stunned. Finally his face broke into
a smile and he closed his eyes.

“Alastair? Are you unwell?”

The Scotsman shook his head, his smile
growing wider still. She saw that tears had come to his eyes. “Oh, my
lady, I could not sleep last night for the fear that your sudden interest in
Skynegal was for the very reasons I spoke of to you moments ago. Skynegal lies
on much good arable land, with oak and pine forests and rich verdant glens. She
is not an estate that turns a great profit by her rents, but she could were she
to convert to a sheep walk. Factors from the neighboring estates have already
come seeking to purchase portions of the estate
in order to increase
their own holdings for the same purpose. But with the estate held in trust, we
could not even consider their offers, at least not until it reverted to its new
ownership. And it has now and I praise God that Skynegal has come to you, my
lady.”

With every moment she stayed at Skynegal,
Grace began to sense more clearly her purpose in being called there. “My
thanks, Alastair, for your kind words. But I fear I am not as learned in estate
management as I will need to be. I will have to rely upon you to advise me on a
good many matters. I only know that I cannot abide what you have told me has
happened to the tenants on the other estates. My grandmother always said the
life-blood of any great estate is its people. I will make a vow never to allow
greed for pound profit to overstep my own sense of morality.”

Grace set down her teacup and crossed to
the window. Outside, on the courtyard, the rain still fell steadily. “When
the weather clears, I should like to take a tour about the estate and pay a
visit to the tenants of Skynegal. I would ask that you accompany me, since you
are acquainted with the people. I imagine my coming will give them thoughts
similar to those which kept you up and worrying through the night. They will
fear I seek to evict them. They will not trust me. I want to assure them no
such action will be taken here at Skynegal as long as I am lady here.”

Alastair nodded.

“Now,” Grace finished, “if
you would please set to putting out the call for workers, I would like to make
use of this afternoon’s inclement weather to acquaint myself with the inside of
the castle.”

“Of course, my lady, I would be happy
to take you about and show you—”

Grace put up a hand. “I appreciate
your offer, Alastair, truly, but I think I should prefer to explore the castle
on my own. Skynegal has been a part of my family’s heritage for generations and
yet I was never told of its existence. It has been home to people I have never
known, setting to events I had never been told. I should like to spend some
time getting acquainted with my history privately.”

Alastair inclined his head in a gesture of
complete understanding.

“However,” Grace added on a
smile, “if I do not return by nightfall, you may have to come searching
for me.”

Grace set aside the last of the stack of
books she’d found packed away inside the carved wooden trunk, one of several
she’d discovered in the many rooms and storage closets of the castle. They
mostly contained estate papers, small memorabilia of days gone by, and even
some old clothing, long-forgotten and moldering from the damp.

Grace leaned back against the trunk and
closed her eyes, rubbing the taut muscles at the nape of her neck. She had
placed several of the books apart to study later, texts on estate management
and crop cultivation that she thought might prove useful in the coming months.
She had been in this particular room for hours, it seemed, her skirts pooled
around her, smudged by the dust that had settled over the past century or more.
A small timepiece hung from a ribbon around her neck and she took it up,
studying it again as she had many times that day.

She had found the piece soon after she’d
begun her explorations through the castle earlier that day. It had only an hour
hand and did not function at all accurately, its small dial going from sun to
moon to sun again several times in the past hours. But that didnt’ matter to
Grace. She wore the piece for the sentiment of its engraving. Modest,
oval-shaped, and cased in tarnished silver, it had inscribed upon its case
words in Gaelic.

Is e seo m’ uair-sa.
Deirdre had given her its translation:
This is my
time.

Grace could have no way of knowing what
meaning the words had represented nor what purpose the original owner of the
watch could have had for inscribing them. It didn’t matter, for the words could
not have been any more significant to her had she inscribed them herself.

This is my time.

For the first time in her life, Grace had
found a sense of purpose, a feeling that her very existence had reason for
being other than to interfere. Her parents, while kind
and genuinely fond of
her, had seen her as more of an inconvenience to the plans they had mapped out
for themselves upon their marriage, a plan that didn’t allow for the addition
of a third. Nonny had cared for her, raised her in love and security, yes, but
doing so was not a decision she had been given any choice in. It was a duty
Nonny had assumed in the wake of her children’s abandonment of their only
unwanted
child.

Grace’s sudden place in the household of
Uncle Tedric, a bachelor accustomed to coming and going as he pleased, had left
her feeling like a burr beneath his saddle. And then there was Christian, who
had made it abundantly clear he had been forced by his grandfather the
duke—against his will—to wed her.

All her life, she had known a sense of
waiting, of searching, as if the world was spinning past her and she could but
watch from the outskirts. But now was
her
time, a time to cease being an
inconvenience, to cease being tolerated. Now was her time to pursue her own
life’s path.

Grace looked to the timepiece once again,
then closed her fingers around it as she headed for the door.

Yes, this was her time.

The following morning broke to a glorious
sunrise that peeked over rugged mist-skirted mountains to the east. After
sharing a hearty breakfast of porridge, bannocks, and tea, Grace and Alastair
set out on their round of visits to the tenants of the estate. Flora, Deirdre,
and Liza set to mopping up the water that had puddled beneath the various leaks
in the roof. To help pass the hours inside during the previous day’s rain,
Deirdre and Flora had baked shortbread for Grace and Alastair to take along
with them for the tenants. In doing so, they had depleted nearly all of the
sugar and most of the flour and butter Grace had brought along with her on her
arrival. McFee and McGee had gone that morning, sailing north for Ullapool to
purchase sacks of meal, sugar, and the various other food stores they needed to
provision the castle.

They had taken with them a letter that
Grace had written to Mr. Jenner at his offices in London with a request for the
release of additional monies from the account that had been set aside for
Skynegal’s restoration. Until then, she would have only what Nonny had given
her many years earlier to keep them.

It had been an early spring day when Nonny
had come to her holding a small embroidered reticule. “My mother gave this
to me when I was a young girl of your age shortly before I wed your
grandfather. Women seldom are permitted money of their own and oft are left
desolate in times of need. When my mother gave this to me, she made me promise
that I should only open it in time of great extremes. I was fortunate in that I
never met with such crises and so I am passing this on to you, dear.
I hope you shall never
come to a time when you are faced with misfortune or deprivation, but one can
never tell what Fate has in store. If you should find yourself in such
circumstances, just remember, like Pandora’s box, with this you shall never be
utterly without hope.”

Grace had never opened the bag, not even
to peek, until just before she had left London to travel to Skynegal. She had
known that the bag had contained money, but she could have had no notion of the
amount. She had been overwhelmed when she had found several five-guinea coins
wrapped within four fifty-pound notes. Discovering the treasure had removed the
last obstacle to her departure for Scotland, affirming for Grace from then on
that she was indeed pursuing the right course.

Grace and Alastair set out across the
heather-covered Sgiathach hills on sturdy Highland ponies, riding over a
verdant glen carpeted in bluebells, primroses, and wild anemones. They came
across strath and brae along the River Sgiathach, a peaceful scene touched by
the trill and chip of the bright red crossbills who flitted about the fir trees
as they passed. Along the way, Alastair passed the time recounting tales of his
childhood on this same land, land on which his great-grandfather had toiled
more than a century before.

“You speak of your love of this land
as some would the love for a woman,” Grace remarked, sitting with ease in
the sidesaddle as her pony picked its way along the narrow glen path.
“Have you never wed, Alastair?”

Alastair immediately fell silent—not a
thing he was prone to do—and Grace reproved herself for her too-inquisitive
nature. “I’m sorry, I should not have asked you something so personal. It
isn’t my place to pry.”

“Nae, my lady, ‘tis nothing improper
in your asking.” He shook his head. “It is just that I haven’t
thought of it in some time. No, my lady, I have never wed. I thought to once,
even got down on my knee to ask her.”

“She refused you?”

“Nae, my lady, not at all. Iseabail
accepted and we even made ready to wed the following summer. I had a year yet
to complete my schooling. ‘Twas while I was away to university in Edinburgh
that she grew impatient. She wanted us to wed sooner, but I could not quit my
studies. So she wrote to
me that she had decided to wed another.” He hesitated a moment, his voice
hushing slightly. “Evidently the attachment I had assumed between us was
not truly extended to me in kind.”

Grace knew well torment of loving another
who did not love in return. “I am so sorry, Alastair.”

He summoned a resolute smile. “Aye,
she’s gone to New Scotland these past ten years, but for as long as I live,
I’ll ne’er forget the first time I saw her. ‘Twas at a
ceilidh
and
everyone came from hereabouts for dancing and singing. I had never met Iseabail
before and when I first set my eyes upon her, she was singing an old Scottish
ballad. Iseabail had the most beautiful voice I’d ever heard before or since. I
was awestruck, aye. Everyone listening was, too.”

A sentimental look came over his face as
the ponies continued on their way across the glen floor. Alastair gazed
wistfully at the pathway ahead, singing softly in a brogue that he had
heretofore kept hidden.

Ca’
the ewes to the knowes,

Ca’
them whaur the heather grows,

Ca’
them whaur the burnie rows,

My
bonnie dearie.

Hark,
the mavis even’ sang,

Soundin’
Cluden’s woods amang,

Then
a fauldin’ let us gang,

My
bonnie dearie.

They rode along a space, each lost to
their own thoughts. Grace listened as Alastair sang, not so much to the words,
but to the love that was still so evident in them, the love he bore for the
girl who’d broken his heart so many years ago.

A small part of her wondered if Christian
ever thought of her as she did him, with a wonder for what might have been had
they met under differing circumstances. They were thoughts that stole into her
mind far more often than she cared to admit, when she would lie awake at night,
watching the moon through her window. She wondered if Christian ever reminisced
as she did about the intimacy of what they had shared together, the emotions
their union had brought. She knew the passion they had so briefly shared had
touched him—perhaps not as deeply it had her—but there must have been something
to have made him return to her as he had time and time again. Grace wouldn’t
believe that it was simply the sexual act for if he hated so much the place
she’d come to hold in his life, he could have just as easily taken his pleasure
with another. But he hadn’t. Knowing that was what left the small kernel of
hope deep within her heart.

They steered the ponies across a shallow
brook that tumbled across the glen. A simple stone cottage lay snuggled close
against the hillside in front of them. A column of smoke rose out of a small
chimney—the
lum,
as Alastair had called it—above the thickly thatched
roof that was weighted down against the Highland winds with stones hanging from
ropes that stretched from one side to the other.

A handful of small white sheep dotted the
verdant hillside, picking among the moor-grass and heath, their distant
bleating carried on the soft breeze that blew down from the mountains. As they
approached the cottage, Grace spotted a small face peeking at them through an
opening in the wall where there was no window, only an oilcloth flapping in the
breeze for a covering. Dogs barked, running around the ponies who were so
docile, they barely gave the hounds notice. A low stone wall enclosed a small
byre where a stocky pony and a shaggy bedraggled Highland calf stood watching
them with little interest.

They stopped the ponies and were
dismounting when a man came from inside the cottage to meet them. He wore a
coarse woolen shirt with full sleeves rolled to his elbows and a tartan belted
at the waist and draped from one shoulder across to the waist on the opposite
side. Woolen stockings with a similar crisscross design covered his legs below
the knee, and leather brogues laced over his feet. Behind him, lingering in the
doorway, stood a woman, her head covered by a kerchief, her feet bare beneath
her ankle-length skirts. Two small children clung to her on each side.

“La math,
Alastair,” the man said in Gaelic.

Alastair nodded to him. “Calum, you
look well. How is the family?”

The man answered him in rapid Gaelic,
eyeing Grace suspiciously as he spoke.

“Calum,” Alastair said,
“I’d like to introduce you to Lady Grace, Marchioness Knighton. Lady Grace
has inherited Skynegal. Lady Grace, please meet Calum Guthrie.”

Calum bowed his head respectfully, saying,
“My lady.”

He no longer spoke Gaelic, but when he
raised his head to look at her, she saw again the unmistakable darkness of
suspicion in his eyes, suspicion and fear of what her coming to Skynegal might
portend for him and his small family.

“It is a pleasure to meet you, Mr.
Guthrie,” Grace said, smiling openly in hopes of allaying some of his
misgivings. When he didn’t respond, she motioned toward where the woman still
stood framed in the low doorway. “Is this your wife?”

Calum nodded. “Aye, she is. ‘Tis
Mary. An’ the two boys, Calum and Ian.”

Grace left her pony and walked over to the
others, smiling at the woman. She made to hand her the shortbread they’d
brought, wrapped in linen. “Hello, Mary. It is a pleasure to meet
you.”

But the woman did not look at her, nor did
she move to take the bundled shortbread. Instead she glanced uneasily to her
husband.

“She disna speak English,” Calum
said, coming to join his wife. He said something to her in Gaelic and she
nodded, then turned back to regard Grace, bowing her head with a tentative
smile.

“This is for you,” Grace said,
holding out the shortbread to her again.

Mary looked to Calum, who nodded, and took
the bundle. When she saw what it was, she smiled, although the same cloud of fear
that Grace had noticed in Calum’s eyes now darkened her eyes as well.
“Taing
is buidheachas dhut, baintighearnachd do.”

Now it was Grace’s turn to look to Calum
in bewilderment. “I’m afraid I do not understand Gaelic yet.”

“She gives her thanks to you, your
ladyship.”

“Please tell her she is most
welcome.”

As Calum repeated Grace’s words to Mary,
Grace crouched down and extended her hand to the first of the two boys. He
looked to be about seven years old and was tall and thin like his father. She
noticed his clothing was tattered and he had no shoes to cover his feet. He did
not take her hand, but looked curiously at the fine kid glove that covered it.
The other boy did the same, peeking from behind him.

“She disna have a hand, Da,”
said the first one.

Calum quickly silenced him with a
Hish!
and
the child turned to her as if she’d suddenly
sprung a second head, one that was coming to swallow him whole. Grace held up a
hand and shook her head, saying, “It is all right.” She tugged on the
fingers of her glove while the boy just stared with a mixture of both
fascination and fear. When all her fingers were loose, Grace drew off the glove
to reveal her bare hand underneath.

She flexed her fingers. “See, I do
have a hand. It was just covered by a glove.”

The boy’s fear melted away beneath the
light of curiosity. He took up the glove Grace offered to him, staring at it as
if it were made of the finest gold.

“Will you shake hands with me
now?” Grace asked and he did, wrapping his grubby fingers tightly around
hers.

“What is your name?”

“Calum,” he mumbled, his
attentions again focused on the glove, the way it was stitched, the small
flower embroidered upon it. He set it up against his hand, comparing the size
of it to his own.

“I should have known that your name
was Calum because you look just like your da.”

She noticed the second boy peering
tentatively around his brother’s arm. He was perhaps three or four, with a mop
of reddish hair and a sprinkle of freckles crossing his small nose. Grace
removed her other glove and handed it to him. “And I would guess your name
is Ian.”

“Aye,” he answered in a tiny voice,
clasping the hand she held toward him and taking the glove with his other.
“You are
vewy pwetty.”

Grace smiled brightly. “Well, thank
you, my fine sir.”

“What’s a ‘sir’?”

” ‘Sir’ is another name for a
grown-up boy like you.”

He grinned at her, still clutching her
glove.

Grace stood then and peered inside the
cottage, but she could see no more than a foot beyond the low doorway, for it
was very dark inside. She glanced to Calum still standing beside Mary.
“May I have a look inside? I’ve never been inside a crofting
cottage.”

The two exchanged a curious glance and
then Calum nodded, seeming almost reluctant to allow her inside but afraid to
refuse her.

Grace removed her tall riding derby and
stepped through the doorway into a large room that was at once a kitchen,
sitting room, and bedroom together. Despite its meager furnishings, it was a
place that gave one a sense of home the moment they entered. A fire burned in
the small hearth, over which an iron kettle hung from a hook. The far corner of
the room was completely taken up by a huge pine box bed. A crude oaken table
stood at the room’s center, covered with numerous wooden bowls of porridge—at
least half a dozen. Odd, Grace thought, for only four had come out to greet
her.