Amanda Scott (20 page)

“Don’t interrupt,” Mariota said. “Little girls should hold their tongues when they are allowed to dine with grown-ups. Moreover, I’m sure I never said any such thing. Did I, sir?” she said, smiling brilliantly at Hector.

“Well, you did,” Isobel said. “Didn’t she, Aunt?”

Visibly startled at being drawn into the discussion in such an abrupt way, Lady Euphemia looked warily from one to the other. “Oh, my dear, I’m sure Mariota may have said such a thing, talking of wildflowers, you know, and mayhap purple is her favorite color for a flower, but now I warrant she is talking of something altogether different and did not mean it as you apparently thought she did. I have noticed that I cannot always follow her thoughts exactly either.”

“That’s just what happens, I’m sure,” Mariota said. “Not that it matters, Isobel. No one was speaking to you, as I recall, so hold your tongue, lest you get us in trouble again. I’m sure I do not want to enrage our dearest Hector more than we enraged him this morning. That was all Cristina’s fault, of course, although I shan’t say another word about it, for I’m sure she never meant to get us into trouble, and merely failed to explain his orders so that I could understand them. Still and all, though, I am never one to hold a grudge. I believe in letting such things go and never referring to them
ever
again.”

“Like now,” Isobel said dryly. “Oh, don’t scold me anymore. I’m mum,” she added, hastily applying her attention to her plate.

Hector had fixed a thoughtful gaze on her, but he said nothing.

The tightening sensation in Cristina’s stomach increased. Catching Hector’s gaze on her next, she wished she could excuse herself from the table, fearing that if she sat there much longer listening to Mariota, her anger would overwhelm her and she would say exactly what she thought of what Mariota had done and was doing. But a lady could not speak her mind so openly or walk away and leave her guests—not without censure. She was their hostess, although presently she did not feel as if she even belonged at Lochbuie, let alone sitting in the lady’s chair at the high table.

Lady Euphemia sat at her left with Isobel just beyond. Mariota, however, sat at Hector’s right in the place of honor. Had other gentlemen been present, his primary male guest would sit there, but in the informal family setting, Mariota had simply taken that place the day after his return from Finlaggan and no one had told her that she must not. So there she sat, monopolizing his attention as if she were some grand visitor and not merely the lady of Lochbuie’s sister.

Truly, Cristina thought, life at Lochbuie had not been what she had expected married life to be. Although she had believed she could be happy as Hector’s wife if he would simply accept her in that position and not puzzle his mind for ways to acquire an annulment, she was no longer certain of that. He did not want her, and as things stood, she feared that a life with him would be trying at best.

The meal ended at last, and uttering a vague excuse that she was certain no one else heeded, she escaped to the kitchen. Her first inclination was to pass through that chamber and out to the yard, but spying Alma in obvious disagreement with the cook, she could not bring herself simply to pass them by.

“What’s amiss here?” she inquired, wrapping herself in her usual calm.

“Only that Calum has neglected t’ send anyone out fishing and the salmon be all but gone,” Alma said, glowering at the cook. “I told him ye’d want a proper fish course for your supper this evening, but he insists the master doesna care if he ever eats fish.”

“Nor he don’t neither,” the cook said testily.

Cristina held up a hand, silencing him. “You mentioned that once before, Calum, but your master desires his guests to be well served, does he not?”

“Aye, I expect so.”

Cristina waited for him to add the usual “m’lady,” but when he did not, she drew a steadying breath and said, “His guests expect fish, so Alma is right, and you will have to send someone to catch a salmon or some fresh trout. Whoever goes will have plenty of time for it and will likely enjoy the expedition. If you do not have time to send someone, I will ask the laird’s steward to do so.”

“I’ll see to it if ye insist,” he said grudgingly.

“Alma, you may go now,” Cristina said quietly, noting that Isobel stood hesitantly nearby in the doorway. “I believe Lady Isobel needs to speak to you.”

“Aye, sure, m’lady, straightaway.”

Cristina noted with approval that the woman gave no sign of the victory she must feel she had just scored over the cook. Turning back to him, she said evenly, “I thought you liked your position here, Calum.”

“I do,” he said. “I ha’ been cook here since the laird came t’ Lochbuie.”

“Have you? Then doubtless in that time you have learned the proper way to address a lady.”

“Aye, but they do be saying as ye willna be here long, so I’m thinking me manners willna come into it.”

“I am here now, however,” she reminded him.

“Aye, sure, but I work for the laird.”

“Then, mayhap you should think of how he will react if I complain to him of your bad manners. Have you had cause yet to believe he will not support me in your dismissal as strongly as he has supported the other changes I have made here?”

“As to that—”

“Perhaps you should likewise consider that his steward will support such a dismissal,” she said. “As I understand it, you and he do not get on well, and the laird has great respect for his steward.” When he paled, she added gently, “You and I, on the other hand, have got along well until now, so I am at a loss to understand your behavior today.”

“I’ll mend me ways straightaway, m’lady. In truth, I ha’ nowt agin ye. Ye’ve made many a suggestion that I ha’ appreciated, particularly since the laird come down t’ me kitchen yestereve t’ say he likes me new way o’ doing things.”

Gratified but still bewildered, she said, “Then why were you so rude to me?”

The man grimaced. “I canna tell ye, and that be plain fact. I shouldna ha’ done it, but ye’ve enemies about who would see ye gone, mistress. Dinna turn your back on no one, I’m thinking.”

“But who would do me harm?”

He shook his head. “Nay, nay, ’twould be as much as me life be worth.”

Telling him to get on with his work and not to forget the fish, Cristina went in search of Alma again and found her in the yard, introducing Isobel to two lads only a year or so older than she was, who had been chopping wood for most of the morning, with a huge scatter of oven-sized quarter logs to show for it.

Isobel surveyed these fruits of their labor with narrowed eyes. She had done no more than tie a long apron over her gown, but Cristina did not say anything about that. “That’s a lot of wood,” Isobel said.

The shorter of the two woodchoppers looked at Cristina. “This lass says she is t’ help us stack yon wood. Be that true, me lady?”

“It is,” Cristina told him, drawing a heavy sigh from her little sister. “Lady Isobel has wanted something more energetic than needlework to do, so we thought you might like some help with the wood.”

“We would that,” he agreed, grinning. “Wi’ three o’ us, we can be finished in half the time.” Glancing at Isobel, he added, “Well, mayhap no half the time, but less anyways. Then, mayhap they’ll let us off t’ do a bit o’ fishing.”

“Mayhap they will at that,” Cristina said, glancing at Alma. “Calum needs fish for supper.”

“’Tis true,” Alma said. “I’ll speak t’ him. Doubtless he’ll want t’ send more than one lad just t’ make sure o’ the fish.”

“I’ll linger here for a bit,” Cristina said. “I want to be sure Isobel knows just how we like the wood stacked at Lochbuie.”

With a wry smile that said she knew young ladies did not usually help gillies stack wood, Alma turned on her heel and hurried back into the kitchen.

“Why don’t you begin over here, Isobel?” Cristina suggested. “I’ll lend you a hand for a short time.”

Isobel looked disbelieving, but when Cristina said nothing more, she went with her to the far side of the woodpile and began selecting logs to stack. “You don’t have to show me, you know,” she said. “I’ve done it often enough at home to know exactly how you like it done.”

“I know, love,” Cristina said. “I just want an excuse not to go back inside yet a while. I’m not feeling very sociable, and I don’t think I could endure another conversation with Aunt Euphemia or Mariota, let alone with both of them, until I’ve enjoyed a few minutes of peace.”

“So you went to the kitchen and walked into the war betwixt Alma and Calum.”

“Is there a war?”

“Aye, because Alma is a Bethune and Calum is a Mackinney.”

“The Mackinneys are connected to the Mackinnons, are they not?”

“Aye, they are,” Isobel said as she carefully squared her logs on the stack. “And the Bethunes are members of Clan Gillean.”

“I see. And doubtless Hector’s steward is of Clan Gillean. I wonder why his cook is not.”

Isobel said, “Calum had served him before, although he would not tell me in what capacity. He said it were nowt for a bairn’s ears, that.”

“You seem to have learned a great deal,” Cristina said.

“I ask questions,” Isobel said. “May I ask you one?”

“Of course you may,” Cristina assured her.

“Are you angry with me, too?”

“Too? Oh, you mean because Hector was.”

“And Mariota, but I displease her whenever I tell her she is contradicting herself. Really, Cristina, it is as if she sometimes gets a picture of things in her head that only she can see, and that picture changes whenever it pleases her to change it.”

Cristina chuckled. It was an apt description of Mariota’s more complex conversations. Nevertheless, she recognized Isobel’s tactics and brought the conversation back to the point. “Hector had good cause to be angry with you,” she said. “Eavesdropping is very rude.”

“I only wanted to be sure you were all right,” Isobel said.

“I can take care of myself, but I thank you for the thought.”

“Do you like him?”

“Of course I do. He is my husband, and more than that he is . . . at least, he can be . . . a most charming gentleman.”

“I’ve seen that for myself,” Isobel said. “I like him, but I was thinking that he had eyes only for Mariota. Now I am not so sure, but he keeps his thoughts to himself, does he not?”

“Aye, he does.”

“Is that why you are angry then?”

“Faith, I am not angry, not with him. Not with anyone,” she added conscientiously.

“But you are,” Isobel said. “You are always angry. Even when you laugh, you are angry—just as Mariota is always lying, even when she tells the truth.”

“Isobel, what a thing to say about your own sister!”

“But she does, Cristina. She never tells the plain truth. She exaggerates everything so much that even when she is telling the truth, she lies.”

Cristina opened her mouth to say “Nonsense,” but she shut it again. Isobel was right. Mariota did tend to exaggerate everything she said.

The child gazed at her, patiently waiting, her blue eyes clear, her rosy lips slightly parted, clearly expecting Cristina to see her point.

Cristina did. “Am I really angry
all
the time?” she asked.

Isobel nodded, then added with a half smile, “Perhaps that is also an exaggeration, but you seem angry so often that I had to stop and think about it. Why are you so angry, Cristina?”

“I cannot answer you,” Cristina said honestly. “I did not know that I seemed that way, but if it seems so to you, I suppose it must be so. I think you are very wise for your years, Isobel. You see things so clearly. I wonder how that came to be.”

“I just watch people,” Isobel said. “I learn by watching.”

“And by listening,” Cristina said with a twinkle.

Isobel grimaced. “Aye,” she said, “and listening.”

“We might all do better by listening more,” Cristina said.

Isobel smiled and returned to stacking the wood, but a moment later, she said, “If you want solitude, why not escape to your tower for a while.”

Deciding that that was an excellent notion, particularly as she wanted to think, Cristina went there directly but found herself recalling not the events of the past few days but her little sister’s words.

Anger? How odd that she had not thought of herself as angry, whilst Isobel apparently believed that she was. She certainly got upset sometimes—frustrated, overwhelmed perhaps—but anger seemed too strong a word to describe her feelings except for the times that angry words flew around in her mind or those extremely rare occasions when she seemed to lose control and say dreadful things that she was sorry afterward for saying.

A sudden poignant memory struck her of a sunny morning in the garden at Chalamine when her mother had scolded her for an unseemly display of temper.

“Ladies do not make a gift of their emotions to all the world,” Lady Macleod had said sternly. “Ladies set good examples for lesser persons to emulate. Courtesy and good behavior are duties, Cristina, and we Macleods never shirk our duty.”

Lady Macleod’s image was suddenly so strong that it was as if she were right there in the tower chamber speaking those words. And Lady Macleod always knew just what one should do in any situation.

Cristina had never seen any circumstance defeat her mother except her death. But death had taken her much too soon, long before she had been able to impart all the so-important things she knew to her daughter, abandoning her to a cruel world, barely half-armed to meet its challenges and burdens.

Cristina did not realize that tears had begun coursing down her cheeks until she dashed an impatient hand across one cheek to brush them away. But the gesture, startling her, released a torrent.

Before she knew what was happening, gusty sobs overwhelmed her. Gasping with them, too overcome to remain upright or to seek a chair or stool, she crumpled to the floor, hugging herself. Her sides heaved, aching as the sobs racked her body. Then uncontrollable, hiccupping cries came, heard by no one, because no one was there—ever, not for Cristina—although heaven knew that she did her best to soothe everyone else’s tears, to soothe everyone else’s woes, to solve everyone else’s problems. But no one else cared enough, apparently, to be there for poor Cristina.