Emma Jensen - Entwined (7 page)

"What I would like, Iseabail Ròis, is for you to do a bit of thinking before you do something rash!"

"Rash? The man has already caught me creeping about his house like a thief in the night; our father
was
a thief at some point yesterday; and you use the word
rash?"
Unable to help herself, Isobel laughed. "Oh, Maggie, I do love you. Now, get out of my way."

In truth, she had no intention of barreling into the Hall. Not yet, at least.

She simply needed to think a bit, perhaps allow herself the ultimate luxury of dipping her toes in the stream while she did so.

As it turned out, there was no need for Maggie to move. Both sisters were forced to jump back as the door swung in. Jamie MacLeod, visibly confused sons in tow, appeared in the doorway. Without a word, he removed his coat and hat and headed straight toward the study, the image of the whiskey decanter all but blazing from his eyes.

"Papa?" Hot on his heels, Isobel pressed, "What happened?" All four of her siblings followed. "Papa!"

Having had years of practice, Maggie slipped past and reached the liquor first. She poured her father a miserly shot, then tucked the bottle tight against her chest when Rob reached for it. Jamie tossed back the whiskey and held out the glass. Maggie shook her head.

"Och,
lass, I need another wee dram after what I've just suffered!"

Isobel moved in front of him. "Not until you've told us what happened."

Jamie ran his free hand through his grizzled hair and darted a beseeching glance around her shoulder. Maggie ignored him. "Aye, if I must. But not with
an pigidh bheag
here."

Five pairs of eyes swung to Tessa, who promptly tried to make herself inconspicuous behind the wing chair. "Off with you, brat," Geordie ordered.

Tessa set her jaw. "I'm every bit as much a member of this family as you, you great lummox!"

"Aye, perhaps, but ten years younger and aeons dimmer."

"Debatable, that," Tessa muttered, but made a show of marching from the room. Maggie, for what it was worth, closed the door and did her best to block the keyhole with her skirts.

"Now, Da', suppose you tell us why you dragged Geordie and me away from our walk to town." Rob draped himself over a chair. "There's a regiment passing through, you know."

"Blues," his brother chimed in. "The officers are always good for a bit of news from Town—"

"Cuist!"
Isobel hushed him, her patience shredded. "Well, Papa?"

"Och,
Izzy..." Jamie, with all the drama of his sons and none of the elegance, dropped onto the divan. From his sagging hose to the glass dangling from his limp fingers, he was the very picture of woe. Isobel felt both an urge to embrace him and to smack him smartly atop his graying head." 'Tis done for, we are. Sacked," he moaned. "Given the boot.

Deprived of my livelihood and the only means of supporting m'darlin'

bairns!"

This brought Rob's head up. "What was that?"

Geordie gaped. "The marquess sacked you? Why?"

"A cruel man, he is. Heartless. Why, he hasn't a whit o' concern for aught but his own money. No thought of my family..."

"Papa!" Isobel closed her eyes and tried to count ten. She made it to three. "How can you say so? His lordship's concern for his money is right enough. 'Twas your sticky fingerprints all over it!"

"What was that?" Rob demanded.

Geordie's jaw swung as if on hinges. "You took money from the man?"

Isobel turned on them. "For shame, both of you! Where on earth did you think your shiny coins came from last night?"

"Well, I—" Rob stammered. "I thought—wages..."

Geordie said nothing.

"Oh!" Isobel threw up her hands. "God save us from the witless!" She looked back to her father, who now had his face in his hands. "I suppose we ought to be grateful he didn't have you tossed headfirst in jail!" Not surprisingly, there was no response to that. "Well, how long do we have to get out? Papa,
how long?"

There was a lengthy silence. Then Jamie cleared his throat. "Actually, there is... We can..."

"We can what?" she demanded.

"We can stay."

Had he announced that the Archangel Gabriel himself had descended to their aid, Isobel could not have been more shocked. "What did you say?"

"Lord Oriel gave us an alternative. Can't take it, of course..."

"Papa!"

"Och,
very well. The man is willing to let us keep the house. He even offered an allowance. If..."

"If what?"

"Nay, nay." Jamie lifted bleary eyes. " 'Twas a lifeline, but one not to be grabbed. Damn me if he wasn't generous, though."

"We'll be here a long time if you cannot manage to get the tale out, Papa."

"You'll not like it, Izzy lass."

"As if my liking for the way of things has stopped you in the past!" She ignored Maggie's hand, lifted in warning. "Out with it now."

Jamie shuffled for a moment, then announced, "He'll forget about my—

er—lapse in judgement in exchange for..."

Suddenly the room grew very still. Isobel took a deep breath. "In exchange for what?"

"For you, Izzy. He'll trade his hold on me for you."

There was a quiet gasp from the other side of the room as Maggie nearly lost her grip on the decanter. Isobel's jaw was slack. For what seemed an eternity, the only sound in the room was the ticking of the mantel clock.

Then Rob's voice shattered the silence. "He wants
Isobel?
My God, is the man daft?"

"Deaf?" was his brother's contribution. "Blind? No offense, Izzy. You know we think you're a prime article, but you've a hell of a tongue on you, and, well, Maggie's the looker. Why didn't Oriel ask for her?"

"Geordie!" Maggie had clearly found her voice. "How dare you say such things?"

"Didn't mean anything by it. You've always been the pretty one."

"Oh, you idiot! I wasn't referring to your nasty insults, though you'd do well to take a bit of lye to
your
tongue. Nay How dare you be so glib about a devil's bargain?" She slammed the decanter onto the nearest table and rushed to Isobel's side. She wrapped one arm around her sister and, in uncharacteristic fury, shook her free fist at her father. "You told him what he could do with his offer, didn't you?"

There was another ominous silence. Isobel, roused from unfamiliar speechlessness by Maggie's equally unfamiliar shouting, managed, "What did you say to him, Papa?"

Their father could not have looked less impassioned if he had tried. "I refused, of course."

"And called him out on the spot, I trust," Maggie snapped.

"Called him out?" Geordie repeated.

"Are you daft now?" Rob demanded. "The fellow's no doubt had years at Manton's!"

"Madness," Geordie agreed. "Da' would only end up with a ball in the gut."

Jamie shuddered. "I know I ought to have____Manton's.

Aye, Manton's."

"I cannot believe I am hearing this!" Maggie was nearly spitting in her rage. "The man has the gall to bargain so, and you let him get away with it?"

"Don't see that he had a choice, Mags." Geordie was making his way stealthily toward the decanter. "Happens all the time. Local demigod, holed up on some ghastly country estate. I daresay he's gone through all his maids already."

"And the tavern wenches," Rob added, gesturing for a glass. "Be happy he hasn't had a look at you, Maggie Líl. You're the only one with hopes of marrying well, after all."

From his seat, their father was moaning again, this time something about being a miserable wretch of a man. Isobel felt her sister stiffen to the point of shattering.

"A curse on the three of you! " 'Tis ashamed I am to share blood! Why, if I'd one of Manton's pistols right now—"

"Maggie," Isobel said gently.

"You'd what?" Rob laughed. "Have a go at Oriel? He might just let you shoot him if you'd but flash a smile first."

"Robert." Isobel's voice went up a notch.

'"Tis right, Margaret is," their father mumbled. "Honor and my duty as a father, wretch of one though I am, demands no less. Find me some gloves, Geordie lad. Daresay the blackguard'll shoot me dead on the spot, but I'll have the satisfaction of slapping him like a proper gentleman."

"Both cheeks, Da'!" Geordie chuckled into his glass and made no move whatsoever to find the demanded gloves.

"I mean it, lad! Off with you now to m'wardrobe! And you can lay out my best black coat while you're at it. 'Tis fine enough for any man to be buried in."

That did it.

"Enough—all of you!" Isobel jerked from her sister's embrace and planted herself squarely in front of her father. She spoke very slowly. "You will tell me now, exactly what Lord Oriel demands. Is he looking for a bedmate?"

"Isobel!"

"Shh, Maggie. Well, Papa?"

Jamie shook his head. "What else am I to think, Izzy? Damned cool bugger. He claimed to want you as his secretary."

"Was there more?"

Now her father looked surprised. "Isn't that enough? His secretary.

Hah!"

"Answer me. Was there more?"

"To be sure there was. Wants you to live at the Hall, he does. A full time employ, he called it." Jamie gave a halfhearted wave in his son's direction.

"Gloves, Geordie!"

Isobel grabbed his hand. "And if I go, what do you get?" Her father stared at her blankly for a moment before his eyes sharpened. It was an expression part hopeful and part wounded. "Tell me. Do we get to keep the house?"

"Aye."

"And he would pay me your wages?"

"Aye. That, too."

Maggie's fingers clenched over hers. "Isobel, you cannot."

"You're wrong, Mairghread Líl. I can." Turning her back to her father and brothers, Isobel touched Maggie's cheek. "I do not believe he will ask anything truly ill of me."

"How can you know that?"

"Ah, well I cannot. But I can believe. And hope, You will help me pack, won't you?"

Their eyes met, Maggie's concerned and loving, Isobel's as certain as she could manage. "Aye," Maggie said after a long moment. "I will. And I'm coming with you."

"So am I! I'll plant him a facer he'll feel for weeks!" Tessa's voice came clearly through the keyhole.

Isobel spun back to face the door. Somehow, in the midst of it all, she found the ability to laugh. "You'll do no such thing, either of you. It's my affair, and I'll see to it."

Minutes later, a reluctant Tessa dispatched upstairs to search for a valise, Isobel rounded on her father again. "I understand that you're a bit unclear as to my end of the bargain, but I suggest you inform us of his in complete detail." She shoved trembling hands into her apron pockets. "If we're to accept his lordship's generosity, this time I, for one, would like to know precisely what you're to get."

"Izzy." Jamie struggled from his seat. "I don't think—"

"Nay You don't." She struggled to soften her words with a faint smile.

"You dream. I suppose 'tis your legacy to all of us. We hope for the best."

Hoping for the best was all well and good, she decided as she walked away from the cottage several hours later, valise in hand. Expecting it, however, was dangerous. All things considered, perhaps her future was not so uncertain. There was no doubt in her mind that Lord Oriel would be perfectly clear on what he wanted from her; there would be no need for any expectations at all.

Behind her, she could feel Maggie's eyes, no doubt worried and grim.

Somewhere behind her sister, the men's eyes, Isobel was sure, were beginning to glaze with drink. Disaster averted was the best excuse they had had for celebration in months.

CHAPTER 5

It had been hard for him that spake it to have put more truth and untruth
together, in few words, than in that speech: "Whosoever is delighted in
solitude is either a wild beast or a god."

—Francis Bacon

Isobel stood in front of the Hall's massive doors and knocked again. She had been pounding the bronze knocker for a good five minutes. Already nervous, she felt very small and thoroughly insignificant as she waited to be admitted, rather like a poor and unwanted relative. It did not improve matters that the knocker itself, designed to look like the face of a satyr, leered at her.

The possibility of turning around and heading straight back home was tempting. Of course she would do no such thing. The marquess had agreed to accept her in her father's stead, and the least she could do was to speak with him.

It would help a great deal if someone would let her into the house.

Her ears were ringing from the steady assault on the door, and she took a moment's rest. She turned about on the step to survey the grand sweep of sparkling gravel that completed the approach to Oriel Hall. Despite the rather bedraggled appearance of the central flower bed and the tired look of the Hall itself, the estate screamed of old money and even older title. One day the Marquess of Oriel would become the Duke of Abergele, and hence would entertain some of the more illustrious personages of the Realm.

She assumed the architect had not had a poor, plain Scottish spinster in mind when he had designed either the circle or the sprawling Hall. No, the images would have been more along the line of regal ladies in farthingales and starched ruffs, visitors who would most certainly not be left standing on the steps with a single, worn valise beside their scuffed shoes.

Isobel had never paid much attention to the great house. The secretary's daughter, after all, was not likely to be invited for tea. Nor had she gained a clear impression of the place in the past day. One arrival had been in the dead of night, the other in nervous anticipation. She had left shakily both times. This visit promised nothing different, except that she had no idea when she would be leaving.

She was not going anywhere until she had seen Lord Oriel. Squaring her shoulders, she twisted her face into an imitation of the leering satyr and spun, determined to keep knocking until someone answered.

She found herself face-to-face with the butler.