The coachman was already seated and nodded politely to Mared. The cook, an elderly woman with gray hair and one good eye, bustled in with a large platter of what looked like lamb chops. She paid Mared little heed at all, except to tell her that they were in need of flour, and that for a couple of shillings and a tart, the gamekeeper’s boy would go to Aberfoyle on the morrow to fetch it.
Rodina appeared with a platter of leeks behind a pale scullery maid who curtsied politely. “Ye may sit at the end of the table, miss, across from Mr. Beckwith,” Rodina said as she placed the platter of leeks on the table. And as Mared took her seat, Beckwith entered. On his heels were the three footmen. They were a collegial group, obviously, laughing and shoving playfully as they entered the room.
“Is it to be all of us, then?” asked the footman who had introduced himself last night as Charlie.
“Aye, all save Willie. The laird has no’ come in,” Beckwith said as he took his seat and nodded curtly at Mared.
“Gone off with a lass, has he?” a tall, handsome footman asked and winked at Mared as he laughed with the other men, until a stern look from Beckwith made him move on, around the table, to his chair.
“He’s sweet on Miss Crowley,” Rodina haughtily informed them as she wiped her hands on her apron. “I heard him say so this very morn.”
“In his bed again, Rodina?” another footman asked, and Rodina slapped him on the back of his head, much to the delight of the other footmen.
“Miss Crowley, aye,” the tall footman said. “She’s a bonny one.” He made a crude outline of breasts against his chest, which provoked another round of hearty laughter from most everyone.
Save Beckwith. “Alan!” he snapped. “I’ll thank ye to mind yer manners in the presence of the women! And here is our new housekeeper to witness ye behaving so badly!”
Alan glanced at Mared, openly sizing her up as the others took their seats around the large table.
“The new housekeeper is a far sight bonnier than the last,” Alan said, smiling at Mared.
“Oh, Alan!” Una exclaimed, frowning. “And Mrs. Craig no’ yet cold in her grave!”
“That is quite enough!” Beckwith admonished them. “May I present to ye Miss Lockhart of Talla Dileas. Ye will introduce yerselves according to yer rank,” he said and picked up a linen napkin, stuffed it into his collar, and nodded at Una to pass him the lamb.
They went around the table. Charlie and Alan greeted her with big smiles and leering eyes, but Jamie, the third footman, seated on her right, looked at her skeptically and said little as the first course was served.
The coachman, Mr. Haig, nodded politely and informed her that the young groom, William, did not, as a rule, dine with the others, lest there was a visitor. “And then again, the laird, he comes round late many nights,” he informed her.
The cook, Mrs. Mackerell, and the scullery maid, Moreen, said little.
It wasn’t until the main course of lamb chops and oatmeal bannocks was eaten that Jamie leaned back in his chair and studied Mared with a smirk. “Ye’re her, are ye no’? The accursed one?”
That certainly brought the conversation to a grinding halt, and Mared slowly lowered her fork. “I beg yer pardon?”
“Ye’re cursed by a’ diabhal, aye?” he asked, ignoring the gasps of the cook as he eyed her like a curiosity in the Glasgow circus.
“Jamie!” Beckwith said sharply, but the footman was undeterred. “Beggin’ yer pardon, Mr. Beckwith, but I heard all of it the night of the ceilidh,” he said, and leaned forward with a dark grin. “They say ye are a witch,” he challenged her.
Mared couldn’t help but laugh. “A witch! Do they really say so? Then I’ve come up in the world, sir.”
“Then ye confess to being a witch, Miss Lockhart?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.
She laughed again. “If I were a witch, sir, do ye think I’d seek work as a housekeeper?”
Everyone but Jamie laughed at that—but her levity did nothing to quell the sudden interest in her, and from Mrs. Mackerell, a look of horror and revulsion.
This was the moment she despised, the moment when people around her realized there might be something horribly contemptible or frightening about her, and she could feel a cold, empty space suddenly surrounding her, forcing her apart from the rest of the world. It was a moment like a thousand other moments in her life that had long since settled into a distant hum, for she’d learned long ago, when she was just a child, that there was no point in sulking about it. She did what she always did—she smiled down the table and said with all confidence, “I’m no’ a witch.”
“A sorceress, then,” Jamie insisted.
“No, no’ a sorceress,” she scoffed playfully. “A troll.”
Moreen tittered at that.
“I live beneath the old bridge over the water in Glen Ketrich. Ye know the one, aye? I’ve a few wee goblins to tend the garden, but mostly, it’s just us trolls,” she said lightly.
Alan, God bless him, laughed and said, “Aye, I know the bridge. I think the henwife lives there, too, does she no’?”
“Aye!” Mared said brightly. “Why, she’s the housekeeper—who do ye think taught me, then?”