Payton did not see Mared, but when he retired that night, exhausted and out of sorts, he smelled the lilac, her scent. She’d been here. She’d touched his things, had touched his bed. He’d grown used to detecting that scent every night and found he could hardly sleep without it.
Yet he slept badly, for his dreams were familiar—of longing or searching for Mared, of big oaken kegs of Eilean Ros whiskey, of his late father. But mostly, he dreamed of Mared, and when he dreamed about her, they were dreams of frustration, and he thrashed about, until the linens and pillows of his bed were strewn haphazardly about.
He arose early the next morning with the troublesome task of replacing Jamie on his mind. In spite of Jamie’s atrocious lack of judgment, he’d been a good footman, and he would not be easy to replace.
After some discussion, Payton left it in the capable hands of Beckwith for the time being and rode to Aberfoyle, where he was to meet with two men who were interested in investing in his distillery. That was followed by a discreet, but informative call to the smithy’s son.
When Payton returned to Eilean Ros, it was well after dark, and it wasn’t until he’d retired to his suite of rooms and emptied his pockets that he realized he’d forgotten to call on the late Mrs. Craig’s husband.
“Damnation,” he muttered. He hadn’t missed a week since Mrs. Craig had died. He was faithful in his vow to see after the welfare of the elderly Mr. Craig, and his grandson, chubby-cheeked Graham, a lad who’d had the misfortune of losing his mother in childbirth and his grandmother soon after that. His father had long since departed to some foreign port. Payton had promised Mrs. Craig on her deathbed to look after the two of them.
He’d intended to call with a pouch of gold crowns so that Mr. Craig might purchase what dry goods he and young Graham might need before the weather turned to autumn and the rains set in, but his thoughts had been otherwise occupied today. And as he had promised Miss Crowley to attend kirk services with her and her family on the morrow, he’d be riding in the opposite direction of the Craig house.
He’d ask Beckwith to deliver it, then.
But Sunday morning, he could not find Beckwith—he’d left to call on his elderly mother, Charlie said. Payton walked outside to have a look, hoping to catch Beckwith before he departed.
While Beckwith was nowhere to be seen, Mared was there.
Aye, Mared, wearing her old purple gown, her arisaidh wrapped around her shoulders. She was speaking with the two maids, who, Payton noticed, were wearing gowns that had once belonged to his cousin Sarah. Rodina was twirling this way and that, and Una was inspecting the hem of her sleeve.
It was Una who saw him first and dipped a quick curtsey, which prompted Rodina and Mared to turn and have a look.
Rodina curtsied, too, but when Mared turned, she smiled and waved.
“Good morning, ladies.”
“Good morning, milord,” Rodina and Una muttered.
“Good morning, Douglas!” Mared chirped, and the two young women looked at her as if she’d lost her mind. “What is it, then? Oh! Ye must think me impertinent,” she said, and with an easy laugh, she shook her head. “I beg yer pardon, but on Sundays I’m no’ in his masterful employ.”
Rodina’s eyes grew wide, and she looked anxiously at Payton. Una was too shocked to peel her gaze from Mared.
“Sundays ye are free to come and go as ye please,” he politely corrected her. “But ye are still very much in my employ, Miss Lockhart.”
“Am I?” she asked cheerfully, and put a hand over her eyes to shield them from the sun as she looked up at him. “Then I do beg yer pardon, milord, for I misunderstood completely.”
“I’m scarcely surprised, as ye seem prone to misunderstanding.”
“I prefer to say I am open to differing interpretations,” she cheerfully retorted and bobbed a curtsey at him, all the while looking at him with a devilish spark in her eye.
Rodina and Una gaped at both of them.
Payton shifted his smile to them. “Yer gowns are quite lovely,” he said.
“Thank ye, milord,” Una said. “Miss Lockhart gave them to us.”
“Well…no’ me,” Mared clarified. “The gowns were a gift from Miss Douglas.”
Payton knew better than that. Sarah lumped servants and dogs together in her thinking, and she would not make a gift of her gowns to two lowly housemaids.
“She was very pleased with Rodina and Una’s service. She told me so more than once,” Mared added, looking at him pointedly.
It took him a moment, but when he realized that as it was customary for a lady to pass her gowns to a housekeeper when she had grown tired of them, he assumed Sarah must have given them to Mared. Mared, in turn, had given them to Rodina and Una, extending the thanks that would never come from Sarah.
He glanced at Mared. She cocked her head.
She’d have no argument from him. Rodina and Una were good chambermaids, and they’d both worked hard to keep Eilean Ros in order after Mrs. Craig’s death. He greatly appreciated Mared’s act of kindness, and he smiled at Rodina and Una. “Aye, she said as much to me, as well. In fact, it was the last thing that she said upon her departure.”