Her mother’s eyes narrowed.
“I’ll endeavor to be more careful,” she quickly assured them. “But I best go back now and no’ brook his displeasure.”
The family exchanged another look; Ellie hid a smile behind a dainty cough.
“I’ll get the cart,” Liam said and left the table. Mared could feel her mother’s eyes on her and glanced at her from the corner of her eye. Aye, her mother was smiling in that way she had that made Mared feel completely exposed. This time was different only in that she wasn’t certain of what, exactly, she was exposing. So she abruptly downed her port, stood up, and began her good-byes.
They all saw her out, and her mother, the last to hug her, tightened Mared’s arisaidh at her throat and smiled. “Mind ye have a care, daughter,” she said and hugged Mared once more, whispering, “Be kind to him, lass. He’ll return it tenfold.” And she let go, smiled knowingly at Mared’s look of surprise, and gestured to the carriage. “There is yer brother now.”
Thank the saints! Mared gave her mother a tight smile and hurried to Liam.
The night was still and beautiful, a full late summer moon lighting their way, no sound but the creaking of their old, battered cart and the occasional braying of one of their two donkeys.
When they came over Ben Cluaran, and Eilean Ros could be seen clearly below them in the moonlight, Liam brought the donkeys to a halt and gazed down on it. “He’s done well,” he said simply. “No one can deny he’s made a pearl of it.”
Mared looked down at the massive estate. “Do ye think I chose the proper course, Liam?” she blurted.
Her question obviously surprised her brother. He blinked, then cleared his throat. Then once more. “The proper course?” he repeated after a long moment.
“Aye…refusing to accept his offer, that is.”
Liam frowned thoughtfully. “I canna rightly say, Mared. I suppose there was a time we might have sent ye to Edinburra to escape yer fate, but as we canna do even that for ye…”
“Escape my fate?”
“Aye, aye, the curse. ’Tis absurd, but the fact remains that there are many around the lochs who put some stock in it. Ye’d never have a proper offer of marriage here, and we might have sent ye to Edinburra, where yer chances of a good match would have been a far sight better, I should think. But we couldna do so. Therefore, I suppose Douglas’s offer seemed rather generous.”
“But he’s a Douglas,” she reminded him.
“Aye, a Douglas,” Liam said and sighed. “Much has gone on between Douglas and Lockhart for nigh on four hundred years—enough to hate the Douglases for all eternity. But if we are to live by principle and measure a man by his actions, then this man, in spite of his bloody name, can only be said to be a good man.”
His answer surprised Mared. She expected him to be the first to say she’d done the only thing she could do. “Ye think I should have accepted his offer?”
Liam sighed and shrugged uneasily. “I donna know, Mared. ’Tis hard to ignore what has gone on between Lockhart and Douglas. But when I look at ye, and I see the beauty and the spirit in ye, I could rest easy knowing a good man held ye fast to his heart and protected ye from harm…even if he were a Douglas.”
Held her fast to his heart.…Mared looked down at Eilean Ros again.
“There, then, that’s enough of my prattling,” Liam said and flicked the reins against the backs of the donkeys and started them trotting down the winding road to Eilean Ros.
Sixteen
A n hour or so before Liam deposited Mared at the front door of Eilean Ros, Payton had ridden Murdoch into the drive and handed him over to wee William for stabling.
As he walked inside, he recalled that Sarah had once accused him of being just like his late mother in that he was plagued with the Celtic curse, what with his dark moods. His mother had indeed been plagued with dark moods, but he’d only had the one in Sarah’s presence, an evening after one too many barley-brees. His mood had been black because of Sarah’s carping. He’d told her, in no uncertain terms, that he was master of Eilean Ros, and if it pleased him to drink too many barley-brees, then by God, he’d drink them.
At the moment, he wished he’d not been so pleased to have quite as many tots of the barley-bree this afternoon, for his legs felt entirely too heavy to lift, and his belly was protesting so loudly that he was beginning to fear he had partaken of a particularly green batch. It was certainly possible—the barley wash had been made using water from the Ben Cluaran stream a few weeks ago, and the distilling of one small keg had been accelerated so that he and the master brewer might sample it.