“And the gowns, Mared, think of the gowns you will have!” Ellie exclaimed, holding up Mared’s old purple gown. “You’ll never have cause to wear this old thing again.” She turned around to Mared, her fair face beaming. “Aren’t you thrilled?”
“I am thrilled to be free of the curse,” Mared readily agreed. “And I have long wanted to be gone from these hills,” she added as she folded a pair of stockings.
“Yes, you’ve long wanted to be in Edinburgh, where life will be full of exciting new people!” Ellie exclaimed, prompting her.
“Aye, to Edinburgh,” Mared said with much less enthusiasm than Ellie. Edinburgh. Full of new people. Not Payton.
“Then what has you so downcast, darling?” Ellie asked laughingly. “One would think you’d be dancing on air!”
“I am, truly, I am,” Mared tried to assure her in a less than convincing manner.
“But?” Ellie prompted.
Mared looked at Ellie. “But…but I canna seem to fathom how everything has changed so suddenly,” she said quietly, and she felt her heart tilt a little.
“Is it Laird Douglas?” a smiling Ellie asked as she put the purple gown in Mared’s portmanteau.
Mared shrugged, uncertain as to what she was feeling.
“You will still see him, darling. But first you must have your turn in Edinburgh, just as you’ve always wanted.”
Yes, her turn. It was her turn now.
“Douglas will still be here, waiting for you, I’d daresay. But you deserve a bit of happy freedom for a time. He’ll understand, I am certain of it. You’ve been denied life too long.”
A lifetime. She’d been denied a lifetime.
With her family at her side, Mared said good-bye to the servants, feeling as sad in leaving them as they apparently felt about her leaving. Rodina and Una seemed especially disturbed by it. But when Mared took them aside, all she could think of was Payton. “Donna forget the laird’s laundry, Rodina,” she urged her. “He’s very particular about it, aye? And Una—ye must make his bed and clean his chambers every morning while he’s abroad.”
Una exchanged a look with Rodina. “Aye, miss,” she said, trying to smile.
Even Mr. Beckwith seemed a little downcast by Mared’s departure as he wished her good luck.
After Alan and Charlie had carried her things down to the cart, Mared gave her little room one final look, then walked out, her head and heart reeling so badly she could scarcely see. Her world had altered so quickly and so dramatically that she felt almost as if she was another person entirely, her familiar self noticeably absent and replaced by painful confusion.
And there was Payton, the man to whom she’d given her virtue. Payton. What was she to do?
He was waiting there by the cart, next to her father and mother. He looked very grim, and she frantically racked her mind for what to say to him. But how could she possibly know what to say to him? She scarcely knew what to think herself, much less what this must seem to him. Even worse, she hadn’t reached a firm conclusion about what had really happened between them at Loch Leven and afterward. What it really meant. The only thing she knew in all certainty was that she did love him.
But in the midst of her desperate confusion, there was something else that she knew with all certainty—her curse was lifted. She felt it, almost as if it had been physically lifted from her shoulders, and she had never felt more light in bearing than she did at that very moment. For the first time in her life, it seemed as if the whole world was open to her. All of it. The whole fat globe and everything and everyone on it.
That was, perhaps, why she smiled at Payton when her mother patted his arm and said, “Ye must no’ be maudlin, laird. This is quite good news for ye, for ye donna want Mared as yer servant, aye?”
Payton did not respond.
Her mother’s smile was emphatic, and she squeezed his forearm. “Just give her a wee bit of time, Douglas, please? Just a wee bit of time to taste her freedom at long last.”
He nodded and looked at Mared, and she smiled instead of showing him the sorrow, the ache in her heart.
She just needed a moment of peace in which she could think.
Payton did not return her smile, but looked at her with his heart in his eyes. He said nothing as he took her hand in his to help her up on the cart—but he squeezed it meaningfully and looked directly into her eyes, obviously searching for her, obviously wanting a word, some signal. He deserved one, he did…but she didn’t have the right word to say as yet.
Instead, she squeezed his hand back and blurted helplessly, “I…I must think.”
“I understand.”