How strange now to remember once being small enough that his father could drag him up by the wrist and hurl him onto the stone flags. Leo rubbed at his left wrist now, recalling even the pain and beginning to sweat profusely.
His mother was screaming and Leo was screaming as he tried to drag himself up from the floor, his father’s feet and fists striking both of them despite Leo’s tender age and the child in his mother’s belly.
Nay, Daenae! Father! Nooooo!
Pushing back his seat so forcefully that it fell over onto the stones, Leo got to his feet, gasping.
“I am unwell, excuse me,” he managed to say through gritted teeth and then rushed from the hall as quickly as he could.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Again, Beatrice lay awake late in her room at MacSween Castle. Tonight it was not only the strangeness of her environment that kept sleep at bay. There was also the strange affair at dinner, where Laird MacSween had left them so suddenly and inexplicably.
“What on earth got into ye tonight, Leo MacSween?” she asked aloud.
One moment, the laird had been sitting there, eating his food and gazing happily at his child. The next he had been gasping and sweating as though in a fight and barely able to say an audible word.
For Effie’s sake, Beatrice had made a game of it all, saying that her father had eaten too much haggis and now the haggis was having its revenge in the privies. Thankfully, the child seemed to have accepted this, although she still kept looking expectantly towards the doors as if hoping for his return.
If Tyler had been around, Beatrice would have asked after the laird once Effie had returned to the nursery, but the servants in the Great Hall reported that he had gone straight after his master. Of course he had. Tyler would follow Leo to the ends of the earth.
At least it had been nothing Beatrice or Effie had done that set him off this time. Had it? There had been small amount of naughtiness in throwing the cabbage on the floor, but Beatrice had seen Laird MacSween smiling at them after that, evidently pleased with how she had handled that small trouble. Nothing else of note had occurred at all.
“It is a mystery,” Beatrice sighed to herself and rose from her bed, unable to lie still any longer with so much on her mind. “He is a mystery.”
Looking out of the window, she could see again that most of the castle was asleep, although again, a lamp burned in Leo MacSween’s window. It would have been easy, and foolish, to stand there and gaze at that light, wondering what was going on in there. Beatrice refused to let herself dwell on him.
Donning dressing gown and slippers, she instead slipped out into the corridor, taking heart from Shona’s assurance that the laird had made it clear what he would do to any man who bothered her. At this hour, she expected only to meet servants in any case.
Most of the hallways and passages were dark, save for small clusters of candles here and there. Beatrice wandered withoutaim for some time and then began to walk in the direction of a warm, familiar smell.
At the end of a dark corridor she found a room where firelight crackled from around the partly open door. Curiously, she peeked inside and found a kitchen, occupied by two older women, laughing together over by the stoves, while trays of fresh baked oat cakes and breads cooled on surfaces around the room.
“Well, we havenae seen a good one like that for some time, have we?” said the stout and grey-haired woman who was holding a mug in her hands, but didn’t seem to be drinking from it.
Her thinner friend, whose gold and silver hair was partly wrapped up with a cloth, rested a hand on the counter, shaking her head.
“Aye, ooh, look at that. Is it a ship? Anyway, can ye believe he just upped and left them at the dinner table tonight like that? Poor lassie, though worse things have happened in that Great Hall…”
Not wishing to eavesdrop, Beatrice cleared her throat and stepped into the room.
“I hope I’m nae disturbing ye,” she said and the two women looked in her direction, then dissolved into more cackles.
“The lady of the castle herself,” said the stout woman holding the mug, coming over to take Beatrice by the arm and steer her ontoanother stool. “Ye must have nerves of steel sneakin’ around here at night.”
“I couldnae sleep,” Beatrice admitted. “Then I smelled yer oatcakes.”
“I’m sure,” said the thin woman, going over to the oven and taking out another batch. “It’s a smell that makes ye hungry, daenae ye think?”
Beatrice smiled and nodded.
“Well, ye must have some oatcakes and tea with us now ye’re here, lassie,” insisted the stout woman, brushing off Beatrice’s unconvincing refusal. “There’s nothin' like a fresh oatcake to send ye back to sleep.”
She poured Beatrice a cup of tea and then offered her oatcakes on a plate.
“Now, ye must drink it down,” said the thin woman with her hair wrapped up. “We’ll see what we can find in the dregs. Maybe yer fortune will be even better than Mrs. Prinn’s.”
“Me fortune?” Beatrice queried, not immediately understanding.
