Page 12 of Enchantment of a Highlander

“No wife or bairns.” His voice was intentionally gruff. “Where are the others, Wynda?” he asked. “What’s happened here?”

The light faded from her eyes. “Most of the servants dinna wait for yer father to die before they left. Most left after ye. The ones who remained stayed for the memory of yer mother, but loyalty only lasts so long, especially with the way yer father treated them.” Her gaze slid away, as if she had a hard time looking at him. “He got much worse after ye left.”

Guilt pressed hard on Alec’s shoulders. He’d thought if he could escape, everything would be better. And it had been.

For him.

He’d been selfish.

“The castle fell into neglect,” Wynda continued. “And yer da stopped listening to the tenants. With no one standing trial or being punished, the land became flooded with outlaws.” She shook her head and the top of her fluffy hair wavered. “After he died, the remaining servants took their pay in the form of tapestries or silver, whatever yer da hadna already sold off himself.”

Wynda wiped her hands on the dirty apron she wore. “I dinna stop them. No one had been paid in so long. But when the outlaws started coming, I locked the treasures in a room to make sure they dinna get in.”

“Treasures?” Alec repeated. Perhaps all was not lost after all.

A wide smile spread over her lips and he noticed for the first time she’d lost several teeth since he’d seen her last.

Wynda pulled a tarnished key from her pocket. “All in yer mother’s room.”

She stepped over a brownish-red stain on the floor and slid the key into the lock. The door groaned open and the musty odor of disuse hit Alec’s nostrils.

He caught no scent of the jasmine perfume he’d smelled earlier.

His mother’s room lay exactly as it had when she died.

He could see the ghost of her long, slender back in front of the dressing table. The bottles on the surface lay gray with dust now, but he remembered how they’d gleamed in the sunlight like jewels and how her fingertips would skim over the smooth surfaces.

A long chest at the base of the bed most likely still contained all her gowns. His gaze caught the bed. The place he hadn’t wanted to look, but could not avoid. It was dull and faded now, but once the velvet had been a brilliant blue.

She’d lain against those fine coverlets, her brow dotted with sweat and flushed with fever. Her pale blue eyes darting everywhere, seeing things unseen by anyone else, before finally meeting his and locking there.

I love ye.

It’d been a whisper, but he’d heard it—the last words she’d spoken with the last breath she’d breathed.

He sucked in a deep gasp of air in an effort to ease the rending pain in his chest.

A hand rested on his shoulder, heavy and warm. He tore his stare from the bed and found Wynda’s sad smile on him.

“Is this all of it?” he asked, looking for the first time at a pile of goods in the center of the floor. His words came out tight and hard.

A silver candlestick and several tapestries lay among various plates and cutlery. Three sacks of grain sagged in a folded sigh surrounding the small pile. While the room lay shrouded in a dark layer of dust, these items appeared to have been wiped clean. They’d been well cared for.

“It isna much.” Wynda’s dirt-creased hands twisted anxiously against one another.

No, it was not.

But it was more than he’d expected.

For the first time he noticed a brownish-red stain smeared across the expanse of her apron and dress. A similar color to what he’d seen on the floor.

It almost looked like dried blood.

Alec put his hands on her shoulders and she straightened a little taller.

“Ye’ve done verra well, Wynda. I canna thank ye enough for what ye’ve endured for my family and will ensure ye are properly rewarded for everything.” What had not been spared could be repurchased, save the tapestries made by his mother’s hand.

Alec’s ventures around Scotland with Kieran MacDonald and Colin MacKinnon had made him a wealthy man. He hadn’t wasted it on drink and pleasure as other men would. Never had he been more grateful for his prudence.