Page 1 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

Chapter One

STRATHPEFFER, ROSS, 1727

Silas MacKenzie was used to people staring. They couldn’t help themselves, just like they couldn’t help offering all their unsolicited advice. Like leaning too far over the edge of a cliff or taunting a feral boar, they slung their wisdom from fifty paces, just to prove their bollocks’ worth.

Much like Goliath in the Book of Samuel, Si was feared on account of his size, but he was also dismissed as simple and wild—from his first tutors, and later, professors at King’s College, to his fellow scholars whose jaws hung slack upon hearing any cogent rebuttal. And maybe they were right. At any rate, strangers recoiled, even as they itched with a moral duty to guide him, and now that he was back after seventeen years away, even his own kin were as good as strangers.

Yet another stranger was the lass who had run terrified from the kirk, escaping her own betrothal ceremony, drawn like a moth to his mother’s grave. Each MacKenzie and Mackintosh present had an opinion on the matter. Si watched her through the doorway, whilst everyone else watched him. Wind rattled the eaves and benches creaked as they shifted restlessly, waiting for him to do something but too afraid to say it for once. And why? Because this time there was nothing to be done?

If he were silver-tongued like his father’s steward, or even warmly commanding as the laird had been in his prime, before the ravages of war, before succession and political exile had gotten their talons in him, then perhaps he’d have stood a chance. But Si had never mastered the art of endearing himself, preferring instead to shrink into the background, and how well had that ever worked?

So there they were. The lass had taken one look at him and fled. Now everyone stared at him, buzzing with unvoiced counsel on how to play the part of laird and master and coax her back inside, to command her obedience, when he had no business wedding the wee slip of a girl in the first place. Lord knew she'd end up in the ground right alongside where she was standing, because Silas MacKenzie broke everything he touched. If it hadn’t been evident before her flight, she would surely work it out soon, as she studied the cross-shaped headstone of Iona MacKenzie.

Blast and damnation. She was better off staying outside.

He sat beside his father, taking up far too much space in the tiny pew. Like everything else, the benches were much smaller than he remembered. His knees kept banging into the back of the next row, and he was all angles and elbows, like the adolescent boy who had departed Ross so long ago. What was it about coming back to a place you left behind as a child that put you right back there, in time as well as space, making you feel more immature than you ever had back then?

Outside, the skies darkened, ushering in damp air that set his father coughing. It sounded as though his ribs were rattling together like a pair of dice. He’d lived in the temperate climes of France far too long, and a fresh wave of a guilt washed over Si. If he’d returned home sooner to take up the mantle of Kintail, the laird needn’t have returned to the brisk Highland weather that seemed to be making his lungs work double time.

Father Sinclair cleared his throat. “Perhaps we might continue the ceremony? Do we really need the bride for this part?”

Si raked a hand through his hair and counted his exhale—one, two, three—but it came out as a growl that made the priest flinch. He wasn’t wrong. Everything about this charade was based in tradition, and traditionally the bride was no more than an accessory at her own betrothal, and later, her wedding, whether she wished to be involved or not.

The rèiteach was meant to be lighthearted and jovial. Then Mr. Mackintosh had insisted they hold it in the kirk with a priest. He hoped such pretense of officiousness could elevate his own status in the Chattan Confederation.

“She just needs a moment,” the girl’s mother whispered, stroking her husband’s arm with a placating hand, as though they hadn’t all been waiting half an hour already.

“Wee Ellen always needs a moment,” the younger sister moaned, earning a slap from one of her parents that made Si flinch. “Well she does,” the girl sniffed.

Si’s father, the Laird Kintail, coughed again, his hunched shoulders wracking. They’d need to get the physician in with some kind of poultice or potion to stop the crackling sound coming from the old man’s chest.

Despite age and infirmity, though, his old grey eyes were clear and sharp, urging Si to get on with it, just as they’d urged him to stop begging off the arrangement when he’d gone to his father at dawn. If he’d known this was part of the plan, he’d have never returned home from Aberdeen.

When the laird finished coughing, he nudged Si’s young cousin, Bram, and whispered in the lad’s ear.

“Do I really have to?” the twelve-year-old whined, annoyed with the ceremony and his part in it, but for all the wrong reasons. With a familiar jerk of his head, the laird confirmed the boy must play his part, requesting her hand be given to Si.

Knowing better than to argue, Bram dragged himself on his too-large feet over to the bride’s family. He winked roguishly at the younger Mackintosh daughter, at least four years the lad’s senior if she was a day, and she erupted into her own fit of coughing until her father stamped his foot.

Bram shrugged, peeking out from the black hair that hung in his eyes. “So can we, aye?”

The father’s mouth pursed into a solid line, lacking even a hint of amusement.

“Like we practiced,” the laird choked before coughing some more.

Mercy, it was starting to sound like a hospital inside the kirk.

Bram rolled his eyes at his uncle and turned back around. “Good sir, on behalf of my cousin, heir to the chief of Clan MacKenzie,” he began, without the slightest irony, which made Si twitch, “can we have the honor of your daughter’s hand?”

Mackintosh lifted his chin self-importantly. He certainly enjoyed standing on ceremony and all the attention it entailed. “Which daughter?”

“The one outside. Ellen, is it? But I’ll take that one for meself, if ye like,” the brat added cheekily. The sister uttered a horrified squeak and buried her face in her lap.

The one outside indeed. Neither of them might have much say in the matter, but she wasn’t a lamb to be bought and sold at auction, without even being present for the transaction.

“Enough,” Si thundered, standing up and pulling his shoulders straight, his head nearly cracking against the rafter, and his voice booming through the tiny kirk.

Mackintosh’s eyes widened and he shrank back a little. “Fine, yes, granted,” he stammered quickly, before Si could insist on yet another delay while he retrieved the girl.