Page 6 of Lady Len and the Mysterious Mac

Mrs. Kynoch still waited outside the chamber when Si finally left his snoring father.

“I understand the cook down at the inn will be handling everything for the day,” she sniffed, doing a poor job of hiding her sore feelings.

“The Mackintoshes didn’t want to be a bother to you,” he said. “But I understand they’ve brought their cook from Inverness to help.”

“So they’ll be a bother to the inn instead,” she laughed a little too gleefully. “Heaven help us all.”

“Aye, count yourself lucky,” he agreed.

“Oh, aye. My hands are full enough as it is,” she replied, placated by Si’s reassurance that her displacement wasn’t his doing. “There’s plenty to do and only wee Dorrie to help me.”

“Are you asking for new staff, Mrs. Kynoch?” he asked, and she scoffed at him.

“Mmphm. With what money?” she laughed, taking herself back down to the kitchen and whatever all was keeping her so busy.

An hour later, Si paced the four corners of his library, unable to concentrate on the accounts or his correspondence. Every time he tried, he found himself drowning in a pair of bold blue eyes, as though looking up from the bottom of a well, eyes so blue God Himself couldn’t have conjured them.

Even if the illness was temporary, his father was in no condition to lead. If anything, he ought to go straight back to Nice until his health improved. But the people wanted a laird, and the laird wanted Si, and the people wanted Si to marry.

And what did Si want?

His hand tingled where it had grazed Ellen’s that afternoon, and he clenched his fist to try and stop it. Vivid azure eyes stared up at him. What Si wanted didn’t signify.

He collapsed into a chair and, from the secret drawer in the back of his desk, retrieved a small wooden box, carved with an intricate oak tree knot pattern. Inside was a tiny painted portrait of his mother. The artist had colored her eyes a shade that nearly matched those of the Mackintosh lass, though of course Si had never seen them in person. Beneath the likeness was a piece of red jade that he’d found in the mud of a riverbank the day Laird William MacKenzie died twelve years ago, passing the lairdship to his younger brother, Alex, and forever altering the course of everyone’s lives in a single breath.

There was also a lovely lace handkerchief embroidered with the initials ICMM—Iona Campbell Munro MacKenzie. Within its folds lay a silver Luckenbooth brooch, the one his father had given to his mother upon their betrothal. Time had tarnished the shine, but he polished it tenderly with the tail of his sark, smoothing away the years of neglect like they were tears to be wiped clean. It seemed tiny in his broad hand, but it would be the perfect size for young Ellen Mackintosh.

Even after a few weeks to adjust to the idea, the thought of a bride, his bride, was still too foreign to be real. But she’d been real when he skimmed her fingers that afternoon, and she was only going to get more real as the week wore on.

There didn’t seem to be any getting out of it. The question was, what would he do with her?

* * *

Ellen had not anticipated the celebration already in full swing at the inn. Truth be told, she’d been relieved the wedding would take place twenty miles from Inverness, far from the prying eyes of neighbors and relations. Her father was well-known and well-liked, but she hadn’t expected shopkeepers or students to follow them to MacKenzie lands, and suddenly the weight of the proceedings truly hit her: she, Wee Ellen Mackintosh, would soon be the wife of a future laird.

Even the Borlum had traveled from Moy to take part in the festivities, with all her Mackintosh cousins in tow, and she’d forgotten how much her kin loved a party.

The inn was filled to bursting, along with the stable. Several families were even camped outside, all of them eating and dancing in boisterous circles, out-shouting each other over peals of raucous laughter. At least ten different kinds of cooking mingled with peat smoke and tobacco, and strangers kept grabbing her, squeezing her, shaking her, kissing her, and generally wishing her well.

It was times like these, in amongst a crowd of rowdy revelers, that Ellen realized quite how short she was compared to others. She couldn’t see a thing beyond the swarming mass of bodies, and it made the air close, too thick to breathe, though her breaths came so quick and plentiful that she grew faint. Was this what it was like to be buried alive? Desperate to claw her way free?

“If you wish to leave,” her cousin Logan whispered in her ear as he caught her elbow,” I’ll take ye anywhere you’re keen to go.”

Before she could offer him a grateful reply, someone grabbed her other hand and dragged her away.

“We should speak,” her mother said, threading a path towards the stairs. Based on her tone, Ellen might prefer to face the crowd, and she cast a pleading look over her shoulder, but Logan and his wistful face had already been swallowed by the throng.

“Not you,” her mother said to Maggie, shutting the bedchamber door in her little sister’s face.

Ellen imagined Maggie sticking her tongue out at the closed door before cupping her ear against it to hear their mother’s every word.

She picked nervously at a loose thread on her dress, waiting.

“I know you’d prefer the convent,” her mother said.

An understatement. People seemed to know an awful lot about what Ellen wanted without caring whether she got it or not.

“And given the choice, you might have picked someone, well… prettier, more… delicate.”