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Chapter 12
Autumn had givenway to winter, and there was a thick frost on the ground as Meredith and Melissa walked down to the lochside the next morning, their arms linked and their bodies wrapped in thick woolen shawls.
“How I wish me clothes hadnae been lost in the fire,” Melissa lamented, looking down at her attire with distaste. “It’s good o’ ye to lend me some of yers, Meredith, but ye’ve always been bigger than me. I look like a child playing dress-up!”
Meredith couldn’t resist a small smile as she turned to look at her younger sister. It was true that Meredith’s clothes hung off her sister’s much smaller frame, but until the women she’d commissioned in the village to make up some new clothes for the family were done with the task, there wasn’t much to be done about it.
“Clothes should be the least of yer worries,” Meredith reminded her sister gently. “Clothes can be replaced, after all — and least ye’ve still got the things ye brought for the wedding. Ma and Pa have lost their home and their livelihood. Ye should be grateful that clothes were all ye had to lose.”
Melissa shrugged, unwilling to concede the point.
“It’s all worked out though, hasn’t it?” she insisted, taking a seat on a rock by the waterside and waiting for Meredith to join her. “We all like living here. Ye like us being here. Even Laird Grumpy seems to have settled into it. He seems almost human these days!”
Meredith elbowed her sharply in the side.
“Och, shush,” she said, taking a seat next to her and rummaging in the small basket she carried to pull out the bread she’d brought for the swans who lived on the loch. “Ryder’s a good man. He’s happy to have ye all.”
“Aye. And I suppose we were lucky to have been here for the wedding when the fire started,” Melissa acknowledged, her face suddenly serious. “Had we been at home, it could’ve been much worse.”
“Aye. Lucky indeed,” Meredith answered. Her eyes remained fixed on the two swans, who had started clamoring for food as soon as the two women had approached, and she was glad of the excuse not to look her sister in the eye.
Melissa said they’d been lucky, and just a few days ago, Meredith would’ve agreed with her. Last night, though, as they’d lain together in bed, their legs intertwined and her head resting on his chest, Ryder had confided some of his fears about what might have happened to the Quinn’s castle.
“It could well have been just an accident,” he’d said carefully, his fingers stroking her hair. “I’m not saying it wasnae. But, all the same…”
He’d trailed off, not wanting to continue, and she’d looked up at him in surprise.
“What?” she’d said, propping herself up on one elbow, so she could look him in the eye. “Tell me what yer thinkin’, Ryder? Ye ken ye can tell me anything.”
He’d sighed but had done as she’d asked.
“I just think it’s something o’ a coincidence that the castle happened to go on fire when yer family were all away from it,” he said as if the words were being pulled from him reluctantly. “Most o’ the servants traveled with them, after all. There weren’t many left behind, and those that were, were the ones yer faither trusted to look after the place in his absence. It just seems unlikely they’d have started a fire accidentally and then failed to realize until it was too late.”
Meredith lowered her head back onto his chest thoughtfully. It was true what he said. She did not want to believe the fire could’ve been started deliberately — or begin to imagine who would’ve done such a thing — but she knew her father had questioned the servants who’d remained behind carefully. All had sworn they’d done nothing that could have started a fire. Her father had believed them, and so had she. It had been a mystery. But now, it was a mystery that Ryder suggested might have a more sinister explanation than she had so far considered.
It had taken her a long time to fall asleep that night — and, judging by the way Ryder had shifted restlessly in the bed next to her, she wasn’t the only one with an unquiet mind.
She would not share her concerns with Melissa, though, she thought now, watching her sister throw bread to the two swans, laughing when their giant beaks came a little too close for comfort. In some ways, she was glad that the younger woman’s biggest worry was what she would wear each morning. She knew her parents, although relieved to have been made so welcome in Castle Millar, were still reeling from the shock of what had happened. She just wished there was something she could do to help.
“Who’s that, up by the castle?” Melissa’s voice broke into her thoughts, and Meredith stood up, shading her eyes against the low winter sun as she peered up towards the large wooden door, which was, she saw, surrounded by horses.
“It looks like the Laird of Moore,” she said after a few seconds. “At least, I think so. It’s hard to tell from this distance.”
She turned back to the swans, Colby Green immediately forgotten, as her mind returned to the more pressing issue of her parents and their changed circumstances.
“Have ye noticed that Faither doesnae seem quite himself lately?” Melissa was asking her now, her face unusually serious.
Meredith paused, not knowing what to say. She had not realized Melissa had noticed their father’s increased frailty and had not wanted to bring the subject up with her mother, almost as if speaking the words aloud would somehow make them real. But there was no denying that Edward Quinn did not seem as well as he had just a few weeks earlier. Unsurprising, she supposed, given everything he’d been through.
“Faither’s fine,” she reassured Melissa, making up her mind not to share her concerns with her sister. “He’s just tired, is all. Ye would be too if ye had to put up with yer nonsense every day.”
Melissa grinned, her fears allayed. But as her sister turned back to the swans, Meredith felt a shiver run down her spine. She hoped that what she’d told Melissa was true. She just wasn’t altogether convinced that it was.
* * *
Ryder was pacing the floor in the Great Hall when Colby was shown in, talking to Meredith’s father, who sat in a seat by the fire, looking far older than he had on the occasion of his daughter’s recent wedding.
“I’m sorry to intrude,” Colby said smoothly as he approached the two men. “But I wanted to offer me congratulations again on yer recent nuptials, Ryder. Me congratulations, and maybe a small toast to both yer health?”
He pulled a bottle of whisky from the deep pocket of his overcoat and offered it to Ryder, who accepted it reluctantly, and turned to open it before introducing Meredith’s father. The older man tried to raise a smile as Colby offered him his hand, but it was obvious that his mind was on other things.
“I won’t stay,” Colby told them both, ignoring the fact that he had not been asked to. “But I couldnae allow the occasion of me oldest friend’s marriage to go unremarked. To yer health, Ryder, and to yer wife’s, too!”
The three men raised their glasses to their lips. There was a moment’s silence as they each savored the taste of the amber liquid on their lips. Then the silence was suddenly broken by a loud and terrified scream. A scream which sent Ryder running immediately from the room, his glass dropping to the hearth, where it shattered on impact, sending sharp shards of glass scattering over the flagstone floor.
