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“No. English nonsense.Scotch whiskymade by distillers on our land. The best.It’ll cut through any pain. Directly on the left. Pour me one as well.”
She grabbed the smooth glass decanter and poured a dram into a fresh glass. A quick sniff. Whisky. Whisky that singed her nostrils.
Every move of her right arm sent jabs of pain into her belly, so she poured two more full splashes of the whisky into her glass, then a healthy dose into a tumbler for the earl. Tucking her glass between her left forearm and belly, and holding the earl’s in her left hand, she walked over to his chair, awkwardly holding his glass out to him.
“Thank ye, lass.” He took it, and then she slowly lifted her right hand to move her tumbler into her left fingers.
Mission accomplished without spilling a drop.
She moved to the chair opposite Evan’s grandfather and sat down, tucking both of her feet toward the fire.
The earl lifted his glass to her. “I have been anxious to steal ye away from Evan. He’s been around since ye’ve returned, hovering about me like a bumblebee on honey—always afraid to leave me alone. But you’ve gone and disappeared above stairs.”
Juliet took a long sip of her whisky, the heat of it burning a path down along her tongue and throat. Good. That trail of fire would make drinking the rest of it easier, as she was never one for strong alcohol. She preferred a healthy splash of sweet cutting the fire of spirits, yet she knew she needed the numbing of it to steady her nerves and dull the throbbing in her arm.
She drank another swallow. “It is unfortunate that I have been holed up in Ness’s room, but it is a devastating thing she is going through.”
“Aye, it is.” He took a sip of his whisky, his curious grey eyes that matched Evan’s watching her above the rim of the tumbler. “It is good that she has ye. I ken it’s lonely here for a woman.”
“Why is that? That there are so few women at the castle, save for the maids and cook?”
The bones of his shoulders lifted. “Fate has not been kind to our lot. There hasn’t been a girl born of the line—out to our third cousins—in three generations. Only by marriage do women grace these halls.”
“Yes, Ness has said she is lonely here.”
“I imagine she is. I regret it, not having more women around in some sense—it would have helped the twins as they grew as well. But I never had the heart to replace my dear Lettie—she was an Englishwoman like ye.”
“Your wife? When did she pass?”
“When Evan’s father was five.” His eyes closed for a long moment, though not to sleep, as she could see his eyes twitching under his eyelids. He sighed. “I could count the years, but that appears to be a lot of work for my feeble mind.” His eyes opened to her. “But I remember our boy was five. Old enough to miss her terribly. She fell ill with pneumonia, her breath wasting away to nothing. I don’t know that our son ever recovered from her passing, as he was always in her skirts.”
“And Evan said that his mother, your daughter-in-law died in childbirth?”
“Aye. Hannah. She was a kind one. Just above the door.” His finger lifted to point to the far wall by the door where a smattering of portraits hung. All women and posed in the dress of various periods of time past. Evan’s mother had been pretty—blond hair, a pixie smile and a delicate frame. “Ever since her death, this place has lacked the warmth of a woman. Even with Ness here, she is a quiet one. Likes the shadows. Likes taking her meals in her room. I rarely see her.”
“How long have she and Gilroy been married?”
“Four years. Years and she’s never taken to the place.” He shook his head, taking a sip of his whisky. “I regret not giving the twins that—a woman in the house, the softness they could bring, save for the nursemaid they had until they were four. The lads should have had more women about. But you, ye could change that for this heap of stones.”
“Me?”
“Aye. Ye could bring warmth into this place. Bring elegance and modernity to it. Evan needs that. Needs something more than the cold stone about him. It’s never been about the cost of bringing modernity to Whetland, it’s been about the will of doing it.”
Juliet looked around at the worn and outdated surroundings. The faded cushions of the furniture. The cold walls that were only broken up by aging portraits of past countesses. The lack of rugs underfoot. And the library was one of the most fashionable spaces in the castle, according to Evan.
She set her gaze back onto the earl. “That is no small task you set before me.”
He smiled and the quirk of his lips made him look impish. “Ye look up to it, lass.”
She leaned forward in her chair. “How ill are you? You have a remarkable amount of spirit for how ill Evan said you are.”
The smile faded away from his face and he slumped into the back cushion of his wingback chair. “The physician says soon. I say that will do me fine. I have little else to do on this earth.”
She nodded, not quite sure his sudden lack of energy was true or subterfuge. “Evan will miss you terribly. He may not say the words directly to you, but he talks of you as a great man.”
His bottom lip jutted upward with a sad smile. “I have my faults.”
“We all do.”
