Page 62 of Sinful Scottish Laird
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
THETRIPTOBalhaire was as hard as Daisy suspected it would be. She, Belinda and Ellis were in the coach they’d hired when they had arrived in Scotland, and Uncle Alfonso and Robert rode borrowed horses. The road was very narrow, disappearing in parts, pitted in other parts. They made wretchedly slow progress down the glen. At one point, Belinda remarked that the people walking toward Balhaire through the meadows with bundles on their back or pulling carts behind them were moving faster than the coach.
Daisy forgot her discomfort when they neared Balhaire and passed another meadow where men erected tents.
“What is it for?” Ellis asked, crowding in beside her at the window to have a look.
“I don’t know,” Daisy said.
From there, the coach moved into a sizable village, teeming with people and animals that wandered in the lanes, jostling past wagons loaded with wares for the squat buildings that lined both sides of the high road. The entire village was shadowed by the fortress up on the hill, toward which they slowly wended, until they reached the gates.
Daisy had seen many castles in her life, but this one was quite imposing. It had towers and wings jutting off this way and that. She supposed someone could very easily get lost in there, and unthinkingly she put her hand on Ellis’s.
As they pulled through the massive wooden gates, someone shouted, and the coach rolled to a stop. A moment later, the door of the coach swung open, and a beefy, ginger-haired man with a heavy beard put his head inside.“Madainn mhath,”he said.
“Ah...good afternoon,” Daisy responded.
The man looked startled by her English and squinted at her as if he wasn’t certain what he’d heard. He suddenly disappeared, and the door shut behind him.
Daisy and Belinda exchanged a look of confusion.
The door swung open again, and another man glanced disapprovingly around at the three of them. “Good afternoon,” he said, his voice deep. “Lady Chatwick,” he said, and inclined his head. “Rabbie Mackenzie.” He held out his hand to her.
Daisy allowed him to help her out of the coach and waited as he helped the others. She was astounded by the activity in that bailey—there were more people and animals and so many dogs. One sniffed at her hem and her shoes now.
When they had all climbed out of the coach, and Uncle Alfonso and Robert had come down from their mounts, the ginger-haired man said something to the driver, and the coach lumbered on.
“Welcome to Balhaire,” Rabbie Mackenzie said.
“Thank you,” Daisy said and tried, unsuccessfully, to wave the dog away.
“Sguir dheth!”Mackenzie said sharply to the dog. The dog’s ears flattened, and it slowly sank down onto its belly.
“Ah...may I introduce—”
“I’ll take you in to my mother, Lady Mackenzie, then,” he said curtly, cutting her off before he would have to exchange pleasantries with Daisy’s family and gesturing to the massive door of the castle. He began to stride toward it. Daisy grabbed Ellis’s hand and hurried to catch up. Belinda, her uncle and Robert followed behind.
In the foyer, Daisy could scarcely take in all the armaments hanging above their heads before she was ushered along, down a darker corridor and into a room the size of a ballroom. In here, three long and highly polished tables stretched almost the length of the room. They were anchored by hearths on either end, and there, in the middle, was a platform on which a smaller table faced the others, with ten or so upholstered chairs along one side. Above the tables hung iron wheels full of candles that had not yet been lit. And dogs! More dogs wandered about in here, and three of them curled onto mats in front of the hearth.
Ellis had an iron grip on Daisy’s skirt, she realized, and she didn’t blame him—she would very much like to cling to someone’s skirt, too. Her uncle, on the other hand, was enthralled. “Look there,” he said, pointing to the stained glass window high overhead, and the stone arches that crisscrossed the ceiling. “Marvelous architecture, is it not?”
Daisy never answered—there was a burst of activity behind them as two women and three young children appeared through a door near one of the hearths. The children, two girls and a boy, skipped forward, stopping just before Daisy to eye Ellis with curiosity.
Her son pressed into her side.
“Welcome, welcome!”
A regal woman wearing a mantua glided toward them. Behind her were two young women, one of them heavy with child. The other, Daisy was relieved to see, was Miss Catriona Mackenzie.
“You are Lady Chatwick,” the woman said with an English accent. She sank into a curtsy. “You are our honored guest.”
“Thank you,” Daisy said.
The woman smiled, and when she did, she looked remarkably younger than the sixty or so years Daisy guessed her to be. “I am Lady Mackenzie. My daughters, Mrs. Vivienne Mackenzie,” she said, indicating the pregnant one, “the wife of Marcas Mackenzie. And, of course, you’ve met Catriona.”
“Thank you for your invitation. May I introduce my family?” Daisy asked. She made the introductions. Lady Mackenzie did not look at Robert.
When Daisy introduced him, she chose that moment to squat down so that she was eye level with Ellis. “Lord Chatwick, I am so glad you have come,” she said. “My grandchildren are desperate for playmates. And I have heard that you enjoy the caber toss.”
