Page 60 of Hard-Hearted Highlander
He didn’t like to think of them toiling in the kitchen. “And how do you find it there?” he asked as they headed up the high road.
“Barabel is teaching us to make cakes,” Fiona said. “When I grow up, I shall make cakes. Barabel is teaching useverything.”
“You’ll no’ remember it,” Ualan said, saying more than he’d said in Rabbie’s presence yet.
“I will!”
“You will no’, Fiona. We are going to Inverness soon, and there will be no cakes there.”
“I donna believe you!” she said.
“Inverness?” Rabbie asked, catching Fiona’s hand before she struck her brother.
“Aye,” Ualan said, and shifted his gaze to the ground again. “We’re to go to Mr. and Mrs. Tawley. They knew our father,” he muttered. They’d come to the bailey and the lad glanced away from Rabbie. “We must be gone now, sir. We’re to work now.”
“Aye, go on,” Rabbie said.
Ualan began striding for the service door. Fiona’s ire was forgotten, and she skipped behind him.
Rabbie watched them go until they had disappeared inside. He didn’t like the sound of it, this distant Mr. Tawley.
He carried on into the great hall. It gave him no small amount of happiness to hear the sound of his oldest brother’s laughter booming in the great hall. He walked inside and stood a moment, surveying the familial scene. It reminded him of a time when the Mackenzies had prospered, when they were all young and happy and had no fears for the future.
His parents were here, of course. Catriona was sitting on the dais table, her legs swinging underneath her. Vivienne as well, and Marcas, too, his arm around his wife’s shoulders. Aulay was seated lazily at the end of the table, his boots propped on a chair, and Cailean and Daisy were eating from plates laden with food. Daisy’s son Ellis, Lord Chatwick, had finished his plate and was sitting by Rabbie’s father, and was the first to notice Rabbie.
“Uncle Rabbie!” he cried, and rose up.Diah,but the lad had grown, standing almost as tall as Rabbie. He bounced off the dais and hurried down the aisle to embrace Rabbie, his arms tight. He was as tall as a man, but as thin as a reed, and still very much a lad.
“Feasgar mhath,Ellis,” he said, patting his back. “Look at you, then, you’ve grown a foot since last I saw you, aye?”
“Aye,” Ellis said. He’d picked up a bit of Highlander talk through the years, although it always sounded strange to Rabbie’s ear when spoken with an English accent. “I’ll be seventeen years old next month,” he proudly reported.
“As old as that?” Rabbie said, smiling. He walked with Ellis to the dais.
His beautiful sister-in-law rose from her seat, her smile warm, her eyes shining. “Rabbie!” she said, opening her arms to him as she came off the dais. “How very well you look!”
Rabbie kissed her cheek.
“Aye, that he does,” Cailean agreed, following his wife. He embraced Rabbie, too, giving him a hearty shake before letting go. “It would seem the summer agrees with you. The last I saw you, I worried for your health, I did.”
The last time they met, Cailean had brought the news of Avaline Kent’s agreement to marry him. Rabbie had been a shell of himself then, nothing but bones and flesh waiting to die. He was struck with the sudden idea that today he was not waiting to die. That in fact, something else other than death had filled his thoughts.
“I wasna expecting you so soon,” he said to Cailean.
“We’d no’ risk missing your nuptials, lad,” Cailean said, and grinned.
Rabbie joined the rest of his family on the dais and listened as Cailean filled them in on the events at Chatwick Hall. Daisy asked after the Mackenzies, listening intently as Aulay and Vivienne spoke about who had left Scotland, who had gone to Glasgow and Edinburgh to find work, and how their numbers continued to dwindle.
“Well, then,” Cailean said, and turned to clap Rabbie on the shoulder. “You’re to be wed.”
Rabbie tried to muster a bit of enthusiasm for his observation, but it was pointless. He felt nothing but dread. “Aye.”
“He doesna want to wed,” Catriona offered.
“Cat, darling,” Rabbie’s mother said. “Do allow Rabbie to speak for himself.”
“It’s all right,” Rabbie said with a lazy flick of his wrist. “Let the lass say what she wants. It’s hard for me to speak of it...but Cat excels at it.”
Vivienne snickered, but Catriona glared at him. “Whowillspeak of it, then? You pretend as if it willna happen.”
