Page 65 of Seduced By the Reckless Highlanders
“Aye, that is true.” Queenie picked up a cloth and began to clean the bar, then she gazed at the woman she had come to know as her friend. “We a’ have problems, hen, but ye know if yeever need tae talk about anythin’, I am here. Nothin’ ye say will ever go farther than the two o’ us.”
“I know, Queenie, and thank you,” Janice replied. She picked up the other woman’s hand and kissed it, then smiled at her. There were tears in her eyes. “Thank you for being my friend.”
“Pfft!” Queenie flapped a hand at her in dismissal. “Ye saved us a’ fae starvin’ two years ago, hen. The villagers would dae anythin’ for ye.”
Janice shook her head. “That was my father,” she countered. “He was the cause of that triumph.”
“As ye say, hen.” Queenie smiled. Let Janice believe what she liked.
Both women looked up as a muscular middle-aged man came in. He was sweating and filthy, but when he smiled, his teeth, white against the black of his skin, looked like a sunbeam.
“Yer horse is ready, mistress,” he announced. “Four new shoes.”
“Thank you, Cameron.” Janice smiled at him and dropped the payment into his hand.
The blacksmith looked at it and handed her back a shilling. “Too much, mistress,” he said, laughing. Janice always added a generous tip.
Now, she gave the coin back to him and closed his fingers over it. “Buy your wife a new dress or your daughter a new doll,” she told him firmly, before she ordered him a cup of ale. “Now, tell me all your news.”
She sat talking to Cameron Brown and Queenie until more customers came in and the tavern began to fill up; she knew it was time to go home.
“I wish I could stay a little bit longer, but they will be looking for me,” she said regretfully.
She looked so downcast that Cameron put an arm around her shoulders, marking her cream-colored shawl with a large black smear of soot.
He jumped back immediately, horrified. “I am so sorry, mistress!” he cried. He looked in his pockets for something to wipe the mark away, but every rag he found was filthy.
“Cameron, don’t worry,” she said soothingly. “It was an accident, and the mark will wash out. Goodbye, both of you. Cameron, I will have more work for you soon. We are buying three new plow horses at the horse fair.”
She gave a little wave and tried to leave, but she had to stop for another conversation before she reached the door.
As soon as she emerged from the stables, revived by the fresh air and in high spirits, Janice headed for her bedchamber to bathe and rest for a while before dinner. What she really wanted to do was curl up in bed and daydream for a while before drifting off to sleep, but as the laird’s daughter, she had no such option. She had to be with the guests.
As she was crossing the atrium, a young maidservant stopped her. “Mistress Janice, the laird would like tae see ye. He says it is important.”
“Thank you, Molly,” Janice replied. “By the way, how is your mother?”
Molly’s mother was recovering from a fever, and the young woman had been very anxious about her. Now, however, her face brightened up.
“She is very much better, mistress, an’ she sends her thanks for the medicine ye sent. I am ever sae grateful tae ye.”
Janice smiled and patted Molly’s shoulder, then went to see her father. When Bernard arrived, he was just in time to see the door closing behind her.
“Da? You wanted to see me?” Janice asked, as she entered the room.
Her father was sitting behind the desk, working on the estate accounts, and he looked up as she came in and gave her a warm but weary smile.
“Come in, sweetheart,” he said, closing the ledger he had been writing in. He looked white and drawn, and Janice felt infinitely sorry for him.
She poured them each a glass of wine and pulled a chair close to her father’s so that she could hold his hand. They sat in comfortable silence for a while, then the laird put down his glass on the desk and turned to her, smiling.
“I am so proud of you,” he told her softly, lifting up her hand to kiss it. “You are the best daughter a man could have. I wish you had known your mother. She always wanted a daughter, and she would have loved you so much.” He paused to wipe his eyes, which had filled with tears. “And you are so like her. She ran this household like a military camp. She was strict but fair, and all the servants loved her. She was just like you, except that you are a little gentler. I wish she could see you now.”
“I wish I could see her too,” Janice said sadly. They had had this conversation a hundred times, but Janice knew it comforted him, so she never complained. “Da, you asked to see me about something important. What is it?”
He smiled at her, a sad, gentle smile. “I wish I could give the lairdship to you, but I cannot. I worry about what will happento the estate, but you know that.” He gave an exasperated sigh, then took both of her hands in his and looked straight into her eyes. “But I am more worried about you. When I am gone, you will have the right to live here for as long as you live; you know that. But I want you to be happy. I want you to marry and have children and live a long and fulfilling life, as I have done. Half the reason I invited so many young men here was that you could perhaps find someone you could fall in love with. Have you seen no one?”
He looked so hopeful that Janice felt wretched at having to disappoint him. How could she say that the only man who attracted her was the guard who was sharing William’s room? He expected her to marry a young laird or the son of a laird—someone with property or wealth, not a devastatingly handsome but relatively penniless guard, even though he had good connections.
