Page 15 of In Search of a Husband
It had been years since he had been home.
Everything was different. The girls no longer wee babes. Everything was…
The doorknob fell off in his hand as he ushered everyone out into the hallway. He shut his eyes and breathed, certain the world was crumbling down upon him.
“Damn it!”
Everything was breaking or broken, yet he was expected to return home and slip into the giant void his brother had unexpectedly left behind.
He chucked it across the hall and ignored the girls laughing, even as the old housekeeper huffed up the stairs toward them.
“Young ladies, time to break yer fast. How many times have I asked ye no’ to run away from me?”
“But it’s so easy,” Maisie said.
Lorna jumped behind her uncle, poking her head out to stare down the menacing woman. “Because yer so slow and only ‘ave one eye.”
The older woman scowled, slapping her hands. “Lorna Annis MacInnes! I swear to heaven, yer mother is spinning in her grave. Yer no’ allowed to speak to me that way.”
The girls were orphaned. His brother had drunk himself to an earlygrave after his wife had fallen ill and passed. And now the girls relied on him and this ancient housekeeper, who marched about the house as if she were about to announce an invading clan was at the keep.
“I’ll take them with me, Mrs. Malcolm.”
“To the village, at this time of day? Dressed as they are? And don’t ye have business to see to?”
He rubbed his temples and pressed his lips together. There was not enough time to do everything he must in order to save his family, but he had to try. And this morning was the start of it all.
“Aye.”
Lorna and Maisie snickered, darting around him to dash down the long, dark castle hall. “Let’s ask him for a tart when we reach the village,” they attempted to whisper to one another. “I bet he’ll agree. Yer his favorite,” Maisie said.
So that was to be the way of it, then?
He would sort them out, and this house, and the distillery, and the inn because he needed to. Needs must and all that nonsense.
“Verra well, sir.”
Gabriel started down the hall toward his nieces when the older woman cleared her throat. “Sir?”
He halted, spun on his heels, and did everything within his power not to toss his head back toward the ceiling in frustration. Already fifteen minutes late.
“Mrs. Malcolm?”
“Their father wasna much of a father toward the end. They could use some manners. They need the guidance of a woman.”
“I didna return to marry.”
“A governess, then.” The housekeeper’s hands were twisted and gnarled with age, and her chin jutted out, only drawing attention to the missing teeth in her mouth.
“Noted, ma’am.”
The girls poured out of the crumbling house onto the stone drive with abandon, chasing one another around and shrieking, scrambling up the large oak tree as if they were squirrels. It was much too loud,considering he hadn’t had his cup of coffee yet. There hadn’t been time.
And there wasn’t time now.
“We’re late, lasses, time to leave.”
But he had barely pulled Lorna down from the tree before Finlay Wallace dismounted from his beast of a horse in the drive. “Why is there a damn architect in the distillery, MacInnes? He’s poking at the sherry casks. No one should be near the casks! I take care of those casks.”
