Page 19 of The Scottish Duke
“I don’t want you stinking up my house with those potions of yours.”
“They’re not potions, Mrs.MacDonald. They’re herbal remedies.”
“You have a lot of practice in those, do you?”
“My father was a botanist. I learned everything I know from him.”
The other woman didn’t respond. Instead, she peered down her long nose at Lorna.
Ever since she’d arrived in Wittan Village with her trunk and her story of being a widow, the landlady had watched her with narrowed eyes.
She hadn’t expected her to ask so many questions.
“How did your husband die?” Mrs.MacDonald had asked two months ago.
“A carriage accident,” she told her.
“You’ve no family to take you in?”
“No, my husband and I were both orphans.”
“No cousins?”
“No cousins. No uncles. No aunts. No relatives of any kind.”
That hadn’t been a lie. Neither her mother nor father had large families. She’d been alone in the world and had only duplicated that history for her invented husband.
“I don’t run a charity here, Mrs.Gordon,” the landlady said now.
There was that tone again, when the woman called herMissus.Once more Lorna ignored it.
“Don’t think you and your bairn have a place here without paying.”
“No, Mrs.MacDonald.”
The woman finally stepped aside, but Lorna could feel those cold blue eyes on her as she left the house. She was tired, but it was important that she harvest what she could, regardless of how she felt.
At least she was able to sell her remedies at the market. She’d come up with the idea in those terrible months of worry at Blackhall.
Several of the older women of the village used her comfrey joint balm to ease the arthritis in their hands. The Sunshine Ointment she made, so-called because its ingredients made it bright yellow, was helpful in drawing splinters from the skin and reducing the size of boils.
She blessed her education at her father’s side. Hopefully, she would be able to continue to support herself using what she’d learned.
She often found herself wondering what her father would say about her current circumstances. He would probably have warned her against the excesses of passion, had she been brave or foolish enough to ask him about that. What would he have said about what Nan had done?
A week had passed and no one had come, which meant that the duchess didn’t care if her son had a by-blow in the village. Or maybe the note had gotten lost. Someone could have torn it up before the duchess read it.
She needed to stop worrying and concern herself with the task at hand.
Still, if she’d had the money, she would have moved farther away. Blackhall Castle was too close, and so was the Duke of Kinross.
“Has Alex truly left for Inverness, Louise?”
The Dowager Duchess of Kinross hesitated in pouring her special blend of potpourri into one of the ceramic jars. She finished what she was doing before turning and smiling at Mary Taylor. The effort required to produce that smile was not noticed by the younger woman, but then Mary rarely saw anything beyond her own interests.
“Yes, Alex has left.”
“In this weather? It’s icy and snowing. How could you allow him to do such a thing?”
