Page 30 of The Scottish Duke
“That’s generous of you, Alex.”
“We contribute to several good causes,” he said. He would simply view Lorna as another one.
Once he was certain she was settled, he wouldn’t have to think about her any further. He could go about his life without his conscience whispering to him.
As far as his memory, he would do everything in his power to forget her.
Chapter 9
Lorna put on her cloak and gathered up her herbs, all neatly tied with ribbon. She’d carefully penned instructions for their use either as a tea or a soak. A more difficult task than it had seemed at first because her fingers were stiff from the cold.
She’d managed to avoid her landlady for two days, but she wasn’t so lucky when she opened the door.
Mrs.MacDonald was standing there waiting for her.
“You make sure you sell enough of those herbal remedies of yours to pay the rent.”
Every week when she went to market, the landlady said the same thing. Every Wednesday she gave the woman the same answer.
“I’ll do my best, Mrs.MacDonald.”
“You see that you do. I’m not a poorhouse.”
Short of bodily moving the woman, she had to stand there and listen to her harangue. She was not going to hang her head low. Nor was she going to cry. Doing so would only please Mrs.MacDonald, but it wouldn’t soften her heart.
“If I don’t get to the market,” she said after a moment, “I won’t be able to sell anything. The best spots will be taken. Do you want your rent?”
Greed evidently worked when nothing else did.
The woman stepped back, letting her escape.
The day was bitterly cold and stormy, with cold drizzly rain that was mostly ice. Despite the weather, the market was crowded. She found a place near the end of the first row to set up.
Although she saw many of her regulars, she wasn’t making as many sales as she had the week earlier, which was a disappointment. She’d promised herself that if she made the same as then, she would splurge and buy some coal to heat her room.
Several villagers passed her table without glancing at her once. Only old Mrs.McGowan stopped by to comment about the cold.
“It’s thefaoilteach,” the woman said. “That’s why my joints hurt so bad.”
She went on to tell Lorna that, according to the Highland superstition, the weather between the eleventh and fifteenth of February predicted the rest of the spring weather. The worse thefaoilteach,the better the weather to come.
Yet however pleasant Mrs.McGowan was, the woman didn’t buy anything.
Lorna didn’t have a wide selection of herbs and preparations. The comfrey balm was popular. So, too, the St.John’s Wort oil, which could be used in a variety of remedies. In addition, the mint teas were popular throughout the year.
One by one the people she knew passed her by, making her smile feel stiff, and not from just the cold. The market was her only source of income and she couldn’t afford to go into her savings yet. That was for when the baby was born and she wouldn’t be able to harvest any herbs or come to the market for a few weeks.
She was not going to be despondent. Her sales might pick up before market day was over.
“What have you to say for yourself, woman?”
Startled, she glanced up to find Reverend McGill striding toward her small stall.
She attended services each Sunday, ever since arriving at Wittan Village two months earlier, enduring McGill’s earnestly grim sermons. He mourned the old days of publicly shaming a sinner and said so often.
She met with him that first week because to do otherwise would be to elicit the suspicions of the villagers, not to mention Mrs.MacDonald. He’d offered his condolences on the loss of her husband, a falsehood that made her conscience itch. She wanted to confess her ruse yet she realized how important it was to maintain the appearance of a widow, one so desperately poor that she couldn’t even afford to dye her dresses black.
The pretense had worked, at least until the Duke of Kinross had shown up at her door. Damn him.
