Page 28 of To Wed an Heiress
“I didn’t finish my training, Irene.”
She waved a hand at him as if to dismiss his words. “Yer bum’s oot the windae! You and I both know that you were nearly finished. What you missed probably doesn’t matter. If you weren’t determined to become a bird.”
He really didn’t want to start this conversation. He knew that Irene’s starchy comments were because of her affection for him. For that reason, he tried to ignore what she said on the subject of his airships. He couldn’t convince her. She was of the mind that if God had wanted man to progress in such a way He would’ve filled his arms with feathers.
“If I send her a note,” he said, before she launched into a full tirade, “will you take it to her in the morning?”
She smiled, an expression that always startled him. Irene had a utilitarian face, broad and long with lines that had been carved by years and experience. Yet when she smiled, time fell away and he could see the girl she’d been, eyes alight with mischief.
“That I’ll do,” she said. “You go on and write the note.”
He shook his head, knowing that she would badger him until he did so. A good thing he’d already finished his dinner.
The castle’s library had seen better days. The roof over the room had been damaged and a number of the books—some of them valuable—had been irreparably damaged in his grandfather’s day.
He used the library as an office, but not that often. Most of his sketches and his calculations were performed in the Laird’s Room where he’d devised a sloping table that allowed him to see a drawing at a different angle. Sometimes all he needed was a different perspective to figure out a problem.
Now he sat at the desk and looked around him, wondering how long it had been since he’d entered the library. Robert had used this desk, that pen. The silver inkwell was his favorite, as was the silver blotter, two items Lennox could never bring himself to sell.
His older brother had epitomized family to him. Although he’d lived a number of years in Edinburgh, knowing that Robert was at Duddingston had always been reassuring. They’d been separated by seven years, but together they’d faced the deaths of their parents. First their mother, then their father less than a week later, both of influenza.
Even so, he’d never considered that Robert would die.
After Robert’s death everything fell apart. The Macrorys wouldn’t honor the grazing agreement that Robert had made with them. Their herds had to be sold. The seaweed contracts weren’t renewed. Nor were the pacts Robert had made with the fishermen in the village. He saw Douglas’s fine hand behind all those events.
Within a matter of months, he was out of money.
That first year had been difficult. He’d never shouldered the responsibility that was suddenly thrust on him. To get out of his financial difficulties he could have sold Caitheart land, but he’d balked at that. Instead, he’d taken another course and found a buyer for his design of a new chimney flue. The money from that sale had lasted them almost a year. Before the year was over, however, he’d gone back to his notebook of ideas and constructed a strongbox that opened in the middle, allowing the two sections to part.
He’d never sold one of his airships, however. Those felt like part of him, a segment of his identity. Although he wouldn’t be the first man to fly—that had already been accomplished in a glider and a hot-air balloon—he did have an idea that might be revolutionary if he could prove that it worked. The air itself could power an aircraft.
The first time he’d successfully piloted his governable parachute design and landed without incident, he’d come to the library. Here he felt closer to Robert than anywhere at Duddingston. Robert had brought in some of the artifacts from the Clan Hall, arranging them on a few of the bookcases, as if he wanted the history of Duddingston Castle around him as he worked.
What would Robert have thought of his efforts in the past five years? A question he’d asked himself numerous times. He didn’t know. He would never know. The elder brother he thought he knew had changed. Robert had fallen in love. A woman had dictated Robert’s actions. A Macrory woman.
He pulled out a piece of stationery from the middle drawer, dipped the pen in ink, and began to write.
The Macrory woman had told him her last name, but he couldn’t remember it. He was sure that Irene knew it, but he just wanted to write the note and get it over with. So he addressed it to Miss Mercy, feeling a little foolish for doing so.
I have heard that your wound has been bandaged. It will heal much faster if you leave it open to the air. I realize that such an action may challenge your vanity, but rest assured it will not be for an extended time.
He frowned at the words he’d written. Perhaps he could’ve been less didactic. Or more gracious. He could have wished the rest of her visit to Scotland to be uneventful and pleasant. However, being at Macrory House, he couldn’t imagine how that would happen. He could take out that remark about her vanity. She hadn’t struck him as excessively vain.
She’d been genuinely concerned about her maid. In that respect she was unlike most of the Macrorys, at least according to Irene through Jean.
Maybe he should reword the whole thing. Better yet, he shouldn’t send her a note at all. The sooner everyone forgot about the accident, the better. Besides, she’d called him insane.
Yet he couldn’t help but remember the look on her face when he told her to leave. He’d never been that rude to anyone before, but the accident and the fact that she was a Macrory summoned forth all sorts of memories and emotions.
He wanted his brother back and that was impossible. He wanted someone to be punished for what had happened to Robert and that was impossible, too. No one was at fault. The carriage accident had been caused simply by too much speed.
Before he talked himself out of it, he sealed the letter, writing her first name on the flap. There, that should both assuage his conscience and silence Irene.
Chapter Fourteen
Mercy would have been tempted to stay in bed if it hadn’t been for the knock on the door.
She was in no hurry to encounter the inhabitants of Macrory House this morning, especially her grandmother. The passage of years had softened her memory of Ailsa. She’d had nothing but empathy and compassion for the desperate times her grandmother and aunt had gone through, yet it was all too obvious that those emotions weren’t wanted or appreciated.
