Enraptured (Mockingbird Square 2)

“Mrs Maclean!”

The grating, Scottish accented voice made her jump, but she made an effort to force a polite smile to her lips as she turned.

“Mrs Muckleford, how … how providential. I am a little late I’m afraid . . .”

Mrs Muckleford raised an eyebrow.

“Well, very late,” Olivia admitted. “I am still recovering from the journey.”

Mrs Muckleford stood with her hands on her broad hips and for a moment Olivia wondered uneasily if she were about to be ejected from the kitchen forthwith. To her relief the woman smiled back, or at least she supposed that was what the twitch of her mouth was about.

“Come on then, lassie,” the housekeeper relented. “Sit yourself down and I’ll fetch you a bowl of porridge.”

Olivia perched on the edge of a heavy wooden chair.

“Master Rory was up with the birds,” the older woman informed her. “He was always an early riser.”

“Was he?” she asked, surprised, trying to remember if her husband had risen early in London. The truth was they had their own rooms, as was the custom between married couples of a certain class, and she didn’t know what time he rose. Did Rory stride out into the dawn light? Further evidence that Olivia didn’t know her husband very well at all and needed to remedy that.

Not that she was going to tell Mrs Muckleford that.

“Aye, he was always a busy lad. Always out and about. He missed his mother, I think, try as we might to cheer him.”

Olivia blinked. Her own childhood had been blissfully happy and she had just assumed Rory’s was the same. Or perhaps she hadn’t thought about it much at all. Suddenly she felt confused and off kilter, and rath

er guilty.

“I knew his mother was dead, but I didn’t realise it happened when he was so young,” she said.

Mrs Muckleford gave her a sideways glance before she answered, probably thinking it a strange thing for a wife to say about her husband. “I suppose you’ve not been wed very long,” she offered by way of excuse.

The porridge was warm and thick, and there were lashings of honey and cream. She tucked in while the housekeeper watched on. If she ate like this every morning, Olivia thought, she would get fat. But then again perhaps this was all she would be getting until supper?

“Does Master Rory stay out all day?” she thought to ask, when her appetite was satisfied. “He was in a boat on the loch when I looked out of my window.”

“Only in the morning. They search the loch for the sword every morning, and then in the afternoons Mr Maclean rests and Master Rory deals with matters about the castle.”

“Isn’t it possible the sword could have rusted away at the bottom of the loch? How will they find it then?”

But Mrs Muckleford wasn’t interested in common sense. She shrugged. “These things are mysterious and mystical.”

Or maybe she just didn’t have the answer, Olivia decided.

Chapter Eight

Summer 1816

Invermar Castle

Rory shook the water from his dark hair and, standing in the boat, eased his aching arms and shoulders. He had risen early and walked five miles to visit one of their last remaining tenants. He wanted him to know that soon things would be improving at Invermar, but he could see the man was more interested in the heir’s recent marriage.

“I believe you’ve taken an Englishwoman to wife,” he had spoken doubtfully. “Is that wise, Master Rory? Will she want to stay? It would be a shame if your wee children were brought up as foreigners to their own country.”

“You can be sure I will not let that happen,” Rory had said. And how could you stop it?

“’Tis a pity you didn’t wed Widow MacIntyre,” the man went on. “She’s verra upset, Master Rory. Inconsolable.”

Rory had remembered then that the tenant was a relative of the Widow, and soon afterwards had taken his leave.