think he probably could.
For the next week Olivia took over Rory’s father’s role. She directed him to the unsearched sections of the loch, crossing off each square with careful precision. Often Archie would come out to watch her, or sit in a chair Mrs Muckleford set up, a blanket about him, half dozing with his dog at his side.
He wasn’t well, and Olivia suspected this wasn’t a recent thing, and that Rory knew it. By now she had learned that some subjects were out of bounds, so she didn’t ask. Although she thought they both knew that this game of pretence, where Archie was perfectly fine, when it was becoming more and more obvious that he wasn’t, couldn’t last forever.
“Your wife is verra good with the map,” he told Rory once in her hearing, which Rory said was the biggest compliment it was possible for his father to give her.
Sometimes Olivia would look back at Invermar Castle and imagine it as it must have been. Flags flying, men in kilts like her husband’s, and women and children filling the rooms with their happy voices.
As for the tale of the lady throwing the Sword of the Macleans into the loch, to stop her husband marching off to battle . . . perhaps it had some basis in fact. Olivia could see how it would happen. The wife upset, desperate to keep her man safe, removing from him the one thing he treasured above all others, perhaps even above her. Yes, it was possible.
But Olivia decided that if she was the lady, and the Laird marching off to battle was Rory, then she would go about matters very differently.
She would chain him up in the dungeon and not let him out of her sight.
The woman was tall and slim, and she rode her grey horse with an elegance that spoke of a person of some importance. Olivia stood on the shore of the loch, her hat shading her eyes, and watched her approach. The hat was an old one of Archie’s and probably not particularly flattering, but Olivia had noticed that as time went on here at the castle, she had stopped worrying about such minor details.
What did it matter when no one could see her apart from the Macleans and their housekeeper? And it was actually very liberating to climb out of bed and descend to the kitchen without giving her outfit, or the fashionableness of it, another thought. All her life she had been conscious of her name and status, the importance of it in relation to how people saw her and her place in society. Here at Invermar none of that mattered.
Now, suddenly confronted by the stranger, she felt herself jolted back into the world she had thought left behind. She was seeing herself as this woman on the grey horse must see her, and it was a shock. Grubby feet and an old gown she had found in a chest in one of the rooms and altered to fit, the straw hat on her head and her hair loose and wild about her shoulders. How far her standards had slipped!
“You there!” the woman seemed to think she was some sort of servant or peasant woman, judging by her imperious manner. Her eyes were piercing. “Take my horse, girl!”
Olivia froze, and then glanced over her shoulder hoping for someone to appear and put things right. But Mr Maclean was in the town, some business he said couldn’t wait, and she and Rory had been left with the map and the finding of the sword. That he’d trusted them with his dream gave her a sense of pride but also a niggle of concern.
“Girl, I said come and take my horse!”
No one had ever spoken to Olivia like that, not in her entire life.
“Aye, you!” the woman pointed her whip in her direction. “Are ye deaf, girl? Come and hold my horse for me.”
Slowly, Olivia approached. She took the reins and the woman dismounted and shook out her skirts. She was older than Olivia had thought her from a distance, but still attractive. Dark hair and eyes, and skin as pale as milk. She was also well dressed, even if her clothing was a little dated compared to London standards.
“My name is Mrs MacIntyre,” she said haughtily. “And there’s no need to announce me, girl. I know my way very well about Invermar Castle.
I’ve come to see Rory Maclean,” she finished, and looked at Olivia as if she expected her to scuttle off immediately to fetch him.
And then the woman looked past her, to where her husband was in his boat on the loch, and moaned.
Startled by the sound, thinking her injured in some way, Olivia would have asked her if she needed help, but then she followed the direction of her gaze.
Rory had just pulled himself back into the boat and his well-muscled body was gleaming with moisture, while the dark line of hair running from his chest to his hard belly disappeared beneath the band of his linen drawers. Meant to cover instead they clung to him, and Mrs MacIntyre seemed to appreciate the view.
“Well will ye look at that,” she said, her accent slipping into a broader form of Scots. “If there was ever a man worthy of the name, then it is Rory Maclean.”
Olivia felt her surprise giving way to anger. How dare this woman speak of her husband like that? He has a fine looking man, but the way she was looking at him . . . She had no right!
The woman spun on her, eyes cold and hard. “And just who are you, lassie?” Those eyes narrowed. “Some servant of his wife, I’ll bet.” Something like amusement sprang into their depths. “Well you can tell that whore from south of the border that I don’t care if she has married him, Rory Maclean is mine.”
Olivia grasped several truths at once.
That Mrs MacIntyre had a strong desire to take Rory from her, and thought she had a good chance of doing it. And that she had no trouble in believing he would agree to go to her.
She knew she should just come out and say who she was, it was wrong of her not to, and yet suddenly her doubts about Rory were back, and she found herself playing along.
“He’s yours, do you say?” she asked, trying to blunt the cut glass of her English accent. She had listened to Mrs Muckleford enough now to be able to approximate some of her vowels. “Then why didn’t you marry him before the Englishwoman?”
Mrs MacIntyre was too busy ogling Rory to look at her.