Robena’s harp playing had reverted to a soothing melody, thank goodness.
“I dinnae want to worry about birthing a son. I didnae want to be a lady,” she finished emphatically.
Nicola seemed to take pity on her and, wiping her hands on her apron, crossed to the chair where Leanna pouted and patted her shoulder.
“Trust us, we dinnae want ye to have to be a lady either. Luckily, ye have five sisters to take some of the focus off ye. Da’s ultimatum said we all had to marry, remember? Whichever one of us births the first grandson, that daughter’s husband will become the next Laird Oliphant. Nae wonder Coira is so angry,” she finished wryly, tugging on Leanna’s braid. “When she kens she’s just as good as any man one of us might marry.”
She was right. Coira still hadn’t forgiven their father for such a declaration, especially when she was likely out leading the Oliphant warriors someplace exciting, even as Leanna pouted.
“But…” Nicola tugged her brown braid again. “I still dinnae understand how this can all be laid at the feet of the Ghostly Drummer of Oliphant Castle.”
Feet? Did ghosts have feet? Well, the floaty diaphanous blobs at the bottom of the Ghostly Drummer of Oliphant Castle didn’t quite have the same ring to it, did it? On the other hand, Leanna had never actually seen the drummer—no one had, as far as she knew—so perhaps the ghost did have feet and—
“Leanna?” her sister tugged her braid for a third time, jerking her attention back to the present. “How?”
Oh, right. Leanna uncrossed her arms and pushed herself upright, admitting she’d never been very good at holding a sulk for too long. “Well, unless I’m mistaken—”
“Ye usually are,” Nicola quipped with a smirk, settling back on her heels, her hands on her hips. “Remember that time ye tried to convince me our clan is named after some great huge land animal? Thick leathery skin and”—Nicola placed her two fingers on either side of her nose, pointing downward—“great big teeth, like a boar, except in the opposite direction?” She laughed. “And something about a nose? The mythical ‘Oliphant’ had a twisty nose like a pig’s tail?”
Leanna harrumphed. “He has a long nose, like a cow’s tail, only longer. And he can shoot water from it! And he’s no’ mythical!”
She’d seen a drawing in one of Wynda’s bestiaries after all.
Still giggling, her sister patted Leanna’s shoulder. “Och, aye. No’ at all mythical. We’re definitely named after a completely real, no’-at-all-mythological or allegorical, huge, long-nosed animal. I just hope it willnae arrive to eat us in our sleep.”
“I think they only eat plants.” At least, that was Leanna’s observation—the bigger the animal, the more likely it was to subsist on grasses and rosemary and such. Except for bears.
Were there Oliphant bears around?
Nicola must’ve been able to tell she’d gotten distracted again, because—chuckling—she reached over and pinched Leanna. “So, unless ye’re mistaken…?”
“Och, aye. Unless I’m mistaken, and I dinnae think I am,” Leanna hurried to clarify, “’twas the Ghostly Drummer who gave our great-whatever grandfather the idea, which Da copied, when he gave us all this ultimatum.”
Instead of answering—or teasing her further—Nicola turned toward the window. “Wynda?”
When their scholarly sister didn’t answer but continued to murmur quietly to herself as she laboriously transferred the words in her head to the vellum spread out before her, Nicola raised her voice.
“Wynda!”
Wynda, the next-youngest sister after Nicola, didn’t do anything so uncouth as to show she was startled. Instead, she carefully placed her stylus across the inkstand, straightened, smoothed her palm down the unused portion of the vellum, and exhaled. Then, slowly, she turned toward them, a faint questioning look on her lovely, delicate face.
Smiling beatifically, she said, “I really hate it when ye idiots interrupt me.”
Leanna burst out laughing.
But Nicola scoffed. “It does ye good to come back to the mortal realm and interact occasionally, sister. Ye cannae spend yer life conversing only with dead people.”
Wynda rolled her eyes, as Robena’s music became sharper and faster. “Ye think I like talking to bloody ghosts all the time? Or rather, listening to them? They willnae leave me be!”
“And so ye write their stories.” Leanna nodded to the manuscript their sister always seemed to be working on these days.
“Just the one,” Wynda sighed. “The Gray Lady refuses to move on until her story is told, so I’m helping her by writing it.”
Nicola nodded in that no-nonsense manner of hers. “Ye are all heart and compassion, I ken, but ye’re also our historian.”
“Tell her about how we’re named after the Oliphants with the long noses,” Leanna urged Wynda, when their healer sister trailed off.
Nicola, however, scoffed. “Nay, tell me about the Ghostly Drummer of Oliphant Castle, and why ‘tis his fault Da says we have to be married, even though some of us dinnae want to be.”