Kieran Kramer: If You Give A Girl A Viscount

She’d learned so well, she hadn’t cried at Papa’s funeral. The night he’d died, her private grief had been wretched, a pain so deep that she never thought she’d be free of it. She still wasn’t.

And she knew she never would be.

In the kitchen, she washed her hands in a bucket of clean water, dried them on a clean piece of linen, kissed Hester’s cheek—appreciating how lovingly it was offered to her—and formed a bannock of oatmeal dough for Hester to bake on a griddle.

“Bake it extra hard, Hester,” Daisy said. “I’m hoping Mona will break a tooth on it.”

“Has she been worse than usual today?” The housekeeper was as soft as a freshly baked bun herself.

“Not really. But for some reason, I felt more provoked than usual.” Maybe because Mona had interrupted Daisy’s daydream about her prince. “She’s sleeping right now and will no doubt wake up just in time for dinner.”

Hester tsk-tsked. Daisy went out the kitchen door and down the steps to check on her potted lemon tree, the one she’d grown from a seed Papa had brought her back from London. One lovely lemon was growing on it—it was the first one ever, and she wished Papa could see it as she’d grown it especially for him.

But it was too late. He was gone. And Mona’s hatred of her, which Daisy had always been keenly aware of—even when Mona used to smile at her and hug her in front of Papa—had come out into the open since his death and was stronger than ever.

The truth was, Papa would still be here today if it weren’t for Daisy and her carelessness.

The old guilt came back, spreading through her like a pool of black bog sludge. And then, as it always did, it became guilt coupled with sorrow as thin and sharp as the blade on Papa’s old skean dhu .

Then … guilt, sorrow, and anger—a lumbering, suffocating anger that was always the same: accusing. Cruel. Unreasonable. Unaccepting.

She tried to breathe.

If only!

She let out a little sigh.

If only.

She was angry at herself—there was always that—but there was the beginning of something else surging in her, tendriling up from the depths of her despair and demanding notice.

She’d give it time. She must be patient. Because it might be her only lemon, too. She couldn’t afford to waste it.

Which was why moments later when Cassandra and Perdita called her into the drawing room, she straightened her spine and went to them without complaint.

“Yes, sisters?” she said in her most pleasant tones. Not because she felt like being polite but because she knew it annoyed them no end, how sweet and kind she always was to them.

Cassandra was a stunning young lady with glossy black curls and fine gray eyes. She and Daisy were almost the same age. Perdita, a year older, appeared to be a man dressed in women’s clothing, and she sounded like one, too.

“You blondes are dimwitted, aren’t you?” Cassandra said to Daisy. “I require tea and cakes immediately.”

Hester walked in then. “You’re impatient, lass,” she told Cassandra with a placid smile, and placed a tray of cakes upon a low table. “You’ve already asked me for tea. I’ll have you know the kettle has not yet boiled, but here’s something to pique your palate.”

“Your old bones will be fired, Hester,” Cassandra replied in sharp tones, “if you insist on being so slow. You and your simpleton brother with you.”

Daisy’s whole body stiffened with rage. How dare Cassandra threaten Hester and Joe—and then insult him so! No one had been here as long as he. For the past fifty years, the people of Glen Dewey could look up and see him, regular as clockwork, tending his sheep with loving care on the side of Ben Fennon.

He was the heart and soul of Castle Vandemere.

Hester, his younger sister, and still a fierce Highland lass beneath those wrinkles forming about her eyes, merely folded her hands in front of her. “Miss Cassandra,” she said in a gentle but firm tone, “I’m doing my verra best to serve you.”

And then she curtsied out of the room, but not before she gave a small wink to Daisy.

Winks always meant the same thing: may the Furies rot in Hell .

Hester had read about the wicked threesome in Papa’s big book of Greek mythology. Scots believed in education for all, and Hester was no exception. They also believed in calling a spade a spade, and if anyone could be compared to the three Furies, it was Mona and her two daughters.

Only because Hester was able to do so, Daisy also held her temper as Perdita ate an entire cake whole and then another. But these days, as the first anniversary of Papa’s death came near, Daisy couldn’t help thinking, When will it be my turn?

Her turn to be in charge? Her turn to make Cassandra and Perdita uncomfortable? Her turn to oust the vermin living in her ancestral home, the ungrateful English family who’d so bamboozled her father and made her life, Joe’s, and Hester’s a living hell?

Joe knocked at the drawing room door.

“Come in,” she said, admiring the way the aged shepherd’s eyes sparkled so blue in his swarthy face. Not a day went by that he didn’t say—

“It’s a braw, bricht day, Miss Daisy,” in his thick burr.

He did so now, and as always, his gaze was innocent and his demeanor shy. He clasped his cap to his breast and looked at her hopefully.

She gave him the response he loved. “It is, indeed, Joe,” she said with spirit.

He grinned. It was a braw, bricht day to Joe even when a cold rain was slashing his face, or snowflakes found their way between his neck and the collar of his faded woollen coat. It had even been a braw, bricht day the day after Papa had died, and Joe had said the words with tears streaming down his cheeks.

Like their mother, Cassandra and Perdita showed no interest in their adopted country. Neither had ever bothered to learn any special Scottish words or ask to hear stories about the old clans. And they didn’t give a fig for anyone at the castle or in the village of Glen Dewey.

Cassandra held up a hand. “Joe, don’t you dare come in if you smell of the byre.”

“Or sheep dung,” Perdita added, with crumbs falling out of her mouth.

“Those sheep,” Daisy said pointedly to her two stepsisters, “put food on our plates and a roof over our heads.” She looked at Joe. “Come in, dear, and you’re very welcome.”

“Ta, Miss Daisy,” said Joe, and limped over the threshold, his weak leg dragging behind him. From beneath his cap, he pulled a folded note and held it out to her. “The mail coach came to Glen Dewey today. And this was on it.”

Cassandra jumped up faster than Daisy had ever seen her move and snatched the missive from Joe before Daisy had a chance to take a step toward him.

“No!” he remonstrated with Cassandra. “Tha’s not for you.”

Cassandra held the paper triumphantly over her head and giggled. “Finders keepers!”

Joe looked worriedly at Daisy.

“It’s all right,” she told him with a small smile to send him on his way with a light heart.

He still looked doubtful but retreated, no doubt to visit Hester in the kitchen before he went back out to Ben Fennon. The baking bannock was creating delicious smells that had wafted on the ever-present draft to the front of the castle.

Meanwhile, Daisy’s smile disappeared and her heart raced. The letter could only be from one person: her godmother. Daisy had never met her before and had only just discovered she had a godmother two months ago, when she’d been reading from one of Papa’s books and a letter had slipped out.

It had been dated from before Papa was married to Mama and had come from a Lady Pinckney. She’d said that if Barnabas ever married and had a daughter, she yearned to know of the news and was highly desirous of being the godmother. Those had been her exact words: yearned and highly desirous .