Julia London - Sinful Scottish Laird

Not until she had needed someplace to which to escape.

And now? More than once Daisy had considered putting her son back in the coach and returning to England, no matter how exhausted they all were.

On their first tour of the lodge, she’d been appalled by what they’d found in the lodge—a dim interior, deteriorating furnishings. And the decor! Turkeys and stag heads seemed to lurk around every corner.

“Well, then,” she’d said when they’d seen it all. “There is nothing to be done now but begin work.” She’d said it confidently, as if her occupation was that of a woman who routinely walked into deteriorating hunting lodges and rejuvenated them. “We will muster our little army and work, shall we?”

“Assuming none of us is made ill,” Belinda had said darkly from beneath the lace handkerchief she kept pressed to her nose and face.

In that moment, the prospect of defeat before Belinda was enough to spur Daisy into turning this lodge into a highland jewel.

In the days that followed, Daisy worked as hard as anyone to restore the lodge. She and her household polished and scrubbed, tore down old wall hangings, washed windows and sashes, and carted out unsuitable furnishings. Carpets were dragged outside and beaten, mattresses turned, linens placed on beds. Sir Nevis, who meant to return to England after a week, scouted the area while they worked, and returned with a craftsman to repair the windows. He also returned with information about Balhaire, the large Mackenzie estate and small village where sundries—and, thankfully, paints—could be purchased.

But as the days progressed, Ellis looked more and more disheartened. He and his tutor wandered about looking a bit lost. Ellis was curious to inspect their surroundings, but Daisy would not allow them to venture far from the lodge...the Scotsman’s warnings of others had made her a bit fearful.

She tried to engage Ellis with the lodge itself, but the boy, like any nine-year-old, did not want to beat carpets. So Daisy urged him to continue his star charting. That occupied him until they had charted all that they could. She then commanded him to help her clean windows, but he tired easily.

When Daisy wasn’t struggling to please her son, she toiled from morning to sundown in a manner she’d never experienced in her life.

At first Rowley, Uncle Alfonso and Belinda had tried to dissuade her from it. Great ladies did not beat carpets, they said. Great ladies did not scrub floors. But Daisy ignored their protests—she found the work oddly soothing. There were too many thoughts that plagued her when she was left idle, such as whom she’d be forced to marry, and how the days of her freedom were relentlessly ticking away. Whether or not Rob would reach her in time, what was wrong with her son that he was so fragile, and how cake-headed she’d been to think a journey to the northern part of Scotland could possibly be a good idea, and, of course, what a terrible thing she’d done, dragging her family here.

Yes, she preferred the labor to her thoughts. At the end of each day, she ached with the physical exertion, but the ache was not unpleasant.

But there were times, when she couldn’t keep her thoughts from her head, that Daisy felt a gnawing anger with her late husband. Clive had forced her into this untenable situation, and her feelings about it had not changed with time. She felt betrayed by the man she had respected and revered and tried to love. She’d been a dutiful wife—how could he have had so little regard for her? How could he believe she would jeopardize her own son’s future for her own pleasure?

Sadly, the answers to these questions were buried with Clive.

By the end of their first fortnight at Auchenard, Daisy could see that the old lodge was beginning to emerge, and she was proud of the work they’d done. She began to notice less the repairs that had yet to be made and more of the vistas that surrounded the lodge. It was possible to gaze out at the lake and the hills beyond and forget her worries.

When she was satisfied with the work on the interior, Daisy turned her attention to the garden. Or what she assumed had been a garden at some point. Whatever it might have been, it was overgrown. Vines as thick as her arm crawled up walls and a fountain, and weeds had invaded what surely once had been a manicured lawn. She’d donned a leather apron and old straw hat she’d found in the stables. She’d cut vines and pulled weeds until her hands were rough. She crawled into bed at the end of those days and slept like the dead.

Belinda complained that the sun was freckling her skin and turning her color. Daisy didn’t care.

Each morning she rose with the dawn light, pulled a shawl around her shoulders and sat at the bank of windows that overlooked the lake from the master bedchamber. She’d open them to the cool morning mist, withdraw her diary from a drawer in the desk and make note of the previous day.

She pressed flowers into the book, as well as the leaves of a tree she’d never seen before, and had sketched the tree beside it. She’d drawn pictures of boats sliding by on the lake, of a red stag she saw one morning standing just beyond the walls, staring at the lodge.

Yesterday, Daisy had uncovered an arch in the stone wall that bordered the garden. She dipped her quill into the inkwell to record it—but a movement outside her window caught her eye.

The mist was settling in over the top of the garden, yet she could plainly see a dog sniffing about in a space she’d cleared. Not just any dog, either—it was enormous, at least twice as tall as any dog she’d ever seen, with wiry, coarse fur. She wondered if it was wild. She stood up, pulled her Kashmir shawl tightly around her and leaned across the desk to have a better look. “Where did you come from?” she murmured.

The dog put its snout to the ground and inched toward the one rosebush she’d managed to save.

Daisy hurried out of her room, down the stairs and the wide corridor that led to the great room and outside.

When she reached the garden, she slowed, tiptoeing through the gate, her bare feet on cool, wet earth that slipped in between her toes.

The dog’s head snapped up as Daisy moved deeper into the garden. It lifted its snout in the air, nostrils working to catch her scent. Daisy froze. The dog didn’t seem afraid of her, only curious.

She took another step, and the dog crouched down, as if it meant to flee. “Don’t go,” she whispered, slowly squatting down and holding out her hand. “Come.”

The dog stood alert, its tail high, watching her warily.

She looked around for something to entice it. There was nothing but a battered rose, and she reached for it, breaking it off at the stem and wincing when a thorn pierced her thumb. She crushed the petals in her hand and held them out. “Come,” she said again.

This time the dog slunk forward, its nose working, every muscle taut. It kept slinking forward until it could touch Daisy, its nose to her hand. A bitch, Daisy noticed. She uncurled her fingers and revealed the crushed petals in her palm.

The bitch sniffed at the flowers, licked them, and then allowed Daisy to scratch behind her ears. But when she’d inspected the petals and found them wanting, she touched her snout to Daisy’s arm, then loped away, disappearing through a patch in the hedge...through what Daisy had believed was a stone wall until this very moment.

She followed the dog’s path, pushing back against the overgrowth of vegetation, and discovered a crumbling crack in the wall. The stones had fallen away, leaving a gap of about a foot. She stepped over the pile of stones, pushed away the leggy and tangled vines of the clematis and squeezed through the opening, popping out the other side into a meadow.