Raven McAllan - The Scottish Lord’s Secret Bride

Soon. Fraser stretched and prepared to work again.

‘There’s a carriage coming up the drive, my lord,’ Archie Retson, his factor, exclaimed some half an hour later, as they both balanced on a cross-beam. ‘Posh equipage and all.’

Fraser looked towards the drive and swore under his breath when he saw the smart carriage. So it was all about to kick off? That phrase, he thought, suited this situation perfectly. Whatever he discovered when he finally got to Stirling, life was not going to be plain sailing from now on.

‘Friends of my mother’s, up for a visit,’ he said to Archie insouciantly. ‘It will do Mama good. She is still a little down.’

Liar, she is more than a little meddling. Down has nothing to do with it.

‘Aye, it was a hard blow to her, the old laird going so suddenly, and not a sign he wasn’t good for another ten or twenty years,’ Archie replied sombrely. ‘Not that you aren’t filling his shoes proper like, but well. He was a one was the old laird, and he and your mama fit together.’

Fraser understood what the other man meant. He nodded and checked the last hazel rod they had secured. ‘He is a hard act to follow. If I manage half as well, I’ll be happy. There, do you think that will do for the winter?’

Archie studied their handiwork with a professional and critical eye. ‘I reckon so.’ He picked up the tools they’d been using. ‘And for your information, just one more thing…’

Fraser stared at him as he reached the top rung of the ladder to take him to the ground. ‘Yes?’ What now? Please not more roofs to fix. As much as he liked manual work, the weeks since he’d returned to Britain had seen little of it in his immediate orbit, and his muscles told him so in no uncertain terms.

‘You’ve got more than halfway there already,’ Archie told Fraser roughly. ‘He’d be proud.’

Those simple words put a lump into Fraser’s throat. It took several seconds before he felt able to reply. Even then it was only with the most mundane: ‘Archie, thank you.’ Fraser swallowed several times. ‘That is a compliment I’m proud of. Now I best get on. I want to go back via the village and check if old Russell has sorted that well out properly. If he isn’t bothered about clean water, the rest of his family is. He’s a lazy so and so.’ Not only that, as a former traveller, he’d know when the gypsies would be back to sell their wares.

And I can ask that all-important question.

‘Best catch him before he wanders to the inn, then,’ Archie suggested. ‘Now his gout isn’t as scuppered by the weather as it has been lately, he’ll pop along after lunch for an hour or so.’

And no doubt whilst Jessie—his daughter, who kept an eye on him—was busy elsewhere. ‘At least I’ll know where to find him if he’s not there,’ Fraser said once he’d ducked his head and torso in the nearby stream and dried as best he could on a scrap of material Archie gave him.

‘He’s a chancer, and I’d bet a lot of pheasant poults somehow make their way into his larder, but I canna help but like the rapscallion.’

Fraser pulled his shirt over his head and sniffed his sweaty and odorous neckerchief before he shoved it in his saddlebag. ‘Best not to produce that anywhere near a female until it is washed and ironed.’ He slid his arms into his jacket and ran his fingers through his hair. ‘That’ll do.’

Archie grinned as he donned his own serviceable tweed jacket. ‘Aye, I reckon so.’

Fraser saluted him with a wave of one hand and saddled his horse once more. He really ought to go and greet his visitors, for whatever he said to the contrary they were as much his as his mama’s, but he needed time to decide what to do and how to react. He didn’t want to face Morven without an idea of how they stood. A visit to Russell might help him plan. With a mental wince at the look his mother would bestow on him, not to mention the dressing-down she would ring over his head given the opportunity, he turned his horse away from the direction of the castle and headed down the pass towards the village.

Whilst he was there he might just check if the dower house was ready for occupation. It might be time to take his castle back and arrange it as he wanted it. Married or not.

Married or not.

‘Ah well I’ve seen the signs that the tribe will be back.’ Russell nodded his head sagely and shifted his empty tankard across the scarred wooden table. The screech put Fraser’s teeth on end, as it was undoubtedly intended to. He ignored the silent blackmail hint and raised one eyebrow.

‘And, what does Wullie say?’

Russell coughed. ‘I dinnae ken. Och, I’m awfy dry.’

Fraser said nothing. The silence lengthened until at last Russell spat into the fire and sighed.

‘You’re awfy hard, laddie—m’laird, ye ken. Like thon faither o’ yours.’

‘A compliment indeed,’ Fraser said emotionlessly. ‘Better you remember it than not. So?’ He deliberately raised one eyebrow in his best aristocratic manner.

Russell scowled. ‘Jessie’s Wullie said they’ll be back for the games,’ Russell said, his dialect so thick even Fraser had difficulty understanding it. ‘They’ll do the usual. Expect the normal site and so on, not to mention the handouts and your housekeeper buying the dolly pegs and the heather.’

Fraser nodded even as his heart sank. The games were weeks away. Plus, his largesse would be expected to go above and beyond the clothes, food and purchases. Madame Beshlie would expect to read everyone’s palms. His own palms itched as he remembered the last time she did that. Look how that had ended up.

His body tightened as he thought of one golden afternoon, and the three special weeks that followed.

How his love had looked up at him, how they’d slipped away from the games and held hands whilst Tam Curtin, gnarled and aged, had spoken those portentous words… “Do you…”

They had.

Misneachail, his horse, shied at an unseen something on a nearby bush, and Fraser pulled himself out of his introspective memories and concentrated on what he was doing. He might not be in any mad hurry to get home, but nor did he want to arrive on Shanks’s pony.

Plus for his own peace of mind, he wanted to look over the dower house. Whether he chose to be married or not, it was time for his mama to take a step back. He wouldn’t tell her she was meddlesome to her face, well not in so many words, but Fraser had long decided it was hard enough for any new laird, with or without a wife, to take control of what was in effect his destiny, when part of the old brigade was so closely involved.

He’d coped, and coped well in Barbados, and left what had been an ailing tobacco plantation when he arrived as a flourishing one. Although the Kintrain estate was well maintained, Fraser was damned sure he could make it better and ever more prosperous. He didn’t want any interference as he did so. Therefore, the dower house had to be next on his agenda. He’d have to be subtle to ascertain whether his mama thought it a good idea, or even better whether she would suggest it herself.

Twenty minutes later he was glad he’d made that decision. The couple that looked after the house were overjoyed to see him.

‘For you know, m’lord, your mama has held everything together until you got back, but I know she’s ready to come here,’ Mrs Black said earnestly. ‘She’s often said the day can’t come soon enough when you manage your own household and she lives here instead. Cosier and more homely.’

‘She said that?’ Fraser asked in a surprised voice. It wasn’t the impression she’d given him.

Mrs Black coloured. ‘Oh, milord, I hope I wasn’t speaking out of turn. But she did mention you were ready to settle down and she and your siblings wouldn’t want to encroach on your wife’s territories.’