The Scent of Scandal (Rogues and Gentlemen Book 16) Page 6

  In his ignorance, he’d thought Scotland a nasty, heathen land with rough people and rougher food. Truth be told, Ross Moncreiffe was rough, and the castle… well, he’d rather not dwell on that, nor even start on the drink.

  He’d once allowed the good captain to get him drunk on the foul brew that passed for alcohol around here. There was an illegal whisky still run nearby and, in Digby’s opinion, the law had the right of it. There ought to be a law against the stuff, judging by the head he’d woken with.

  Yet, on being taken up by Captain Moncreiffe and brought to the wilds of the Highlands, it had taken him less than a year to change his thinking… about the people and the food, at least. Nothing would change his mind about the whisky.

  The captain was certainly no gentleman, despite Digby’s best efforts. The food, however, well, Mrs Murray was a marvel in the kitchen and warm bannocks with butter dripping down the sides were Digby’s idea of heaven. Once their initial suspicions had been allayed by Mrs Murray, the people had proven themselves friendly, too. Though she still insisted on talking to him as though he was some damned Sassenach, there was no heat in it.

  “Well?” the lady herself demanded, looking up as he came in.

  “He’s taken himself off to that glasshouse of his to get away from my bellyaching,” Digby said with a grin.

  Mrs Murray chuckled. “Well, I ought to have known driving the poor man from his home was something ye’d excel at.”

  Digby shrugged, too used to Mrs Murray’s sharp tongue to take offense. “It’s a skill like any other.”

  Taking a fresh bannock from the pile he tore it in two, sighing as the warm scent drifted up.

  “I dinnae understand how ye stay so skinny when ye inhale bannocks as fast as I can cook them,” she said, putting a jar of blackberry jam down beside him.

  “What time do you think she’ll come?” Digby asked, ignoring this admonition as he took out his pocket watch and squinted at it.

  “Well, seeing as I invited her to come at three, any time now, I’d imagine,” she said, looking pleased with herself. “And if my sore knee is right—and it always is—we’ll have the devil of a storm soon enough, and she’ll be forced to stay the night.”

  “He’ll see us hung, drawn, and quartered for this. You know that?”

  Mrs Murray laughed and shook her head. “Nae. He’ll bluster and rattle the walls, but he’s all noise, surely ye have learned that by now?”

  Digby nodded. It was strange really. He’d worked for the quality all his life, before circumstances had found him in dire straits. Yet the captain, who was a lowborn heathen by any English standards, treated him with more respect than he’d found elsewhere. It had taken him a while to appreciate that fact, but he did now.

  “True. If only I could induce him to dress like a gentleman. Even if it was just a nicely tied cravat,” he added with a wistful sigh.

  “Ach, a pretty face suits the dish cloth,” Mrs Murray replied and then sighed as Digby returned a blank look. “I mean, with a face and figure like yon captain, it disnae matter how tidy his cravat. Seeing him in his skin was likely the best thing that could have happened to our Miss Wycliffe. She’ll be smitten soon enough, ye wait and see.”

  Digby bit into a bannock and gave a happy sigh. After all, if there was a mistress for this gloomy pile of stones, things could only improve.

  ***

  “What do you think?” Freddie asked, turning in a circle for Maggie.

  Her companion was sitting in the snug little parlour before the fire, her ankle still elevated on a cushioned foot stool and not a bit less puffy than it had been.

  “I thought you said Captain Moncreiffe was an ill-mannered lout?” Maggie said with suspicion.

  “And so he is,” Freddie replied, laughing. “But I don’t see why I shouldn’t look my best all the same. I’m not an ill-mannered lout, after all.”

  “Hmmm,” Maggie replied, setting aside the book she’d been reading. “Is he a handsome lout? That’s what I want to know.”

  Freddie pretended to consider this question and wrinkled her nose. “Well, I suppose some might consider him handsome, yes. In a rather coarse way, you understand.”

  “Oh, I think I probably do,” Maggie said, the sardonic edge to her words inescapable. “Freddie, dear. You do know you’re playing with fire?”

  “I’m only going to have tea with his housekeeper, Maggie,” Freddie replied, a little exasperated even though there was a flutter of something awfully like anticipation in her stomach. “You sound like I’m planning on handing over my virtue the moment he crooks his finger.”

  “You’re not, then?” Maggie asked, arching one eyebrow. “Because you’ve paid me to be a chaperone and, as of yet, I’ve been of little use to you.”

  “Nonsense,” Freddie said briskly as she put on her pelisse and snatched up her gloves. She knew the dress suited her, so there was no need to seek further reassurance from Maggie.

  It was only tea with the housekeeper. Except that Mrs Murray had had a rather odd, conspiratorial look in her eyes when she’d asked Freddie to come.

  “You’ve been perfect,” she said, returning to the conversation and carefully avoiding the question about her virtue. “I could hardly have made that journey alone, could I? And the village knows I’m perfectly respectable, as I have you living with me. Digby and Mrs Murray won’t tattle, so why should anyone even know I’m even visiting the castle?”

  Maggie huffed out a sigh and gave her a hard look. “Because these things always get out, you little fool.” She sat forward, holding out a hand. Freddie had little choice but to take it. Maggie squeezed her fingers. “I worry for you, Freddie. If you want to make a life here, you need people to respect you. If they think you’re having an affair with the captain—”

  “Oh, I know,” Freddie said, frowning. “But I made a promise. Possibly a stupid one, but I made it all the same, and frankly going into another stranger’s house to be a governess….” She shuddered and shook her head. “I was lucky that Lady Cheam was so nice and more so that her husband was often away, but I don’t want to live that life. When Lord Cheam was in the house she was always in a quake and he made no secret of his disdain for me, nor his… other feelings either. I didn’t feel safe.”

  Maggie nodded, understanding that at least. “A vile man. I think I was too old and too fierce to catch his eye, thank heavens, but I’m glad you got out of there. I know several of the maids left suddenly, and the rumour was always that they were running from him and his attentions.”

  “I heard that too,” Freddie said. “And I always took care to lock my door at night, but even if the family were nice, it’s a terrible life. A governess is stuck in some strange world, neither part of the family but not quite a servant. It’s lonely, Maggie.”

  It was the first time Freddie had ever explained the situation aloud. She was not one to dwell on her problems, but returning to that life frightened her. So, Captain Moncreiffe was just going to have to like her. She wasn’t that unlikeable, was she?

  Given time, perhaps they really could be friends.

  “Well, I’m going, or I shall be late.”

  Maggie peered out the window and frowned, shaking her head. “I don’t think you should go. The sky looks awfully threatening, it’s bound to rain.”

  “I have an umbrella, a little rain won’t hurt me, and the sky always seems to look like that,” Freddie said in a rush, waving a cheery goodbye and hurrying out the door.

  ***

  “Come in, come in, lassie,” Mrs Murray urged Freddie as Digby took her dripping umbrella from her. “Well, an’ who would hae thought it would pour like that, and ye soaked to ye skin, ye poor wee thing. Come down to the kitchen and dry off. I’ve got some fresh treacle scones, still warm from the oven. They’ll take the chill from cold bones.”

  Freddie hurried after her, trying to keep her teeth from chattering. She’d never seen rain like it. Though she’d been barely a minute’s walk from the cas
tle when the heavens had opened, she’d been wet through in seconds. With a stab of anxiety, she had to concede that Maggie may have had a point. Perhaps she ought not have come.

  However, half an hour later, sitting by the blazing kitchen fire with her pelisse and stockings and petticoats drying on a rack and indulging in the sweetest, lightest treacle scones known to man, all seemed right with the world. Her skirts were still steaming a little but, as she wriggled her toasty toes before the flames, she didn’t care.

  “Let me top up your tea,” Mrs Murray said, whisking away her teacup and setting it back on the small table at her elbow a moment later. “And have another scone.”

  Freddie laughed, shaking her head. “Mrs Murray, I’ve never been so spoiled and indulged my whole life. Are you trying to fatten me for the pot?”

  “Well, and whatever gave ye such a notion?” Mrs Murray said with a laugh as she went to peer up at the kitchen window. “Nae, lass, it’s still lashing down. I think ye may have to bide the night here.”

  “Oh, dear.” Freddie bit her lip. Being late home for dinner was one thing, but not coming home at all… Maggie would be beside herself. “I’m sure a little rain won’t do me any harm,” she said, though she was less convincing this time than she’d been with Maggie. The rain had been icy, and the thought of walking two miles home in it with the light fading was not a happy one.

  She got up and went to stand next to Mrs Murray, craning her neck to look out of the high window. The sky was an iron grey, the light disappearing at speed, while the rain was still falling in sheets. Freddie shivered at the idea of going out in it again.

  “Captain Moncreiffe won’t be pleased,” she said in a murmur, feeling a lot less sanguine about meeting him in such circumstances. Popping in for tea with his housekeeper was one thing, but staying the night….

  He was bound to think she’d done it on purpose, which she hadn’t. The sky had been grey for days with no rain. How had she been supposed to know it would choose that afternoon to throw every drop from the skies at once?

  “Dinnae worry about yon captain,” Mrs Murray said, her tone soothing. “His bark is worse than his bite.”

  “So is mine,” Freddie said ruefully. “Which won’t make for a pleasant evening. Perhaps, could I hide?” she suggested, brightening at the idea. “I could stay down here and then perhaps you could make me up a bed somewhere and I can sneak off again in the morning. He need never know.”

  Mrs Murray regarded her thoughtfully. “Aye, well, I suppose I could contrive something of the sort.”

  “Oh,” Freddie exclaimed, impulsively giving the woman a hug. “Thank you so much. I was quite in a quake at having to face him.”

  The woman patted her back. “There now, no need to get in such a taking, though I rather wish ye would face him. It’s what he needs, someone to stand up to him and tell him he’s acting like an eejit.”

  “That’s what you do, though, isn’t it?” Freddie asked, sitting back down before the fire and watching as Mrs Murray began to prepare for the evening meal.

  She laughed a little at that. “Aye, true enough, but I’ve known him since he was a wee boy. Coming from a lady, it’s different.”

  Freddie frowned a little and stared at the flames in the hearth. “I’m not a lady, not anymore.”

  Mrs Murray snorted and shook her head. “Ye are the finest lady this castle has seen in many a year, my lass, and I say ye are a lady to ye core. Ye were raised to be one, I take it?”

  “Yes,” Freddie said with a smile. “For all the good it did me. I learned every aspect of how to be pretty and useless. The things that could actually have helped me, like French and sewing, I have no aptitude for at all, and then my life turned upside down and I had to work for a living with no skills to recommend me.”

  “What happened?” Mrs Murray asked, sitting down with a knife and picking up a potato to peel.

  Freddie got up from beside the fire and came to sit at the table. “Give me a knife and I’ll tell you,” she offered. “It’s about time I did something practical.”

  “A lady ought not dirty her hands,” Mrs Murray said, a scolding tone to her voice.

  Freddie gave a crooked smile, folding her arms. “Fine, no history of Fredericka Wycliffe for you, then.”

  “Ach, that’s nae fair,” the woman grumbled, before getting up and fetching another knife. “Now the idea is just to pare a fine layer of skin off, not great chunks. See, like this.” Mrs Murray deftly peeled the potato, cut it in half and dropped it into a pan of cold water.

  Freddie watched and nodded, she’d seen it done often enough in her life though she quickly realised that Mrs Murray and the others she’d watched had made it look easy.

  “On ye go, then,” she said, gesturing for Freddie to begin her tale.

  “Well,” Freddie began, frowning at the potato in concentration as she peeled. “As you said, I was raised a lady. I had an idyllic childhood. My father was a lovely man. He enjoyed life to the full, and my mother was considered something of a beauty in her day.” She paused giving a rueful smile. “I think she was a little disappointed I didn’t inherit her beauty. I take after my father and have nothing of her golden good looks.”

  “Not golden, perhaps,” Mrs Murray said, giving her a critical look. “But ye are a bonnie lass, just the same.”

  Freddie flushed a little, surprised and touched by the compliment. Among the ranks of the ladies of the ton she’d always felt plain and rather ordinary. Being considered a ‘bonnie lass’ seemed a lovely thing in comparison. “Thank you,” she said, meaning it. For a moment she wondered if Captain Moncreiffe might consider her bonnie too, and decided she’d be better off not thinking about that.

  “Tis naught but the truth,” Mrs Murray said with a shrug. “Ye have a bonnie face, a kind nature—but you’re no pushover—and ye’ve good child-bearing hips, too. Ye would make a fine wife to some lucky man.”

  Freddie opened her mouth and closed it again before hurrying the conversation on.

  “My parents died when I was seventeen. I was away, staying with a friend or I might not be here,” she said, trying to keep her tone matter of fact. “Typhus killed them both and a good number of the staff too. I never went home again,” she added, swallowing past the lump in her throat.

  To give herself a moment, she concentrated on peeling the last piece of skin from the potato she held, cut it in half and popped it into the pan where Mrs Murray had already placed five far neater examples.

  “My, you’re so fast,” Freddie said, relieved to change the subject.

  Mrs Murray snorted. “Years of practice. Did ye have no other kin?”

  “No,” Freddie replied. “That is, I had a cousin who inherited the house and the income it brought, but he is not a kind soul and he had no interest in me. If not for my friend Bunty and her parents, I don’t know what might have become of me. They let me stay with them and helped me find a position as a governess.”

  Mrs Murray let a potato fall into the water with a plop. “You mean to say they didn’t keep ye?”

  Freddie shook her head. “At the time they couldn’t afford to. They had Bunty’s come out to pay for and they weren’t wealthy. Since then her father has inherited a large estate when his own father died, but at the time it happened….” Freddie shrugged. “They were very kind to me, Mrs Murray, and did everything they could. Though I was friends with Bunty, they didn’t know me very well. It was the first time I’d gone away to stay with them, and….”

  Freddie trailed off, not wanting to talk about it anymore.

  Mrs Murray seemed to understand and reached out, patting her hand for a moment before returning her attention to her work.

  ***

  Digby frowned and he regarded the housekeeper with consternation.

  “I don’t understand. Why did you go to the trouble of getting her here in the middle of a downpour, so she’d be forced to stay, if you’re going to keep her hidden?”

  Mrs Murray rolled h
er eyes at him in a manner that always made him feel like snotty nosed boy.

  “She’ll be hidden until the ghosties come out and frighten her from her bed.”

  Digby snorted, shaking his head. “I’ll admit, the place looks like it should be crawling with ghosts, but I’ve never seen one.”

  “Ah, but she’ll hear one, tonight. Such a pitiful wailing will turn her out of her bed in a quake and leave her trembling in the corridors. It will also have the captain out o’ bed in short order too, just in time to rescue the fair damsel.”

  “You’re not serious?” Digby demanded, eyebrows hitting his receding hairline. “He’ll more likely think her an intruder and murder her.”

  Mrs Murray huffed out a breath. “I think she’ll present a pretty enough picture to reassure him she’s neither a thief nor an assassin.”

  “And what then?” Digby demanded. “Do you not think he’ll want to know what the devil she’s doing there?”

  “Of course, and she can admit she came to visit me and got caught in the storm, but she didn’t want him to think it had been done on purpose, so she asked me to hide her there until morning.”

  “Which is true,” Digby said, not understanding.

  “Exactly,” the housekeeper said, sounding exasperated now. “Look, never ye mind the whys and wherefores, just meet me in the great hall at three in the morning, and you’ll see.”

  Digby sighed, scowling. “I don’t like it. He’ll know it was us and he’ll give me my marching orders.”

  “The captain has given ye notice more times than I can count. He’s sent ye packing twice since Friday,” Mrs Murray said with a snort. “And ye never actually leave, so what does it matter?”

  “True,” Digby replied, mollified. “Though this one might be the clincher.”

  Chapter 7

  “Wherein things that go bump in the night.”

  Ross lay on his bed, staring into the darkness, and wishing the darkness was all he saw when he closed his eyes. If it hadn’t been hammering with rain outside, he’d have taken a lantern and returned to the glasshouse. It was his favourite place in the world, a place where he could imagine the world wasn’t the vile, ugly place he knew it to be.