Chapter Three
Philip, ruffles of lace around his wrists, reached for Evelyn. His fingers were cold and damp, like dingy linen left in the rain. His blank gaze moved closer, the plume in his floppy hat bending to slake across her face. Evelyn was trapped, rooted to the floor, her heart pounding.
“This is a dream,” she said, but her voice was nothing more than a whisper. She squeezed her eyes shut. A nightmare. I don’t want this. She squeezed her whole body tight, her mind pushing for another scenario, anything other than an advancing Philip Sotheby.
She inhaled, smelling pine and rosemary. Warm lips touched hers, slanting against her mouth as muscular arms wrapped around to her back, pulling Evelyn into a solid, broad chest. She sighed against the kiss as gentle fingers slid along her cheek. Evelyn opened her eyes, and her breath caught as she stared into the strong face of none other than Grey Campbell.
He wore his kilt with no shirt, the skin of his chest hot under her palms. He grinned rakishly at her, stepping back. With a tug on the belt holding his Highland dress, the kilt dropped to his ankles, giving Evelyn a view of his manhood. He looked like the classical statue of David she’d studied in books.
Evelyn jerked awake, her lips parted on a pant, her fingers curled into the sheets around her. For several seconds, she inhaled and exhaled, her eyes wide as she stared at the wooden ceiling above her. I’m in Finlarig Castle. It’s burned. And Grey Campbell… Is large and godlike. “Good God,” she whispered, frowning over the ridiculous thought. She pushed upward in her warm blankets.
Grey Campbell was infuriating. Insufferable, devilish, and warlike. It mattered not that he was ruggedly handsome, well-muscled and tall, and that the lines of his face were classically cut. She couldn’t care any less that his dark hair hung, clipped about his head in waves, free of those awful wigs in London. Or that he smelled clean.
I sleep naked. Lord help her, how that teasing statement, surely said in some ridiculous attempt to thwart her plans for the library, had kept her awake as she tossed in the small bed on the fourth floor. And then the dream. Evelyn had learned how to change the course of her dreams while asleep, fighting nightmares since she was a child. Grey’s comment must have influenced her turn from the distasteful scene with Philip.
Dawn light filtered in through the warped windowpanes of the servant’s room, the second best on the floor. Scarlet was slumbering at the other end of the hall in a slightly larger, cleaner room. The rest of the rooms would be for the students once they were refreshed.
What had happened to Finlarig? Had her advice on smoking rats to make them flee been carried out by incompetent people? And why were the chief of the Campbells and his sister still in residence? She would untangle this mess today, and nothing, save the physical hand of God himself, would lift her from this castle.
“I am not going anywhere,” she whispered. With Philip Sotheby waiting, like a gloomy, persistent mule, to marry her, and her father’s brutal demands in his will, she had no choice but to make her way here in Scotland. Or take vows of purity and join a cloister. Considering the turn of her dream, her soul was not inclined toward a nunnery.
James had found her room, no doubt thanks to Molly, and delivered her trunk. Evelyn shook out a green day dress. Wrinkled but dry, the soft lawn brought out the color of her greenish eyes and had always been one of her favorites. She would need to acquire some work clothes as soon as possible, for there was much to be scrubbed, dusted, and swept. Just the thought of the scorched great hall made her head ache, and she rubbed a finger across her forehead.
She brushed and tied her hair into a loose knot at her nape. There was no water in the pitcher in the small, square room, easily rectified in the kitchens. Evelyn wrapped her woven shawl around her shoulders and held the lantern before her as she made her way down the curving stone steps. She paused on the second floor, where the plastered walls were indeed singed, and glanced down the hall to where the infuriating Grey Campbell was probably sleeping naked in her library.
She counted fifty-three steps in all to the bottom level. Climbing the stairs could give her students indoor exercise if rains kept them from their brisk walks in the courtyard for health.
The smell of damp soot surrounded her on the first floor, making her feel like she stood in an unswept chimney. She rubbed against the tickle in her nose and walked forward, her boots crunching on the floor made of wide, gray flagstone. The great hall sat empty and without a stirred fire in the large hearth at the far end, but sunlight filtered in through the broken windows set high in the walls. Still and silent, a chill ran down Evelyn’s back. The room felt like a grave rather than the hub of her school. Black scorch marks rose on every wall to the vaulted ceilings, where arching timbers were stained black. She could imagine the flames soaring up fifteen feet to lick at the rafters. Two sparrows swooped back and forth, alighting to chirp down at her.
“Taking shelter?” she whispered, her small voice seeming too loud in the brittle silence of the ruined hall. “Just like us.” She turned in a tight circle to survey what must have been hanging tapestries lying in mounds where the floor met the walls. Tables and chairs lay scattered and broken, half burned like she imagined bones left after a funeral pyre.
“Whatever happened here?” Evelyn whispered.
“English happened here.” The deep voice shot like last night’s lightning through her stomach and back, snapping her shoulders straight. She turned to see Grey Campbell standing in the entryway.
…
Grey had watched the Englishwoman descend the stairs from the shadows of the entryway. No longer drenched, curls escaped the bun at the back of her head. She wore a green gown of fine material instead of homespun wool, and it clung to all her womanly curves. Aye, she was bonny, but she was also English.
“Captain Cross sent his men from the English garrison to make certain the castle was empty,” Grey said and strode to the hearth, his boots crunching through his mother’s broken dishes and tea bowls still scattered across the stone floor. He set the rushlight he held among the kindling in the grate. “When I refused to let them steal our castle, Cross’s lieutenant lit it on fire. Said he would smoke us out.”
Grey watched Evelyn from over his shoulder. The morning light in the hall revealed her brows furrowing over alarmed eyes. They were light eyes, but he couldn’t tell the color.
“Was…?” Her hand rose to her cheek. “Was anyone harmed?”
“Of course,” he said, straightening to turn toward her. “Burn the Scottish vermin out, and let the Englishwoman build her school for sheep.”
“He said…vermin?” she asked.
Grey narrowed his eyes. “He did.”
Evelyn cleared her throat and tilted her chin higher. He watched her slender throat swallow. “My brother nor I would ever have consented to burning the castle, especially with people inside. Captain Cross and his lieutenant will answer for their brutality and for ruining my brother’s property.”
“Bloody hell, woman,” Grey said, frowning. Was she addled or just ignorantly English? “The castle is not your brother’s property. It was never available for sale to begin with.” He shook his head, feeling the rock of anger sitting in his middle, a constant weight since the day he received a royal missive stating that he must surrender Finlarig. “Your brother was tricked into buying something that doesn’t exist.”
“This castle and the lands most certainly do exist,” Evelyn said, throwing her arms wide to indicate the hall. “And the English crown felt that the land and structure were forfeit.”
Grey strode across to where he left his mug of ale on a newly built wooden table. “Forfeit on imagined charges of treason against King Charles,” Grey said.
“Yes,” she answered, inhaling through her little nose.
“As if I were building an army up here to swoop down and kill the English king and his queen. Bloody ludicrous,” Grey said. “I have enough to do just keeping our harvest going, my people living in harmony, and the Menzies clan from trying to regain this land after we’ve lived on it for centuries. I have no reason to plot against a king who is too busy making merry with all the ladies of London to concern himself with our holding.”
Evelyn ran the pads of her fingers across her forehead. “The king has dissolved parliament because he feels they overstep their duty in wanting to rule with him. It has made him anxious about his support and possible plots against his life. But why would he target Finlarig Castle? Or the Campbells of Breadalbane if you’ve had no interactions with him?”
“He doesn’t feel an explanation is required. Just torches.” Grey grabbed some fresh bread that his Gram had given him when he’d visited her yesterday in her cottage west of the village. After surviving the fire, she refused to return. The shame he felt that his grandmother couldn’t depend on him to protect her was still raw. His jaw ached as he clenched it.
With each step Evelyn took, shattered pottery and china crunched under her boots. She looked down at the ashy floor. “There is more here than broken window glass.”
Slow and deep, but with carefully schooled apathy, Grey’s words came. “Lieutenant Burdock took the time to have his men smash everything before they lit the tapestries while holding us back with smoking muskets. Ye’re stepping on centuries’ old pottery and my mother’s Chinese tea bowls, a gift from my father.”
Evelyn squatted, her green skirt billowing out around her, to unearth a red-hued piece from the rubble. “Good God.”
Grey gave a dark laugh. “God seems to be good for only the English, lass, else He’d have at least brought down the rains that night instead of wind to fuel the fires.”
She glanced at him from her crouch. “Could the lieutenant have meant to…frighten you with torches and smoke, but the winds caught?”
Grey’s fists clenched against his legs. “He came inside, smashed everything, and held his torch to the tapestries,” he said, his words grinding out from behind his teeth.
“Oh,” she said, dropping her gaze back to the shattered fragments. He watched her uncover and collect pieces of broken tea bowls, cups, and plates in her top skirt. She carried them to the table, setting them down gingerly as if they could break further. The way she treated the pieces with care irritated him. “They are rubbish now,” he said and grabbed the back of his skull, pressing against the tension in his neck.
“Perhaps they can be mended.” She bent over them. “I have a decent recipe for glue.”
She glanced up, meeting his gaze. Closer now, he could see that her eyes were greenish gray, like the summer moors in the mist. “They will never be the same,” he said and swallowed past the bitter pill of dishonor and loss.
She nodded but kept his gaze. “Sometimes things that are broken can be changed into something new if the pieces are picked up, dusted off, and put together.”
“No matter how much glue ye paste on there, it won’t hold drink any longer.”
“But it could have value beyond the extrinsic,” she murmured.
“Descartes may argue that,” he said and watched her eyes open wider. “The intrinsic value of rubbish is nil, making your time wasted. It will just be swept out,” he said, enjoying the look of astonishment on her face.
“You know French philosophy?”
“I am not some illiterate Scottish barbarian, Lady Evelyn.” He leaned a bit closer, his eyes squinting despite his grin. “I chose not to read your damned paper when I burned it, but I very well could have.”
She frowned, weighing his words, then looked out at the ransacked great hall. She let loose a long huff, shaking her head. “What a blasted mess this is, intrinsically as well as physically.” She turned until she located a chair that still had four legs and righted it, sitting against the high back. “Are you willing to share?” she asked, looking at the rolls on the one rebuilt table.
“My castle? No. My bread? Aye.”
Evelyn glanced at the ceiling as if an angel sat among the rafters, and she wished to persuade him to bring down a lightning bolt.
“Good to see you two aren’t dueling this morning,” her sister called from the stairwell. She took two crunching steps. “Lord, this place is a disaster.”
The second sister, Scarlet, was bonny too, yet sadness seemed to dull her gaze. She lifted the edge of her skirt so as not to let it touch the destruction of his hall…the destruction of his life and legacy.
“This is what a damn English captain can wreak when the English crown wishes to steal a man’s home,” Grey said. He turned on his heel to leave the castle. He didn’t owe them any further explanations or information. Certainly not that he was going to check in on his cousin, Aiden Campbell, who still suffered from burns.
No, he didn’t owe Evelyn Worthington or her sister anything but hostility and condemnation. They were English, and they thought they owned him, for Finlarig and the Campbells were one and the same. If England destroyed his home and land, they would also destroy him and his clan. Which was something that Grey would never allow, no matter how bonny, brave, and reasonable the Englishwoman, standing among his mother’s broken tea bowls, appeared.
…
“Help me gather up the shards,” Evelyn said to Molly and Scarlet. “Then we can sweep and start on the walls.”
“You still have hopes to make this ruin into a school?” Scarlet asked as she stooped down. “Even with that Highland brute threatening you with a sword?”
Evelyn propped hands on her hips. “Nothing will deter me from bringing education to the women of Breadalbane.” After inspecting the castle, she was feeling more hopeful. Only the first floor was terribly scorched, and the kitchens were in perfect order. “And I don’t think Greyson Campbell was really going to stick me with his sword.”
Molly held up two pieces of a tea bowl that fit together. “Slicing your throat would have ended you faster.”
“I would have been angry, too, had my home been taken from me.” She frowned at the twist of guilt inside her stomach. Certainly, Nathaniel and the solicitor hadn’t told this English Captain to burn Finlarig to evict the human occupants. Although Grey Campbell wouldn’t believe it, she would never call people vermin or suggest burning them alive.
Scarlett stretched her back in an arch. “So, the crown believes him to be guilty of treason? It’s a wonder he hasn’t been arrested.”
“Perhaps this Captain Cross decided to execute him and his family in the fire,” Evelyn said grimly. “Though I doubt he was judged fairly or even at all. Nathaniel might be able to help.”
“Help with what exactly?” Scarlet asked. “If he solves Grey Campbell’s problem, he loses his new sheep farm and probably the money with it.”
“There is no easy solution,” Evelyn said. “But we are not returning to Hollings or Whitehall Palace.” She shook her head, meeting Scarlet’s gaze with determination. Even if she didn’t know what happened to her sister, she’d support her in never returning if that was what she wished. “So, we must find a way to become independent women here in Scotland. This area has no school, which is in direct conflict with the Education Act of 1646. And we have coin to make it happen, so the town needn’t be taxed. The only other structures suitable for a school within this parish are Balloch Castle, at the other end of Loch Tay where another Campbell lives, and Castle Menzies, where the chief of the Menzies Clan resides. Balloch is remote, away from the village, and someone is currently residing there, too, as well as at Castle Menzies.” She let out a long exhale. “There is just no other place within this parish for my school.”
Molly grabbed a willow broom in a corner. She started to sweep on the far end but stopped to move the remains of one of the tapestries. “Burned and left like an unburied body,” she said, shaking her head. “’Tis a shame.” She sneezed at the tangy dust.
Evelyn pressed her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth just behind her teeth, something she’d learned to do while withstanding her mother’s tireless lectures on…well, everything. She looked around, crossing her arms. “We will need to create new tapestries or murals. The students could work on some, and in a few years, the walls will be beautiful once more.”
Evelyn glanced at the soot marks on her apron. “I need to find us suitable work clothes, Scarlet, or we will ruin every gown we brought.”
“There are none above,” Molly said.
Evelyn dusted her hands. “I think it is time to venture into the village.”
“Should James escort you with a loaded musket?” Scarlet asked. “I can’t imagine, after what Grey told you, that the good people of Killin will be welcoming.”
“Even more important that I go out and make a good impression,” Evelyn said, squaring her shoulders. She found the velvet-lined bag where she stored coins and strode toward the doors. “If I’m not back in an hour, you can rethink the musket.”
The breeze was cool, even though it was past the noon hour, and the sun was bright. Evelyn gathered the collar of her shawl close and walked with confidence across the pebbled bailey and out the broken gate. Two Highlanders watched her from along the wall, and she raised a hand in greeting, though only one responded in kind.
Evelyn walked along a stacked stone wall, which diminished to brambles on each side, and breathed in the serenity and clean air. Rural and untouched by the world, she let the green, rolling hills beyond calm her. I can do this. For me and all the women here. Scarlet would heal, and Evelyn could show her brother and her father’s London, dusty-wigged cronies that women were intelligent and useful far beyond that of childbearing. She would be independent and free of Philip.
The path turned so that she could see thatched roofed cottages ahead. Dodging puddles from the rains the night before, she waved to a woman churning butter outside her door with a girl of probably ten years. With a glance Evelyn’s way, the woman abandoned her churn, the milk inside still moving the plunger up, and pulled the girl with her into the cottage.
Evelyn frowned. On Hollings Estate, she had befriended everyone from the gardener to groomsman to the cook who taught her how to bake. Evelyn continued along the road between three more silent houses before reaching the smithy where several fires were lit. A man with white hair that stuck out wildly around his head, was pointing to a set of bellows as he spoke to a thin young man.
“Keep them pumping, Eagan. I need the fires hot.”
The young man threw himself into action. Evelyn stopped. “Pardon me,” she said, making the white-haired man turn.
“More bloody English,” he murmured with a scowl.
Evelyn maintained her pleasant smile. “I’m hoping to represent my people better than the English you’ve had the misfortune to meet.” He didn’t say anything, and she blinked, struggling to keep her features from narrowing. “I am Lady Evelyn Worthington. My sister and I have moved into Finlarig Castle, and I saw that the iron gate needs mending. Could I hire you to do the job, and perhaps some work on the interior? I need new glass panes for the windows in the great hall.”
“Ye have coin?” he asked, looking her up and down.
“Yes.”
He rubbed his chin, his thumb and forefinger coming up to squeeze his bottom lip, and shook his head. “Too busy.” He turned away, dismissing her.
God’s teeth. “Are there other smithies about?”
“Closest one is back in your England, miss,” the smith said. “Might as well head there.”
She kept her sigh in place. “I would rather give my coin to you than to a smith with the English garrison nearby.”
He frowned over his shoulder. “They be the ones to break it all. They should be the ones to fix it.”
She held his stubborn gaze for a long moment before giving him a tight smile. “You do have a point, sir.” She looked out at the vacant road. “Is there a weaver and seamstress about and a butcher perhaps?”
Watching him carefully, Evelyn caught his glance back toward the castle. He shook his head. “None in the village.”
“A shame, as I’m sure my coin in exchange could benefit them.”
“Ye can’t eat coin.” He turned back toward his frantically pumping apprentice.
Evelyn walked in the direction of his glance. Around the side of a stucco and timber cottage, she spotted a large spinning wheel and a table with freshly carded wool piled high, along with a basket on the ground near the wheel. A skein of finely spun yarn wrapped around a wooden spindle. Evelyn saw no one about and walked over to touch the soft yarn.
“Are ye planning to steal it then?” a woman’s voice called from a window.
Evelyn slapped a hand over her thumping heart. “Of course not. I was just admiring the fineness. It’s the thinnest thread I’ve ever seen.”
The woman looked to be close to Evelyn in age, long plaited hair and a pretty face, though she’d be more attractive if she didn’t scowl. She came out through the door, wiping her damp hands on an apron. “It’s the strongest wool thread ye’ll ever find,” she said, her frown still in place.
Evelyn smiled broadly. “Are you the talented spinner then?”
“Aye.”
“I’m pleased to meet you. I am Evelyn Worthington. And you are?”
“Kirstin MacGregor.” She kept her frown, but Evelyn smiled genuinely over having won the woman’s name.
“Well, Lady Kirstin, I would like to purchase some of your fine yarn and any weaving or cloth you might have. I have coin.”
“I’m just Kirstin,” she said, crossing her arms. She scrunched her nose. “No lady.” Kirstin glanced in the direction of the castle. “Are ye one of the English who stole our clan’s castle?”
Evelyn let her exhale fill her cheeks, then let it out in a rush of air like a popped bladder ball. “My brother bought the estate without knowing there was a dispute over the ownership.” Evelyn let her smile fade to genuine worry. “Now no one in town will have anything to do with us.”
“Give it back,” Kirstin said as she turned to go inside. For an instant, Evelyn worried she would slam the door, but she reappeared with some folded cloth, dyed a beautiful light blue.
“It’s lovely,” Evelyn said, reaching out to touch the soft wool. She met Kirstin’s gaze. “And it’s not that easy to give the castle back. My brother paid a large sum for it to become a sheep farm, and I have plans to make it into a school for women, a parish school for the whole community, too.”
“A school? Why do we need a school?”
Evelyn smiled, holding up one finger. “First of all, it is law that there must be a school in each parish. And more importantly, I want to teach all of you to read and write and count and expand your thinking.”
Kirstin nodded slowly as if chewing a new dish and waiting to see if it appealed to her. “Not sure we need to know all that,” she said. “Unless it will keep our bellies full.”
Evelyn grasped onto her argument. She’d been ready for this after her father told her it was worthless to educate the masses. “But what if you could read notices that come through town, telling you about the English and what they’re up to? Or the bible? Instead of just going with what priests or pastors tell you, you could read and decide for yourself. If you could figure numbers and read about the world, you would never be tricked into anything. Education can protect you, plus you could learn a trade that would translate directly into keeping your stomach pleasantly full.”
Kirstin stared at her with a blank face. Her lips pinched together. “The cloth will be eight shillings. And mind ye, I can count to eight.”
“I’m certain you can,” Evelyn said and dug around in her bag for the coins. “Are you also a seamstress by chance?”
“Everyone here can sew.”
Evelyn smiled. “But you’re the only one who will talk to me.” Her honesty brought a hint of a smile to the woman’s face.
“What do ye need made?” she asked.
“Much,” Evelyn said. “Curtains, table drapes, napkins, and a sturdy day gown each for my sister and me.”
“Is Alana still up there at Finlarig?” Kirstin asked.
“She was last night.”
“Alana’s a good seamstress.” She shrugged. “Although I doubt she’ll help, ye being English and all.” She narrowed her eyes at Evelyn, looking her up and down in condemnation. “Not when the English threw her back inside to burn with the castle.”
“They…threw her back inside? After she ran out?”
Kirstin nodded slowly without breaking eye contact. “And locked the doors with half a dozen people inside and Alana’s wee pups.”
Good God. What terrible example of English had these people been given? “I suppose I wouldn’t help me, either.”
Kirstin looked pointedly at Evelyn for a long pause. Finally, she puckered her lips outward. “I’ll be up there tomorrow morn.”
Relief picked apart some of the knot in Evelyn’s stomach. “Thank you.”
Kirstin crossed her arms over her ample chest. “And even though ye’ve come to teach us, I think ye have a lot to learn, Sassenach.”
Evelyn held the soft wool close to her as she walked farther down the empty road. The wind blew the fragrance of early spring, and a tickle of unease skipped up her spine. She turned around, but only closed doors and curtained windows stared back. Facing forward, she bent over, pretending to admire a little bluebell flower, and glanced behind past her skirts.
A child crouched low, looking at Evelyn with large eyes. With a ragged dress and long, stringy hair, it seemed to be a girl, though it was hard to tell what was under all the dirt smeared across her face and arms. When Evelyn’s gaze met hers, the girl smiled, but the smile made her look mad, like she might start cackling any moment. Slowly Evelyn stood. “Hello, there.”
Evelyn heard the crunch of horses behind her, but her focus was completely on the waif. Her filthy, ragged appearance pulled at Evelyn’s heart. “Do you live in the village?” The girl didn’t reply, just stared with wide eyes and that disarming, exaggerated smile.
Afraid to look away, else the child vanish like a pixie in the weeds, Evelyn held out a hand. “Can you speak with me? I’m a stranger here and could use your help.”
The girl remained frozen, but her gaze shifted behind Evelyn, her face pinching into murderous contempt. The change was so swift, and seemingly without the girl moving, that gooseflesh rose along Evelyn’s arms. Crouching low, the girl skittered off the road toward the corner of Kirstin’s house.
“Well now,” a deep voice said behind Evelyn. “A new girl in Killin.”
Before she could turn, Evelyn felt someone mold against her back, a man, his rigid member pressing hard against her backside. His arms came up around her as hot, foul breath brushed her ear. “My men and I would like to give you a proper English welcome.”