Chapter Eight

 

 

Beth knew she would need to explain herself. When Rory called for her to go across to the solar above the great hall, she knew why at once. “Is he angry?” she asked, unable to read the steward’s expression.

“If he yells at you, send for me. I’ll soon talk some sense into him. Without you, we might be looking at many dead and crushed when the place collapsed and I thank the Lord you came when you did to prevent such a disaster.”

“I’ll be over in a minute,” she said, looking the endless queue of people, all with questions for her about the work. “I just need to set a few more things on the go.”

“You better be quick. Keeping a laird waiting is not advisable.”

She hurriedly called the queue together and then spoke to them all at once. “I shall be back as soon as I can. Hold for a short time.”

She left them by the tent and crossed the courtyard to her reckoning.

She had got the hang of the wooden soles of her shoes in the time she’d been supervising the rebuild. That was something at least.

The noise of work carried on behind her. It surprised her how pleasing a sound she found it. She hadn’t been expecting things to happen so quickly. It had been made abundantly clear when she began studying architecture that nothing in the building world happened fast. Here, she had shown the steward what needed doing and almost at once the demolition had begun.

Up the stairs, she paused, looking back at the work. The scaffolding next to her ran up to the unfinished towers. They needed pulling back and part of the wall taking down but no one was willing to get started on that yet without the laird’s say so.

The walls had been an easier sell although less at risk of collapse. People were working hard. Progress would be swift. She just hoped it would be worth it and that Andrew could be made to see the value of what they were doing beyond the cost in pence.

She headed inside, making her way into the great hall. Pulling back the curtain she stepped through, the smell not seeming as strong as before. Was she just getting used to it?

Everything here was more intense, the smells, the sights, the sounds, all so much stronger than she was used to.

Everyone seemed to know each other too which was hard to accept at first but then the population of the country was what? A couple of million? Certainly fewer than in a single city in her time.

At the far end of the great hall was an open door. She passed through that and up a short flight of stairs. Turning a corner she walked straight into the solar before she even knew she’d reached it.

She stopped dead at the sight before her. Andrew was running wet hands through his hair, his eyes closed. From where she was he seemed to be nothing but shoulders and chest. His hose was sitting just above his hips, giving her a hint of what lay hidden inside, the water soaking through the fabric made it cling to every part of him. She couldn’t move, she couldn’t speak, she couldn’t look away. All she could do was stare at the bulge.

“Beth,” he growled, wiping his eyes with a cloth. “Come in and sit down lassie. We need to talk.”

“Do we?” she replied.

“Please,” he added, pointing to the chair by the fireside. He took a cloth and wiped his face.

Forcing her feet to move, Beth made it over to the chair, willing her eyes to only look at his face, nowhere else.

He crossed in front of her to poke at the fire, bringing it back to life. From where she was sitting his bulge was right in front of her face.

She closed her eyes and kept them shut until he moved away, her body heating up uncontrollably. She told herself it was the fire that was causing it but as he looked at her, the churning feeling deep inside her spoke the truth.

“I hear you’ve been making a few changes to my castle?”

“Stopping it from falling down. Your masons have done poor work.” That wasn’t how this was supposed to be begin. What was to gain from criticizing him?

“Want to tell me why I shouldn’t have you chained up for bewitching my people into tearing down their own walls?”

“Feel free but I think they might have something to say to you about it.”

“Like what?”

“Like that I’m strengthening your walls so they don’t collapse. Or they might mention that the portcullis will stand up to a siege where it wouldn’t before. Or maybe they’ll tell you that you need a master mason who knows his stuff. No one will tell me who’s been in charge of the building work so far. Will you? Whoever it is, their incompetence has left lasting damage and I want a word with them.”

“Aye, maybe I’ll tell you who’s in charge.”

“So who was the idiot you hired?”

“Me.”

She felt a sudden lurch in her stomach. “You? You’ve been in charge of the building work? But you’re the laird?”

“Aye. Are you saying I’ve not been doing a bonny job?”

“You’ve been doing an appalling job. On your watch the laborers haven’t bothered mixing the lime mortar right. Your battlements have crumbled and you’ll be lucky if they survived the winter. The roof of your chapel is about to collapse and as for your keep? If I were you I’d be pulling the whole thing down and starting again.”

“My father designed this keep,” he said, his voice quieter than before. “I only want to finish what he began.”

“Then you need someone to supervise the building work. That’s what a master mason does.”

“I know what a master mason does. How do you?”

“Rory was telling me all about it.”

“So tell me.”

She told him everything she’d told Rory. She told him how they could use the stone dug out of the earthworks as rubble infill. She told him if he got this right, the laborers he was paying to do little could get the work done in months and get started earlier on Pluscarden abbey which she’d read in the guidebook he wouldn’t found until 1195.

She told him how with the makeshift repairs his battlements would still dominate the landscape until spring when they could be rebuilt properly. She told him how to create a camber on the roads leading up to the castle to help with drainage. She told him how his enemies could easily undermine the place in any siege unless he got everything fixed quickly. There had not been the time to wait for his approval. It had to start at once.

Through it all he sat and listened quietly, not saying a word.

She only stopped talking when she realized someone was standing in the doorway. She looked up at the same time Andrew did to see Derek moving from the shadows into the room.

“How long have you been skulking?” Andrew asked.

“Not long,” he replied. “I didnae want to interrupt the lassie. Sounds like there’s some work to be done.”

“What do you want, Derek?”

“You sent for me.”

“What? Oh, aye, I did. Gather the men in the great hall. I need to talk to them.”

“All the men?”

“Actually, on second thoughts leave those who are working for Beth.”

“Working for her?” Derek’s eyebrows raised momentarily before lowering again.

“Aye. Now on you go. I’ll be down presently.” He waited a moment before turning his attention back to Beth. “I hate how he walks around without making a sound. It’s unnerving. Now, lassie, I wonder whether you’d consider being master mason of the castle until this work is done? I’d want you to rebuild my old hall too, if we can spare the wood for it.”

Beth couldn’t help it. She burst into tears. She tried to stop them but she was unable to do anything but let it happen.

Andrew was across the room in a moment, his arm on her shoulder. “What’s the matter, wee lassie? What ails you?”

“It’s nothing,” she replied, feeling the heat of his hand through her dress, wanting it to go and stay in equal measure.

She couldn’t tell him the truth. What good would it do? How could she tell him about her love of masonry and architecture? How it was the only thing she’d ever wanted to do? How her father had tried to tell her it was a man’s job and she needed to set her sights on something more realistic? How she had to take a job to support her mother instead of going to college at the same time as everyone else from her school? How she’d finally started studying and still worried no one would give her a job? How many people out there thought it was just a man’s job?

Yet here, in the era most people would consider far more sexist than her own, she was being offered the highest possible position a laird could offer apart from steward. She would be in charge of the entire rebuilding of the castle, maybe the old hall too. “Was the old hall all wood?” she asked, wondering about something as she sniffed loudly.

“Aye. Why’d you ask?”

“In my time it was stone vaulted.”

“Never been vaulted in stone. Perhaps it could be if you took on the job?”

She almost cried again but managed to stop herself. She noticed his hand was still on her shoulder and he was leaning closer to her. She looked deep into those eyes which reflected the fire beside her. “I thought you’d be angry with me for starting work already. Then you act like this. I don’t understand you at all.”

“Maybe you could get to understand me better.” He was leaning closer still. Another inch and his lips would touch hers. She yearned for him to do it, from deep inside all she wanted was to feel his lips on hers. He was going to do it. He was moving closer. She held her breath, leaning forward in her chair.

“The men are ready, my laird,” a voice said loudly from the doorway.

At once the expression on Andrew’s face changed. He stood up and was once again the brutish angry giant she’d first seen. “Good,” he said, nodding to Derek who was looking from her to the laird and back again.

He left without saying another word, leaving Beth to sit in the solar and stare at his bed. She looked at it without moving for a very long time, lost in thought.