48
Kimberly would have preferred to remain tucked away in her room until she fully recovered from that disastrous first meeting with Nessa. But the laird was home and a gala banquet was planned for that first night at Kregora, with all clan members invited, as well as close neighbors.
Lachlan had apologized profusely for Nessa’s behavior when he took Kimberly upstairs to show her their suite of private rooms. He’d tried to tease her out of her upset by pointing out that out of the four connecting rooms—one was a very large bathing chamber that was thoroughly modernized with hot and cold running water—she could have one of the extra rooms for dressing or whatever she chose to use it for, as long as she didn’t try sleeping in it. There’d be only one bed, he’d told her, and they’d be sharing it.
He hadn’t gotten a blush out of her, hadn’t gotten much of a response at all. And he’d finally left her alone there to rest and settle in.
Rest wasn’t needed, but activity was. Yes, that was definitely one cure for rotten moods. So Kimberly had helped Jean put her belongings away, while the maid had chattered nearly nonstop, between mumbles about barbarian wenches, to try and keep her distracted.
Kimberly had then sent her to find where her things from Northumberland had been stored. She wasn’t going to feel like Castle Kregora was truly her home until her treasures were dispersed to their appropriate locations, leaving her mark, as it were.
Lachlan’s rooms were very nice, she found, when she got around to really noticing them. There was a lot of light from large windows in each room that offered that splendid view of the lake and the mountains beyond. The bedchamber, the largest of the rooms, even had a small balcony with French doors that looked down on a boating dock far below. She imagined it would be nice having breakfast out there come summer.
Dark emerald drapes in soft velvet framed each window, drawn back with tasseled ropes. The wallpaper was in several shades of pastel blues, with numerous paintings of ladies and gentlemen of the French court from the era when white powdered wigs was the fashion for both men and women. Thick rugs were so large, they nearly covered every inch of the wood floors, and had likely been specially made, since they were in leafy swirls of blue and black on a green background, the colors of the MacGregor tartan.
One of the rooms Lachlan had definitely been using for dressing—the wardrobe was full of his clothes—as well as for private relaxing. There was a chaise lounge there, a large desk, several reading chairs and tables. It was quite big enough to serve both purposes. As was the other chamber, which Kimberly would use as a dressing-sitting room, at least until it was time to plan a nursery. That was if there wasn’t already a nursery somewhere nearby.
Thoughts of her own children running through those rooms someday did much to lighten Kimberly’s mood. She was even looking forward again to exploring the rest of the castle. And when Jean came back to tell her that her belongings that had been delivered from Northumberland had been stored in the cellar—well, she didn’t question why they had been put there, her clothing included. She simply took the maid with her to find out if the cellar wasn’t something other than what one might expect, just as the great hall had been.
It wasn’t. It was dark and dank, and the one place inside the castle where the original stone walls were still in use, and the home of countless spiders. It was also filthy, being the storage area for coal, the main fuel source since Scotland didn’t have an abundance of trees.
They’d had to backtrack to find a lantern, as well as a couple of stout servants to carry the trunks and furniture upstairs once they found it. Locating it was another matter. There were a lot of rooms down there, small cubbyholes that might have been cells at one time, larger rooms, and a lot of narrow halls that went off in all directions. Centuries of stuff seemed to be stored down there, mostly old furniture all covered in cobwebs.
But the room was finally found where Kimberly’s belongings had been brought, and her smile of relief lasted all of one second as she held the lantern high and surveyed the total destruction of her family heirlooms.
The grandfather clock lay on its side, the hour hands missing, the body cracked, dented, raw chips of wood sliced open as if an ax had been taken to it. The legs were gone from the chinoiserie, the doors broken off their hinges, more raw slices in the intricate wood carvings, again, as if an ax had chopped and hacked at it.
The mammoth painting looked like someone had stood on one end of it and pulled the other end down until the frame and canvas cracked in the middle. The small tables, the three-hundred-year-old hall bench, the antique vases, the deeply carved Chinese bedding trunk, everything was broken, sliced open, shattered. Even her clothes trunks had been ripped open, the clothing dumped about the dirt floor.
Kimberly stared, and stared, so horrified she couldn’t breathe. She took a step forward, another, then dropped to her knees, her hand stretching out, but not reaching anything, and the tears started. This was all she had left of her mother, and it was gone now, broken junk, good only for firewood. The willful destruction, and even in her shock, she had no doubt it was deliberate, was unbelievable. And there was only one person here who she could think would do such a thing.
Kimberly got slowly to her feet, the name on her tongue: “Nessa…”
“My lady, these broken things—they aren’t what we were looking for, are they?” Jean asked beside her, the same horror in her voice.
Kimberly didn’t answer, she looked at one of the confused castle servants and demanded softly, icily, “Where would Nessa be now?”
One shrugged, the other said, “Where the laird be, most like. The lassie’s always been his shadow.”
“And where would he be?”
Now they both shrugged. Kimberly asked no more questions. She’d find him—and her, if she had to search every inch of the entire castle, inside and out. And there was going to be worse than hell to pay when she did. She was choking with hurt, and so beyond furious that she didn’t know what she was going to do, but murder wasn’t to be excluded.
She found Lachlan first, easily, in an office of sorts. The greetings over, dozens of his kin still required some of his time, for reports, complaints, good news and the like. And there was little formality at Kregora, as she was to find, nor much privacy. Instead of all those people waiting out in the hall to see him individually, they were all of them crowded into that room, which was fortunately a large room.
He smiled when he saw her enter—until he noticed her tears, which she didn’t even realize were still coursing down her cheeks. She barely spared him a glance, though, searching the room for his young cousin, but she didn’t see Nessa and almost turned about to leave. But then she did spot her, and only because Nessa had lifted her head to see what had gained Lachlan’s attention.
The girl had been sitting on a footstool against the wall, unobtrusive, just listening to the proceedings. It was doubtful Lachlan even knew she was there.
“Kimber, what happened?” Lachlan asked with concern on his way to her.
She didn’t hear him. She had Nessa in her sights and all she could think about was getting to her. But Nessa saw her coming and didn’t stay put. She leaped to her feet and ran around the desk there, putting it and about a half dozen people between them.
“You keep that giant away from me, Lach!” Nessa shouted. “She’s crazy!”
“Crazy, am I?” Kimberly said, still working her way around the crowd. “Do you even know what you did? Those were priceless heirlooms you destroyed! All that I had left from my mother, who’s dead!”
“I didna destroy anything! ’Twas all delivered just as you saw it!”
That gave Kimberly pause, until she remembered the ax marks. “I don’t believe—”
“’Tis true,” Nessa insisted, adding quickly, “The wagon driver said he’d lost a wheel, and everything spilled out because it hadna been tied down properly.”
“Falling a few feet wouldn’t account for every single item being broken!??
?
“’Twas more’n that. It happened at the side of a gully, and everything hit the rocks below.”
It was possible. Completely unlikely, but possible. And just because Nessa had already shown her true colors didn’t mean she was responsible for this too.
Kimberly stopped the chase, deflated that she couldn’t have immediate satisfaction. “I’ll hear it from the driver himself then.”
“He’s no’ here. Why would he still be here? He’s gone back tae wherever he came from.”
Kimberly stiffened. There was simply too much smugness in Nessa’s expression now. She knew she was lying. And then she had it confirmed.
“There’s nae need tae be askin’ the driver,” one of the men said, giving the dark-haired girl a disapproving look. “Yer a liar, Nessa MacGregor, and I’m ashamed tae call ye my kin right now. I helped tae unload that wagon. There wasna a thing wrong wi’ any o’ those goods, and I even asked ye why ye wanted such fine things put down in the cellar.”
Nessa went red in the face. So did Kimberly as her fury returned tenfold. And while Nessa was still glaring at her accuser, she closed the distance between them and brought her hand down sharply against Nessa’s cheek.
It staggered the much smaller girl, whose eyes rounded incredulously as her hand went to the burning area on her face. “How dare—!”
“You’re lucky I don’t take an ax to you, as you did to my treasures. What you did, Nessa, in your vicious spite, is irreparable. And I refuse to live in the same house with anyone as malicious as you are.”
She realized her mistake immediately, in making an ultimatum like that, because pride wouldn’t let her back down from it. But it was too late, she’d said it. However, to her immense relief, her husband was in agreement.
“You’ll no’ have tae, Kimber,” Lachlan said behind her as his arms wrapped around her. “She’ll be packing her bags tonight and leaving in the morn, because I’ll no’ have anyone that spiteful living in my house either. And I swear tae you, I’ll find the finest artisans tae repair your mother’s things, and Nessa will be paying for it herself wi’ the money she claims tae have found.”
Nessa had gone pale, listening to him, then paler still when he finished. “This is my home,” she said with a catch in her voice.
“No’ anymore. Your behavior has lost you the right tae call it so.”
“That isna fair! She should be the one leaving, no’ me! She doesna belong here, I do!”
“Nessa lass, do you no’ even see the wrong you’ve done?” Lachlan said sadly.
It was probably the disapproval in his tone that brought her anger back. “This is the thanks I get, after all I did for you? And you didna even ask me how I got the money for you. I sold myself tae Gavin Kern, that’s how!”
She threw it at him as if she expected it to hurt. It did surprise him. And it did anger him, but not for the reason she’d hoped.
“Then we’ll be having us another wedding,” Lachlan said with cold finality.
“I won’t marry him!” Nessa screamed.
“You slept wi’ him, you’ll marry him, and that’s the MacGregor telling you that, Nessa.”
She paled again. Kimberly realized that his putting it that way apparently made it an indisputable fact. And then Nessa ran from the room.
Into the uncomfortable silence that followed, someone said, “She’ll be going into hiding, I warrant, hating Gavin Kern as she does.”
“He’s asked her tae marry him a dozen times,” another pointed out. “At least he’ll be glad she’s boxed herself into this corner and can no longer refuse him.”
“If he can find her.”
“Go, detain her,” Lachlan ordered abruptly, nodding to the two men nearest the door. “And someone else fetch Gavin here for his wedding. We’ll be having it tonight, or I’ll be knowing why.”
Kimberly, incredibly, actually felt sorry for Nessa after hearing that. She didn’t approve of forcing a woman to marry a man she despised. But she kept her opinion to herself. After all, she didn’t feel that sorry for the girl.
49
Most everyone enjoyed themselves that night at the banquet, with a few notable exceptions, too few to dampen the high spirits of a homecoming though. And once Lachlan made his announcement concerning Winnifred, that she’d been found at last and his inheritance returned to him, well, that merely doubled the mood of celebration.
Modernization did have its drawbacks, however. With the great hall converted, there wasn’t a room in the castle that was big enough to accommodate so many people for a normal-type banquet, let alone a really large one as was thrown that night. So the food was set up in the dining room, but it was the hallway and parlor that became the eating areas, with chairs and benches aplenty brought in to line the walls and fill in most of the empty spaces.
Nessa was one of those exceptions, of course. She sat in a slump on one of the sofas, her arms crossed, her expression mutinous and occasionally baleful, if anyone tried to speak to her. Not many did.
Kimberly tried to put a good face on it, because that was the proper thing to do. A lady didn’t share her sorrow with the general public. But she was hurting too deeply to manage too many smiles. Lachlan’s assurance, after he’d gone to examine the damage, that it could all be fixed and looking brand-new again, hadn’t helped. For one thing, she doubted it was possible, the damage from the ax too extensive. For another, she didn’t want her things looking new. They were antiques. They were supposed to look old, but well preserved.
But she would wait and see. Her husband was determined to correct this wrong. If it was at all possible, he’d see it done and done right. And that alone lightened the pain a bit—and warmed her heart toward him a little more, not that her heart needed any encouragement whatsoever in that regard.
Gavin Kern, now, was a very happy man tonight. He’d apparently been asking Nessa to marry him for quite a few years now. Kimberly was still bothered that the girl was being forced to marry him, until she found the opportunity to talk with Gavin alone for a few minutes.
Lachlan, who had been staying close to her side all evening, was called away to deal with a disturbance between two quick-tempered brothers before it escalated into physical blows. He’d been speaking with Gavin at the time, so his abrupt departure left Kimberly alone with him, and allowed her to appease her curiosity.
Gavin, she had discovered, belonged to that castle across the lake, or rather, it belonged to him. He’d been born there, so had always been a neighbor, though in his early thirties, he was far enough older than Lachlan and Nessa, that they hadn’t been younger companions together. But he’d been one of the first to notice when Nessa had begun to mature into a little beauty. She’d still been a tomboy, still had no interest in men, but that hadn’t stopped him from courting her from that time on, all to no avail.
Kimberly had learned all of this when she’d asked him, “It doesn’t bother you to marry a woman who—ah—?”
“Despises me?” he helpfully finished for her. “But she doesna. She always says she does, and I used tae believe it, but I know better now. She always comes tae me when she needs help. She always cries on my shoulder when she’s the need tae be doing that. She tells me her dreams. She tells me her desires. And I was sick tae my soul o’ hearing how she loves the MacGregor, until I realized ’twas nae more’n a habit she had since she was a wee bairn.”
He seemed like a really nice man, too nice for the vindictive Nessa. He had blond hair a bit darker than her own, and amiable brown eyes. He was no taller than Kimberly, and he had pleasant features, nothing extraordinary like Lachlan’s, but strong, friendly.
“She went to great lengths for a habit,” Kimberly remarked. “She even came to you—” Again she couldn’t finish, embarrassed by the subject.
But again he understood, replying, “As I said, she always came tae me for help when she was needing it. In this case, she could’ve just asked for the money, and I’d have given it. She knew that. But she?
??s prideful, you ken, and she knew she’d have nae way tae repay it, sae she offered herself. I should’ve refused, but”—he blushed here—“I’ve wanted her tae long, and I was hoping, praying, that this is what would happen when the MacGregor found out.”
“That he’d force her to marry you?”
“Aye,” he said, then he smiled. “And I dinna doubt she knew this would be his reaction as well. She’d turned me down tae many times, you see. Her pride was in the way o’ her accepting me now.”
Kimberly was amazed. “You’re suggesting she’d changed her mind and wanted to marry you, but couldn’t bring herself to say so?”
He nodded. “I’ve—spent the night wi’ her, you ken. Much was revealed tae me that night o’ her feelings, that even she wasna aware of. She’s protesting now, but ’tis all for show, I’m thinking, for her pride’s sake. She’s a complicated lass, is my Nessa.”
And malicious and destructive and—well, Kimberly wouldn’t have to figure the girl out after tonight. Nessa could be as complicated as she liked, as long as she was doing it across the lake and not at Castle Kregora.
They’d spoken a bit more before Lachlan returned. And not long after, the wedding ceremony took place, right there in the parlor.
Nessa continued to look mutinous. She hadn’t changed her clothes into something more appropriate for the occasion, or fixed her hair. She hadn’t eaten any of the food offered to her. And she refused to answer the questions put to her during the wedding.
But it was a MacGregor performing the ceremony for them, and whenever he got no response from Nessa when she was supposed to respond, he would simply look up at the crowd and say something to the effect of, “And the MacGregor says she agrees, which is good enough for me.”
A bit medieval in Kimberly’s opinion, but Nessa certainly didn’t seem surprised that she was getting married without her permission, and neither did anyone else. And when it was over, the soft-spoken, unpretentious Gavin Kern let out a whoop of joy, tossed Nessa over his shoulder, and walked out with her like a conquering hero.