Devil in Tartan (Highland Grooms #4)(92)

“What are we to do without a chief?” someone near the back shouted. “We must have a chief, aye? We’ve taken the stills as he asked, but he said we’d all be rich.”

“What?” Lottie asked, lifting her head. “My father asked you to take down the stills?”

“Aye,” said another. “The morning you left, he bid us take down the stills, and remove any trace so that no one could ever know. We didna need them any more, Lottie, for we’d all be rich.”

“We’re no’ rich,” MacLean said bitterly.

“The laird is to come Monday!” said a woman. “Who will answer for the rents?”

“We must have a chief,” said another. “It must be Lottie.”

“What? No!” Lottie exclaimed, and held up her hands. “No, I canna be your chief. Duff will take charge for now, aye?”

“For God’s sake, no’ Duff,” Mr. MacLean said. “He’d turn us into a theatrical troupe, he would. It must be you, Lottie. I daresay it is you. We all know you’ve been chief for a verra long time, aye?”

A chorus of ayes rose up to agree.

Panic rose so quickly that Lottie thought she might choke. “No!” she said again, and took several steps toward the small crowd, imploring them. “Do you no’ see that I’m the last person who should be chief? I am the reason we sailed. I am the reason we took the Mackenzie ship! It is because of me that we’ve come to this terrible place, with no money, and no occupation, and no way to pay our rents.”

“Aye, but you’ll think of a way, Lottie,” said Mrs. Livingstone Blue. Several heads around her nodded in agreement. “You always do. I’ve always said you’re right clever, you are.”

Lottie looked around at their hopeful faces. What was the matter with them? “Och,” she said, flicking her wrist as her father used to do at the lot of them, and whirled about and continued the march to the house, rabbits and people following behind her.

At the manor house, Lottie said, “We’ll think on this again on the morrow, aye? But now, some rest.”

There was some rumbling, but the crowd began to thin, gathering their sailors and taking them home. Lottie and her brothers went inside and she shut the door behind them.

They stood in the foyer, looking around them. “I never thought I’d see it again, in truth,” Mathais said.

“Neither did I,” Lottie breathed.

“I’m hungry,” Drustan said.

“Aye, me too,” Mathais agreed.

Lottie had no appetite. The last twenty-four hours had been an eddy of conflicting emotions, of despair and hope, of fear and utter relief. She was grateful for her freedom, afraid of being discovered. She’d found love with Aulay, and they’d parted so suddenly. He’d disappeared from her life almost as irrevocably as her father had.

Lottie went to her father’s bedroom and opened the door, hesitating a moment before stepping over the threshold. Just inside, she found the stub of a candle and lit it. She held it up—his room was comfortingly familiar, essentially unchanged since her mother had died. And yet it felt strangely distant from the person she was now. That voyage had changed her in ways she didn’t fully understand.

The spirit of her father was still very much alive in these walls, as was her mother’s spirit, and Drustan and Mathais and Lottie’s, as well. But she felt herself miles and miles from here. She didn’t know how she could return to being the woman who had left this island three weeks ago.

She picked up a wooden box and opened it, inhaling the scent of the cheroots her father had kept there. It was his scent, and the familiarity of it felt almost as if he’d wrapped his arms around her. She sank down onto his bed and curled onto her side and allowed her tears of exhaustion and loss and heartache to fall.

She awoke the next morning to the sound of birds chirping. Sleep and tears had made her groggy, and she slowly sat up, uncertain at first where she was...until she saw the rabbits through the window, come to devour what was left of the grass.

Lottie swung her legs off the side of the bed and rubbed her eyes.

She knew what she had to do. She’d known all along, but hadn’t come to fully accept it until she’d found herself at Balhaire. It had taken her a grand adventure and deep loss to come to terms with it. “I’ve no’ forgotten what I want, Mor,” she said to her mother’s departed spirit. “But I’m no’ clever enough to achieve it.”

She stood up and went to her room. She opened her wardrobe and examined the gowns there. She owned precious few, but the yellow one with tiny rosebuds and green leaves would do.

By midmorning, while her brothers still slept, Lottie had bathed and dressed, and had made the eggs she’d found in the hen house. She donned her sturdy walking boots, picked some flowers from the garden that the rabbits had not yet feasted on, and set out for the south end of the island.

An hour or so later, the MacColl house came into view. Her father was right—it was larger than theirs. It had six chimneys across the top, four of them with smoke curling out of them. The lawn was better tended than the Livingstone house. Well, in fairness, they’d never been particularly orderly on the north end of the island, but really, how did the MacColls keep the rabbits from destroying every green thing?

Lottie walked down the hill and went through the little picket fence, and up to the door. She drew a breath for courage and knocked. Before long, an elderly woman in a plain cap stood in the open door. “Madainn mhath,” Lottie said. “Might Mr. MacColl be at home this morning?”