Kenmore
For today’s program of the Ladies’ Quarterly Meeting, Mr. Iain McClain, the schoolmaster, read a poem he’d written in praise of the local mountain, Schiehallion.
Sitting in the kirk sanctuary with two dozen other women considered prominent in the valley, Sabrina Davidson noticed that he was very free with the word “breast” when describing Schiehallion’s shape. He used it no less than three times. Then, when he referred to mountain’s “nippled crest,” Sabrina almost laughed aloud. She stifled the sound when she realized no one else seemed to think there was anything awkward or humorous about his imagery. Indeed, they clapped enthusiastically at the end of his recitation of his dreadful poem. Sabrina clapped as well, albeit less enthusiastically.
The women then, as was their custom, piled out of the church to walk across the way to the Kenmore Inn, where a delicious luncheon awaited them.
Sabrina walked in their midst, surrounded by their happy chatter . . . but acutely aware that no one was actually speaking to her. No, they talked of matters that interested them—children, household concerns, husbands—topics that didn’t include Sabrina.
Not for the first time did she realize that if she stopped and let them go on, no one might notice she wasn’t part of the group. It wasn’t that they didn’t care for her. She was the magistrate’s daughter. She had a place in their society, including the fact they needed her musical skills to play the pianoforte for the local assemblies.
However, Sabrina was an outsider and would always be one. She was nine-and-twenty and unmarried. Thankfully, her father had been devoted to her late mother and would never think of disgracing her memory by remarrying. Otherwise, Sabrina might have become that most pitied of souls, an unmarried female relation.
As it was, she not only served as her father’s hostess and helped him as his secretary, but she was also the earl of Tay’s niece. Her position in society was secure.
Still, Sabrina had caught herself thinking about the married ladies quite a bit lately. There was a mystery to men that other women seemed to understand, and she didn’t. During those years when a woman was young enough to catch a husband, Sabrina had been caring for her mother, who had battled a wasting illness, and now the time for courting had passed her by.
Lately, she wondered what she’d missed.
Perhaps her thoughts along these lines were prompted by her cousins’ recent marriages. Or that after two years of mourning her mother’s death, Sabrina had finally set aside her black.
It was also possible that something deeper stirred inside her, like the tiniest hint of rebellion at the thought she was only worthy if she was a wife or a mother. That her intelligence was of no value otherwise.
She’d caught their pitying glances, those looks between them that said louder than words they thought themselves superior to her.
And maybe she agreed with them . . . just a little.
She knew she couldn’t reason this out herself. She needed a mentor. For that reason, she’d penned a note to Dame Agatha, one of the widows of their group, asking if she would sit with her today. The dame was well respected and appeared to enjoy her life as an independent woman. Sabrina hoped for her advice.
The innkeeper, Mr. Orrock, and his wife greeted the flock of women at the door, giving them a chance to remove their bonnets before grandly escorting them into the inn’s public room. The tables had been set with silver and napkins. The women fanned out to claim their chairs.
All the tables in the room were set for four or six, except for one. It had service for two and was located in the corner by the hearth. True to his promise, Mr. Orrock had placed the “reserved” card Sabrina had designed in the middle of the table, thereby ensuring it was kept for her.
She took her seat and began pulling off her gloves as she looked around for Dame Agatha. However, before she knew what was what, Mrs. Lillian Bossley, the notorious “Widow Bossley,” pulled out the chair opposite hers and plopped her ample bottom into the seat.
The aging widow was a robust woman of relatively good looks and lax morals. She had a head full of graying blonde curls and a guilelessness to her blue eyes that men seemed to admire, especially since she was quick to jump into their beds.
Last year, she had carried on a scandalous affair with Sabrina’s dissolute uncle. Of course the earl did what he always did with women—he tired of her and didn’t hesitate to toss her aside.
In that respect, Sabrina did feel a bit sorry for her. The gossip was that, after the earl’s disgraceful abandonment, Mrs. Bossley’s spirits had been very low.
However, sympathy did not mean Sabrina wished to share “the special table” with the likes of the widow.
“I’m sorry,” Sabrina hastened to say, “that seat has been claimed.”
“By whom?” Mrs. Bossley had the effrontery to ask.
“By Dame Agatha,” Sabrina answered.
“Oh, you needn’t worry,” Mrs. Bossley said, waving a hand in the direction of the other tables. “Dame Agatha suggested I take this chair.”
“She did?” Sabrina looked over to see that the diminutive matriarch had seated herself at a table with three other women. The dame smiled at Sabrina, her expression as benevolent and unrelenting as a queen’s.
And since everyone else in the room was seated, Sabrina had no choice but to accept the arrangement.
The serving lad, the Orrocks’ oldest son, placed soup and bread in front of them.
“May we have a pot of tea?” Mrs. Bossley asked the lad.
“Yes, mum,” he murmured, and hurried away.
Mrs. Bossley considered Sabrina’s stiff silence, and said, “Don’t be too upset, Miss Davidson. Aggie knows I needed to speak to you on a matter of some importance. That is why she suggested I sit with you.”
Aggie?
Sabrina set her gloves to the side. She could barely look at the woman. “If you wished to discuss a matter of some importance, would it not be wiser and more circumspect to call upon me in private?”
“I have attempted to do so, Miss Davidson,” Mrs. Bossley answered, slathering butter on her bread. “But you have not accepted my call.”
“That is not true—”
“Of course it is. I called yesterday and the day before. Mrs. Patton told me you were not at home although I am certain you were.”
“I believe you are imagining things,” Sabrina countered, even as heat rose to her cheeks. She sparingly buttered her own bread. In truth, she had seen the widow approach the house and had begged Mrs. Patton, who served as cook and general housekeeper to the Davidson household, to inform Mrs. Bossley she was out. She also sensed a quietness in the chatter in the room and realized that everyone was interested in their conversation. It was as if the other women sensed something was afoot.
Sabrina’s guard rose even higher.
The lad brought a pot of tea for them to share. Mrs. Bossley took it upon herself to pour them each a cup. She lifted the creamer, silently asking Sabrina if she wished a drop in hers as well.
Sabrina shook her head and picked up her spoon to sample her soup. Forcing a smile and keeping her voice too low to be overheard, she said, “If you wish to speak to me about the earl, let me assure you I have no control over my uncle’s behavior, good or bad. No one does.”
Of course, in Sabrina’s mind, the Widow Bossley had behaved just as poorly as the earl and had probably received exactly what she deserved. Her mother had always cautioned Sabrina to not be too bold around gentlemen, and after witnessing the widow’s behavior, she understood why. Perhaps in the future, Mrs. Bossley would not be so free with her favors—
“Your father has asked me to be his wife, Miss Davidson, and I have said, yes.”
If the chair had fallen apart beneath Sabrina, she could not have been more surprised. She waited, spoon poised in the air, for the woman to laugh.
There was no humor in Mrs. Bossley’s expression.
Sabrina put down her spoon. “I don’t believe you.”
“It is not a question of whether you believe me or not,” Mrs. Bossley countered serenely. “It is a truth and therefore not subject to judgment. Your father has been courting me for the past three months.” She held out her gloveless right hand, opening her fingers to reveal a dainty gold ring in her palm that had belonged to Sabrina’s mother. It had been in the family for generations. After her death, her father had attached it to his fob chain.
“Richard gave this to me as a pledge of his troth. He asked me not to wear it until he had spoken to you.”
Sabrina’s gaze was riveted on the ring. This was to have been her ring someday, the only memento that had truly belonged to her mother and had been passed down from mother to daughter over several generations.
And her father had given it to this woman?
“Now that you are aware of our intentions,” Mrs. Bossley continued crisply, “we can have the banns announced. However, I do have one important question.”
“And that is?” Sabrina managed to say through her shock.
“Can you accept me as your stepmother?”
Sabrina felt suddenly, violently ill.
She threw down her napkin and pushed back her chair. “I need air.” She didn’t wait for a response but moved quickly from the room. She shoved open the inn’s front door and almost fell into the road. She took several deep breaths of air, needing to regain her balance and clear her head.
What the widow had said couldn’t be true. It couldn’t.
The door behind her opened. Mrs. Bossley came outside. “We are not finished with our conversation.”
“No, we are not,” Sabrina agreed. There were no prying ears here. The road between the inn and Kenmore Kirk across the way was empty save for vehicles and horses and a few drivers waiting in front of the church for the ladies to finish their meals.
At last, Sabrina could speak her mind.
“You asked if I could accept you as a stepmother? The answer is no. I will never accept you,” she said, infusing each word with as much disdain as she could muster. “Nor will my father ever marry you. If he had intended to do so, he would have told me of this himself.”
“He was afraid of your reaction,” Mrs. Bossley countered. “Of your childishness—”
Those were fighting words. Sabrina took a step toward the woman, ready to “childishly” throttle her.
Mrs. Bossley’s chin took on a determined angle as if daring Sabrina to attack. “I will be your father’s wife,” she promised. “And be forewarned. No household can have two mistresses. My rightful place will be by his side, and if you cannot accept my position, then we shall have difficulties between us with perhaps only one solution.”
“And what will that be? Tossing me out? You believe my father would place you over me?” Sabrina challenged. “That he would ask me to leave?”
“We are lovers.” The widow threw out the declaration with the glee of a gambler showing his winning card.
“That can’t be true.”
Mrs. Bossley smiled, her confidence unnerving. “You are such an innocent.”
Her words slapped Sabrina across the face.
There was a movement in the inn’s windows. A curtain in the public room dropped as if someone had been peering outside and was afraid to be discovered.
“They are all watching,” Mrs. Bossley said with a touch of cynicism. “We shall be the dinner discussion around many a table unless we settle this amicably between ourselves. Accept the marriage, Miss Davidson, let us walk back into the dining room as friends, and the gossips will not have anything to go on about.” She offered her hand.
She was right. A feud between them would ignite the vicious tongues in the valley. Although Sabrina did not think highly of the Widow Bossley, apparently there were many who did—like Dame Agatha. Sabrina could not fathom why. The local society had so many strict standards where a woman like herself could be verbally pilloried, and yet, a blind eye could be turned on someone like Widow Bossley.
And the valley had easily accepted Sabrina’s cousins because of their extraordinary beauty although one had been divorced and the other was a spoiled brat.
And everyone tolerated the earl’s excesses.
Meanwhile, people were always quick to point out Sabrina’s flaws. She was not like the other Davidsons. She was dark like her mother. Her hair was thick, with just a hint of red to it, and no one had ever called her even pretty. “They” said there was too much intelligence in her eyes, and her tongue was too quick. Yes, “they” wanted her to lead the kirk’s charities and play for their dances, but she was pitied more than respected.
Something inside Sabrina snapped.
Had only minutes earlier she’d wondered if she was dissatisfied with her life? She now knew the answer. Yes.
Her own culpability filled her with anger. Furious in a way she’d never experienced before, resentment came roiling up inside her like a pot boiling over.
Ignoring the offered hand, Sabrina turned and began walking away from the inn. Her cart and pony were hitched with the others. Dumpling, a shaggy Highland beast with a flaxen mane and tail, had one back foot cocked as he slept standing in the afternoon sunlight.
But Sabrina didn’t walk in that direction. Instead, without the hat or the gloves she’d left behind in the inn, she chose the road leading toward the moors.
“Miss Davidson,” Mrs. Bossley called, an impertinent note in her tone as if she expected Sabrina to immediately come marching back.
Sabrina wouldn’t. She couldn’t.
What she needed to do was to have a moment alone so that she could release this terrible anger building inside her. She had to clear her head to think. Her whole life was about to change, and it was all her father’s fault.
He’d been courting the Widow Bossley and hadn’t said a word to her? She couldn’t believe he wanted to remarry. It was completely out of his character.
Her father had always been a cautious man, a reserved one . . . although since her mother’s death, there had been times Sabrina had concerns for him, something she hadn’t realized until this moment. He did not always act quite himself. However, she had never imagined he’d be open to clandestine meetings with the Widow Bossley. And asking her to marry him made Sabrina wonder if he was ready for Bedlam!
The worst was having the widow behave in such a condescending manner. She’d called Sabrina “innocent.” Another way of saying naïve. Or unimportant.
However, she did speak one truth. If her father remarried, Sabrina would be subject to the widow’s whims. Men were that way. They could be led.
Hot tears spilled from her eyes. She swiped at them, angry with herself for being hurt, for being afraid.
How soon men forget their grief. How quickly they move on. Bitterness threatened to consume her. She couldn’t return home, not yet. She’d do and say things she would regret.
As she moved to higher ground, she left behind the trees and the silver waters of Loch Tay. She left behind civilization. Here, where the sky touched the wild moors, she had space to breathe, to cry, and to scream her anger.
Not far from the road was an abandoned bothy. When her mother had been so frighteningly ill, there had been many a time Sabrina had needed escape. She’d discovered the bothy and realized here was a place she could go to release the horror of watching her mother slowly die.
In the bothy, she could break down, rage at God even, then dry her tears, dust herself off, and travel home with no one’s being the wiser. Because of the bothy, she had smiles for her mother and soothing words for her father.
And right now, Sabrina needed its haven.
The bothy was nestled in the crook of the moor’s rolling land. She picked up her step. Without hesitation, she ducked under the open doorway, strode right through the first room past the door into the second, windowless one. She stopped, facing a corner. Her face was flushed and her breathing labored from exertion and anger.
Doubling her fists, she gave vent to her outrage, speaking to the air as if to her father.
“You can’t marry that woman. You mustn’t. And if you think I shall live under the same roof with her or sit at the same table—you are wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong. I shall not disgrace my mother’s memory by recognizing her. Do you hear me? I won’t.”
That last felt good. And so, she repeated it.
“I. Won’t. Not ever. You may cut me off, send me to the poorhouse, whip me with chains, but I will not sit at a table with the Widow Bossley. And she will never be a mother to me. Or anything else.”
She could have jumped up and down she was so angry. She’d never speak these words to her father. Mrs. Bossley was right; Sabrina had no choice but to accept the marriage.
Sabrina would become an unwanted appendage in their lives, a shadow of what she’d once been. Then she would die. Alone. Unmourned. A morality tale to young girls of what happened to the unmarried—
Her thoughts broke off as the hairs on the back of her neck tingled with awareness.
She might die alone, but she was not alone now.
In the space of a pause, she’d heard someone else’s breathing, a heavy sound as if with difficulty.
Slowly, she turned, and her heart gave a start.
A man blocked the doorway to her room. He leaned against the stone wall as if needing support to stand.
He had the disreputable appearance of a brigand or a pirate. His black hair was overlong. A beard shadowed his jaw. He was tall, lean, muscular—and deathly ill.
His eyes burned with fever, he said, “Help me. Please. Water—”
His plea broke off as he fell to the floor at her feet.