wrighterly

Are you smart enough to be POTUS?

2012-01-08T08:49:00.001-05:00

Governing the most influential country on the planet – fortunately – has more to do with a skill set than with issues (even those about which we care most deeply). Politics has more to do – more or less fortunately – with familiarity and talking a good game than with a skill set, which may be why we have such difficulty remembering the former point and favoring the latter as we gear up for elections in America; so many of our presidents are groomed in Congress that we feel as if we should hear the same political speeches from presidential hopefuls as from congressional ones. Not so. Constitutionally and historically, domestic matters are the purview of Congress, and the president provides the executive check and balance for the House and Senate while acting as the nation's leading foreign diplomat. In short, Congress runs the country while the president engages – peacefully or not – with others.

That doesn't mean I care nothing for a presidential candidate's stand on issues. I do care, but unless the candidate steps from the silver screen à la Ronald Reagan or swaps academic regalia and army fatigues for a chalk stripe and tie like Ike, his – or her – stance on core issues is most probably well known from gubernatorial, congressional, and/or senatorial races. Do I not expect change in those positions? Some and in some candidates more than others. I appreciate having some awareness and predictive ability to know which laws written by Congress may well garner a Presidential veto, and all presidents have their agenda they push within their parties to greater or lesser success domestically. But Congress controls this country's budget and its current homeland concerns, while her president guides her relationships with other nations. So it was intended by the framers of the Constitution, and I am not so lazy as to believe I can't determine on my own that Santorum is anti-abortion (all abortion) and Obama still prefers diplomacy to war.

All of which brings me to my central point. The race for the United States presidency begins with a primary season for the outside party (and sometimes both parties), and this primary seems to me to have become solely about issues. Again, candidates' positions on issues are, in my estimation, not difficult to determine. For instance, in the 2012 crop of Republican candidates, we have three governors including one sitting and two former, two congressmen including a current representative and a former Speaker of the House, and one former senator. I doubt one would have any trouble finding campaign speeches or, better evidence, voting records to support the candidates' positions. Further, President Obama has made his positions relatively clear, and the cycle of American politics in the past two years gives ample illustration of the reason why an American presidential candidate's positioning on issues should be of secondary concern to his or her skill set on the campaign trail.

What do I mean by "skill set" as I ramble on about issues and the overuse of candidates' positions on them during campaigning? Simple. If I have the opportunity to speak to you – you, the presidential candidate – could you convince me that you can do the job of being president of the United States all without ever once speaking your mind on abortion, climate change, Syria, Iran, China, the Pacific Rim, or the Keystone Pipeline? Can you forget about unemployment, the payroll tax cut, flat taxes, and entitlements for a one-hour job interview? Because that's what the campaign trail is (or should be). What do you, presidential candidate, carry around in your toolbox that can convince me you are United States President material?

That's what I mean.

In the real world, my world, I am part of the 99%. I work hard 60 hours each week –often more – in a job where I supervise a modest staff of ten. Many of those ten I led the charge in hiring: forming the hiring committee, determining the key competencies required to perform the essential job functions, writing the interview questions for the committees to ask of the candidates. By the interview stage, we knew all the candidates had the right backgrounds (e.g., education, work experience, references). What we needed to determine was whether or not those backgrounds translated into the right skill sets for the job.

The presidency really isn't all that different. Most candidates – though these days, almost anything goes; look at Herman Cain – have law degrees and a stint as governor or congressman or senator. Most have ringing endorsements. (Cue the educations, work experience, and references above.) Without these, a candidate lacks the basic requisite knowledge to do the job. Having these guarantees little. What I want to know, ladies and gentlemen, is this: Are you smart enough to be POTUS? Because I'm here to tell you that, so far this season, I've seen very little to impress me.

Our past presidents boast four Nobel laureates (T. Roosevelt, Wilson, Carter, and Obama), a Rhodes scholar (Clinton), five college or university presidents (Jefferson, UVA; Madison, UVA; Garfield, Hiram College; Wilson, Princeton; Eisenhower, Columbia), three college chancellors (Washington, William and Mary, Washington College, and Washington and Lee University; Fillmore, University of Buffalo; Tyler, William and Mary), and a host of academics both pre- and post-presidency.

For the approximately one-half of past presidents for whom IQ estimates are known, the mean IQ is 128, including George Washington's 118, Richard Nixon's 148, and FDR's 147. Highly correlated with IQ – intellectual curiosity or openness to experience estimates from the NEO-PI-R are also much higher for these presidents; FDR's 45 and Jefferson's 99 are examples.

Educational attainment is a very good predictor of intelligence, and given my assumption that you, dear candidate, will not release your formal IQ results nor submit for an administration of the NEO-PI-R, I'll take the reports of how far candidates have gone in school. In the current crop of GOP candidates, for instance, former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich earned Master's and doctoral degrees in history from Tulane University (as opposed to the honorary doctorate à la Huntsman with his earned Bachelor's degree in political science). The only other two candidates of note, Romney and Santorum, appear neck-in-neck (big surprise) with their Bachelor's in English (R) and Political Science (S) and identical MBAs and law degrees. Ron Paul does have a respectable M.D., it should be noted.

Why do I care? Because in a world where Congress will dictate what bills come to a vote, what laws become federal code, and what presidential agenda see the light of day, I care far less whether a Republican candidate eschews all abortion or only late-term abortions than I care whether he or she is intelligent enough to interact cleverly and with integrity with foreign heads of state. Santorum may be staunchly pro-life, but my supposition is that he's almost smart enough to know he can't overturn Roe v. Wade. I know Gingrich is smart enough.

So, are you? Smart enough to be POTUS? Can you charm like Clinton, arm like Roosevelt, and advance the world like Jefferson? If you don't have that vision, if you can't think that far beyond today's horizon, go home. I have no use for you regardless of whether or not your position on the issues aligns with mine. If you're still game, below are ten questions to assess your suitability to be my president.

Job Interview Questions: President of the United States of America

Please tell us about your educational background and professional experiences specifically as they relate to the position of President of the United States of America.
The office of the President of the United States more often than not finds itself multi-tasking. Describe how you are effectively able to handle multiple tasks and projects, and give an example of when you were successful in completing a project on time and on budget in a multi-tasked environment.
The office of the President, like most elected positions, requires adherence to specific, legislatively mandated work processes. Tell us about one of the most important improvements to a work process that you carried out successfully under similar circumstances as [Governor /U.S. Representative/Senator].
Please describe an example of a wide-reaching initiative you led from inception to enactment into law. What were the results of the evaluation of the initiative, and how did you use those results?
Tell us about a time when you were unable to successfully advance an agenda. How did you communicate your lack of success to your constituents and to the leadership within your party? Did you make any changes to your position as a result?
Many times, the office of the President of the United States of American finds itself in a situation in which the advancement of people in other nations - sometimes their very survival –is pitted the current political goals of the United States. What specific skills do you bring to the office to enable you to make the best decision in these situations? If you have faced such a situation as [Governor/U.S. Representative/Senator], please provide a brief description of the situation, your role in its resolution, and what you learned from the experience.
The position of President of the United States is responsible for policy initiatives and administrative appointments whose implementation depends on others at the White House and on members of Congress doing their jobs on time. Describe how you, as the President of the United States, would handle a situation when your deadline is approaching and your administration and/or Congress has failed to act in their roles to expedite your work.
The main functions of the office of the President of the United States are heavily dependent on the analysis and evaluation of a cadre of experts - the Presidential Cabinet . What experience do you have constructing such a cabinet, and what evidence can you provide that suggests you are able to critically consider and respect the advice of your experts?
The President of the United States operates, as does all her citizens, under the requirements of federal law. It is imperative that the person assuming this position be cognizant of these laws, particularly those most frequently cited as divisive among the citizenry or most likely to be in need of revision during a particular age. (For instance, a recent presidential candidate who has withdrawn his candidacy, broadcast a campaign ad decrying school children's inability to pray in public schools, when the actual letter of the law indicates all children may pray but none can be compelled to pray.) What in your background specifically prepares you to deal with the legislative challenges all presidents face, and provide evidence that you are aware of the current state of the nation's most inflammatory codes.
The position of President of the United States requires collaboration with the heads of state of almost all other governments on the planet. These may be diplomatic handshakes handled by proxy via the Secretary of State, or they may be allied decisions to make war on yet another nation. What professional experiences as [Governor/U.S. Representative/Senator] do you have to enable you to undertake these collaborations? Provide an example from prior experiences to illustrate your ability to forge alliances beyond the boundaries of your own state.

There is a scoring rubric. I use a 1-10 scale, and I never tally a final score until all interviews have been complete. If you'd like to see how you'd do, please feel free to email your interview answers to stephaniewright01@gmail.com. Let's give it a couple weeks. I'll post anonymous results at that time. Perhaps, between a reexamination of the poor quality of dialog to this point and an honest attempt to answer the questions immediately above, we can begin to arrive at an answer to my overarching question: Are you smart enough to be President of the United States of America?

Senryū

2011-12-27T14:01:00.000-05:00

no faery grand-mum
just one step and one step and -
receipt for a life

The Long-term View

2011-12-16T21:38:00.000-05:00

Across from Declan, his wife laid down her portion of the morning newspapers. With a deep sigh, she raised her head, which he noticed from the corner of his eye though he chose not to look at her directly. After a protracted moment, she huffed and cracked the section of paper on her lap as she folded it back into place. Avoidance was not in the cards.

"Something wrong, love?"

"They're at it again," she nearly spat.

Cocking his head, he listened but heard nothing from the gaggle of teenagers asleep on the floor above them. Confounded, he turned to her. "Who's at it?"

"The bloody Americans. Who else?"

Who else, indeed. "At what? You seem to have me at a disadvantage. I've only made it through the football headlines."

She tapped the news section and ignored her cooling tea. He'd made it special for her, too. "Another one of their governors has signed a law disallowing school children's books to contain mention of evolution."

"Ah."

Her brows shot upward as she caught scent of him nearing her trap. "You do see then?"

"Of course, dear." There really was nothing else to say when one's wife was an eminent scientist.

"Fecking republicans." She reached for her tea and gulped, evidently content with its ambient temperature. "Were they half so clever as they think they are, they'd embrace evolutionary fact, for it is –"

"No theory, yes, I know."

"Don't mock me, Declan O'Leary. The sofa just there has plenty of sleeping life left in it."

Laying aside his own paper in defeat, Declan chuckled. "When do I ever mock you, Colina? I learnt long ago that I can't be certain just when you're carrying one of your bitty knives and when you're not."

"A lesson well remembered," she retorted, but she blew him a quick kiss.

"Now then, you were saying something about right wingers embracing evolution? I don't suppose you believe the world's coming to a premature end?"

"But that's just it. It is. At least for us, for humans that is. What do republicans despise as much as evolution? Republican politicians, I mean."

Declan thought for a moment. "Abortion?"

"Aye, well, of course that, but they've got no foothold there. What else?"

"Environmental concerns?"

"Exactly. Only by accepting evolution can they also embrace the idea that humans, as a species, are doomed. Ten thousand years at best, more like three to five."

Declan nodded and winked at her. "I see where you're going with this. We watched that BBC special a few months ago about what the planet'll do after humans finally go extinct. What'd that scientist predict, about a hundred years for complete planetary recovery?"

"About that."

"So, if the right wing gets on the evolution train, they can have a legitimate pulpit – no pun intended – from which to argue against environmental regulations."

"In a roundabout way, aye."

"Doesn't account for asthmatic children or the rising cost of fossil fuels."

His beautiful wife laughed. "No plan's perfect."

Due Credit

2011-11-25T15:19:00.001-05:00

As Ron said, it's nice to be recognized publicly. For as long as I can remember (quite literally), I wanted to "be a writer," whatever that means. As I finish growing up, I struggle to redefine just what that means for me. Publish or perish doesn't exist only within the ivory tower, and I've found myself regressing toward the need to write versus the need to be read. For now, I am content. Perhaps.

I'm not even sure if there are any who remember that what drew me first to LiveJournal was the need for a forum in which to be read. My first LJ wasn't even mine, per se, but one for a secondary character (Declan O'Leary). That was five years ago now. As I've continued to write, I've gotten better (as Zelda would say, "Well, duh."), but I've also grown more selective in what I can tolerate reading. I purchase almost zero fiction anymore, preferring to read those writers online who I know to be first rate and whose characters engage me. (My non-fiction is still purchased, but that's a different sort of thing altogether.) Thus, when Ron chose to honor me on a list of five writers to read online, I was both honored and delighted to be able to select five of my own to pass on to you. Because I will post this both here and on my blog, I don't worry so much about the redundancy of LJ and the fact that many of my LJ readers will also read those I recommend.

Here are the rules/suggestions for this nomination. Do with them what you will.

Leibster is a German word meaning "dearest," and the award is given to up-and-coming bloggers with less than 200 followers. (I don't really care if a nominee has more than 200 followers to be frank.)

If you receive the award, you should:

Thank the giver and link back to the blogger who gave it to you. Again, thank you, , also found at The Road to Donnick Cottage
Reveal your top five picks and let them know by leaving a comment on their blog.
Copy and paste the award on your blog.
Hope that the people you’ve sent the award to forward it to their five favourite bloggers and keep it going!

Ron Runeborg

Ron Runeborg deserved the nomination that got this ball rolling, and he deserves mine. He is one of those rare writers whose natural talent is the envy of many. Whether Suessical or serious, his verse sings always and is delivered damned near without effort. When he turns his pen to fiction, he peoples his worlds with characters and situations that transport the reader and, often, transform the reader. To add insult to injury (or the cherry on top), Ron's recorded readings of his own and others' works delight us all. My only complaint about this nominee is that he withholds his talent as often as he shares it.

Rachel Green

Rachel Green, the Renaissance artist of our time, is truly one of my favourite writers. I have been enriched beyond measure since I began reading the tales of Harold & Jasfoup four years+ ago. Her wit is razor sharp, her characters fully fleshed (even those whose flesh is slightly decayed), and her plots as tight as a Christie or Doyle. Writing primarily in the urban fantasy genre, Rachel also does a bit more than dabble in the BSDM and gay/lesbian arenas, often overlapping the two. She is brilliant, funny, humble, and a complete delight, as are all of her works. As if that were not enough, she also boasts a compendium of accomplished poetry, penning seven each day and sometimes more.

Nathalie Bouchard-Beudin

Nathalie is a little Lovecraft, a bit Atwood, and completely herself. A Frenchwoman who lives in Italy and writes in English, she pens poetry, flash via Twitter, and feature-length horror that will have the reader suspending disbelief before we realize it's even required. Despite the fantastic elements of her stories, Nathalie reminds us always that the dark we have to fear generally lies within ourselves.

Chan Pheng Lew

Chan writes, as far as I am aware, within the confines of Live Journal. If you are an LJer, you may know Chan's work already. These stories, typically set in Laos, are sweeping, beautifully set tales of human frailty and strength. I am always struck by the breathtaking prose she crafts within the economy of words she chooses. Chan's gift is the offering of stories to those of us fortunate enough to read. If you haven't discovered her yet, please do so now.

Teresa Frohock

Fellow North Carolinian and fantasy writer Teresa Frohock is destined to become of favourite of readers around the web and elsewhere. Her recently published Miserere: An Autumn Tale recently received a starred review in Library Journal (and I can say I tweeted with her when...). In all seriousness, Teresa is a serious writer with a serious ability to craft a complete world with characters that will stop you in your tracks and pull you into their lives. She also has a gifted ability to talk the craft as well as work it. Read her work and her thoughts on it. You'll be delighted that you did.

Triquain: Unglazed

2011-11-22T13:40:00.000-05:00

Violet

blooms on pliant porcelain
a violent, before-the-fire rage
leaving rumour to run like the wine spilled in haste
staining the linens and her fingers
a blood red metaphor -
tempering.

Senryu

2011-11-15T12:57:00.000-05:00

daily suit and heels
administrative ma'am now -
jeaned Dr. Wright? gone

Senryū

2011-11-12T15:19:00.001-05:00

woman from a distance
winds - fertile slopes, liquid core

hard beneath the hands

Inspired by this National Geographic photo.

Saturday at the Grocery

2011-11-12T15:16:00.001-05:00

A pristine sky with no wide strokes of white to break
the boundless spill of azure cloaks my drive
a man with a dog ties the lead to a bike rack
reminding me of Rachel and I think
I should have walked the two miles
with only two light sacks for the return trip
supplies for a science experiment, crystals to grow
in salt water - kosher, table, and coarse sea
plus bell pepper and two heads of garlic for the dinner pot
two miles, two sacks, two heads, too easy to slide
behind the wheel
but no means of enjoying the scarlet dress of maples
and golden oaks readying themselves for the dance
or twittering senryu to those who would read
sitting instead in the parking lot to text myself
free form verse of missed opportunity
and a half pound of coffee bought on sale.

Senryū

2011-08-07T09:29:00.000-04:00

The Ugly Boob

2011-08-07T09:19:00.001-04:00

At just about six last Friday, I got home, and I followed my normal routine: put keys in little pottery bowl by the door, drop lunchbox in kitchen, say hello to Daughter No. 1 and partner, kick off shoes and pick them up, start walking to the bedroom to change clothes. Each day, minor aspects of this routine vary. Perhaps my partner, already engaged in preparations for dinner, kisses me in the kitchen as I leave the lunchbox on the table handmade by his grandfather. Perhaps my eldest daughter is at work, and our greetings and partings took place via text half an hour or more before. Minor aspects. I return home; I greet whomever might be there; I slip away to change.

Last Friday, my partner followed me to the bedroom to continue a conversation already underway. I began to strip away my layers. Red cardigan removed and carefully hanged in the closet. Black and red summer chiffon top removed and tossed on top of the laundry. Down to a black tank top and my bra, I intended a quasi-Jennifer-Beal maneuver in which I would remove my bra while the tank remained in place, allowing me to keep the comfort and lightweight cotton on top and slip on a pair of pajama bottoms for the evening’s wear. My partner sat on the bed facing me as we talked and I carried on these machinations. Bra unhooked at the back, I reached upward, pulled on a strap, and tugged. When the strap fell down my arm, I felt more cool air along the left side of my body than I should have, looked down, and frowned. The strap to my black Old Navy tank hung limp to my elbow rather than the strap to my bra. I took corrective measures, grinning at my partner.

“Oops. I almost flashed you the ugly boob.”

My left breast currently sports a backwards C-shaped incision just outside my nipple, a nipple that, until a couple days ago, had begun to point decidedly off-center. The incision marks the entry point for the surgeon who removed a small mass a week ago Friday in the climax of a month-long battle with anxiety and fear and quite a bit of disbelief. On the backside of this ordeal for now, I carry less anxiety (though no less fear) and a new sort of guilt.

When I learned at the end of May after my first-ever mammogram that something wasn’t quite right on the scans, I quashed my nervousness, irritated more than anything else. I truly do not have enough hours in the day for repeat mammograms. Further, I was the good girl, getting it done on time, having all my little OB-Gyn boxes ticked off annually as I’m supposed to. Hardly fair then to have the first scan in my life turn up an abnormality.

Then the second scan confirmed the first, and the fire of anxiety flickered and caught. I began to look at the harsh realities of my life a little more closely. Forty years old and (legally at any rate) the single mother of two minor daughters and one in college, I am not wealthy. I do not have a Gatesian fortune to leave my children should I die a premature death after paying extensive medical bills. My life insurance, which felt so expansive only a few months ago, now felt woefully inadequate, and who gives more life insurance to a woman with breast cancer? Then there were the more immediate aspects of life to think about. I began to envision myself without the mane of hair that is, in some ways, a trademark of my appearance. When I learned I would most likely not need chemotherapy, I mentally put my hair back in place and started to think about my breasts.

I love my breasts. I do. My almost-A, are-you-sure-you-don’t-want-to-have-those-things-enhanced?, these-beautiful-things-have-nursed-three-daughters breasts are part of my mental makeup. I never felt them inadequate to any task despite their size, and suddenly I’m staring down the knowledge that one may be imperfect in a way necessitating radical, noticeable change. I convinced myself I would lose my breast in preparation for losing my breast just as I had with my hair.

In June, I endured the utter indignity of a stereotactic core biopsy under local anesthesia. The doctor and the nurse performing the procedure attended me with the highest degree of professionalism and skill, but sometimes life is what it is and we just have to move on without much more said. The results from the biopsy were good. I didn’t seem to have breast cancer but was referred for an excisional biopsy nonetheless because the cells extracted during the core biopsy indicated some degree of abnormality. The doctor at The Breast Center had taken the liberty of making my appointment with the surgeon; I could change that if necessary.

I kept the appointment. I had the recommended surgery a month later. I confess to not quite understanding why. It’s all a numbers game; that much I do know. That much I can understand, too. I do numbers all day long everyday for a living. Every female walking around in America has about a 12% chance of developing breast cancer at some point in her life. Because I developed a non-invasive form, my risk sky-rocketed. Because it was caught early, my risk could be decreased again (but never back to that 12%) but only if I had the surgery. Okay. I can see the reason behind that.

Ironic really, this whole sequence of events. I know people – personally and virtually – affected by breast cancer. (Who doesn’t, right?) It is my very good fortune that all have survived. Here stands the pinpoint of my guilt, and whether or not I can dance fast enough not to fall will be interesting to watch. The guilt lies two-fold. First, people worried about me. Some worried, because they’d been personally touched by breast cancer and didn’t want me to walk that path behind them. Others worried not because they had experience with breast cancer but only because they cared about me. I do not like for others’ time to be filled with worry for me. Second, despite my love and concern for others touched by breast cancer and despite my awe and admiration for the efficacy of the Susan G. Komen Foundation, I’m not a pink ribbon girl; I’m a purple ribbon girl. Throughout this mini-trial, I’ve had to acknowledge the irony that my abnormality was probably caught and my surgery probably recommended due to the research driven by SGK, while I’ve spent several years railing that the effects of domestic violence touch far more people than those of breast cancer and the purple ribbon campaign should be as widely known as the pink. So, I have guilt. (I do guilt very well and acknowledge its place in my life.)

Third, I need to acknowledge the tertiary guilt of not having breast cancer.

Please, allow me to explain. This past Thursday, I received the pathologist’s results. Clean margins and nothing unexpected in the abnormal tissue. I am cancer-free. For now. Hopefully, forever.

However, my journey began as every breast cancer survivor’s and victim’s begins. A mammogram or self-exam leads to further scans which lead to… Only my journey ended for now. I’ll have another mammogram when I’m supposed to. That’s all. I didn’t need additional surgery. I didn’t need chemotherapy or radiation. I didn’t face months of illness. I didn’t face death. There is no reason why I should have had a better outcome than other women. Thus, the guilt.

For those who worried, for not being a pink ribbon girl, for not having breast cancer today, I apologize. Now, I release myself from the guilt.

“Oops. I almost flashed you the ugly boob.”

“You don’t have an ugly boob. You have two beautiful breasts, Stephanie.”

The one with the stitches, you see, that tells him I’m cancer-free. For me, it’s my reminder if the guilt ever strays too far. The scar reminds me this was my close call and I should do a better job with my daily life: love a little more freely, enjoy my children at every opportunity, buy more life insurance, support more than one ribbon.

I love my breasts. Even the ugly one.

Senryū

2011-05-14T11:24:00.000-04:00

sucking maple sweets

eyes tear from too much sugar

or memory's whip

Senryū

2011-05-09T08:52:00.002-04:00

we could speak in code

like old spies, double agents

too clever for love

Senryū

2011-05-01T17:25:00.000-04:00

apologies stuffed

inside a parka’s pockets

unread ‘til winter

Senryū

2011-05-01T12:51:00.000-04:00

A loaf of rough bread –

eggs in baskets with gruyère

blankets. Intimate.

Senryū

2011-04-30T17:18:00.003-04:00

almond biscotti -

espresso-dipped dreams, wet Rome

and ageless poisons

Flying the Nest

2011-04-29T19:27:00.002-04:00

Glynis counted the Swiss dots on the skirt of her new frock. Navy on lilac, she suspected she resembled less a young lady waiting to be asked to dance than a blue speckled egg left in the nest by a neglectful mother bird. Her own mother, having done her duty in outfitting Glynis for the party and seeing her hair properly dressed (“Where did you get these ebony curls, lassie? You look more the child of an Irishman than either mine or your da’s.), had taken herself off to the balcony “for a bit of air.” She didn’t mean to neglect Glynis, but there it was. She knew she would be remembered once they retrieved the car at the end of the evening.

Darling, where’s Glynis?

Oh, I thought she was with you.

No, I thought she was with you.

I’ll just go fetch her then.

Always an afterthought, Glynis, from her very conception after a couple glasses of port and one of her father’s contraband cigars. Not that thought had had much to do with that, she supposed, which made perfect sense when one considered she was the fourth child in a family where her three older brothers had all gone off to university or the service before she’d entered primary school.

“Hullo, Glynis.”

The unexpected sound of her own name startled her, and she jumped. Champagne sloshed over the rim of the narrow flute she held, dousing her wrist, corsage of delicate stephanotis, and broad navy silk sash. Mother would have something to say about that. Shaking her wrist, she glanced at the polished shoes in front of her but couldn’t discern their ownership and forced herself to travel the length of stockinged leg and kilted thigh until she came, at last, eye to eye with James Lindsay.

She bit her lip, cheeks flaming.

“Sorry. Didn’t mean to frighten you.”

She shook her head to negate his apology but couldn’t find her voice. The copper taste of blood lit the tip of her tongue, and she grimaced, releasing her lip with a frown before realizing he might think it directed at himself. “’S all right,” she managed.

“Did you save me that dance then?”

Though his words teased, she thought him just the wee bit nervous. She noticed his hands toyed with the sporran at his waist, and he glanced away from her quickly after asking. Somehow, that gave her just enough courage to speak without stuttering. Gulping the remains of her champagne, she smiled directly at him.

“You’ve put the asking off rather late in the evening now, haven’t you, James?”

“Thought you might be keen to save the best for last.”

“Oh!” She felt a new flush starting and hid behind the flute for an instant.

“Or something like that.”

“You do set high expectations, James Lindsay.”

“I fear I must, else I’d find myself unworthy to share a dance, much less ask if I can call on you at home tomorrow.”

He bent and took the champagne flute from her. Handing it to a passing waiter, he offered her a hand. She placed her own inside of it, relishing the warmth and strength she felt as his fingers closed around hers. As she slipped into his arms on the ballroom floor, he leant close to her ear and whispered.

“I’ve not stopped thinking of you since McIllreavy’s store. Your face is the first thing I see in my mind when I wake in the morning and the last thing I see when I close my eyes at night.”

“James – “ Glynis bit the open sore on her lip and winced. “James, I don’t know what to say.”

“Just say you think of me, too. Even a bit from time to time.”

“I do,” she whispered, thinking she might never have to be an afterthought again.

To Skin the Cat

2011-04-28T11:22:00.001-04:00

Glynis read the morning papers with a cynical detachment. It seemed Parliament had passed The Murder Act at last, abolishing capital punishment for murder – but not treason, espionage, piracy with violence… That one flummoxed Glynis. Did non-violent pirates exist? Or any pirates for that matter in 1965? If so, she thought she might dearly like to meet one if only to say she had.

Her thoughts digressed.

She wondered, had there been a sitting Parliament when state-sanctioned killings began, if that bill would have been called The Murder Act, too, and laughed aloud at the notion. Her hilarity caused James to glance at her from the stove where he stood preparing breakfast. His lovely face puckered in a smile.

“Reading the comics?”

“No,” Glynis informed him, “the latest from Parliament.”

“Is there a difference?”

“Most days, likely not.”

“Blackberry jam or just butter on your toast today?”

“Is that mum’s jam from last summer?”

“Aye.”

“Then the jam please.”

She turned back to the papers and tried to refocus, but a familiar roiling nausea overcame her attention. Laying the papers aside, she pushed away from the table and waved off James’ look of concern.

“Be right back, love.”

He grunted acknowledgement, and she slipped from the room before he could probe. In the library they shared, she pulled a slim, silk-bound journal from behind the American classics section. She knew James would never look there. The volume in hand, she eyed the blotter on the desk. James’ Montblanc lay shiny and alone, awaiting use.

The ink flowed fluid and without skips, rendering the blank page as damning as the ones preceding it. May, 1994. James, Glynis: d. Automotive accident. There. Done. She resisted the temptation to put teeth marks in James’ pen, tossing it to the desk blotter before she succumbed and snapping the journal closed.

“Darling? Where’d you go? Breakfast is on the table.”

Sniffing, she pressed a finger beneath her nose and crammed the journal behind Hardy and Fitzgerald, guardians of her secrets. Glynis knew well the degrees of execution, as her prescience had just signed her husband’s death warrant. And her own.

“Coming,” she whispered, pulling the door to the library closed behind her.

Senryu

2011-01-25T15:39:00.000-05:00

thieves begging slices
from the life of pie eschew
bruised flesh of regret

Senryū

2010-10-25T12:50:00.000-04:00

Mississippi heat

melts words into rivulets -

Bashō slowly drowns.

Raising Faulkner

2010-10-20T12:36:00.001-04:00

Raising Faulkner

Deep in the

Mississippi Delta

the past is unearthed as one man seeks

half-truths, time soaked recollections, Pandora's box

of poems and demon driven art -

inexorable truth,

his word kept.

Triquain synopsis for upcoming NaNo novel.

Senryū

2010-10-20T11:23:00.000-04:00

grey clouds hovering

wrapped in wool and memory

spinning tales, love lost

Morning Tea at Kirkhill

2010-10-05T21:17:00.000-04:00

Colina flicked an errant curl from the collar of her husband's shirt as she reached across his shoulder from behind. He half turned in his chair at the kitchen table, taking the cup of steaming tea from her hand and scowling at her playfulness. She lifted a brow and chuckled.

"You could do with a trim," she informed him.

"Hmph. No time today. It's Eddie's tenth anniversary with the company, and Aleck and I are taking him to lunch."

"Then forego the barber altogether for a while," she suggested. "I recall when you wore your hair much longer."

"Aye, and you wore your skirts much shorter." He winked, and she turned back to the kettle to hide the rapid blush. "Do you happen to also recall that party when you left me standing under a potted fig watching you walk away in that black skirt with those ugodly heels?"

Colina couldn't help it. She laughed, for she did remember the night in question. Not one of her finer moments. Or perhaps her finest, perspective depending.

"I remember. You were very gallant that night, very charming."

"I went to bed cursing your name and avowing I'd never return to Kirkhill until you came begging me to."

"Aye, well, there was Aleck. So, you had a good excuse to come round and pretend it wasn't for me, no?" She risked a glance at him and saw his face turn an alarming shade of red before he raised a finger in her direction.

"Your father clearly didn't turn you over his knee half so often as he should have, and I'll thank you to not distract me from the conversation at hand."

"Oh? And what's that, my love?"

"I'd like to know when it was you exchanged those wee tight skirts for trousers anyway."

"Just about the time I realised how often it was you looked at my legs and not my eyes when you spoke to me, Declan O'Leary."

"If I'd known how mad the doctor would become, I might have ogled your legs a bit more and carried aroung that auger a bit less, saved us both three or for years' time," he said, a lecherous smirk lighting his eyes over the rim of his cup.

The comment confused Colina. "Doctor? Mad? What are you going on about?"

"Mad with desire of course, and unless you've got another squirreled away in the larder, there's only one doctor in the house, Mrs. O'Leary."

She tipped her own cup towards him. "That's Dr. Lindsay to you, and mad with desire might be overstating the case a touch."

"Come 'ere, woman, and I'll show you what a touch will do, and I'm not overstating anything. Well you know it, too."

She cocked her head to one side, a half grin playing at the corner of her mouth as she approached him. "Will you grow your hair again?"

"Will you wear wee black skirts again? Even just for me to see?"

"Always, my love."

Senryū

2010-09-29T22:01:00.000-04:00

she sprinkles stardust and

drinks charms half-forgotten

lucent nebulae

November, II

2010-09-20T23:07:00.000-04:00

Mairi's step faltered when they reached the corner of Duncraig Street. The images in her memory shifted and blurred atop the store facades winking in the lights from the street lamps. Pausing, she blinked and caught her breath. Beside her, Lachlan gripped her elbow.

"All right?"

"I -" Everything seemed lonely now, modern and sterile. "Aye," she whispered, "fine."

She didn't mention that the posh new hair salon used to host Molly & Tam's, an artists' concern and one of Aleck's favourite haunts once. Her heart clenched. How had she not noticed the change?

Giving over to Lachlan's gentle tug, she moved on. Her heels clicked out the steps of seven more blocks until he steered her into the courtyard, their breath steaming the air in bitty white pockets as they walked. November was colder this year, too.

"We should have brought the car," he said. "You're shivering."

"I'm fine," she repeated.

Inside the church, they talked about her as if she weren't there, which was perhaps true in many ways. She felt as if she'd taken her place with the ghosts. Or wished she had.

"There you are!" Rosalind pecked Lachlan on the cheek while she placed their infant daughter into his arms. "I was beginning to worry."

"Mum wanted to walk," he explained.

"From the mansion?"

"No, only from dinner. I'll just get the car after the service."

Mairi's daughter-in-law looked at her askance. "All right?"

She sighed and assured her, "I'm fine. Really," though she was beginning to doubt the fact herself. The past seemed to weigh on her for reasons unknown. She reached for Elaine and took the squirming baby from Lachlan's arms. "Come to Granny, Aye? That's a good lass." She cuddled the infant while the remaining worshipers took their seats.

There, the ghost of Hadrian, kneeling and making a mocking sign of the cross before turning to her with a sardonic smile on his rogish mouth. There, the benevolent ghost of Da, lighting a candle for her erstwhile mother and fading into the walls before the priest could arrive. And there, at the last, the greying ghost of her love. Aleck slid into a pew several rows in front of them, head bowed in penitent prayer for long minutes. She watched the back of his head, tears blurring her vision and occluding the wispy form.

She murmured to Elaine until the closing hymn, handing her back to Rosalind for bundling against the cold wind. Together, she and Rosalind waited for Lachlan to dash back to the restaurant for her car. A quarter hour later, she bade them good-night, waving off Lachlan's desire to accompany her back to the mansion. "I'm tired, Lachie, and I suspect your family would like to see you before it's time to douse the lights. We'll talk tomorrow."

"If you're quite certain," he said, unconvinced.

"I am."

She kissed the top of the baby's covered head and folded herself into the car. Lachlan shut the door, and she pulled away from the kerb. Glancing into the rearview mirror once at a stoplight, she squinted. "What colour is my hair?" she wondered.

"Copper now," the voice whispered from her left. "A bit in need of polish though. Why haven't you gone white? You should have done by now."

"I don't know."

She'd finally gone mad. Talking to a ghost. Or was the madness the comfort hearing him gave her?

"Dead six months, and I still can't take my eyes off you, Mairi Munro."

"Get on with you!"

A horn behind her beeped, and she jumped in her seat. The light had turned green, and there she sat, talking to her dead husband. She touched the accelerator with her foot and sped through the intersection.

"Lucky for you that Lachlan went home rather than riding with you. It's hard to find you alone these days."

"Aye. If he'd seen me back at the light, he'd have said I need to stop driving."

"Are you going home now?"

"Roundabout. I meant to go to the mausoleum. I wanted to visit you. I saw you in the kirk and it made me miss you."

"Mairi?"

"Aye?"

"Go home. You're tired, love. Go to bed, and I'll come to ye."

"Aye, Aleck, I'll go home. I'm very tired now."

November

2010-07-25T13:39:00.004-04:00

Mairi coveted the coming of November, always had since childhood. November was the month of infinite possibilities, when Christmas shopping nipped at the corners of the calendar like the wind stealing round the corners of her favourite haunts, when Da's birthday floated like the high white clouds of shifting dreamscapes daring her to conjure a gift even more spectacular than the one she'd given him the year before, when the red berries of holly bushes bled against the white of early snows and all the world seemed wrapped in wonder. No sooner did summer flee in September and autumn arrive for good in October than she would begin counting the days until November, and as much as she coveted its coming, so, too, did she relish its stay.

“Here, m'am?” asked Jimmy as he held a length of garland from the centre of the chandelier in the foyer walking backwards to the staircase leading to the bedrooms above stairs.

“That's fine.” She watched as he began to pin the garland in place. “Oh, no. A little higher... higher still... there. Aye, that's good. Thank you, Jimmy.”

Climbing down from her own perch on a step-ladder, she carried the last length of garland – they'd already hung two – to the corner near the umbrella stand near the door. Tacking it into place, she stood back and surveyed their handiwork. She smiled and sent Jimmy on his way back to Cook, pleased with the results. With a glance at her watch, she saw she still had time to bathe and change before the evening's big event, and big it would be.

***

“Are those real?” Hadrian asked from the corner of her girlhood bedroom.

Clean and dressed in a strapless gown of crushed velvet in cobalt with silver embroidery on the bodice and at the hem, Mairi had only to fasten her necklace and earrings in place before dressing her hair and seeing to Lachlan. His voice, unexpected and somehow crass, caused her to jump, and she let loose one end of the necklace. The pearls dangled along the right side of her gown, their sapphire clasp brushing her breast.

“They are. Planning a heist?”

“Hardly. If I'd wanted your jewellery or anything else in this house, I'd have married you long since.” He walked to where she stood and removed the necklace from her fingers. “Here. Let me help.”

“Thank you.” She ignored the implication that he wanted none of it, herself and Lachlan included, and reached for the matching earrings as soon as the clasp rested at the base of her neck. “You look rather dashing tonight in your dinner jacket and studded vest.”

“Do I?” His reflection smiled at hers in the mirror, the dark hair setting his blue eyes to criminal advantage. “I'm rather gratified you noticed. Thank you, darling.” With a peck on top of her head, he turned to go.

“Hadrian?”

“Yes?” he asked from the door to the hallway.

“Please be on your best behaviour tonight.”

“I wouldn't dream of doing otherwise.”

No, but you might plan it, she thought as she smiled at his retreating back.

With a flick of her eyes at the clock on her bureau, she rued the waning time and twisted her hair into a loose knot at the base of her neck. Then she called for Lachlan and was relieved to see someone, Da most likely, had already dressed him in short grey trousers, white shirt, and braces in the family plaid. Smoothing the wayward hair, she smiled.

“Ah, what a lamb you are. Quite handsome, too. Tonight you'll have oodles of playmates, aye?”

“Cake!”

Mairi laughed. “And cake.” She took his hand and switched off the lamp near her door as she led him out. “Come along, wee man. It's time for Grandda's party.”

The guests arrived in fits and starts, small groups whose coming together was at times contrived and at others coincidental. She and Da greeted them in the small parlour early in the evening, ushering them towards the main salon after hands and cheeks had been offered with much grousing by Da in between.

“Seems a good deal of hullabaloo for nothing,” he said after the venerable Mrs. McDowell and the horrid Katrin had been bidden hullo.

“Da, you're fifty tomorrow. That's hardly nothing.”

“And hardly a number mortal men wish to mark with such fanfare.”

“Then you should have no difficulty partying it up, as you are no mere mortal, hmm?” She leant over and kissed his cheek. “Ah, look. Here comes the Widow Stewart. She's quite lovely tonight.”

“Hmph.” Yet he pulled a corner of his mouth upwards and whispered, “Where's the lad? Women go weak for infants.”

“Da, you're incorrigible!” She bit back a laugh and waved Lachlan over from his perch beside a bowl of Cook's sweets. “Here, love, Grandda needs you to charm the pretty lady.”

She left them to join the party proper only to catch glimpses of Da laughing from time to time as the night wore on, or Lachie darting between feet and knees or on occasion charming an unsuspecting guest into a ride on a well dressed hip, or the two of them together charming an equally unsuspecting unescorted lady of advancing years Da might have taken a shine to. Mairi allowed herself to relax, safe in the knowledge her two men needed little enough from her for the moment.

“Quite a party,” Hadrian said as he came up behind her. He offered her a glass of champagne, which she took with a nod of thanks, and pointed his own in the direction of her father. “He seems to be having a good time.”

“I think so. Haven't seen much of you tonight.”

“Nor I you. There're so many people about, it's a wonder you can tell one guest from another nor the next from the coat rack.”

“I suppose. Have you seen Lachlan lately?”

“A few minutes ago. He seemed chipper enough. The three-year-old twin daughters of some baroness or another were plying him with cheese biscuits.”

“God, he'll be constipated for a week.”

Hadrian grimaced. “Really, Mairi.”

“What? It's true, and I'll be the one dealing with the bad tummy.” Just then, Jimmy caught her eye and hooked his head towards the dining room. She nodded, and he rang a bell indicating the buffets were ready for dinner. “There's dinner now. I'll get the lad.”

Without another word, she handed him her glass and left him standing beside a pyramid of poinsettias.

“You could have warned me Hadrian would be here,” Aleck whinged an hour later on the balcony overlooking the bones of Cook's kitchen garden.

Mairi pulled her wrap more tightly around her bare shoulders and leant against the railing. As she peered into the night trying to find her erstwhile lover among the men and women stealing through the deciduous skeletons, she sighed. “Would my informing you have changed anything?”

“No.” He moved closer to her, placing his hands on the balcony's railing to either side of her in such a way that she was effectively pinned between the wood and his body. “Oh, perhaps I'd have worn my trousers instead of the kilt, aye? The better to kick his arse in.”

“I'd have thought the kilt would provide for better range of motion,” she said through a fit of giggles.

“You are a wicked woman, Mairi Munro.”

“You have no idea,” she teased.

Aleck pushed away from the railing, leaving her back suddenly cold in the November air. “It's not for want of trying, is it now?”

She turned and looked up into his face. “Don't be angry, Aleck. Please. I've been having such a good time tonight.”

“Well, bloody good for you and the lad! Have your fun and no small measure of it at my expense.” He stopped and bit his lip, patches of red blooming across the sharp planes of his cheeks.

“Aleck.”

“I'm sorry.”

“So am I.”

“It's only Hadrian's here, and well, even if we're not together, I've grown accustomed to being at functions where you are without him around.”

“Ho! Really?”

“What do you mean?”

She held her hand out to him. “Hullo, Pot. Allow me to introduce myself. Friends call me Kettle. Didn't I see you arrive with the third blond this month? Leggy thing she is, too. She does realise this is a formal event, no?”

“Wee bit jealous, are you?”

Mairi snorted. “Hardly.”

“I think you are.” Aleck smiled, his recent temper dissipating. “That's encouraging. My strategy is working then.”

She raised a brow, curious. “Strategy? What strategy?”

“Oh, I can't tell you that. Like the knight, I'm all over the board, my lady, protecting the queen from direct assault.”

“Is that so? And if it is, what then is Hadrian, pray tell?”

“Naught but the shadowy rook. Two moves only, forward and back, and I'll have him off the board in another...” He stepped towards her and put his face near her bare neck for a moment or two.

Mairi stood very still until his breath tickled her and she started to laugh. “Are you sniffing me, Lord Crawford?”

“Three moves,” he pronounced, stepping back.

“Really?”

“Four at most.”

“Hmm.”

“Five possibly, but no more than that for certain.”

“You are too much.”

“And Lachie's asleep under the cake table. So what? Let's dance before Hadrian returns and you give me some spiel about honour and duty.”

“Only if you let me lead.”

Aleck offered her an arm and a heavy, mocking sigh. “When have I done anything else?”

Hardly a Surprise by Then

2010-07-13T19:12:00.000-04:00

Mairi found the expression on Aleck's face interesting, or she would have done were she not so very tired. With Lachie's birthday party the day before, the emotional turmoil of discovering the photograph of her mother (let alone the strangeness of its location), and the upheaval of being ejected from her own home for the better part of the afternoon, she wanted nothing so much as to crawl into bed and close her eyes around whatever dreams might come. Aleck, however, had other ideas.

“Are you worried?” she asked him.

“What?” He glanced at her from where he'd been reading a slip of paper held in his hand. He seemed distracted as he shoved the paper into the pocket of his trousers. “Worried? No, I don't suppose I'm worried. I'm irritated and a bit relieved and ready to have the day behind me, but I wouldn't say I'm worried.”

He raised a brow at the mug of tea steeping in front of her – tea he'd fixed himself and that smelt faintly of Lachie's nappies when they weren't at their freshest – and she thought it likely he lied. Just a wee bit.

“And so, what did you do with yourself while I spent the afternoon with Da?”

“I attempted to discover the origin and purpose of this,” he said, pointing at the crimson velvet sack, “and then I set about snooping into your knicker drawer and all your cupboards both high and low and every other conceivable hiding place looking for more of the same.”

“And did you?”

“Did I what?”

“Discover the origins and purpose of the bitty bag or find other odd assortments of my life's memorabilia?”

Aleck shrugged. “Aye, I did, and yet, perhaps not so much as I'd hoped.”

“Ooharrypitooahpt,” she said through a yawn.

He looked at her and laughed. “Translation?”

“I said you're being cryptic tonight.”

He slipped into a chair next to her and pushed the sleeves of his shirt nearly to his elbows. Nodding at her tea, he prompted her to, “Drink up, darling,” before saying, “and I'll explain.”

Mairi sipped at the strange brew and wrinkled her nose. Not only did it smell like a soiled nappy, she suspected it tasted as one might, too. “Really, Aleck? Must I?”

“Please.”

And his face drew downward in such careworn exhaustion that she did. In very, very small sips.

“Will you tell me now.”

“If you keep drinking.”

“I will. I promise.”

“You're a good lass, Mairi.” He lifted the sack and placed it between them on the table. “As to your wee bag here, it contains the elements of a very old bit of magic known as a fidelity spell.”

He paused with a dramatic flair, no doubt waiting for her to question him on this rather bizarre pronouncement. She was much too tired to come up with much more than, “Voodoo?”

“Not voodoo, though not entirely unrelated either. This spell was crafted to keep you tied to the caster, to make you actually want to be faithful.”

“What do the pieces mean? Why the photograph of my mother?”

“Regarding the photograph, I should think that relatively simple to interpret. My suspicion is the spell was cast while you were pregnant with Lachlan, and the caster wished your feelings about the lad to be tied to your feelings about your mother.”

Mairi took a sip of the tea at a raised brow from Aleck and said only, “Oh.”

“Hmm. And the rest, well, the stone is a lodestone, which is not unusual in any romantic spell-casting as I'm given to understand. The wax is part of the candle magic associated with love spells, too. My supposition is your sack is the result of a spell cast either here while you slept or were away or cast elsewhere and its remnants brought here and hidden. The candles used would have been red and brown.”

“Thus the waxy bits?”

“Correct.”

“And the white stuff?” A slow flush started in the collar of Aleck's shirt and worked its way to his cheeks. The fascination of his colouring arrested her. Aleck never lost his poise. “Aleck?”

“Well, I can't be certain, you understand?”

“Very well, but what do you think it is?”

“A combination most likely of seminal fluid and, ah - ”

“Oh, don't say any more please,” she whispered.

“Thank you.”

“How...?” she began then stopped. “Oh.”

“Quite.”

“So, Hadrian did this?”

“Who else would worry about your fidelity?”

“Excellent question.”

No longer needing prompting, she sipped at the tea just to have something to do between words. She knew she should be shocked, outraged, and skeptical when she got right down to the heart of the matter. Magic? Pah! She didn't believe in such foolery. Somehow, she couldn't summon the energy for disbelief or even very much anger.

“Do you wish to know what else I found?”

She jerked her head out of contemplation and looked at him. Jesus wept, she was so tired, and it was difficult to concentrate on the features of his face. “Else? Oh, right. You said there was more. Aye, tell me now before I fall asleep on the table.”

“Two smaller sacks with similar lodestones, wax, and the – ah – other matter. One was in your bureau, and one was in Lachlan's room.”

“No photographs in those?”

“No. No doubt they're less powerful because of that.”

“Anything else?”

“Only one other thing. A plait of hair slipped into the centre of your Bible. I nearly overlooked it, but then I realised each segment held different hair.”

“The three of us, Hadrian, the lad, and me?”

“Aye.”

“Nothing else?”

“Not that I could find.”

Tipping the mug into the air, she finished its contents and handed the porcelain to Aleck. “And what now?”

“I've disspelled their magics.”

Mairi laughed, high and hysterical. “But of course you have!" Aleck sighed, and she attempted to get herself under control, a task she thought would be ever so much simpler were she less tired. “Sorry, love, but you must admit how far fetched all this sounds.”

“I know, but I've never asked you to believe me without cause, have I?”

“No,” she allowed with a grudge.

“And I'll not start now.” Standing, he walked to the sink and cleaned the mug, setting it carefully in the wooden drain rack when he'd finished. “So, I've done that, which is all I can do tonight. I've got a bad feeling there's more, a poppet perhaps, something he keeps with him and not here, that will continue to act on you. Mairi, I don't know how long it will take me to find that.”

“You'll do your best, I'm certain of that.”

“That I shall, but for tonight, I believe you've had enough. Let me put you to bed and burn what we did manage to fine, aye?”

“Okay.”

The last thing Mairi remembered of the first day of Lachlan's second year was Aleck's hand in hers as she walked into her bedroom. When she woke the next morning, the sun shone high in the blue sky and her head felt stuffed with cotton wool. Rolling onto her stomach, she groaned. Had she got pissed last night? Christ, she couldn't recall a single thing after coming home from the mansion after lunch with Da.

The voices in the kitchen first alarmed and then comforted her, and she managed to put both feet on the floor and lurch to the doorway so that she could call out. “Aleck?”

She heard two pair of feet coming in her direction, one heavy and with a long stride, the other light and quick. Aleck reached her first, Lachie peeking between his knees a few seconds later. “Good morning, lovely. How do you feel?”

“Like I lost twelve hours of my life. What happened last night?”

Aleck gave her a closed look. “Last night? Nothing. You came home after visiting with your father, and we had a light dinner. You said you had a headache and went to bed after a cup of tea. I said I would sleep on the sofa in case Lachie needed something and you were ill. Now it's morning and here you are. How's your head?”

Mairi reached upwards and felt her skull. Other than the stuffed feeling, it was fine. “Fine? I really don't recall that, Aleck, and not remembering bothers me.”

“Ach, it shouldn't. You had a headache. Who really understands the mysteries of the human brain anyway? You're fine now, and that's all that matters. If it troubles you all that much, we'll go get a brain scan. Do you want to do that?”

“Oh, don't be ridiculous,” she laughed before frowning. “Do I smell pancakes?”

Lachie clapped and slipped through Aleck's legs to clamour for her attention. Bending, she lifted him into her arms, smothering herself to kiss his neck. As he giggled, Aleck nodded.

“And bacon, too. By the time you feed the lad, your breakfast will be ready.”

“Ah, lovely. Thank you, and thank you for staying last night.”

“Of course.”

As she turned to take Lachlan into her room to nurse, she remembered one thing from the day before and called back to Aleck. “Did you happen to figure anything out about that crimson bag or find any other evidence of someone being in the house?”

He flicked his glance to Lachie and winked at him before looking at her again. “Ah, no. Nothing turned up, and I really don't know what to tell you about the sack. I'll keep trying though.”

“Oh,” she said, squelching her disappointment. “Oh, it's no matter. Thank you for trying. We'll be in there in a few minutes, hmm?”

“I'll be waiting with bated breath.”

Toil and Trouble

2010-07-10T21:21:00.002-04:00

At eleven in the morning, Mairi left Lachlan at the park with Aleck, pretending as he took the beribboned sack with clean nappies and a bottle of expressed breast milk that she didn't care who the statuesque blond on his arm the evening before had been. At eleven-twenty, she joined Da for lunch, salmon and roasted veg at her favourite corner restaurant, and while they waited for their soup, she pretended not to care much about the photograph of her mother she brought so casually into the conversation. At noon, a perplexed waiter held two daily specials over an empty table, peering down at a note written in a hasty hand, “Urgent family business. Apologies to the chef. ~R. Munro” Beneath the note lay a wad of bills, and the waiter only hoped it would cover the costs of the two plates.

At twenty past twelve, precisely one hour after sitting across from Da, Mairi's head swivelled between the two of them, Da and Aleck, as if she were sitting at centre court at Wimbledon. “So you don't know anything about it?” she asked Da, pointing at the crimson sack now held in Aleck's hand.

“Of course not, although why you're so distraught over its appearance is beside me.”

“I'm not distraught. I'm confused, and I thought you might have an answer.”

“And I,” interrupted Aleck, “really must insist you go.”

“Go? Isn't this my house?”

“Mairi, I'm not asking you, and I'm not telling you again. You'll take the lad, and you'll go now.” He looked at Da. “Richard, since you abandoned your lunch, would you care to have a late bite with the two of them? You needn't be gone overlong.”

Da nodded, and Mairi wanted to stomp her foot in irritation. Giving in to the urge, she did so, and the heel of her shoe clicked loudly on the polished wooden floor in the parlour. Feeling better, she did it one more time, with feeling. “I'm being forced from my own house with no explanation, and you...” she pointed at Da, “are in agreement?”

The Duke shrugged. “Aleck feels perhaps the cottage's been tampered with, and though a mysterious photograph of your mother does not a burglary make, I'm too old to be creeping around all the nooks and crannies of this place. Let's let him have a keek while we go over to the mansion where Cook can lay us a plate, aye?”

Mairi narrowed her eyes at him. “I detest it when you're reasonable.”

“And I'm a bit shocked by the foot stomping, but if I can overlook your temper tantrum, perhaps you'll overlook my reasonable approach to the matter?”

She turned her gaze to Lachlan, who was sitting in the centre of the floor chewing happily on a filthy gardening glove. “What do you think we should do, hmm?”

In answer, he clenched his jaws around a finger of the glove leaving the remainder dangling from his mouth, rolled to his knees so that he could push himself to into a standing position, and slowly tottered to his grandfather. Grasping at one leg of Da's trousers, he let go the glove, spat out a stream of dirt and grinned. “Up,” he commanded.

“That's that then,” Da said. “Mairi, get the lad's nappies.”

Defeated, she gave Aleck a baleful glance. “Don't you think you're overreacting just the tiniest bit?”

“Don't you think Cook is dying for an excuse to send me some raspberry jam?”

“Oh, that was just mean, as you know quite well I intended to make some this week-end and would be doing so today if you weren't playing at Sherlock Holmes.”

“The sooner you go, the sooner you can have your kitchen back.”

With a huff and one last narrowing of her eyes at him, Mairi grabbed Lachlan's sack. Checking that Da had him still, she led their wee procession out the door and to the waiting car. On the way to the mansion, she mentally rehearsed the words she'd give to Aleck over his pot of raspberry jam later should he be fortunate enough to receive any at all.

And she wished she'd never mentioned the damned photograph.

Bon Anniversaire

2010-07-06T14:57:00.002-04:00

Mairi knew a woman who once threw a birthday party for her two-year-old that was attended by all the well-to-do in town. The event, on every social calendar of every female within the peerage, cost the annual wages of the average Fortune 500 executive. Having better things to do with her time – lay in bed with Hadrian as she recalled – she didn’t attend the monstrous affair.

Thinking of the party in retrospect, Mairi chuckled. Perhaps not all the well-to-do had gone after all. Thanks to the good offices of Katrin’s gossip, she had heard of the painted clown and inflated jumping palace and petting zoo and full-sized carousel.

Having heard, she kept all of it in mind in the planning and execution of Lachlan’s first birthday party. First rule: family only. That meant Da, of course, and herself and Lachie. Well, and Aleck, for the lad adored him, and hadn’t the man been at her son’s birth after all? She could hardly not invite him. Second rule: no engraved invitations. She’d handwritten a note to Aleck and dropped it in the post on her daily walk to the park with Lachlan. She’d telephoned Da, and she and Lachlan didn’t need invitations to the party, did they? Hardly. Third rule: no hired entertainment of any sort. What with Da’s impromptu sneezing accompanying the April pollen, which he invariably turned into honking like a clown, and Aleck’s rolling jigs, who needed to pay for amusement? Not they, not hardly.

She did ring Hadrian and inform him of the date and time, although she felt irritated at having to do so. For a lingering instant, she thought of Hadrian’s father, for he mentioned him often enough in his excuse-making as the reason he so seldom managed to see them anymore, but he never made the obvious connection between the elder Welles and Lachie. From the little she knew of Hadrian’s childhood, she understood that Hadrian’s father remained unaware of his existence until Hadrian was ten or thereabouts, after which time he took considerable efforts to undo the damage those years apart wrought. They were close, Hadrian and his father. Why wouldn’t the man want to know he had a grandson? Mairi had difficulty imaging the father Hadrian described as any less doting a grandfather than her own Da, and she found herself longing to inform him of the party, too. At the end of the day, she left well enough alone, trusting Hadrian to break the news when he thought the time right.

The big event, timed to coincide with Lachlan waking from his afternoon nap, came and went without any hiccups. Rather fortunate for her if less so for the lad, Hadrian failed to appear, and at his age, Lachie never noticed his absence. He clung to Aleck, laughed so hard at Da’s shenanigans that he spit up blue icing from his cake, and delighted all three adults with his latest acquisition, a shining tooth in the very center of his bottom gum.

“Hurts like holy hell when he feeds,” she informed Da and Aleck as they inspected the tiny tusk.

“Pshaw,” Da chided. “You should give that over already. The boy’s nearly walking, and he’s ready to eat a ham if you sit it in front of him.”

She ignored the gentle rebuke, wiping crumbs from Lachie’s face and the front of Da’s shirt. Later, when the men had gone, Aleck leaving her with a look begging her to ask him to stay, she shook the crumbs from the rag into the sink before sitting on the sofa with the baby. She stroked his carroty head and sighed.

“Are they right, wee man? Do you want to give up your nursies?”

At the word ‘nursies’ he grabbed for her blouse and yanked hard enough to pop a small, white button free of its hole. Grunting, he reached inside, drool pooling in the corners of his mouth.

“I suppose not. That’ll teach a grown man to tell a woman her job. Come here, then, love. It’s almost bedtime for you.”

She didn’t bother putting him to bed once he drifted to sleep but, rather, laid him on a pillow where her bottom had warmed the sofa. Standing, she tidied the rest of the cottage from the party, placing the seldom used silver and china serving pieces into the sideboard in the kitchen. She struggled with the large platter on which she’d served the cake and dropped to her knees to shift aside other pieces that might be obstructing its placement. Withdrawing a silver teapot to make additional room, a small bit of fabric fell from the rear of the sideboard and brushed her hand. Instinctively, she withdrew her arm then reached back inside to see what she’d uncovered.

Pulling the parcel into the light of the kitchen, Mairi frowned. She held a velvet sack, much as one might be given at a jeweler’s for the storage of a lesser necklace. The colour, crimson, was interesting only in that it wasn’t one she’d ever choose and marked no jeweler she knew. Lachie grunted in his sleep, and she glanced at the doorway to the parlour. She shoved the cake platter and teapot into the sideboard before hefting herself to her feet and carrying the sack into the room with him. She could examine its contents in there while keeping an eye on him.

“All right, wee man,” she whispered, sitting beside his chubby form on the sofa, “what can this be?” Lachie kicked in his sleep when he heard her voice, and she laughed silently. No one, not even her absent mother, could have prepared her for this bond between herself and her child, and Hadrian be damned if he couldn’t appreciate his child for the gift he was.

She tugged on the bitty silk string holding the sack closed at the top and reached inside. The first thing she noticed was the smell. Almost but not quite like Earl Grey tea. Lemony but not quite lemon. Bergamot? Possibly. Her fingers brushed against several surfaces, and she chose the hardest first, withdrawing a small stone. The dark grey, uneven face of it seemed covered in something, sand perhaps? Wrinkling her nose, she lay the stone on her thigh and reached into the sack a second time and pulled forth a photograph. Gasping, she stared at an image she hadn’t seen in a very long time, her mother pregnant and smiling just days before she herself was born and wanderlust overcame her mum. She sat the photograph beside her on the sofa, loathe to touch it again, and reached into the sack a final time. The tips of her fingers felt an assortment of small crumb-like bits at the bottom, and she upended the sack over her open palm, catching what seemed like small pieces of brown and red wax, more of the sand from the stone, and a fine, white substance that might once have been sticky like chewing gum. She stared at all of it, frowning.

Glancing from the stone to the photograph to the collection of bits in her hand, she shook her head, trying to recall having put the odd assortment together, but nothing came to mind. “What the hell is all of this?”

At the sound of her voice, Lachlan stirred again, fretting and turning his head back and forth. After a moment, he opened his eyes and whimpered, muttering, “Mumumum,” over and over until she looked at him.

“What is it, love?” She scooped the wax and flaky white stuff back into the bag and dropped the stone in with it. Then she replaced the photograph before reaching for the baby. “Come here to Mummy, aye?”

When she drew him into her arms, the sack slipped from her lap onto the sofa cushion, and she sighed in exasperation. She made a mental note to collect it in the morning and resume examination of its contents. For the time being, she would concentrate on her son and what remained of the day marking his entry into the world.

Eggshells

2010-07-04T23:44:00.001-04:00

Hadrian prowled the cottage. For several minutes after he arrived, Mairi followed him from room to room, trying to ascertain what he was about. Giving it up for a bad job, she put the kettle on and busied herself in the kitchen until he sniffed her out in there. She'd just laid a platter of sandwiches on the table when he wandered in, cross and dishevelled, though he'd arrived as immaculate as ever.

“That's roast beef on the plate, and I've water boiling for tea,” she said.

“Good. I'm hungry.” He pulled a chair from beneath the table and sat, his mood poorer by the moment.

“There's none here,” she said softly, removing the kettle and pouring the water over the leaves in her wee brown pot.

Hadrian grunted. “None what? What are you on about?”

“Evidence of Aleck. He's not been here in months.”

“What would make you say that?”

“Isn't that what you were looking for?” She'd no idea why she said it, but as soon as the words began tumbling from her lips she knew she was right. He'd been looking for signs of Aleck, for signs of intimacy between her and Aleck.

“I don't expect him to leave his pants lying in the middle of your bedroom floor.”

“No? Well then, perhaps you should check under the duvet. He might have been in a hurry to leave before you arrived today.” Surprised at her own level of sarcasm, she bit her tongue when Lachlan, waking from his afternoon nap, called out for her. “Excuse me,” she said, “I'll just go fetch the lad if you'll see to the milk and sugar?”

When she returned, the scent of bergamot permeated the air, and Hadrian slouched in the chair facing the door to the hallway, a mug in his hand. She put Lachlan, all of ten months old and newly able to take a step or two if holding her hand, onto the floor and led him to his father. Placid and sweet tempered, he let her place his chubby hands on Hadrian's thighs to keep himself upright while she took a seat and lifted the cup of tea waiting for her.

Mairi watched Hadrian peer at their son with a look of consternation. “What is it?” she asked after a moment or two.

“I swear I see nothing of me in him.”

“The eyes?”

“Yours not mine, both the shape and the blue.”

“Oh.” She sipped once, twice, and thought. “Is it such a hardship that our son looks like me, Hadrian? You once thought me the loveliest lass in town, you know.”

He glanced at her, eyes narrowed, before smiling the same smile that'd got her into such trouble once. “I still do. Think that.”

“Do you? I hadn't realised.”

“Then I've been remiss.”

Setting his mug aside, Hadrian reached for the baby, and Mairi held her breath. Lachlan was generally at ease in the arms of most people, but he knew well the arms of most who would hold him. When his father lifted him from the floor, he squirmed a bit but didn't cry, and she blew a silent breath into her tea. That was all right then.

“Well, I do thank you, Hadrian. That's very pleasant to hear.”

He sneaked a glance in her direction, rakish smile flitting across the generous mouth, before returning his attention to Lachie. “You're welcome. I'll try to remember to tell you more often. Ho, there!” He laughed as Lachie made a grab for his shirt collar, mouth open and drooling. “Hungry, lad? Doesn't Mummy feed you?”

“Of course, I do. What do you take me for? Here, give him to me.” She reached across the space between them and took the baby. With a combination of speed, sleight of hand, and nimble fingers, she lifted her blouse and put him to her breast in a nearly fluid motion. After almost a year of practice, the pair of them had the routine down pat, and in moments, Lachlan lay pressed against her grunting and suckling loudly.

Hadrian glanced from them to the platter of sandwiches and back again, eventually shoving the roast beef out of reach. Mairi chuckled. “Not hungry?”

“Not so much, no.” He pointed to the baby. “Is he supposed to still be doing that?”

“Aye, and I'll not have you telling me different.”

“I suppose Lindsay approves.”

“I've no idea whether he does or not, and it wouldn't matter to me either way. This is my business, Hadrian, mine and Lachlan's.”

“I see.”

“I hope so.” Bracing the baby's head with one hand, she retrieved her cup of tea, too cool but still drinkable, and relaxed in the chair. She kept a keen eye on Hadrian as she cleared her throat and asked, “Will you be here in April, do you think?”

“April?” He seemed perplexed, and her good mood of a moment earlier dissipated.

“April. You know, Hadrian, for your son's birthday.”

“Oh, that. Of course, that's what you meant.” He swilled the last of his tea in the bottom of the mug before upending it into his mouth. After swallowing, he shrugged. “I'll do my best, but April's a busy month for Dad. Can I let you know when we get a bit closer?”

She nodded but kept her eyes down so he couldn't read the disappointment on her face. Aleck, too, worked for Hadrian's father. Yet something told her he wouldn't miss Lachlan's birthday even if she sent up a thousand flares warning him to stay away.

Quantum Juxtaposition

2010-07-04T14:27:00.001-04:00

Mairi approached Colina with some trepidation. Never on the surest of footing with one another, they'd been ever more precarious since the death of the elder Lindsays and Aleck's unofficial departure from her own life, though no one spoke of that. Mairi hoped, without the need to protect her brother, Colina might warm towards her now.

“I'm glad you came, Colina. You're looking well.”

“Thank you. It was kind of you to invite me.”

“That black is smashing on you, and I'm clearly not the only one who thinks so.”

“Oh?”

“Aye. Who's the rogue in the corner? He's been watching you since you arrived. So far as I've noticed, his eyes only leave you to check he's still got drink in his glass.”

Her eyes followed where Mairi nodded before continuing to peruse the room. A smile, half of one rather and so much like Aleck's that Mairi's heart clenched, danced on Colina's lips. “Oh, him. That would be a friend of Aleck's who came to stay after the accident. Somehow, he never left. He's Irish,” she said as if that explained everything.

“Irish?”

“Right down to the toes of his boots. Likely shits potatoes.”

Mairi hid her own smile behind a flute of champagne. “Well, he's certainly attentive,” she noted.

Colina snorted. “So's Randall McCorrie. Has been since I was twelve, and you don't see me salivating over him, do you?”

“McCorrie?” Mairi held a finger under her nose until the bubbles she'd sniffed in her surprise died away. “You could do worse. I could do worse.”

“No, I couldn't, and neither could you. Ach, well, possibly you could and have with Hadrian Welles, but who am I to judge? McCorrie's an arse and always has been. I'd sooner die alone and loveless.”

Not I, Mairi thought, though I seem to be on that path.

“I hear congratulations are in order,” she said instead.

“To whom and for what?” Colina seemed genuinely unaware of what Mairi meant.

“On your schooling of course. You're returning to Edinburgh?”

“Only temporarily. I've got the majority of my coursework completed already. The acceptance was really just a formality. I'll travel back and forth for a while, but by next year, I suspect I'll be here more than there. The site I've selected as the location for my doctoral research isn't but an hour or so from Inverness.”

“That'll please Aleck surely.”

“What? Having me gone a year. I suspect you're correct.”

Mairi chuckled. “I meant having you close again.”

“Oh. Perhaps. You should ask him.”

A passing waiter in black coat-tails paused, and Mairi exchanged their glasses for fresh ones. Alone again, she turned to Colina. “Oh, aye? I would have thought you'd be glad we're not speaking, Aleck and I.”

“I'm never glad by the things that make him unhappy, and I'm not the only one being silently watched tonight.”

Mairi took her own turn to follow Colina's gaze and found Aleck huddled beside the enigmatic Irishman. For a half second, their eyes met, and she wondered how early she could reasonably leave her own party. “Oh.”

“Oh,” Colina echoed.

“I really can't do this,” she whispered.

“You can always join an archaeological dig.”

Mairi ignored the jovial tone as her eyes clouded. “Or the circus or a travelling mariachi band, no?”

“You'd leave Inverness and your father and the only home you've ever known?”

“To stop him looking at me like that? Possibly.”

“And what of wee Lachlan?”

“I don't know.”

Colina touched her arm very gently. “And how then would you be so far different from your mum, hmm?”

“Oh, stop it,” she said, turning to Colina with a glare. “I'm not going anywhere, and you know it.”

“What I know is that you're being melodramatic and selfish.”

“Selfish? How in the name of God am I being selfish? Am I not denying myself the one thing I truly want?”

“Oh, aye, you are that, but are you not also denying Lachlan what he wants and Aleck what he wants all for some misguided sense of honour about what Hadrian and Lachlan might one day wish they'd known of one another? And isn't that based on your own lack of knowing about your mother? Lachie isn't you, Mairi, and he's got a father waiting in the wings in case you hadn't noticed.”

“I did notice, thank you.”

Colina turned her nose into the air. “Don't take that prissy tone with me, Mairi Munro. I was as coddled as you by an overindulgent father. If you want Aleck to stop looking at you like that, then don't call him every morning after a party when he's shown up with another girl. Don't accidentally run into him at the market when you know he's taking an evening run. Don't take Lachlan to the park when you know Aleck's meeting me there to walk me home from the university.”

“Ah, like Da when I was pregnant, you want me to just shut myself away home for the duration then?”

“No, I want you to be considerate and allow him time to move on if you're not going to give yourself permission to move on from Hadrian.”

“I don't know what to do.”

“I know you don't, which is why he'll keep watching you that way.”

“He's not the only one.”

“We've already established that fact.”

“Then what are you doing about your Irishman?”

Colina drank her champagne in one long swallow. Finished, she righted the flute, covered her lips, and belched softly. Then she turned to Mairi with her trademark half-smile. “For the love of Bride, I honestly do not know.”

The First Good-bye

2010-06-27T07:54:00.001-04:00

“You sound tired,” Aleck said.

“There’s no cause for concern,” Mairi told him, stepping into the cool May evening and pulling the door closed behind her.

“No?”

“No, Aleck. I’m fine.”

Since he and Colina moved into the flat in Inverness, leaving only a skeleton staff at Kirkhill and sending the rest to manor in Aberdeen, he’d taken to doing this. Ringing at all hours, searching for reasons to come round to the cottage, ‘just checking’ she and Lachlan were all right. Well, they weren’t, not that night in any event, though damned if she’d tell him that.

“Then why did I hear the baby howling a moment ago and hear only a toad croaking now? It was there, his crying, and now it's gone.”

“Er - BBC special on amphibians?”

“You went outside so I wouldn’t hear him, which means you left a screaming infant alone as well.”

“Only for a moment, and you don’t know how beastly he’s been, Aleck. I can not get him to stop crying no matter what I do!”

“You should have let me know.” His voice fell to a whisper. “I want to help.”

“Aye, well, I want to be a competent mother, thank you.”

“Mairi, you are competent. You’re also young, alone, and contrary to what your stubborn, beautiful head might tell you, only able to do so much.”

“Is this where you tell me no man is an island and break into song?”

“I never sing.”

“Thank God.”

“Shall I stop for dinner on the way over?”

“If you’re hungry. There’s nothing in the house.”

In her own defence, she rationalised later, Lachlan's recent perturbation had left her without much sleep at all, as had fretting about Aleck in the wake of losing his parents. And Colina's loss, too, of course. She didn't mean to overlook that. As much as she might wish to overlook it, there was also Hadrian's conspicuous absence; he'd been to the cottage only twice in the two months since since his son's birth. Quite a lot, when one listed it all out, to keep her up nights and leave her vulnerable to the argument she and Aleck had after the chops while Lachie fussed and cried in the background, head hanging over Aleck's shoulder so that she only caught glimpses of his tired blue eyes when Aleck turned his back to her and paced the opposite direction.

“I was sorry about your parents,” she managed during one of his moments crossing the narrow room away from her. She'd not told him that yet, though she'd wanted to many times.

His foot seemed to miss a step, only she knew it wasn't the foot nor the leg to which it was attached. Nor yet the hip or lovely line of torso beneath the wrinkled cotton shirt. His heart surely missed a beat with her words, causing all other systems to momentarily falter. Surely. For her own heart had squeezed her veins dry at having to say the words. How much worse would he have felt?

No more than an instant passed. His stride, confident again, relaunched itself across her rug, and he bent his head toward the baby's to lay a kiss against the orange fuzz. “Thank you.”

“I... I went to the service. With Da. We kept to the rear. It was lovely, the service.”

He nodded but didn't comment.

“Can I do anything?”

He'd reached the end of the parlour and turned around to head back in her direction. “No.” One step. Two, three. “Well, perhaps there is, aye?”

“Whatever, Aleck.” Preferably it would be a Colina-less task, but even that she would undertake without complaint if he needed her to. “Anything.”

“Look at your son.”

She looked. Lachie lay draped across Aleck's shoulder, content for the moment sucking on his own fists and making puddles of drool on the starched white of Aleck's shirt. His eyes, heavy with the need for sleep, were no longer swollen from crying. “What about him?”

“What you can do for me is tell me just how long you're going to let me play the father to your son while his real father waltzes in and out of your lives whenever it suits him.”

“Aleck - ”

“Hear me out, Mairi. It's close to a year now we've been playing at house, hmm? I love you, and shall I tell you the worst facet of loving you? It's the knowing that you love me, too, that Hadrian Welles isn't in the running for your emotions but you'll send me home at end of the night regardless.”

“Aleck, it's only a matter of - ”

“I know well enough your reasons, Mairi, but the end result is cruel. This is just cruel.”

Stung, she straightened on the sofa. Such care she'd taken to always be forthright and not lead him to think things were anything other than what they were between them. “I'm very sorry you feel that way, Aleck.”

“So, am I.”

“Perhaps you should leave.”

“Perhaps I should.”

“For good.”

“I agree.” He gave Lachie back to her and retrieved his jacket, slinging it over his shoulder before he bent to kiss her cheek. “Good-bye, Mairi.”

“Aleck.”

That was the first time she saw Aleck Lindsay for the last time.

A Spot of Sun

2010-06-14T23:00:00.000-04:00

The spider web caught in her hair and surprised her as she left the house. So, too, was she surprised by the brief spot of sunshine breaking over the arc of a concrete angel's wing and casting a shadow 'cross the grave beneath. The sun, as ephemeral as the web, gave way to low clouds for which she felt a melancholy gratitude. She found it difficult to imagine bright skies on the day they laid Aleck's parents to rest. She had more trouble than she cared to admit thinking much beyond the two copper heads standing beside the two open graves rows and rows of people away from her.

Mairi kept to the rear of the mourners, safely tucked to Da's side, her bloodshot eyes and swollen lips hidden from view by a thin, black veil.

“You'll be visiting the family at Kirkhill after the service?” he asked, bending low and whispering in her ear.

“No.”

He knew well enough she wouldn't.

“Reckon I'll stop by, pay my respects.”

“Colina would like that. She's got a soft spot for you, though Christ and all his saints know why.”

“Shall I give them your regards as well, Mairi?”

“Of course, now shush. You're interrupting the service.”

Someone, she couldn't see who from her ill-advantaged spot, had begun “Flowers of the Forest” on the pipes. Reginald Stewart probably. No one played like Reginald, nor should they. Music like that ought to be as rare as the land whence it springs, she thought. Aleck moved his arm around Colina's shoulder, and the mourners shuffled from their positions. Mairi thought they were forming some sort of loose line. The service must be nearly over then. The music, haunting and beautiful, made her wish she hadn't come.

“What is he now, hmm?”

“What are you talking about, Da?”

“Young Lindsay. Isn't he now the five thousandth Viscount of Highland Park or somesuch?”

“He drinks Highland Park sometimes, Da, as you know well enough. I don't know what he is, the thirty-eighth perhaps?”

“Summerland?”

“Da...”

“Winterberry?”

“Really, Da. Do I need to send you back to the car with Lachlan and Cook?”

“I'd be less chill.” He sighed, and Mairi took his arm. They'd leave now. She didn't want to parade past Aleck with the host of well-to-do from Inverness and beyond. “I know,” Da said, but she interrupted him.

“Crawford,” she whispered.

“Aye, of course, although he's the twenty-ninth and still isn't a duke.”

“Da...”

“I liked James Lindsay,” he said after a moment of quiet, “rather a lot actually.”

He sniffed, and Mairi reached inside the breast pocket of his overcoat for the handkerchief he kept there. Handing it to him, she kissed his cheek and said, “Here. Blow your nose before one of the widows catches you with snot on your chin.”

“Thank you.” He took the handkerchief and blew, tucked it back into his pocket.

“I'm sorry for your loss, Da. Truly.”

“You'd have liked her. Glynis. Extraordinary woman.”

Mairi smiled a little, and she wondered if Aleck's mother might possibly have liked her. Just the tiniest bit. “I'm sure I would have. Aleck speaks highly of her.”

“She'd have liked you, too, lass.”

“Thank you, Da, but it hardly matters, aye? Come along. Let's leave before I'm spotted if you please. You can drop me and Lachie back at the cottage then make your way around to Kirkhill.”

He took her arm and steered her towards the waiting car. As a light rain began to fall, she nearly missed his next words, and the rattle of leaves beneath her feet allowed her to pretend she had.

“Mairi, if you love the lad, tell him. Don't wait for tragedy to strike again, for next time you may find you've put it too late.”

A Day of Rain

2010-05-30T22:27:00.004-04:00

Mairi had no idea of the hour. Nor did she care. The rain of the past three days continued its gentle patter on the roof, and in the pre-dawn, she slipped from the bed - laying the pillows on either side of the baby just in case he moved in his sleep - to put on the kettle before he woke for his feeding. She liked sitting in the rocking chair in his room, just about the only thing the room was used for yet, nursing him while she sipped a cup of herbal and pondered why she no longer had a use for keeping track of time. When the clock stopped with Lachlan’s arrival, the world rebirthed itself anew for her, each moment unmeasured and unmeasurable in its loveliness.

While the baby took his morning nap, Mairi bathed and dressed for a meeting of the garden club. Lachlan made his debut among the dowagers and homemakers the month before at a pink and sleepy two weeks of age. Now, at six weeks, he’d begun trying on the odd smile and making spit bubbles. That ought to earn her a mark or two among the women. She selected a white linen trouser suit - pre-pregnancy, she was pleased to note - and a pair of low heeled slingbacks. Administrative meetings were held in the odd months, when no digging or potting occurred, and she could afford to dress well. She laid a white cotton one piece affair with smocking across the breast on the bed in the baby’s room and waited for him to wake.

She couldn’t care less about punctuality, and by the time he began rooting and grunting and she fed and dressed him, they left the cottage ten minutes past the time they were due at the Sisters MacDougall’s house. Mairi smiled to herself and hummed to Lachlan as they drove along the B862 towards their destination. When she reached the fork at Drumchardine, traffic stalled her progress, but she couldn’t see the problem. Thinking quickly, she pulled into the car park at The Old North Inn and reversed her direction, seeking a side road to the old women’s house.

No one met her at the door, and although she arrived later than could be called fashionable by any definition, the lack of greeting felt odd. Making her way through the labyrinthine old farmhouse, she located half the garden club talking in furtive whispers from various recesses and corners. Where the other half were - demerits to be sure - she had no idea. Handing Lachlan to Lindy MacDougall with a brief hullo, she turned to ferret out Colina Lindsay. As the only other truly young woman in the group, she suspected Colina would be the best source of gossip, but Mairi didn’t see her.

Rounding the corner into the kitchen, she collided with Katrin McDowell. “Oh! Excuse me, Katrin.” A thought occurred to her, and she reached for Katrin’s elbow before the other girl could escape to the parlour. “Katrin, when did you join the IHPS? And why are you crying?”

“It’s too awful to bear repeating,” Katrin wailed, retreating towards the other women.

“Agnes?” Mairi asked, moving completely into the kitchen where Lindy MacDougall’s sister stood at the sink filling two kettles.

“Who’s that?” Agnes turned her head, and Mairi noticed the tip of her nose was red and moist. She’d been crying, too. “Ah, it’s you, Mairi. Good. Can you prepare the pots on the table while I start the kettles to boiling?”

Mairi raised her brows but moved to the table as bade. “Of course. What’s going on? Where is everyone, and why is Katrin McDowell weeping?”

“Did you come in on the motorway this morning?”

“Aye. So? Oh, the traffic? Was there an accident?”

“James and Glynis Lindsay.” Agnes shut off the tap and set the kettles on the hob. Wiping her hands on a towel tucked into the waist of her apron, she turned to Mairi. “In the wee hours this morning as they returned from the Wakefield’s gala last night.”

Mairi’s tongue felt too big for her mouth, and she struggled to form words around its swollen mass. “Not James Lindsay that’s Colina’s da?”

“Mmm, aye, him and his wife. Terrible tragedy. Hit head-on by an oncoming lorry. That’s your traffic problem. They’re still cleaning up the mess.”

A cold, heavy weight had settled in the very centre of Mairi’s stomach, and suddenly she wanted Lachlan back in her arms. “And the Lindsays?” she asked, although there could only be one answer.

“Dead at the scene.”

Oh, God. Aleck.

Mairi placed a hand over her stomach, trying to stall the spread of cold slowly radiating outwards from her core. She hitched her head towards the parlour and said, “I should - I should get the baby and go.” Where? Not to Kirkhill for certain, but she could go to the mansion. Da would know what to do.

“Aye, we’ll not be meeting today of course. Lindy and I’ll go to Kirkhill this afternoon, soon as I can get rid of the maudlin marauders.” Agnes winked at her quickly, as if she didn’t wish to be caught in the irreverent act on such a solemn day. “Take Katrin with you, dear?”

“Doubtful, Mrs. MacDougall, but I’ll happily spill some tea in her lap if it would further the cause.”

Agnes waved her hand in dismissal. “Never mind. No one would buy it. You’re never so graceless. Get along with you then, and give your father my regards.”

“I will.”

“He’ll know about the service, of course. Will we see you there?”

“I don’t know, but he’s bound to be there. I’ll tell him to keep a watch out for you unless you’d like a lift?”

“Oh, no. We’ll drive, but thank you for the offer. So, I’ll see you later in the week then or else at the next meeting?”

Mairi nodded. “I should think so. I’ll have Da call the morning of the services just to be sure you don’t need a lift.”

She hunted down Lachlan, still perched securely in Lindy’s arms, and took her leave. Fifteen minutes to Da’s if she took her time, and with the news of the day, she would. She promised herself that when she arrived at the mansion she would ring Kirkhill...just to make certain Aleck and Colina were bearing up all right.

April Showers

2010-05-29T23:05:00.004-04:00

The abandoned book lying on the floor in a froth of Marilyn’s Chamomile Foaming Milk Bath told the story better than Mairi could have. Consumed with the cottage and the child growing inside her, Hadrian’s on again and off again attentions, and the reckless pursuit by Aleck, she’d quite lost track of the months and missed the release of Alexandra Ripley’s Scarlett. Once when she was a very little girl, so small as to barely recall the night, her shadowy mother allowed her to stay awake far past her normal bedtime to watch a BBC airing of Gone With the Wind, and whether that singular memory or the saga itself were to blame, Mairi had been eager to read the sequel for the year of full media mayhem preceding its release. Then she forgot.

Now Scarlett lay ruined in the slosh of her bath and just at the point where Scarlett might be drowning, which had a certain irony Mairi might have enjoyed were the pain less severe.

“I will not cry,” she told the four walls of her bedroom as she dressed in the bottoms of her pyjamas and a shirt Hadrian left behind once. Bending, she attempted socks before finding herself on hands and knees, crossing her eyes against the pain. “What now?” she asked herself after it passed. “You’re too big to get yourself up again.”

Forgetting the socks, she crawled to the door and grasped the knob. “There. That’s better.” Using the crystal handle as leverage, she hoisted herself to a standing position and creeped down the hallway to find the telephone and ring her father.

She rang Da and the hospital before hesitating over the third number. With ten minutes or more gone since leaving the bedroom, another pain arrived, and she used its intrusion to buy her time. After, she sighed and punched the numbers from memory. On the other end of the line, a hollow ringing sounded, and no one answered.

“Don’t worry,” she told the baby, patting her taut stomach. “Daddy will be here. He promised.” And how do you plan to keep your word, Mummy, when you can’t even leave him a message?

Another pain came and went as she lay stretched down one cushion of the sofa. Her bottom rested on the outer edge, her legs halfway across the floor, and her head barely met the top of the cushion behind her. She couldn’t have moved if the house were on fire. Movement seemed unnecessary in any event as a key turned in the lock at the door before the next contraction arrived. Mairi frowned. Da didn’t have a key.

She turned her head, the frown deepening. “Aleck, what are you - ”

He tumbled into the salon tripping over his shoelaces and landed at her feet. With a good deal of effort, he kept his own. “Your father rang. Is it time?”

“It bloody well better be for all that it hurts worse than anything I’ve ever imagined.” She pointed to the kitchen. “Can you help me in there?”

“Of course!” Aleck grasped her elbow and hefted her, groaning a bit with the effort. “Why? What’s in the kitchen?”

“The kettle,” she whispered.

“Mairi, there’s no time for the kettle. You’re having a baby, sweetheart.”

She whirled on him, her belly knocking him backwards a step. “I’m well aware of the fact, thank you kindly. Now, I’d like a cup of tea.”

“Mairi - ”

“Please.”

She was spared further need to argue by the Duke’s arrival. He ordered Aleck to fetch her wee valise, packed and ready weeks ago, so they could be off to Raigmore. Glad of the errand, Aleck seemed to ignore Da’s imperious tone and turned at once towards her bedroom. Mairi took her father’s arm and led him a step or two more towards the kitchen.

“Tea, Da?”

“What?” He peered at her as if she were mad, and between his reaction and Aleck’s, she began to fear she might well have gone around the bend. “No, child. No tea. We’re leaving. Didn’t you hear me?”

She bit her lip and ground her fingers into his forearm as another pain constricted her belly. Jesus wept, but that must be unnatural surely? When it was over, she released her hold and licked the spot of blood from inside her lip before saying firmly, “We’ve got to wait for Hadrian. He promised he would be here.”

The look on Da’s face told her well enough that Aleck had returned with her bag, and she twisted her head far enough to see his expression. Disappointment. That stung, but let either of them try to deliver a baby elephant without its ungodly father around and see how they liked it.

“He’s not coming, Mairi,” Aleck said.

He moved around them and entered the kitchen. She could hear water running and the sound of the gas coming on under the kettle. With a hand at her back, her father led her in and sat her at the table while Aleck fixed the tea she so desperately wanted to fill the time, to make the clock stop until she could reach Hadrian. When he placed it, steaming and fragrant, before her, she looked at them both in turn and tried to smile.

“I’m sorry for worrying you both, but he did promise.”

“I’ll try telephoning him,” Aleck said, leaving her alone with Da. She sipped in silence for the minute or two it took him to return. “I’ve left a message. First labours, I hear they can take a long time. Perhaps if he receives word soon, he’ll make it.”

“He said he might be arriving today anyway, to wait here until the baby was born,” she said. “That might be why we can’t get hold of him. We should wait a bit longer.”

The Duke grunted and pushed away from the table. “Drink, Aleck?”

“I can not say strongly enough how much I would like one, sir. Thank you.”

An hour passed. Mairi counted four contractions, two cups of tea, two whiskeys apiece for the men, and four more telephone calls to Hadrian. By then, her hair was a tangled nest of snarls, and tiny rivulets of perspiration ran from beneath her breasts, over her stomach, and into the now damp waist of her pyjama pants. Sometime during the hour, Da had gotten her shoes, and Aleck had slipped them on her feet. Even her toes seemed to be perspiring. She couldn’t look at either of them.

“Mairi?” Da asked, his voice barely a whisper, after a fifth contraction came and went.

Aleck, losing patience, slammed his hand palm down on the table. The delicate porcelain tea cup trembled in its saucer, and Mairi shrank into her chair as much as she was able. “He’s not coming. We have to leave now, or you'll be having this child on the kitchen floor.”

“He’ll come,” she said through gritted teeth, though whether she sensed another contraction on the rise or were merely annoyed, she could no longer tell.

Aleck looked to the Duke for help, and Mairi wanted to laugh. A less likely pair of conspirators she couldn’t imagine unless it were her father and Hadrian.

“Sir?”

“Mairi, lass. Listen to Aleck. Hadrian Welles, God rot his soul, is not going to get here in time. You've called. Aleck’s called and left messages several times. He'd have arrived by now if he were going to do in time for you to wait him out. It's time we left before you force me to deliver this babe myself.” 

Mairi laughed, and Aleck winced. Wasn’t she the one giving birth? What right did he have to make faces such as that? Kneeling by her chair at the table, he took her hand and pried the fingers loose from the spindles on the chair's back, then raised the hand to his mouth and kissed the fingers. She scowled at him, but she didn't pull away.

“Come on, love. It's time to go. He'll know to come to Raigmore in any case by the time on the messages, aye?”

Sucking in a great gasp of air as the next pain began its climb through her womb, she nodded. Her father sighed in relief and picked up the small valise now sitting near the rear door while Aleck waited for the pain to pass. Once it had, he hefted her from the chair and helped her to the Duke's waiting limousine.

The nurse attending her proclaimed the delivery the briefest she’d ever witnessed. Mairi arrived at the hospital, demanded drugs for the pain, and was told upon examination that the labour was too far progressed to allow for medications. Furious, she cursed and cried her way through the rest of it, more than an hour of utter torture, and the nurse’s claims as to its brevity be damned. The nurse, too, for that matter. With Da and Aleck relegated to the visitor’s lounge, she learnt not to look at the clock for time seemed to move at a supernaturally slow pace during each contraction. She was just that much shocked then to find the hour gone midnight when Lachlan Ian Róidh Munro made his noisy entrance into the world on the sixth of April.

The Duke proclaimed him the very image of Mairi at her own birth. A quarter hour after that, Aleck stood beside the bed looking down on the two of them. Mairi felt the weight of his stare, and her eyes welled with tears that didn't fall as she gazed at her son. She didn't look at Aleck.

“Will you please consent to wed me now, Mairi?”

“No, Aleck. You know how Hadrian feels about the baby. He wants to be part of his life, wants the three of us to be a family. Of sorts anyway.”

“Then where, pray tell, is he?”

Much to her credit, she thought, she made no excuses. To his, he let the matter drop once she'd answered.

“I don't know.” She looked up at him then, but his eyes weren’t on her. He stared at the baby with an intensity and longing she’d not seen on Hadrian’s face after she’d given herself to him the first time. “Would you like to hold him?”

Aleck nodded, and she leant over enough to place the baby in his waiting arms. Cradling her son, Aleck half turned from her, whispering promises and secrets to the new life she’d shepherded into the world. She hoped Aleck managed to keep them a bit better than the lad’s father. 

Architectural Wonder

2010-05-19T19:31:00.004-04:00

As the garden began a drowsy reawakening in March, Mairi spent as much time as she could manage out of doors. This required layers as the air remained cold even while the ground slowly thawed, and layers required practice. Her size - gargantuan now - and increased blood flow caused her to sweat under heavy garments, but no sooner would she remove her scarf and coat than chills forced her to put them on again.

She loved every moment. She was nesting, and the notion pleased her, made her warm with the anticipation of meeting her child soon. All other concerns ceased to matter as she pruned and mulched and started a bitty compost heap by a stretch of fencing near the raspberry canes.

She asked Hadrian to dig four holes near the Lady Banks roses mid-morning on the second Saturday of the month. She had plans for a trellis and a path of paving stones leading from the raspberry canes to her small herbal garden, and she wanted the posts fitted before tea if possible. He caught the pair of heavy gloves she tossed him and scowled.

“But the ground’s still frozen!”

“Not near the top. You needn’t dig a hole for a tree after all.”

“Mairi, have you any notion just how far into the ground a post must be seated to be stable? We’re at near-Arctic temperatures still. It’s not going to happen, love.”

She wanted her trellis and couldn’t hide the disappointment following Hadrian’s logic. “But...”

“I’m sorry, Mairi.”

“So am I.” She fingered the still dormant stalk of one rose bush and imagined it rambling over the wood and iron trellis leaning now against her garden shed. “There’s nothing to be done?”

“I’m afraid not.”

“Very well. There’s nothing to be done then.” Removing her own gloves, she sighed. “I believe I’ll go inside and rest my feet. Are you coming?”

“I’ll be along after I take a minute to put away most of your tools and things.”

“Feed the dog while you’re about it?” she asked as she started the walk back to the house.

“Dog?”

Mairi laughed at the sound of hesitation in his voice and glanced over her shoulder with a smile. “A bit too domestic for you, Hadrian? Twas only a wee joke. There’s no dog.”

“Thank the gods,” he said with genuine relief.

“Yet,” she retorted and grinned again at the look of horror on his face before turning back to the house.

Inside, she struggled out of her scarf and coat, the woolen cap she wore over a tight plait, and her brogues. Left with just an ill-fitting jumper and trousers she’d rather not claim, she fell onto the sofa and threw an arm across her eyes. Foolish to be so upset over the damned trellis, but there it was. She couldn’t help it. As she tried to settle down to doze, the child poked at her with knees and elbows, and she stroked her belly, crooning softly.

“Soon, my love. Soon,” she said as she felt the edges of sleep creep closer.

Voices woke her from filmy dreams of yellow roses and pursed lips stained with the juice of berries. The abrupt return to consciousness startled her, and she lay still, eyes closed, listening. Hadrian for certain, but who else? The second voice rose in anger. Ah, Aleck. They seemed to be just beneath the parlour window outside where she lay.

“If she wants a goddamned trellis, you give her a goddamned trellis!”

Aleck, of course.

“In the fucking tundra? What am I, Lindsay, some sort of - ”

“You know what you are. A pity she doesn’t.”

A dramatic pause followed Aleck’s pronouncement, and Mairi bit her lower lip wondering what he meant. You know what you are. What was Hadrian? Not a very pleasant person all the time, true enough, but he wasn’t a monster.

“You’ll not say a word,” Hadrian said in such a low tone Mairi strained to hear.

“It’s not my business to tell.”

“I’m glad we agree on that at the least.”

“Very little else. What will you do about the trellis?”

“Are you back on that? It’s a garden ornament! The holes can be dug when the ground thaws, and she’s accepted that.”

“I don’t. Bring me the telephone.”

“I - ” Hadrian broke off, and Mairi suspected he was as confused as she about Aleck’s intent. “Very well. I’ll bring you the telephone, but I don’t know what you expect to do that I can’t. Frozen ground is frozen ground.”

She feigned sleep when Hadrian entered the parlour to retrieve the cordless handset to her telephone. Whomever Aleck rang and whatever conversation he had was beyond her hearing, but she caught the tail end of his comments to Hadrian when the latter re-entered the house. She almost gave herself away in her astonishment.

“ - and take her to dinner. My sister’s sending someone with an auger. The trellis will be done when you return. Tell her you arranged it.”

“Why are you doing this for me?” Hadrian asked, no small amount of suspicion in his tone.

“I only do it in the hope that, when the opportunity arises, you’ll be a better man than you have been.”

“Small enough chance of that, but Mairi will be pleased.”

Hadrian closed the door on Aleck, and Mairi lay unmoving, glad her arm still covered her eyes so he couldn’t see her cry.

Triquain: Deep South

2010-05-19T12:18:00.003-04:00

Summer bursts

onto the southern landscape

with sweet, cloying saturation

and heated pursuit of the secrets of new life:

damp earth, electric skies, no signs of

peaceful awakenings;

greening lust.

My Funny Valentine

2010-05-17T07:01:00.003-04:00

Mairi met her father at the bottom of the stairs in the granite floored entry to the mansion. For only an instant, he stood ignorant of her presence, the soft light of the chandelier casting a warm glow over his shoulders and the crown of his head. A lump formed in her throat as she watched him. She pushed the emotion away with a hard swallow and descended the final two steps to join him.

“Aren’t you the handsome one then?”

He turned, a ready smile already in place, but the look reached his eyes when he saw her. “Ach, no. I’m just your old Da, Mairi. It’s to you every eye will turn. You look lovely, darling.”

“I look like a caped snowman,” she said of her white velvet gown and matching ermine trimmed wrap. “Have you seen this?” She pointed at her seven-and-a-half-month belly.

“You look radiant, and I defy anyone to say differently within my hearing.” He reached for an umbrella in the stand near the door and held out his arm to her. “Shall we?”

“If we must.”

“Can’t leave Lady McDowell waiting, now can we?”

“Da, really, do I have to go? Katrin - ”

“Is a gossiping simpleton like her mother. You are the daughter of the Duke of Rothes and have nothing of which you should be ashamed.”

“Why didn’t you say that six months ago?”

“Because you’re also the daughter of a father,” he said with a grimace. “Come now, the car’s waiting.”

“But of course it is,” she whispered and took his arm.

“Can you tell me why you’re so nervous?” he asked as the driver opened the door for them scant minutes later.

Mairi slid from the car with as much grace as she could, allowing her father to assist her at the last. How she’d been talked into such nonsense as the McDowell’s annual Valentine’s Ball she had no earthly idea. The farce boasted no end of being preposterous.

“It’s just been so long,” she told him.

“So long since what?”

“Since I’ve been to a party.”

“Then I have been remiss.”

She shot him a glance. “How so?”

He offered her his arm again, flicking the umbrella open with his free hand. “Clearly, I’ve been remiss in my societal duties, my dear, as you are my ready escort, no? If it’s been an age since you’ve attended any parties, then so has it been for me.”

Mairi chuckled. “What have the dowagers been doing with themselves in your absence?”

“I shudder to think.”

“Da, you’re incorrigible.”

“I think you have little idea how in demand your father is.”

She thought back to that fateful day when she’d met Hadrian at this very house, thought of Mrs. Kilkenny’s words. Of course, all of us hoped there would be word one day that she’d died so that your poor father could move on and remarry.

“I’ve some idea,” she informed in her most droll tone.

“Ah, there you are, Richard.” Lady McDowell herself met them at the door. Just passing by, Mairi assumed. “And Mairi. What a delicious treat. How well you’re looking, child. When is the babe due?”

“Early April, and thank you, Lady McDowell.”

“Eileen,” her father said, raising the old bat’s hand to his lips, “always a pleasure.”

“Such a charmer, but then that was ever the case. Well, come along inside. Peter will take your wraps and the umbrella. Let’s get you dry and put a whiskey in your hand. Mairi, I’m sure we can find something suitable for you.”

I’m sure I can find something suitable for you, too, she thought. Right. Up. Your. Bum.

“Thank you,” Mairi said as she and her father followed her into the main salon where most of the guests seemed to be engaged in much merriment.

The room would have made Cupid blush. Banks of hot house roses in crimson and enormous sprays of pink and scarlet carnations bedecked every conceivable surface and not a few ill-conceived ones. Fine netting in embarrassed shades of rouge and cerise clung to the crown moulding and hung in bitty bows from the chandelier, studded here and there with minuscule stephanotis. Three tables along the back wall sported fountains: champagne, dark chocolate and white. A string quartet played from a corner dais. If it weren’t so laughable, Mairi might have vomited.

“A bit ostentatious, no?”

She spun at the familiar voice, quite forgetting her father who snaked into the crowd and became trapped by widows and divorcees immediately. At her shoulder, she found the copper-topped head of Colina Lindsay, satirical smirk fixed in place above the perfect cut of a tailor-made black sheath that fell from breast to ankle in a single line.

“It is,” she agreed, though she found herself disconcerted by the younger woman’s approach. Their last parting had not been amicable. “I’m surprised you sought me out,” she said with candor.

“Aye, I suspect you are at that.” Colina shrugged. “I don’t like what you and my brother are doing, but less than that do I like Katrin McDowell. I wanted a prime seat for the show.”

“The show?”

“Hmm.” Colina turned to her and smiled. “I apologise, Mairi. I’ve been rude. You look lovely tonight, but I suppose you’ve already heard that.”

“From Da, but he’s got to say so.”

“They’re good for it, fathers, or they should be. I think Richard’s an absolute love.”

“Aleck doesn’t think so.”

“That’s because your father’s concern is you and the baby. He doesn’t give a fig for Aleck, nor should he. Aleck’s put out, of course, but then he would be.”

“Well, when you put it that way...” Mairi realised Colina hadn’t answered her question. “What did you mean by having a prime seat for the show? You never said.”

“Didn’t I?”

“You know you didn’t.”

“Have you seen Aleck yet?”

“No. I’ve only just arrived. What’s Aleck got to do with anything?”

“Katrin invited him. Us really. If you want to be technical about it, but it’s Aleck she was after.”

“Oh. I see.” Mairi felt a sting of jealousy and willed it to pass. She had no claim to Aleck’s time, and she knew that well.

“She’s never forgiven you, you know.”

“For what? Hadrian?”

“Aye, for Hadrian. That,” Colina said, pointing to Mairi’s belly, “will likely infuriate her.”

“You think I shouldn’t have come.”

Colina laughed, and Mairi thought her quite genuine in her hilarity. “Not at all. I told you I have no use for Katrin.”

“So, you’ll use my condition to derive enjoyment from her displeasure?”

“Not quite. Be patient, Mairi. You’ll see.” Looking up at her, Colina frowned. “But first we really must do something about your hair.”

Mairi reached and felt the smooth chignon at the base of her skull. “What’s wrong with my hair?”

“It’s lovely, but we should...just...” Colina withdrew a pin or two, and Mairi felt the locks loosen and begin to fall. “Ah, there. That’s lovelier still.”

“What did you do?”

“Just let a bit down around your face. If I know my brother, that look there’s good for mucking up at least three or four canvases.” She turned her head and grinned. “Speak of the very devil.”

Mairi followed the direction of Colina’s glance and caught sight of Aleck entering the room from the conservatory where the disastrous meeting over the marzipan cake had taken place. Katrin McDowell dripped from his arm, and Mairi’s eyes narrowed as she noted Aleck wearing the kilt she’d ordered him for Christmas. A wee devil on her shoulder whispered the fine wool would be sullied by Katrin’s pressing herself against him.

“He cuts a fine figure in his rigout, doesn’t he?”

“What? Aleck? Oh, I suppose.”

“You’re a poor liar, Mairi, but I’ll let it pass. Look now.”

“At what? They’re just talking to Da and - ”

“Wait for it.”

Beside her, Colina seemed electric with anticipation. Even the babe stirred as if it sensed something near to happening. Mairi found herself flushed with an air of expectancy she couldn’t define.

In sequential moments so closely timed as to be almost simultaneous, Aleck glanced at her followed by Katrin’s murderous glare. He dropped the arm on which the girl had been hanging and made an abrupt apology to her father. She recognised the words excuse me clear across the room. Katrin struggling to keep pace in his wake, he strode in her direction, and by the time he approached where she stood with his sister, she was as out of breath as Katrin, who Aleck seemed to have quite forgotten.

She lifted her hand a moment before he reached them, and without missing a step, he took the fingers into his and lifted the knuckles to his lips.

“Lady Rothes.”

“Good evening, Lord Lindsay.”

“You look - ”

Beside her, Colina cleared her throat, and Aleck turned his head to his sister. “Oh, there you are. I was looking for you. Don’t you need a drink perhaps?”

“Are you offering to fetch me one?”

“No.”

“Then no.”

Aleck drew his brows together and scowled at her. She laughed in return. Just to Aleck’s rear, Katrin stomped a slipper-clad foot and demanded to know what Aleck was doing talking to ‘that woman’. Mairi dropped her hand from Aleck’s grasp and her eyes to the floor.

“Don’t do that,” he said.

She flicked her eyes back to his face, catching him from toe to kilt to starched white shirt as she did. He really did look beautiful. “Don’t do what?”

“Don’t look at your feet when someone talks about you.”

She lifted her eyes again and met his, warm and supportive. He had to have known how difficult the evening was for her, and she wanted to find comfort in his gaze but wouldn’t let herself. There was Katrin, for one, and her own reaction to the fact he had a date, and the fact she shouldn’t have any reaction at all.

“That’s better,” he said.

It was, too. Better. Until Katrin huffed behind him.

“Must you take absolutely everything, Mairi?”

She turned her attention to her host’s daughter. “What?”

“First, Hadrian. As if it weren’t insult enough you took him from my very house, you come back flaunting your bastard child growing in your belly, and even that isn’t enough for you. You’ve got to have my date, too!”

“That’s enough,” the two Lindsays said together.

“See you at the IHPS,” Colina told Mairi with what might have been a sympathetic touch on her shoulder. Looking at Katrin, she said, “Always a delight, Katrin. I’ve missed my comedy.” Then she was gone, swallowed by the crowd, Mairi staring after her in confusion.

Aleck had turned to Katrin, fury stamped on his face. “Please apologise.”

“I shall not! Every word I spoke was true.”

“It was,” Mairi agreed. “Except for the stealing her date part. I’m surprised they don’t call the constable when I arrive.”

She saw Aleck bite his lip to keep from laughing. Unfortunately, Katrin saw it, too. A deep flush bloomed across her cheeks, forcing her face to compete with the room’s decor until the salon won and she seemed to fade into the background. For a moment, Mairi almost pitied her, would have pitied her had the wordsbastard child not been ringing in her ears still.

“Enjoy your date, Katrin,” she said with a hand on Katrin’s arm. To Aleck, she said, “Please tell my father I’ve taken the car home. I’ll send it back around for him. You know where to find me later?”

“I - ” His jaw hung open for a moment, and she smiled, waiting for the inevitable nod. When it came, she turned from them and left.

She felt impossibly cruel, insinuating to Katrin that Aleck was hers to bid as she pleased, but had she not been just that, impossibly cruel? Had she not just demonstrated she could beckon him to her as it pleased her, and had she not just demonstrated it mattered not at all that he socialised with other women for she knew he would return to her?

She waited in the cold and the mist for the car to pull around for her. Nothing more than what she deserved. Far less. Katrin’s damnation was spot on, and she could have gone quite a bit farther. Mairi knew she didn’t deserve Aleck, and her bitty display of superiority proved it. Whatever hell Hadrian put her through was what she deserved, and a little humility wouldn’t kill her.

Delights

2010-05-16T09:24:00.003-04:00

Mairi tried to rise from the floor, but her stomach hit her knees. She moved her knees out of the way and sent a tower of boxes tumbling to the floor. Laughter echoed from the walls of the parlour, drowning out the sound of Bing Crosby playing at a tasteful volume in the background. She scowled at Aleck.

“Don’t laugh at me!” But her mouth twitched, and her own merriment overcame the sense of being mocked.

“How can I not? Just be thankful there wasn’t anything breakable in there.”

“Oh, I am!”

Her fingers found the floor beside her hips, and somehow she manoeuvered herself to her feet. “Would you like a cup? We’ve been at this for hours.”

“Coffee?” he asked, a hopeful light in his eye. “And it’s only been a half hour, darling.”

She eyed the boxes, the bright wrapping paper, the cellotape, and sighed. “That can not be right.”

“Here,” he said, standing and taking her hand to help her navigate the land mine of presents scattered about the floor, “let me help you. Just take care not to let me drink too much. I’ll end up with coffee jitters at dinner, and that bothers my mother.”

“Does it?” she asked, curious about the infamous Glynis Lindsay, a woman she’d never met but whose reputation intrigued her.

“My mother, bless her soul, delights in the delights of others, but she requires a good deal of peace of an evening. My bouncing from wall to wall would not give that to her.”

“I would think not!”

Together, they made tea and coffee. Mairi selected a platter pasties sent over by Cook and slid them into the oven to warm, and fortified with their beverages, they made their way back to the task at hand. She stopped in the doorway to the parlour and whimpered.

“There’s so much left.”

“Buck up. This is fun.”

“You’re insane.”

“True, but that doesn’t make me wrong.” Aleck put his coffee atop a precariously balanced stack of boxes and plopped into the spot he vacated minutes before. “Coming?”

“Aye,” she sighed. Mairi took longer to re-situate herself, plopping being less an option and grace being quite out of the question. “I don’t even have that many people to buy gifts for,” she said, “so how is it I’ve this many to wrap?”

“Oh, most of them are mine. I slid them into your stack when you went to the loo.”

“Cheeky bastard.”

“It’s only you’re so much better at the corners than I am. Look how neatly you’ve tucked and taped them, and look how sloppy mine are by comparison. You wouldn’t want my sister to be presented with a lot of ill-wrapped gifts on Christmas morning, now would you?”

Mairi didn’t say what she’d like Colina Lindsay to be presented with on Christmas morning. She bit her lip, managed a squeak of negation, and reached for the closest parcel. “Very well, Lord Lindsay, but you owe me.”

“I’ll add your superior gift wrapping skills to the lengthy I-O-U list I mentally maintain with the name Mairi Munro at the top, shall I?”

“You do that,” she said with a grin.

“I shall.” He reached for a box of his own to wrap then said quite suddenly, “I like it when you do that.”

She glanced up at him, finger holding the paper in place. “Do what?”

“Smile. You light up the room.”

“Get on with yourself, Aleck. People smile. It’s no novelty.”

“You don’t. Not often anymore.”

She returned her attention to the gift under her hands, more to avoid the look of intensity in his eyes than any devoted attempt to make the gift beautiful in its wrappings. “I do.”

“You don’t. Or at least not when I’ve been here with Hadrian.”

Oh, now that was true, but she smiled plenty when alone with Aleck.

“That’s different,” she said.

“Aye, I suspect it is.”

“Can we not talk about Hadrian today?”

“As you wish, my lady.”

A second or two later, his arm crossed the space between them, and she pushed the now wrapped gift aside and reached for the next one he held. “But it’s already wrapped!” she protested, trying not to laugh at the bulging bits of wrap slipping from beneath the tape at the corners.

“It is,” he agreed. “This one’s yours.”

Mairi frowned a little. “I thought we were waiting until tomorrow night after church to exchange our gifts.”

“I don’t want to wait. Besides, I’m afraid the Duke will insist you stay at the mansion and I won’t have the chance to see you at all.”

“Astute. He may well.” Mairi pointed to the bitty table beside Aleck. “In that event, yours is inside the drawer there. You’ll have to retrieve it yourself, for I’m not getting up again anytime soon.”

Aleck found the two boxes, already wrapped, she’d tucked into the drawer days before and pulled forth both. “Which one?” he asked.

“Oh, both.” She smiled when his brows rose. “Go on then, man.”

“No. You first.”

Acquiescing, Mairi unwrapped the heavy parcel. Tossing the paper to the side, she turned the gift over and over in her hands before speaking. The truth of the matter was she had no words.

“Oh, Aleck.”

“It’s more for the babe than you, of course.” Getting to his knees, he leant over to examine the treasure with her. “I thought it seemed appropriate.”

She smiled, fully and with genuine pleasure as she did too infrequently of late and almost always in his presence. “Peter Pan. Aleck, this is wonderful.”

“Hmm. I hope you think so. My thinking was that girls are so seldom taught how to have grand adventures that this would be a good starting point if the child were a lass, and if he’s a boy... well, isn’t it equally important to learn there’s nothing wrong with dreaming?”

“I couldn’t agree more.” She opened the cover and glanced at the flyleaf before turning that over. “Aleck, oh God, Aleck, this is a first edition.”

“It is.”

She leant forward and kissed his cheek. “You are too much. Thank you.”

“You’re very welcome.” He sat back on his bottom and retrieved his own two boxes. “May I?”

“Of course!” She lay the book aside and picked up her tea to sip, trying to quell her nerves. The one she didn’t fret over. The other marked a rather large step for her. “Open the long one first,” she said.

“Very well.” He sat down the small box and went to work on the flat one that ran about eight inches in length. “It feels empty,” he complained as a child would.

“It isn’t,” she assured him.

Throwing off the glossy red wrapping, he took off the top and withdrew the slip of paper inside. “McIlreavy’s?”

“Aye. I hope you don’t mind,” she said, “but your kilt’s got a bit long in the tooth. You have noticed the fraying around the edges?”

“Mother said something last time but...”

“I took the liberty of ordering you a new one in town. It’s ready for your final fitting. Mr. McIlreavy did say you’ve grown just the wee bit thicker since you had your last made.” She couldn't restrain a smirk.

“Oh, I have, have I? It’s all muscle, and I’ll demonstrate that to old man McIlreavy soon enough!”

“No doubt you will,” she said, laughing through a fit of hysterics. “So, you aren’t offended then?”

“Offended?” Aleck glanced at her. “Why should I be? This is very - ” She hoped he didn’t say ‘wifely’ and was relieved when he found a pair of words with which they could both live. “ - thoughtful and generous. Thank you, sweetheart.”

“You’re most welcome.”

For a moment, he simply looked at the slip from the haberdasher’s and smiled, but then he laid the box on the floor beside the tower holding his cooling coffee and lifted the second box. Looking at her, he raised a brow in question.

“Go on then,” she said and held her breath.

The wrapping took little time, and soon enough he stared at the gift. A stainless steel key, nothing extraordinary in its appearance, cut like most house keys. Aleck pulled one corner of his mouth inward in consternation.

“It’s - ”

“I know well enough what it is, for I’ve opened your door for you often enough, Mairi.”

“Are you displeased?”

“No.” Aleck lifted the key from the velvet lined boxed in which she’d wrapped it and closed his long, elegant fingers around the metal. “I’m surprised.”

“Senseless for you to keep knocking all the time, and senseless for us to have an enormous conversation about it. If you don’t want it - ”

“Will you stop talking?”

Mairi bit her lip. “I’ll stop talking.”

“You’re still talking!”

“Not any- ”

“Hush, woman!”

He leant backwards and withdrew the ring of keys from the pocket of his trousers. While she watched, he slipped hers onto the ring in between the key to what she assumed was the manor at Kirkhill and the Golf he drove most often to visit her. A place of some position, she noted with pleasure. The smooth edge of each key faced the same direction, and she smiled at the idiosyncrasy.

“I suppose we won’t tell Hadrian about this?” he asked.

“I suspect it wouldn’t matter a great deal either way.”

“Then you don’t know the father of your child very well at all.”

“I thought we weren’t talking about this.”

“You really are infuriating.”

“Aye, but like my father, you love me.”

“Adoration has its blind spots.”

Their eyes met for a moment, and she laughed. “That it does. Happy Christmas, Aleck.”

“Happy Christmas, angel.” 

Do you love me?

2010-05-13T22:32:00.006-04:00

Every now and again, Mairi had the urge to take Hadrian’s hand and ask, “Do you love me?” She fought the temptation, for she feared his response whichever answer he might give. ‘No’ led to questions of obligation and ownership, and ‘yes’ led to equally unpalatable self-examination of whether or not she loved him.

Not knowing if she did or not made her rather certain her own answer was ‘no’. She was fond enough of him, and she very much enjoyed the sex, particularly as her pregnancy advanced and they discovered ever new and more creative ways of going about it. But love? Look where that had got her father, and there was the child to consider. She refused to offer her baby a lifetime of wondering about an absent parent.

As December rained its way towards Christmas, she dreamt of elegant hands travelling the length of her thighs, spanning her growing belly, cupping her breasts that had grown heavier than usual in recent weeks. A guttural sound and feather touch woke her as the radiator hissed, and she started to see Hadrian sitting in the chair in the corner across from her bed. The look on his face was removed, as if he were watching her from afar. The touch had been her own hand, which she jerked towards the pillow in guilty reflex as a child caught stealing biscuits from the tin.

“Good dream?” he drawled.

Mairi struggled to sit, her nightgown riding even higher on her legs. “I didn’t expect you.”

“Clearly. I suppose I should be grateful to find you only dreaming of another man and not actually in bed with him.”

“What do you mean?” She shook her head to loosen the cobwebs of sleep. She had been dreaming of him after all.

“You talked in your sleep, love.”

“I did? What did I say?”

“Something that sounded like ‘All’, and I presume you didn’t begin worshipping Allah in my absence.”

“You’re mad.” She patted the mattress beside her. “Come here, hmm? I’ve not been dreaming of anyone but you, though I’ll willingly admit the dreams keep me warmer than the radiator. I suspect you could do even better were you to give half an effort.”

Hours later, she turned the bottle of lavender bathing creme upside down and watched as it fell in a thick stream on top of her belly. The white liquid formed a circle the size of a tuppence then began to slide towards her navel, and she rushed to catch it before the shower spray could. The pungent scent of lavender filled the steam surrounding her as she worked the cream into a foaming lather over her body, and as her hands travelled across her swelling stomach, she frowned, remembering Hadrian and their lovemaking earlier. He’d been angry, certain her dreams were of Aleck, though neither of them spoke his name aloud. She’d been hurt when, in a thoughtless moment, his hand skimmed her belly then rapidly pulled away as if the motherly shape of her were somehow repulsive.

In the shower, she stroked the taut globe of skin encasing her womb and wondered how it would feel to be desired because of, rather than despite, it. Turning her head to the water, she closed her eyes as the spray wet her hair. As the warmth ran between her breasts and over her stomach, the baby started an exercise regimen of twists and somersaults, and in her mind’s eye she imagined Aleck touching her belly, placing his hands over her skin and feeling the child’s movements. Wanting her because of what she harboured. And she cried, pondering the impossible.

Old School Propriety

2010-04-25T14:55:00.001-04:00

Mairi picked at her lunch, her appetite dulled by her father’s mood. Everything tasted bland. Pushing her plate away with a pout, she looked at him seated to her right.

“What’s the matter now?” she asked.

Da laid his fork alongside his plate and returned her stare blank-faced. “Have I said there’s anything wrong?”

“No, but I can tell there is. I know you.”

“How often does the Lindsay lad visit you?” he asked, which wasn’t an answer to her question, but perhaps was of a sort if she examined it closely enough.

“I don’t know.” Mairi sipped at her water to buy a moment’s time. She couldn’t be certain just what answer he desired. The truth could be delivered in any number of ways, and she preferred the one that brought her the least grief. “Once every week or two when Hadrian’s not around. Honestly, Da, I’d have thought you’d be pleased.”

He scoffed and went back to his food, attacking a carrot with vigor. “Foolish child, I suppose you would think that. Of course, you’ll not have considered that I’ve got to see the man’s father in town, at the club, down there.”

He waved his fork on the air as he finished, and she assumed ‘there’ meant London. Further, she hadn’t considered those things. Perhaps James Lindsay wasn’t pleased to have his son cavorting with her, though to hell with him if that were true. Worse things in life could happen to Aleck than tying his father’s viscounty to her own’s duchy.

Oh. Had she really thought that? But she wanted Hadrian. She did. She wanted her child to know his father, had said as much to Colina Lindsay, the meddlesome chit, during their disastrous luncheon.

“We’re just friends, Da. Do I have to wear sackcloth and foreswear all human contact because I’m having a baby?”

“You’ll have noticed there’s a difference between friendships between women and friendships between women and men, aye?”

“I don’t give a flying fig for the talk around town if it comes from the likes of Lady McDowell.” She huffed before rushing to add, “Or James Lindsay.”

“You’ll care.”

“I will or you will?” She threw her napkin over her unfinished lunch then felt guilty over the trouble she knew Cook must have taken with the preparations. “Oh, never mind. If I’m such an embarrassment, I won’t bother you anymore. I’ll just stay locked in the cottage until the baby is born.”

“Don’t be petulant or ridiculous, Mairi. I just want you to think about what you’re doing and why others might be doing what they’re doing. Why do you think Lindsay’s so attentive to you?”

“I told you,” she said through gritted teeth, “he’s my friend.”

“And I’ll wager he’d not waste time in moving matters along to the next level were you to give him any indication you were willing.”

“I think you’re wrong, but even if you’re correct, I haven’t given him any indication of that. So, your worries are groundless.”

She stood, sliding her chair beneath the table. As she looked down on him, she felt a moment’s hesitation. He wasn’t the easiest man to love, Da, but love him she did. And he her, for all that she likely vexed him to the limit of his patience.

 “I’m sorry if you’re troubled by my friendships,” she said by way of compromise, “but they are mine to manage.”

“Just you mind who you are, Mairi Munro. Bad enough there’ll be talk about the babe. No need to pour oil on a fire.”

She left him without further comment, kissing the top of his head and turning towards the kitchen rather than the front doors of the mansion. She wanted to apologise to Cook for not eating and make certain she didn’t think there had been anything wrong with the food. She found her at the old oak table rolling pastry for the dinner’s pie and slipped into a chair near enough to talk without becoming painted with clouds of wafting flour.

“Not hungry?” Cook asked, barely lifting her eyes from the work in front of her.

Mairi shook her head. “Not hungry enough to eat with him today.” She balled her fists and shook them on the air, fully aware how ludicrous she appeared. “Why is he so difficult?”

“Ah, that’s easy. He adored your mother, lass, and look what that got him, hmm? He loves you more than he did even her, and he’s petrified he can not keep you safe nor close enough to him to be his little Mairi any longer. What’s the man to do?”

“So he tells me who my friends can and can not be? Aye, well, that’s certain to keep me close to hearth and home.”

Cook chuckled. She scooped a bit of flour into her hand and coated the rolling pin before going back to work on the pastry. Mairi watched her brow sweat as the circle become ever closer to wafer thin.

“Apple?” she asked.

“Mmm. With cinnamon and cloves, I think, though I’ve a cache of almonds I might use instead. Listen to me, for I love you well as does your Da...”

Mairi listened with half an ear as the remainder of her mind wandered. She glanced out the kitchen window onto the patio where Cook grew a handful of herbs in large crocks during the summer. The window, grimy from recent rains, obstructed her view, and something occurred to her with an almost audible click in her mind.

“Cook?”

“- and so, you see... What? Did you need something?”

“The windows.”

“What of them?”

“They’re dirty.”

“Aye, well, Jemmy’s not had time this week to wash them.”

Mairi’s sparkled, the sunlight streaming into the cottage on beautiful mornings, the rain running down the double-glazed glass in sleek rivers on rainy afternoons. All the colours of her world in panoramic, crystalline display not hindered by grime. The mansion was never dirty, and Mairi did not clean windows.

In her chair, she whirled on Cook. “It’s you! You sent Jemmy to clean my windows!”

Cook shrugged and kept rolling the dough in front of her. “What of it? I’ve sent staff to your house from time to time to do odd jobs. It’s not but helping you a wee bit.”

“Oh, but it is,” Mairi said, squinting her eyes. “It is, isn’t it? Jemmy’s how Da knew about Aleck Lindsay visiting. Da didn’t just come by last night for no reason. He never does that, only I was so flustered by seeing him I didn’t think about that. Jemmy’s your bitty rat, and I’ve no idea what he’s spied since September, have I?”

“Jemmy doesn’t wash the windows when you’re at home,” Cook offered, as if that excused whatever else the boy might do.

“So, he doesn’t see me leaving the shower nude? How reassuring to know, and let me just get that out there.”

Mairi considered the myriad things Jemmy might have seen. Aleck’s Golf parked in the drive if they were in town in her car. Aleck’s Golf parked in the drive until an hour some of her father’s generation might consider inappropriate if the movie were good or the card game particularly enjoyable. Every possibility began with ‘Aleck’.

“Oh.”

At the table, Cook glanced in her direction and lay the rolling pin aside. “Mairi, what is it, child? You look as if you’re going to be ill.”

“When did he come to the cottage last?” she asked.

“Who? Jemmy?”

“Aye, the Duke’s spy.”

“Today’s Friday? Would have been Thursday last then. He’d have gone yesterday, too, only his mum’s down with pneumonia, and your Da gave him the week off to tend to her.”

“I see.”

Thursday last. And it had been the day before, the Wednesday, that Aleck had been over for dinner, had consumed a bit more to drink than he should have perhaps, had left serenading her all the way to the car. The following morning, she’d opened the curtains in her bedroom and found the sloppy imprint of a pair of lips on the outside of her bedroom window. Giddy and melancholy and utterly without thought for why she did so, she’d knelt and placed a twin kiss on the inside of the glass just where his lay on the outside, and she made a mental note to wipe it off later with a bit of cleaner and paper towel.

Only she hadn’t. What if Jemmy saw the kiss Aleck left for her? What if, after cleaning it, he saw what remained on the inside of the window? Surely that would remain a secret, a tale for modern bardic heraldry and not one for passing along to Da. Surely.

Mortified, she bit her lip then drew a deep breath. “Cook, please tell my father to stop spying on me. I’m a grown woman now, clearly capable of making her own choices.” She patted her belly. “Good ones and bad.”

“I’ll tell him. I promise. Jemmy’ll be relieved. He didn’t like telling tales at all, not ‘bout you.”

“Hmm. Be that as it may, could he still come to do the windows?”

Those Wee Self-Justifications

2010-04-22T12:41:00.003-04:00

Hadrian tried to visit each week, staying overnight and plying Mairi with visions of what a good father he would be. She didn’t complain the weeks he couldn’t leave his father to come to her, for if it took him two weeks to visit, he always tried to stay an extra night. During the lengthier absences, she had no cause for loneliness. Da came often enough, and she kept herself busy with social activities and housekeeping. She discovered the guilty pleasure of reading Anaïs Nin and the even more decadent enjoyment of making jam. She cut back the raspberry canes at the far end of the garden and prayed next year’s bounty would be great.

Then there was Aleck.

When Hadrian failed to appear for more than a week, Aleck invariably arrived. They found a mutual pleasure in long running games of rummy and watching Connery as James Bond on late night television. She delighted in his skills at her cooker and didn’t mind her expanding waistline, putting that down to the baby. She resolutely ignored both his sister’s barbed warning and the manner in which he would fall silent of a sudden if he caught her staring at him. Sure and she thought he might love her - if one bandied about the term with casualness - but only as he did his prickly sister. None of it meant anything other than she had a good friend, a friend who knew her well and treated her kindly.

If only her father and Colina saw the matter in the same light, her life would be much simpler. Each time she thought she’d gained ground with Da, she made a misstep and found herself back in the proverbial doghouse, digging her way into his good graces again. Aleck was only one more event since telling him of the baby that offended his sense of propriety. Mairi didn’t even know how it began really.

She’d opened the door to Aleck’s knock on a Thursday during a week when Hadrian couldn’t come. He stood on the porch holding an umbrella, the newspapers, and a paper sack. Ushering him in from the rain, she took the umbrella and shoved it into the stand behind the door while he shook droplets from his hair.

“Cold?” she asked.

“Miserable. I’m going to lay these by the radiator to dry,” he said, holding up the dailies.

“All right. Just be careful they don’t catch fire. What’s in the bag?”

“Dinner and a surprise for you.”

Surprises made her leery.

“What sort of surprise?”

He sat the bag on the floor near the chair her father favoured and spread the papers over the radiator before answering. When he turned back to her, she couldn’t stop the involuntary smile that rose to match his. Whatever devilry he had planned pleased him, and she enjoyed seeing him happy. Hefting the sack, he led her towards the kitchen.

“Follow me, and I’ll show you.”

At the counter, he laid out chops for their dinner and a head of lettuce for their salad. Two potatoes joined the chops. He hid one hand in the sack while the other cupped the bottom and clutched it to his stomach. The silly tease.

“What? What is it?”

“Do you really wish to know?”

“I do! Stop being such a beast, and show me!”

From the bag, he withdrew two quarts of dark, lush raspberries held together in clingfilm. With a wicked grin, he waved them on the air, saying, “Raspberries, Mairi, your favourite.”

“Oh! Where did you get those? And how did you know?”

“As to where, I didn’t find them at all. My sister did. Some wee market down near Leys. She was off yesterday for an archaeological dig with some professor from Aberdeen. I’d asked her to buy any if she happened to see them, aye? And so she did.”

His sister. Her belly did a somersault, or perhaps that was merely the babe.

“How kind of her,” she said, forcing a smile. “But why did you ask her to?”

“Because I know you love them, and you’ve been wanting to make some jam, no? Well, there’s none to be had in the grocer’s till next year.”

“But I don’t understand, Aleck.” She took the berries from him and stuck them on a shelf in the refrigerator beside a pint of cream and a half bottle of chardonnay he hadn’t finished the week before. It seemed she’d lost track of time, and it was going on three weeks since Hadrian’s last visit. “Have I told you I like them?”

“In late September, I found you weeping, Mairi, and when I asked what had happened, you told me you only got a pint of shrivelled berries off the vines in the garden. You’ve got twelve jars of blackberry jam unopened in your cupboard, but you’ll no’ deign to buy a manufactured jar of raspberry jam. You hacked away at those canes two weeks ago until your hands bled, and when I wanted to salt the steaks before cooking them, you told me I couldn’t because you’d poured every bit on the ground at the roots as an offering to Dionysus... even though you were fairly certain you’d got the wrong god and you thought possibly it should have been Demeter, but you’re a good Catholic lass and what do you know about gods of berries and harvests anyway, but it couldn’t hurt, could it Aleck?”

“Oh, do stop!” she cried with her head in her hands to hide the mortification.

“I’ll stop,” he said, but she heard him chuckling and dared to peek through her fingers.

“Am I that transparent?”

“Only to a good friend. Would you like me to hand you down the heavy pot for your jam-making while I start the chops?”

Mairi smiled. “Please.”

They worked side-by-side, and by the time the potatoes were tender, the butter running off them in rivulets, Mairi pushed the pot to the rear of the stove for the jam to cool. Aleck laid a hasty table, and they ate in pleasant silence, commenting only now and again on how their respective weeks had gone until they’d finished. Aleck cleared their plates, and she sliced a bit of sponge cake for their sweet, spooning the warm jam over top.

“Happy?” he asked when she sat next to him again.

“Very.” She reached with her spoon and cut a healthy slice of cake from his plate, eating it before he could protest. “Thank you for my surprise. That was lovely.”

“You’re most welcome. It’s nice to have someone easy to please in my life.”

She would have liked to have been able to pursue that interesting morsel, but the Duke’s arrival brought the rain November rain into the kitchen. She hadn’t even heard him enter the house.

“Da!” She leapt from the table, her napkin fluttering from her lap to the floor. “I didn’t know you were coming.” Flustered and irritated with herself for being embarrassed, she rushed to introduce Aleck. “Da, this is Aleck Lindsay. He’s... well, he’s a friend of mine. He’s - ”

Aleck stood, laid his napkin on the table, and with a terrible calm, offered her father his hand. “Your Grace.”

“Alexander.” Her father shook Aleck’s hand with enough politeness, but she noted he didn’t smile. “How are your parents?”

“They’re doing well, thank you. I’ll tell them you asked, sir.”

Da nodded, and Mairi frowned. “You know one another?”

“James and I belong to the same club. Young Aleck here accompanies his father to the odd luncheon. I’ve met Aleck’s mother Glynis on occasion, an absolutely charming woman.”

The mention of Aleck’s mother brought a small but genuine smile to her father’s mouth and Mairi relaxed for the moment before a seed of jealousy took root. Why should her father know Aleck’s family and she should not? And did he know the vexsome Colina as well?

“And your delightful sister? How is she? James told us over drinks sometime in the summer she was finishing her degree at Edinburgh early, I believe. She can’t be more than nineteen.”

“That’s correct, sir, though I believe she plans on pursuing an advanced degree, a doctorate in archaeology or something equally frivolous and unsuitable.”

Her father snorted. “James indulges her.”

Aleck shot Mairi a smile, and she dropped her eyes to her toes. She interpreted his look easily enough. What did the Duke think he himself did with her? Twenty-two years old, a cottage of her own, and whatever monies she required to raise her bastard child in style? It was obscene, and she knew it.

“That he does,” Aleck agreed.

“Aye, well, I can see I’ve intruded,” Da muttered with a pointed glance at the remains of their cake on the table. “I’ll see you tomorrow, Mairi?”

“There’s no reason for you to leave,” she protested. “Would you like cake?”

“No, thank you.” He leant over and kissed her cheek absently. “Tomorrow then?”

“Tomorrow. I’ll come for lunch.”

“Very well. Alexander.” He shook Aleck’s hand, giving a half-grimace as he did so, and Mairi surmised she’d spend her lunch the next day eating a lecture on propriety as well as Cook’s delicacies.

“Good evening, sir. It was a pleasure seeing you again.”

“Hmph. A pleasure. Well, take care.”

Mairi saw him to the door, closing and locking it behind him. Behind her, she heard Aleck apologise. Whirling, she frowned.

“Whatever for?”

“He’ll give you trouble tomorrow.”

“I suspect he will, but that’s not your fault.”

“I’m still sorry for it.”

“There’s only one thing to do then, only one fortification I know of to girdle oneself for a coming confrontation with the Duke.” She grinned, and his eye twinkled.

“Oh, aye? And what’s that then?”

“More cake.”

Two Women

2010-04-21T07:35:00.000-04:00

Mairi trudged along Duncraig Street, dogging Colina Lindsay’s footsteps as best she could. The effort took rather more out of her than she felt it should have and put the the torture down to the bit of elastic pinned across her belly beneath the pale blue jumper she wore. The elastic extended the waist of her trousers since the button no longer met its hole and zipping was a mere fantasy. Good thing the worsted jumper came to her hips and covered the machinations.

“I’ve never noticed this shop before,” she panted when Colina stopped in front of the tall glass windows perfectly spaced between bright blue casements. The sign above the entrance, Molly & Tam’s, gave her no indication of its contents. “What is it?”

“Aleck’s haunt, but he telephoned while we were with the blue hairs and asked that I stop on the way home.” The sister of her only friend in the world just then flicked a rapid glance in her direction, then shoved open the door. “I thank you for coming with me, Mairi. It gives us an opportunity to chat.”

Chat. Now, that could be the any-friend-of-my-brother’s-is-a-friend-of-mine chat or the what-in-the-name-of-God-are-you-doing-you-pregnant-hussey chat. Mairi crossed her fingers behind her back and hoped for the former.

Inside, Mairi saw the shop catered to artists’ needs, paints of all varieties, canvases and enormous stacks of paper in differing grades, sculptors tools, and other sundry supplies. She stared in wonder at the colourful displays until she realised Colina had quite left her behind. She found the tiny woman in an aisle of oil paints, selecting tubes hesitantly, her spectacled face scrutinising a serviette.

“You took his list on Lady McDowell’s linen napkin?” she whispered in astonishment, for there was indeed a monogrammed M in the corner near Colina’s thumb. The muted cream thread against the linen standing out as a glaring brand of theft.

Colina laughed, and the sound tinkled through the shop. “You really don’t violate norms, do you?” The pointed glance at Mairi’s belly seemed to further fill Colina with amusement. “Present company excluded, of course. Aye, I used the napkin. It was to hand, and I couldn’t keep the list in my head, regardless the rumours about my intellect. Never fear, darling, I didn’t leave her an odd set, for I wrote a note apologising for my theft on another and laid it near the petite fours.”

Speechless, Mairi stared at her. A moment later, the import of Colina’s words before they entered the shop hit her. “You said this was Aleck’s haunt?”

“It is.”

“Aleck paints?”

Colina nodded. “I’m surprised he never told you.”

“He didn’t,” she said, and she wondered if he were good.

“He’s got a rare talent,” Colina said as if reading her mind.

“What does he paint? Does he do landscapes or still-lifes? I don’t suspect Aleck’s into modern art.”

“No,” Colina agreed with a low chuckle. “Portraits mostly. And the sea, portraits, too, of a sort I suppose. Aleck’s passion for the sea defies mortal understanding,” she said without looking at Mairi. “But then many of Aleck’s passions defy mortal understanding.”

And you are no mere mortal, Mairi thought without knowing why she thought it. She knew without knowing this was no typical sibling bond, and she was reminded of the extraordinary relationship she shared with her father.

Reaching for a tube of ocher, Colina placed it in the basket slung over her left arm. Then she lifted a small brick of cobalt from the shelf. “He likes to mix his own,” she said before adding, “That’s it then. Shall we have a bite to eat?”

“Of course. If you like.”

Colina paid for the purchases on Aleck’s personal account, and they hoofed back to King Street, Mairi finding herself sufficiently winded by the time they were seated to flop with distinct inelegance into her chair. She dropped her handbag onto the table and fanned her face with her hand.

“How can you be hot?” Colina asked, smirking. “It’s November, for the love of Brigid.”

“I’m carrying a small elephant. That’s how. You try it sometime.”

“I’ll pass. Thank ye, though.” Colina motioned for a waitress and turned back to Mairi. “What would you like?”

“Anything.”

She watched and listened as Colina ordered a pot of Darjeeling - her own favourite, but the other woman couldn’t have known that - and a bitty selection of sandwiches. While they waited for the food, Colina removed her eyeglasses and folded her arms on the table so that she could lean on her elbows peering at her. Mairi straightened in her chair, alert to the fact she was now to learn the real reason for Colina’s invitation to join her after the IHPS meeting.

“I don’t pity you,” Colina said with a bluntness more extreme for the soft tone of voice she used.

Mairi blinked. “I don’t expect you to. I don’t expect anyone to pity me. I made a choice.”

“Aye, you did, Mairi. The only question I have is whether or not you’ll own it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I said I don’t pity you, and I don’t, but I do have a certain admiration for any woman who attempts what you’re doing. It can’t be easy to bring a child into the world on your own, even with your considerable resources.”

“But?”

“But I can not help wondering about this decision of yours regarding the babe’s father.”

“You know Hadrian?” Mairi, shocked, stared at Colina. Hadrian had never mentioned Colina, although as well as he seemed to know Aleck, it shouldn’t surprise her.

“No,” she said with a quick shake of her head. “I’ve never met the man, though I’ve heard of him and not through Aleck,” she added with haste. “Mairi, people do not speak fondly of Hadrian Welles. Surely, if you have been intimate with him for as long as your belly suggests, you’re wise to his nature.”

Her defensive hackles rose. “My baby deserves to know his father.”

“Your baby deserves parents who love it well and truly, as your father did you and as mine and Aleck’s have us.”

She drew her brows together, uncertain now over who had orchestrated this little tête-à-tête, Colina due to concern for Aleck or Aleck over his desire for her. “Did Aleck put you up to this? Did he ask you to try and change my mind about Hadrian?”

Colina pulled her arms off the table and sat back in her chair, leaving the waitress room to place their food on the table and pour the first cup of tea. Alone again, Colina raised a single brow as she stared at Mairi, ignoring their meal. “Do you know my brother at all? He would disavow any relation with me were he to know I sat here talking to you like this.”

“Then why?”

“I think your motives are pure, although of course I can not know that for certain. I also think you don’t recognise that a man like Hadrian Welles is playing the cat to your mouse, toying with you just as he will with your child. Is that any better for your baby than not knowing the man at all?”

“I don’t know,” she said with complete honesty.

“I suspect it’s a good deal worse. Further, insofar as you are concerned, Mairi, you’re either stupid or cruel, and while I abhor the former, I will anihilate the latter if it threatens my brother.”

“I - ” She squeezed her eyes to push back the unwelcome tears. “I don’t understand.”

“My brother loves you. Despite your unwillingness to admit Hadrian’s unwillingness to commit, he loves you and is faithful to you and your child. I damn near hate him for it, and I’d like to hate you for it. I can’t though until I understand why. A stupid woman would try to convince herself she and Aleck could be friends despite his overwhelming feelings for her. A cruel one would refuse to cleanly break his heart and allow him to move on, breaking it over and over again by letting him play daddy to her child and husband to her while never giving herself to him.”

Mairi’s hand shook as she fixed her tea, stirring with the tiny silver spoon beside the saucer. Before answering Colina’s diatribe, she sipped, burning her lower lip in the process. It made for a good excuse to allow a tear to escape.

“In the latter case, wouldn’t the woman also be cruel to herself, for could she do that if she didn’t also love him?”

“Are you telling me you love my brother?”

“No,” she whispered.

“Are you telling me you don’t?”

“You ask a bloody lot of questions for someone I barely know!”

Colina shrugged. “So I’ve been told by others far more scary than you. You don’t love Aleck then?”

Mairi’s shoulders sagged. “I don’t know. I love my baby. That’s what I do know.”

“Then you shouldn’t see Aleck anymore. A broken heart can mend, but a constantly breaking one never will.”

Photo: Retro Paris, by Xerald, on deviantart.com

Balls in the Air

2010-04-20T18:46:00.002-04:00

Mairi spent two weeks of what she told herself approached happiness with Hadrian while he stayed on at the cottage. She kept her promises to her father, too, using Hadrian’s forays into the city as time to accept an invitation to join the Inverness Historical Preservation Society and the gardening club. Together, they dined with her father once at the mansion, and the Duke took her to lunch near the end of the two week period. Among their various diversions, Mairi also managed to replenish her rapidly ill-fitting wardrobe, contenting herself with an increase in size rather than venturing into maternity wear.

Somehow, she felt she could reclaim the stolen halo of her youth - treasured daughter, desired lover - from the thievery of her pregnancy if she could just please them well enough, these two men. If only they didn’t displease one another so! With each day that passed, Mairi became more aware that she she might be forced to give her affections one or the other of them: her beloved father or the father of her unborn child. The thought rekindled the angst of her own childhood spent pining after an absent mother.

“They’re a Devonshire family,” Da told her at their lunch in the city. “Originally in any event. No real roots.”

“Hadrian told me they moved several times when he was small.”

“Hmph. Be that as it may, the father was in policy analysis in Devon then - advertising - in Virginia.” He said ‘advertising’ as if the word represented something violently excreted from the body and not to be discussed in polite company. “Retired fifteen years ago, moved to Scotland. The mother stayed in America. You’ve got that in common at least, abandoning mothers.”

“Perhaps they abandoned her?”

“Pfft.” The exclamation indicated how little credence he gave that possibility. “No known sources of wealth but - ” He shrugged, elegantly leaving unstated the less than savoury suppositions.

“I can’t believe you hired a spy!” she hissed over a glass of water.

“And I can not believe you’re naive enough to think I wouldn’t.” He lifted his cup of Lapsong. “No trace of any imports enterprise either.”

“Oooh,” Mairi breathed, “that’s it then. They’re running guns for the IRA. Must be it.”

“Watch your tongue, lass. I can still turn you over my knee.”

“As if you ever have.”

Later, Mairi ignored her misgivings when Hadrian failed to return to the cottage by midnight. Allowing herself a medicinal dram of brandy, she tucked herself into bed and fell asleep to the phantom feel of his long, lean body pressed to hers. When dawn broke, she took her tea in a chair out back, striving for peace as she wondered what he was doing and when he might return.

Just in time for the lunch she prepared for one as it turned out. He let himself in - as he did now she’d given him a key - and she rushed from the kitchen to find him standing in the parlour with a stranger. Young. Handsome. But a stranger for all that.

“You’re back,” she said, not bothering to hide the chill in her tone.

“From the grave.” He caught her look of alarm and winked. “Metaphorically speaking of course. Mairi, allow me... Lord Alexander Lindsay - just Aleck will do, love - may I present to you Lady Rothes, daughter of Richard Munro, Duke of Rothes? You can call her Mairi, as the rest is rather a mouthful. Honestly, I don’t know how you bluebloods keep track of it all.”

“Lady Rothes.”

Aleck Lindsay took the hand she swiped hastily across the seat of her trousers before proffering. Mairi was aware of his lingering appraisal, as was Hadrian, who interrupted a rather lengthy gaze into her eyes.

“Don’t get any ideas, Aleck. Not only is she out of your league, but Mairi is also carrying my child. Aren’t you, love?” Stung by the sudden confidence spoken to someone she didn’t know, Mairi glared at Hadrian. “I’m sorry. Are we not sharing the happy news yet?”

She ignored him after giving a brief shake of her head, turning to Aleck. “Are you hungry? I was just sitting down to lunch when you arrived.”

“No. Thank you, but no. I don’t believe we’re staying long.”

“We are not, my friend.” Hadrian pinched her bottom as he moved towards the hallway. “I’ve just got to retrieve that item we discussed, and we’ll be off.”

In his absence, Mairi covered her irritation and worry behind the usual niceties. “How do you and Hadrian know one another?”

The grey eyes became guarded, but he cocked his head, a lock of burnished hair falling onto his forehead. “I work for Hadrian’s father.”

“Ah. The imports concern.”

Aleck Lindsay smiled. “Imports? Aye, that’s correct.”

Her gut told her he lied, but she didn’t press the matter. For one, she thought it likely to do her no good. For another, the smile had sparked a sense of recognition in her. Though they were about the same age and he spoke in the local dialect, she felt certain they hadn’t gone to school with one another. Still...

“Have we met before?” she asked him.

“I do not think so, my lady.”

“You sound very certain.”

“That’s because I am. Quite certain. I would not forget the occasion.”

“Oh.”

“My apologies, Mairi. I’ve embarrassed you.”

Mairi waved a hand. “Not at all.”

“Do I seem familiar to you?”

“No. And yet, aye, you do.” She pondered aloud. “Lindsay, Lindsay. Oh! Are you perhaps related to Colina Lindsay?”

The smile morphed into a smirk, and her knees went weak for just an instant. “You’re acquainted with my sister?”

Mairi nodded, the familiarity making sense at once. They shared the same storm cloud eyes, the same russet hair and angular features, though Aleck was taller than even Mairi was, while the sister was small and slight. “Just the once. I’m a recent addition to the IHPS.”

“Well, there you go,” he said, as if the blue hairs explained everything.

“There you go.”

Mairi rocked back on her heels, smiling at a newfound feeling of kinship. She didn’t have many friends. She even managed not to blush when Hadrian rejoined them, asking, “Aleck swept you off your feet yet? No? Good. I’d hate to bloody your new salon. Let’s go, Aleck.”

"It was a pleasure to meet you, Mairi."

"And you, Aleck."

They smiled, and Hadrian cleared his throat. Aleck turned from her. The men strode to the door, Hadrian turning when Mairi called his name. “Any idea - ”

“When I’ll return? Before nightfall. Then I’m all yours for three days until I must take the ferry back to Dad.”

The door closed. She stood with her hand covering her belly. Thinking. Were three more days sufficient to secure him in the babe’s life and her own?

Social Grace

2010-04-19T21:07:00.001-04:00

Mairi prevailed upon the resources available to her, enlisting in Cook’s help just for dinner. She rang the day before, begging assistance, and had to forestall a seven-course meal ‘for baby’ before things got out of hand.

“No! Something simple please. Soup, meat, and a cake or some other simple sweet. That’s all. Really. If they haven’t throttled one another - or me - by the time we reach dessert, they’ll hardly notice what’s laid in front of them.”

The menu was, thus, decided with a minimum of fuss. Tomato bisque, encrusted salmon with maple glaze and roasted potatoes and carrots for their vegetable, all finished with a blackberry tart. Cook would prepare most everything at the mansion, broiling the salmon at the cottage and just warming the soup on top of Mairi’s cooker. For her part, Mairi would see to tea, after dinner coffee, sherry, and whiskey, and a pint of cream whipped for the tart.

She found herself quite glad she’d left the whipping until late. She needed the noise and the distraction to occupy her mind while Hadrian sulked in the rear garden. Damn, but she hadn’t weeded there. Shrugging off the loss, she scooped the cream into a heavy crock and placed it into the refrigerator while Cook instructed her on keeping the fish warm without over-drying. With a kiss to Mairi’s cheek, she removed her apron, stuffed it into an large faux crocodile handbag, and slipped from the house before the Duke could arrive.

Mairi surveyed the tiny eat-in kitchen, feeling like a symphony conductor. China, pianissimo please. Quietly, elegantly. Silver, at attention! No slouching off kilter! Ah, whiskey, been neglected have you? Still, you must dust yourself off and at least give the appearance of being presentable.

She sighed. What had she been thinking? Even Cook’s formidable skill wouldn’t salvage the train wreck ahead.

She heard the Aston Martin, her car she’d left behind when Da bought the cottage and for which she’d taken his more practical Jeep instead, as it made the turn into the drive. Smoothing her skirt, she glanced out the window over the sink into the garden where Hadrian paced. Surely he’d heard her father arrive, too, but if he had, he gave no sign. Just as well, she thought. It might be better to have a moment with Da alone. She moved to meet him at the door.

“Da,” she said, stepping onto the porch as he made his way up the steps just like Hadrian had earlier. “Thank you for coming.”

“My only daughter invites me to dinner at her new home, and I’m going to tell her no?”

He leant over and kissed her, and she let herself feel like a little girl again. Just for a moment. “Thank you anyway,” she whispered.

“That’s his car?” Da asked, nodding towards the Ford in the drive.

“Aye. You’ll be wanting to meet him?”

“You’ve gone to a bit of trouble to bring that about. No sense avoiding the eventuality.” He followed her inside, and she closed the door. When he shed his overcoat, she laid it across the chair closest to them. “Where is he? Engaged in some sort of wishy-washy hiding?”

“Ach, no, Da. He’s out in the back. Walking off the shock, I think.”

He patted her belly, felt how it already strained beyond its normal flat plane, and glanced at her in surprise. Mairi grinned. “You’re growing!”

“That would be the babe, Da, but it’s kind of you to notice. I’ll be bigger than this house before it’s done. Why don’t you sit, and I’ll retrieve the absent father? Would you like a drink?”

“I’ll fix it. You run along. Is that Cook’s handiwork I smell?”

“Don’t scold!” she said, laughing. “I can’t be expected to do everything myself within a month.”

“No, you can’t, but didn’t you already borrow Jeanie to sew your cushions and the wee dressing for the cradle?”

She started to frown before recognising the twinkle in his eye. That was all right then. He only teased. “Aye, and I’ll ‘borrow’ the whole lot if I’ve need of them. Now, have your whiskey. I’ll be back in a moment.”

Hadrian met her in the kitchen on his return from the garden. Beyond the initial nervousness over the news of their child’s impending birth and his meeting her father, she gave all over to the Blessed Virgin’s mercy and said simply, “Da’s here. Come say hullo.”

“Showing me off?”

His neutral tone left her wondering whether or not he were further annoyed by this perceived indignity. She, in her own turn, was annoyed by his making the day more difficult for her than need be. “Not hardly. He’s my father. You’re this baby’s father. Should you wish to be part of its life - as you seem intent on being - you’ll have to be able to get along with one another.”

“Don’t you really mean I’ll have to supplicate myself?”

“Oh, really, Hadrian. Have you forgotten the circumstances under which we met? I can’t imagine you supplicating yourself to anyone. I just want to know the three of us can have a reasonably civil dinner. Can you at least play nice?”

Without warning, he snatched her elbow and drew her into an embrace that smelled of the autumn sun, clover, and expensive cologne. Something low in her belly tightened, and she turned her face to his, eyes half closed. “I can play very nicely,” he said, kissing just the tip of her earlobe. She shivered, and he chuckled. “Later, my love. ‘Da’ is waiting.”

He was. Right where she’d left him. She led Hadrian to the centre of the room, hoping her father would have the decency to stand for the introduction. He did, thank Mary and all the saints. Hadrian extended his hand first, and her father shook it with a smile akin to the cat who ate the cream.

“Da, this is Hadrian Welles. Hadrian, this is my father Richard Munro.”

“Your Grace, it’s a great pleasure.”

“Bullshit, but I appreciate your effort, lad. Call me Richard.”

Mairi dropped her eyes, unable to look at either of them, but she heard Hadrian acquiesce. “Very well. Thank you, Richard.”

“Fix you a drink, Hadrian?”

“Uh, yes, please.”

“Whiskey?”

“That’s fine.”

“I’m going to check on the soup,” Mairi announced and slipped from the room.

She knew the soup needed no attention. She knew they were half an hour or better from needing to eat. She knew she couldn’t possibly endure the social impoliteness of either of them - masked by polite enough words - long enough to get them to table. She ladled the tomato bisque into the bowls, placed a small plate of toast in the centre of the table, and moved to tell them they should join her. Her father was talking, and she had to wait for a suitable moment to interrupt.

“...your father, what does he do?”

Hadrian caught her eye and winked before answering. “Dad? He’s in imports. American predominantly. I assist him with administrative matters. He’s... ageing and needs more help now, doesn’t trust outsiders much.”

But Da had caught the relevant word amongst the patter of extraneous bits. “What sort of imports?”

“High end cultural oddities for the most part. Spiritual pieces and the like.”

“I see. What about your mother?”

“She’s the American side of the works,” Hadrian said, grinning.

“A real family enterprise then.”

Da glanced at her as Hadrian murmured, “One could say that,” and she wondered why she’d never thought to ask about his family’s business. Not now though, she thought as she nodded at her father.

“I’ve put the soup on the table.”

He glanced at his watch. “It’s a bit early, darling.”

“I - ” She floundered for a moment then hit upon inspiration. “I get tired so early these days.” Patting her belly, she left the cause of her ‘fatigue’ go unspoken but gave an elegant nod of her head towards the kitchen. “Do you mind terribly? The eating early?”

“Ah, princess, for you? Anything.” He stood and kissed her head and she let him pass into the kitchen.

When Hadrian reached her, he, too, leant towards her but rather than a chaste kiss on the head, bent and placed his moist tongue along her neck beneath her hair. She bit her lip to keep from exhaling until he stood and moved on, joining Da in the kitchen. When she turned to them, the men in her life, she smiled.

“Da, you sit there, near the refrigerator. Hadrian, by the cooker for you.” She sat between them, tucking her napkin into her lap and saying a quick prayer to the Virgin that the rest of the evening would pass without event. Or at least without murder.

Pieces of You

2010-04-18T14:08:00.003-04:00

“Missed me?” Hadrian had asked at her third request for a visit over the past six weeks.

Reluctant to admit she had but aware of her growing inability to fasten her trousers, Mairi’d compromised in her answer. “I have. Somewhat. I suppose I became accustomed to seeing you a little more regularly over the summer.”

Damned if she’d grovel though.

“I’m actually touched,” he said, sounding as if he truly were, and she felt some of her tension escape through her tight shoulders. “I do apologise, darling, but my father’s needed me here to help with business matters.”

She’d given him the address of the cottage without telling him she lived there now, knowing he’d take the ferry across from Lewis either with his own vehicle or hiring one on disembarking Thursday morning. Such had become his habit throughout the summer that changed her life and was about to change his. In the autumn of her indecision, she let pass the time when she could have made a choice to return to her carefree, unencumbered lifestyle, and in doing so, had made a more permanent choice at the end of the day. The remaining decisions would be made in the wake of Hadrian’s reactions.

When the day arrived, she cleaned the bitty house until it sparkled, pulled weeds in the front garden, bathed and tidied her hair, and eventually slipped a loose dress of dark blue jersey wool over her head. The advantage of the dress lay in the slight give of the fabric. Stockings held the tiny bulge of her belly to a barely discernible mound, and she clasped a strand of freshwater pearls around her neck to draw attention upwards. Deciding she could do no more, she sat in the corner of her sofa with the daily newpapers. Waiting.

He arrived at a quarter past two. She heard the awkward rumble of his late model Ford when he turned into the drive, hesitant and disagreeable as she thought Hadrian might be himself. Peering through the draperies, she caught the look of consternation stamped on his face and placed a hand over her belly less out of fear than nervousness suddenly arisen by his expression.

"Hullo, stranger,” she said with a smile, pulling the door open as he climbed the few steps to the porch.

“Mairi?” He seemed confused. “What is this place?” He placed an absent kiss on her cheek when he followed her inside.

“It’s my house.” She took his hand before he could ask further questions and pulled him fully into the parlour. “Let me show you.”

“Your house? I thought you lived in a mansion. Mairi?”

He was displeased. The flat tone, hiding something close to a warning, sent a tingle down her spine, but she straightened her back and ignored the soft alarm in her head. “I do. I did, I mean. Clearly, this isn’t it. Da bought it for me in August, and I’ve only just really got set up here. Let me show you,” she repeated quickly, more to forestall his questions than in any real eagerness at displaying her new quasi-independence.

“Very well...” Hadrian’s tone suggested he’d play along. For the moment.

She gave him the quick tour, the five minute portrait of impending single motherhood, curious as to whether or not he would notice the clues. He didn’t until she turned the knob on the door to the nursery. His brows shot nearly to his hairline as he took in the walls painted a muted sage green, the burnished wood floors, the chiffon curtains billowing gently in the breeze through the open windows. It could have been any room - one meant for guests or reading or running a small business - but for the antique cradle brought from the attics in the mansion and dressed now in organza and sage-on-cream toile, a rural scene with hens and farm boys and wee lasses fetching water in pails. Beside the cradle sat her mother’s rocking chair sporting new cushions in matching toile. Hadrian held his breath for a moment, as did she.

“I see you’ve not made over this room yet,” he tried.

“But I have,” Mairi said. “See how nicely the green compliments the scarlet I put on the walls in my room?” It was perhaps a bit flippant, but she thought she knew now which way his sentiments lay.

“I see.”

“Are you displeased, Hadrian?”

“I hardly know!” he said, turning to her and elbowing them both from the room.

She led him back to the parlor where he sat heavily on the sofa and she poured him a whiskey before speaking again.

“Here,” she said, handing him the glass. “I’m sorry to have waited to tell you, but I didn’t want to just ring you on the telephone with the news and it’s been so long since we’ve seen one another.”

“How long have you known?”

“Oh... a month and a half or so?”

“I take it you’ve decided to have the child?”

“I really have no choice at this point, but yes, to answer your question directly.”

She watched the thoughts and emotions play out across his face, each one an illustration of why she’d waited so long to sleep with any man. Fear (of what?), calculation, possibility, more fear, promise, wariness, ambition, desire (for what?), and just a touch more fear. Fear she could live with. The others scared holy hell out of her.

“Hadrian?”

“Do you want to get married? Is that why you asked me here?”

“I...No, Hadrian, I don’t expect you to marry me. It just seemed the proper thing for you to know that you are becoming a father.”

“A father,” he mused. “That’s odd.”

“Is it? Why?”

“I really don’t know, but it is. Do you not want to marry me then? No, I don’t suspect you do nor that your own father would have it if you did.”

“Hadrian, if I wanted to marry you, my father wouldn’t stand in the way.” She stopped. That hadn’t come out well at all. “That sounded quite bad. I’m sorry. It’s not that I don’t want to marry you, only that I don’t want to marry you simply because I’m having your child.”

“I understand.” He tossed back the whiskey and rose to pour himself another. “Don’t worry about my sensibilities, Mairi, but don’t get any ideas about marrying better either.”

That tingle along her spine returned. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“What I mean is that you’re carrying my child and apparently determined to have it and raise it. You don’t have to marry me, but no one else is raising my child either. Married or no, you’re stuck with me.”

“Oh.” Before Mairi could give herself time to consider the implications of Hadrian’s pronouncement, she had to get through the rest of the day, the part she wished now she hadn’t planned. “I should tell you Da’s coming in two hours for dinner.”

Cradle in photo from Posh Tots.

Just Desserts

2010-04-11T13:16:00.004-04:00

Mairi had been prepared for a barrage of incriminations and questions, and her father hit her with them full force. But not until a moment of blank lack of recognition sat on his face. He seemed very, very far away, and due to her hours of thinking how to best protect herself, she couldn’t make the necessary adjustment to reach out to him quickly enough.

“Da?” He stared at her as if she were a ghost. “Da, did you hear me?”

After a moment or two, he sucked in a breath and shook his head like a wet dog. She actually flinched to avoid getting wet.

“Aye, I heard you.”

“I can’t imagine you’ve nothing to say on the matter.”

“You’re twenty-two years old, Mairi. What do you wish that I would say?”

Mairi glanced at her hands, which were folded on the table. This wasn’t going at all the way she’d planned. She needed to steer the conversation onto familiar terrain.

“I thought - just possibly, you understand - that you might be interested in who the baby’s father is. Failing that, I thought you might want to discuss how the situation should be handled.”

Her father’s hand shot into the air like a traffic patrolman’s, urging her to halt. “Do not say that!”

“What?” she asked, startled. “Don’t say what exactly?”

“Don’t ask me how ‘things should be handled’ please.”

“Very well. Why?”

“Do I take it from the direction in which this conversation is leading that you’ve no intention of marrying the father? Or has he no intention of marrying you?”

“I’ve not told him yet.”

“No?”

“No, and I don’t wish to marry him. Not now in any event.”

Her father chuckled but without real humour. “‘In any event’? I’d say the event’s arrived. Why don’t you wish to marry him?”

That the Duke would think Hadrian beneath her was a foregone conclusion, but her father’s prejudices had nothing to do with Mairi’s decision. She sighed. “When... if I married the father, I’d want to know he wanted to marry me because he loved me and not because I was pregnant,” she said softly, carefully. She didn’t wish to hurt her father any more than she had to.

“I see,” he said, and she knew he did. “Shall I have him killed to reclaim your honour then? No?” he asked in response to her look of horror. “Castrated perhaps?”

“Da!”

“Ah, I’m only teasing to keep from screaming at you, lass. How in God’s name did this happen?”

“The usual way, I suspect.”

“Hmph.” He exchanged his cup of coffee that he held for the glass of wine on the table in front of him. “And you’re sure you wish to - ”

“What? Have the child? No. Well, yes. That is, I think so. I’ve a bit of time before I must decide, but I’m reasonably certain.”

“Would you continue to live here at the mansion?”

“Oh, Da, I don’t know. What do you think?”

“I think if this young man of yours isn’t marrying you but is remaining in the child’s life, then you can not live here, my love. Each time he came to see his child, I’d run the risk of imprisonment for murder.”

“I understand.”

From the pocket of her trousers, Mairi withdrew a folded advert and slid it across the table to him. She let him take time opening the single sheet of paper and reading the contents beneath the colour photograph. She’d already been to the house twice, and although the gardens currently boasted riotous colour and plenty of weeds, she could well imagine a few inches of snow lining the cobbled walk in winter, too. The cottage, small by the mansion’s standards, smaller even than the guest house, would be perfect for her and a baby. Near enough to the mansion for frequent visits from the Duke, far enough away he wouldn’t be disturbed by three in the morning feedings or smelly nappies.

He frowned. “You’d leave me alone in this old, creaky house?”

“Da! Shame on you. Not a board creaks here, and you’ve a staff of twelve to see to your every need.”

“They’ll say you’ve brought dishonour on the family name.”

“Who? The likes of Lady MacDowell?” Mairi thought this was rather Lady MacDowell’s fault in the first place.

“Aye, she and all her cronies.”

“I’ll join the Garden Club and the Historical Society. I’ll be the model socialite, Da. It’s 1991, and a child born out of wedlock is hardly cause for scandal.”

“I should disown you.”

“You sound a bit half-hearted in that.”

“I doubt I will be tomorrow. It’s just the shock. Give it time to wear off.”

“Then the sooner you buy the cottage, the better for both of us, no? It’s August already, and near as I can tell, the babe’ll be born in late March.”

“Ah, Mairi.”

“Is this where I’m supposed to apologise?”

“I think so.”

He’d turned away from her, was sat staring at the remains of his cake. Mairi felt tears pricking her eyes. Mary and Jesus, she still had to tell Hadrian, too. Feeling like an old woman, she pushed away from the table and stood.

“I’m sorry, Da. Truly.”

“Me, too, lass.”

When she reached the doorway, she turned back and faced the slumped shoulders of the only parent she could remember knowing and loving. “Da?”

“Hmm?”

“Why did you stare at me so when I first told you?”

“Oh. That. You just looked so like Rachel telling me she was carrying you that I forgot for a moment where I was and who was talking to me. She also asked me how things should be handled. Of course, we were married already, and what did she expect?”

She really was sorry then. Sorry for her mother’s sins and her own. She only hoped in time this child would be a blessing to atone for them all.

“Good-night, Da. I love you.”

“Good-night, Mairi. We’ll talk more tomorrow.”

She wept until she fell asleep that night, waking in the morning to a sodden pillow. It took her several minutes to remember why she’d cried, for she hadn’t shed a tear since learning of the pregnancy. Then she recalled. Not once in the whole of her life that she knew of had her father let her go to bed without telling her he loved her.

Expensive Dinners

2010-04-11T13:09:00.003-04:00

Mairi took care with her preparations for dinner. A silk blouse in white and a pair of grey silk trousers lay across the foot of her bed as she sat in front of the vanity mirror selecting jewellery. Most of what she owned she kept in velvet boxes, sets of matching earrings and necklaces and the odd bracelet, and the boxes lined two drawers in her bureau. A handful of her most favoured pieces, those whose value lay in their discovery or her sentimentality towards them, spent a haphazard existence in a small pewter cache atop her vanity. It was in this that she rummaged now.

There they were.

She withdrew a long necklace before hunting the matching ear bobs. The necklace contained seven strands of tangled glass, bitty beads in a variety of colors. Her gypsy necklace, Da always called it. She recalled it had cost him less than twenty pounds when he bought it at the market one early Saturday in her fifteenth year, twenty pounds for all three pieces. A single pearl from the strand of her grandmother’s she kept safely stored in the bank vault would cost ten times as much, but she treasured the necklace of rainbow beads far more.

Pulling her hair into a loose knot, she secured the locks with a handful of pins, giving in for a moment to the urge to stare at herself in the mirror. What had Hadrian said about her hair?

"Do you know what the the colour of your hair reminds me of?"

She’d rolled her eyes before saying, “Don’t tell me. Carrots.”

He appeared truly horrified. “Gods, no!” Twisting a strand around his finger, he leant close to her and said, “Orange marmalade.”

“My hair reminds you of jam?”

"The very best sort, glistening with bits of zest waiting in unexpected places.”

“There may be a poet in you after all, Mr. Welles.”

“And your eyes...”

“The colour of a summer sky?” she teased.

“How pedestrian. What about... blue salt water taffy?”

“You’re making me sound like a parcel of disparate foods.”

“Then don’t ask me about your skin.”

“What about it?”

“That it’s just the colour of freshly collected milk in the pail.”

She blushed then, felt the glow infusing her body from the belly outward.

“Until you do that,” he amended, “and then it’s as if someone tossed rose petals on top of the cream.”

“Listen to you!” she chided, secretly pleased, and when he stroked the inside of her knee, she opened herself to him.

She caught her reflection blushing as she finished her hair and fastened the earrings that matched her beaded necklace. Rising from the stool, she dressed. She slipped her feet into comfortable shoes and moved below stairs to lay the table. Twenty minutes later, she met him at the door and ushered him into the dining room.

“This is a treat,” he said, smiling, and she lifted one corner of her mouth in response. Engenue wasn’t a role she coveted, but this was meant to be a night of performances. And appeasements. “It’s a good wine you’ve chosen. Where did you find it?”

“The cellar actually. I’m glad it’s to your liking. Do you care for more fish?”

“No, for something tells me there’s a sweet beyond our usual slice of day-old cake awaiting me. I think I’ll save room.” He leant back in his chair and patted his stomach, the glass of wine held loosely in his other hand.

Mairi excused herself from the table, slipped into the kitchen, and returned with a cake she’d ordered specially from the woman in town from whom she’d bought the disastrous marzipan. Somehow, that seemed fitting given what that day had started. When she returned to the table, she balanced two small plates along one forearm, the silver in her hand, and she carried a small silver carafe of coffee in the other.

“I’ve brought coffee, though you may wish to stick with the wine.”

“Trying to get me drunk, are you?”

Mairi laughed. “There are worse things.”

“So there are, but no, coffee sounds pleasant. Thank you, Mairi.”

She poured, and he doctored. She placed his cake in front of him, a lemon chiffon with raspberry jam between the layers and chocolate ganache in lieu of icing. He whistled, and she smiled again, but she waited for him to take a bite before speaking.

“You’re pampering me tonight, darling,” he said.

“Aye, and you deserve it.”

“Is that all?”

“Hmm?”

“Am I receiving the royal treatment only because I am so richly deserving?”

Mairi answered his question with one of her own. “Do you love me?”

“What a foolish thing to say! I don’t think I like your cake anymore.”

“Now who’s being foolish?”

“What am I supposed to say?”

“You’re supposed to answer the question. It was a simple one after all. Do. You. Love. Me.”

He grunted and laid his fork beside the cake, but he didn’t relinquish his coffee. Some things were too important to forsake for silly conversations, she suspected. After a moment, he nodded. “I love you, Mairi. Of course, I love you. Now, please tell me what this is all about.”

Leaving her own dessert untouched, she met his eyes squarely. “Da, I’m pregnant.”

Free Lunches

2010-04-11T13:07:00.003-04:00

When Hadrian left Katrin’s manor with Mairi, he tossed one suitcase into the boot of her Astin Martin and opened the driver’s door for her. She had hoped they could escape undetected, but Katrin pounced on Hadrian in the drive before he had time to reach the passenger side of the car.

“You’re leaving?” she spat. “You’re leaving with her?”

Hadrian stuck a finger or two from each hand into the front pockets of his jeans and smiled down at Katrin. “I am.”

“Is this the way you’re going to play our town then, just eating from the plate of hospitality at one girl’s home before moving on to another? It’s not all free, you know.”

 “No, Katrin, girls like you never are.” Mairi watched with a small degree of malicious pleasure as he withdrew his wallet. He held several notes out to Katrin - at least three she could see with fifty pound markings. Mairi couldn’t tell how much money was in his hand, but the sum amounted to enough that Katrin blushed. “For your trouble,” he said.

Katrin expression changed to outrage, and Mairi swallowed a hiccup of laughter. She couldn’t help feeling satisfied to see one of her lifelong tormentors on the receiving end for once. “My trouble?” Katrin huffed and added, “I don’t want your money.”

“No? Then what do you want?”

“I want you to stay! I want you to behave like a proper gentleman!”

He folded the notes back into his wallet. “I fear there isn’t enough gold in the Queen’s coffers for that.”

Katrin’s eyes narrowed. “For which? For you to stay or for you to be a gentleman?”

“Either.”

They’d left then, Mairi executing a neat turn in the drive before heading back to the main road. When she reached the juncture where right meant town - and hotels - and left meant her father’s mansion, she hesitated and bit her lip.

“Hungry?” Hadrian asked.

“Actually, I could eat.”

“It’s my understanding there’s a new Fusion restaurant on the High Road. Shall we give that a go?”

“Does that mean Katrin wished to go there but you thought it too expensive?”

Handsome and charming though he was, she didn’t want to find herself saddled with a gigolo.

“I thought it too extravagant for Katrin, yes, but I’ve no aversion to going with you.”

Momentarily satisfied, Mairi nodded. “Very well.” She knew the place he meant and made the right turn. A few minutes later, she parked up at the kerb, and they extricated themselves from the car. “Hadrian?”

“Hmm?”

“You don’t have to pay - ” she began, but he interrupted her.

“And you needn’t worry. I may not be a blue blood, but my father’s enterprises are lucrative enough.” She smiled as he opened the door for her. “You seem relieved,” he whispered as the maitre’d led them to a table.

“I suppose I am. A girl in my position and all that.”

“Mairi, I assure you, I am not the least interested in your money.”

It was her turn to blush as his eyes travelled the length of her from head to toe and back again, lingering indiscreetly over her most intimate spots. “Oh,” she said, “that’s good then.”

“Yes?”

“Aye, quite good.”

How long, she wondered, could she wait to tell him she was still a virgin?

Let Them Eat Cake

2010-04-10T21:32:00.005-04:00

Mairi Munro stared at the selection of cakes in the glass case before her. Biting the inside of her lip to hide her dismay at the pitiful array - what was this place, the site of a housewife bake-off? - she tried to peer behind a sagging, plain vanilla with chocolate icing to see the card beside one, the only one, that might yet hold promise. No. Only a strawberry cream.

“May I be of help?”

She looked over to the left where the store’s proprietor, a woman of perhaps thirty-five, stood smiling. Mary and Jesus, she didn’t want to buy a cake from her, but neither did she wish to stamp on the hope in that woman’s eyes. What to do?

“I’m looking for a cake,” she began a wee bit helplessly.

“Aye, and you’re looking at them, too.”

So, the selection was all the woman had to offer. Hope stamping or no, what this woman sold wouldn’t do. “This is it then? I see. I’d hoped to find something with a bit more drama to it. I’m visiting an old friend of my father’s, and her tastes run to the...” Mairi caught herself before she said ‘high end’.

“Ah, I may have the thing then. There was a gentleman that ordered a cake earlier in the week for pick-up today, but he called yesterday to cancel. Of course, the cake had already been baked and the marzipan - ”

“Did you say marzipan?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“I’ll take it.”

At the end of the transaction, she’d also purchased a bitty wooden box with three tins of fine tea. Oolong, Darjeeling, and Assam. Juggling the box with the fairy tale inspired marzipan covered sponge cake, the box of tea, and her bag, she climbed the steps at her destination and just managed the bell with her elbow.

“Please, please, please,” she muttered to herself, “anyone answer but Katrin.”

Katrin, her former school mate, pulled the door open and widened her mouth in surprise. “Why, it’s Mairi Munro come back from her fancy university to visit with us plebes.”

Mairi forced a smile. “Katrin, it’s always a pleasure to see you,” fall on your arse in those ridiculous shoes. “Is your mother available? Da said she’d been ill, and I wanted to call and check on her.”

Katrin swept the door open fully and waved for her to pass. Mairi crossed the threshold despising the trappings of her life but grateful to them nonetheless. Without the social pleasantries and ability to call on ailing friends of her father’s, she might not ever leave the house.

“She’s in the new solar room Daddy had built onto the house this year. You’ve missed so much, Mairi. Here, I’ll lead you.”

She followed Katrin down a narrow corridor lined with family portraits, through what she knew was the larger of the two salons, and into what appeared to be a greenhouse attached to the library. The room smelled faintly of manure and forced tropical blooms. She took care not to wrinkle her nose as Lady MacDowell came into view.

“Who is that, Katrin?”

“It’s Mairi Munro, Lady MacDowell. How are you feeling? Da told me you’ve been unwell.”

“Ach, don’t listen to the old fool. What does he know? What do any men know, eh, Jane?”

Until that moment, Mairi hadn’t seen Mrs. Kilkenny sitting on the settee with Lady MacDowell, but as Katrin moved to take her leave, both dowagers tittered at the insult to her father’s sex.

Mairi crossed the room and bent to kiss the air beside both Lady MacDowell’s cheeks. “I’ve brought you just a bit of something,” she said, laying the cake and tea boxes on the low table in front of the women.

“Have you? Oh, lovely. Thank you, child.”

Lady MacDowell oohed over the teas for ten seconds before turning her attention to the cake box. When she looked inside, she appeared perplexed, as if she didn’t quite know what to make of its ornate decoration. When her brows began to draw together, Mairi hastened to explain.

“It’s marzipan, see? Well, all the little bits and bobs are... the horse and carriage, the castle, even the little leaves and flowers everywhere.”

“Marzipan? Oh...” Lady MacDowell still seemed uncertain.

“Plain old coconut cream for me if you please,” said Mrs. Kilkenny. “Or strawberry cream if coconut’s not available. Those are the best if you ask me.”

“Aye, well, the old standbys do have their charm,” Lady MacDowell agreed as she closed the lid to the cake box. “Thank you, dear. You outdid yourself.”

She had, too. That much was clear. She should’ve bought the strawberry cream and saved herself fifteen pounds.

“Of course. You’re welcome. So, how are you really?”

“Improving slowly. Katrin, I’m sure, would be happy to give you all the nasty details,” and Mairi thought the woman likely correct in her assumption. “But tell me, dear, how is that charming father of yours? How’s the Duke?”

“Oh, he’s...” Mairi waved one hand and left it fluttering on the air as her words trailed away. “You know how Da is. He’s fine, and I thank you for asking.”

Mrs. Kilkenny tilted her head to stare at Mairi, which made her more uncomfortable than she would have liked. She should have been used to being stared at by then. “Mairi, do you know,” Mrs. Kilkenny said, “that you are the very image of your mother at your age? Do you ever hear from her?”

Not since I was six, you old bat.

“No. No, I don’t.”

“What a pity. We never did understand how she could just up and abandon you and Richard as she did, could we Eileen?” she asked of Lady MacDowell, but Katrin’s mother had been shocked into speechlessness by Mrs. Kilkenny’s lack of tact. “Of course, all of us hoped there would be word one day that she’d died so that your poor father could move on and remarry. As it is, Dame Rothes is still gallivanting across the globe somewhere, I suppose.”

“Elizabeth, really,” Lady MacDowell chided.

But Mairi caught the hint of a smile at the corner of her mouth. She hated them both. Hated all of them.

Tears stung her eyes, and she smoothed her trousers as she stood. “Please excuse me. I didn’t mean to stay, only to drop off the cake and see how you were doing, Lady MacDowell. I... I... really, I must go.”

She walked from the room with her back ramrod straight and her eyes focused only on what lay in her path. At the door to the library, she heard Mrs. Kilkenny whisper, “No spunk in that one. Least the mother had a backbone, but what do you expect with Richard Munro raising her alone?”

Mairi left them with the soft chuckles of Lady MacDowell echoing in her ears. Katrin, fortunately, did not make an appearance on her return trip through the house. Once outside, she paused on the walk and pressed her hands to her eyes to stem the tide of tears. No good. She followed the walk to a small, enclosed garden and sat on a bench to collect her thoughts and get her emotions back into line.

Stupid, f@#$ing, arrogant bitch.

“Which one?” she asked herself.

Both of them.

“F@#$ing bitches, the both of them!”

Mairi had never said the word ‘f@#$’ aloud before. She liked the feel of it on her tongue and the sound of it hanging on the ivy surrounding her. She tried it again.

“F@#$. F@#$. F@#$.”

“Now, you have definitely confused my muse.”

The voice behind her, deep and masculine, caused her to jump. Embarrassment at her use of coarse language brought a bloom of red to her fair cheeks as she whirled on the bench to find this new tormentor. “Where are you? Who are you? Come out this instant! You’re being quite rude hiding like that.”

The man swung around a trellis heavy with yellow roses into the garden alcove, leaving his hand laying nonchalantly along the top of the arbor. Tall, she noted. Taller than she, which was difficult to achieve at her height of five feet nine inches. Dark hair and eyes, rakish smile playing on his lips. Mairi heeded warnings about tall, dark, and handsome men, and this one was all three.

“What did you mean by ‘confused muse’?” she asked.

“Only that I’d begun composing poetry - in my head only, you understand, as I am without a doubt an abysmal poet - the moment I laid eyes on you. Do you know you blush just exactly like an English rose? Ah, look, there you go doing it again! Charming.”

He slipped into the alcove, but Mairi didn’t make room for him on the bench. “Enchanted muse then perhaps, but confused?”

“Oh, well, that’s only the fairest of all fair maidens sitting in this idyllic place and then uttering such, such... I’m not even sure I have the words to describe it.”

“I’d never said the word before,” she admitted. “It felt good.”

“I presume the two women in question are the venerable Lady MacDowell and her guest?”

“Of course. Who else? Speaking of guests, who in God’s name are you?”

“I, too, am a guest. Of Lady Katrin.”

“Oh.” Mairi bit the inside of her lip to keep her expression as neutral as possible. She didn’t really want the man interested in her, but it horrified her to think of him with Katrin. She tried to think of something else to say. “You’re English,” she finally said, “but that’s the strangest accent I’ve ever heard.”

“First eleven years in England, four more in the States, and then we moved to Scotland when I was fifteen. I guess I’m a bit of a mongrel.”

“Linguistically speaking?”

“Oh, that, too. You?”

“No. My blood’s pretty blue, but I’ve the misfortune of being the only child of a beautiful runaway wife. My father is Richard Munro, Duke of Rothes. I’m Mairi,” she finished, holding out her hand.

The handsome stranger took it in his own and raised it to his lips before murmuring, “What a pleasure, Lady Rothes. Allow me to likewise introduce myself. My name is Hadrian Welles.”

Kissing Castle Cake from Just Scrumptious Cakes, Adlam Central Park, Glastonbury, Somerset, UK.

Triquain: Warrior Princess

2010-04-10T19:26:00.002-04:00

Warrior Princess

She twirls, crisp
white pinafore snapping
on the wind - dragon’s breath, she muses -
hot air lifting her to sail beyond the pastures
to the barricades of apple trees
where sash becomes a sword:
girl power.

Triquain: A Day in a Life

2010-03-18T08:18:00.001-04:00

A Day in a Life

Light coffee
on the front porch at dawn,
a bit of reading as the day starts -
Ghandi - "Be the change you want to see in the world."
She writes triquains, talks to the abused,
and reads her girls stories
at bedtime.

Triquain: Bloody Sunday

2010-03-17T07:56:00.003-04:00

Bloody Sunday

Bad circuits
and mental health reform
walk a man past the edge of reason;
young mother absorbs his rage while her children watch;
spinal cord severed, she gets a chair
while officials decline
to comment.

Inspired by this story: Woman stabbed in Stephenville park not expected to walk again

Triquain: The Divorcée

2010-03-16T07:35:00.003-04:00

The Divorcée

Did she know
the mute horror she bought
with pennies hoarded against the rain?
She filled the cracks of her life with the new mortar
and thought herself likely defective
when gaping holes replaced
the fault lines.

Triquain: First Music Box

2010-03-15T10:44:00.001-04:00

First Music Box

At fifteen
she bought a unicorn
made of brass that spun on a round base
and played "Born Free" as it reared toward the open sky
of her ceiling; she lay
in bed, wound the spring to
hear and dream.

Once She Was the Gentle Wind

2010-03-11T15:09:00.002-05:00

Once she was the gentle wind

gone whispering through your dreams

now the half-remembered bend

of blue midnight wanderings

as if the hourglass she stood

to mark lazy minutes past

was no more than glass and wood

and not a heart molded, cast

in bronze, a metal ageless,

stern and strong enough to bear

these metaphors - though pageless -

that'd born your woe and care;

she once was all these and more,

such a fragile anchoring,

heartbeat's pause one breath before

a grey reawakening.

Triquain: A Day of Morning

2010-03-11T08:14:00.003-05:00

A Day of Morning

She ate eggs
with bacon and toast twice,
two pots of coffee light and sweet, too,
recreating a desperate routine, watching
the kitchen clock; if time stopped, her love
(proved faithless) might return
before noon.

Triquain: Rebirth

2010-03-03T11:22:00.002-05:00

Rebirth

She finds them
odd, these needs newly met,
finds them hidden in strange, dark places
she once filled with tasks she labelled important but
now hold the sharp fetal bones of needs
prodding for attention
and succor.

A Family Affair

2010-02-26T12:51:00.001-05:00

The nightmares of small children were crafted from a simple dinner out with the Duke. Full on night terrors when the entire family came along. Richard insisted on preening, which meant a round table in the middle of the restaurant rather than a discreet corner booth more to Aleck's liking. Richard also kept everyone regaled throughout the meal from soup to sweet with tales of Mairi as a lass or scandalous debacles he'd witnessed as an MP, leaving Aleck precious little attention to spare for their safety. He'd rather eat a horse in an unheated barn alone.

Catriona, just six, turned her nose in the air as the plate of escargot was sat in front of her, but the Duke bent a conspiratorial head toward Colina. "Best in the country, my dear. So perfectly, so lightly seasoned one can taste the freshness of the snails. You'd think the chef had them caught only moments ago for your pleasure."

Colina raised one skeptical brow. "I hope they live up to the billing, Richard."

"Da, leave Colina be so she can eat in peace," Mairi chided.

Aleck spared his wife a smile of gratitude before resuming his surreptitious perusal of the dining room. To his left, Lachlan pressed one knee to his, and he turned to the fourteen-year-old in irritation. "Aye? What is it?"

"Cian," Lachie whispered, "at two o'clock."

Aleck nodded. "What's my position then, lad?"

"Oh. Er, two o'clock, sir."

Aleck lifted a demitasse spoon from the linens beside his plate and pretended to inspect his reflection in the back of its bowl. As he hunted a sign of the demi-demon Lachie'd seen, Colina's chatter interrupted him. Peering around the spoon, he caught her eye, and she winked, lifting her knife to assist her in wresting a snail from its shell. To her right, he saw Declan put his hand under the table, ready to draw his dagger.

"I can't seem to get the angle just right for the proper trajectory," she muttered.

"Ah, my dear, I believe trajectory has something to do with projectiles," the Duke said as he slid another bite onto his tongue. "Did you mean force perhaps?"

"Two millimeters to your left, Colina," Aleck said, grasping her intent. He hoped Lachie did, too, for the lad would need to duck soon.

Pop. The shell cracked open with such force - thank you, Richard - that the wee knife she'd used seemed to slip from her hand before it whizzed across the table. Lachie bent his head without a nano-second to spare, and the blade flew toward empty space near a neighboring crowd. The Cian, standing in the shadows by the curtained wall, reacted too late, and the knife intersected with his neck horizontally and with enough velocity to sever the head from the torso and create a small pile of dust on the floor.

No one seemed to notice. The Duke looked at Colina as if she were Cat's age, half a frown on his face. "I say - "

"Oh. Well, that was rather clumsy of me," she said with a grin. "Could I possibly get another knife?"

Triquain: Girl

2010-02-26T08:32:00.005-05:00

Girl

On odd days
she cries or falls silent,
brief rippling in the surface calm
that sinks to plummeting depths hiding dreams and doubt
and a woman waiting to be born
from static shifts of truth
fragmented.

Triquain: Morning

2010-02-25T11:18:00.004-05:00

Morning

She wakes stiff
from pillows too flat and
dreams too disturbing, awash in a
patina of promise and the unknown, glowing
amber, over a changing landscape;
she sloughs off the kinks and
brews coffee.