“You are acquainted with every Mackenzie of Balhaire, then,” he said with a chuckle.
Unfortunately.
He suddenly leaned forward and whispered, “Have you a verdict on Miss Kent’s fiancé? Does he suit her, then?”
Bernadette could feel herself coloring. What was she supposed to say to that? “Ah...well,” she said, and paused to clear her throat. “It’s all so very new, isn’t it? I suspect they will take some time learning about each other.”
Captain Mackenzie blinked. He slowly cocked his head to one side, his gaze shrewd, and smiled very slowly. “Aye, then, you donna esteem him.” Bernadette opened her mouth to deny it, but he waved his hand. “Donna deny it, lass—it’s plain.”
“I scarcely know him. I’ve not made any judgment.”
He chuckled at that bold lie, sipped his wine, then put the glass aside. “Donna believe everything you see, Miss Holly. My brother is a wee bit hardened, that he is. But he’s suffered a great loss and has no’ come easily back to the living. On my word, the lad is a good man beneath the hurt.”
A loss? Hurt? She tried to imagine what sort of loss might make a man so unregenerate, but couldn’t think of a single thing. She’d lost her husband and her baby, and she wasn’t so hardened. What possibly could have happened to him?
“Ah, there is Frang,” Captain Mackenzie said. “We’ll dine, now, aye?” He stepped away.
Bernadette was still trying to make sense of what the captain had said when Lady Mackenzie arranged them all for the promenade into the dining room. Naturally, Bernadette brought up the rear. She was seated next to Mrs. Vivienne Mackenzie with Avaline across from her. Next to Avaline sat the man who had suffered such an incomprehensible loss, apparently, as to have made him entirely contemptible.
As the meal was served, everyone was laughing and talking at once. Bernadette was especially enjoying the meal—it was the first decent thing she’d had to eat since arriving in Scotland, and it was delicious. A soup thick with chunks of fish, a pie bursting with savory meat and potatoes. The cook Mr. MacDonald had found for Killeaven didn’t know how to prepare food like this, apparently, for everything she’d made thus far had tasted bland and, at times, even bitter.
Bernadette made small talk with Mrs. Vivienne Mackenzie, who told her about her children, including their names, and their traits. Bernadette politely answered the questions Mrs. Mackenzie put to her. How long had she been in the Kent employ? Nearly seven years. How did she find Scotland? Quite beautiful.
Lady Mackenzie and Lady Kent were engaged in a discussion of the wedding ceremony and the celebrations around it. Lady Mackenzie was quite animated in her descriptions of Scottish wedding customs. “No, you actually jump over the broom” Bernadette overheard her say to Lady Kent.
There was a lull in the chatter between Bernadette and Mrs. Mackenzie when the latter’s husband caught her attention and she turned away.
Bernadette glanced across the table at Avaline. She looked unhappy. Bernadette very surreptitiously nodded in the direction of her fiancé. Avaline glanced at the man, then haltingly inquired if Mackenzie had received his education at a university.
“Aye,” he said.
That was all he said—nothing more, no explanation of when or where or anything else to put Avaline at ease, the lout.
Avaline pushed a bit food around her plate, then said suddenly, “Which university?”
He paused in his eating. “Does it matter to you, then?”
He asked it in a way that sounded as if he was somehow offended, and Avaline’s eyes widened. “No! No, of course not.”
“Of course it does,” his mother said kindly to Avaline, having caught that part of the conversation as well. “Rabbie attended St. Andrews, just as his brothers did before him.”
Avaline nodded and gave Lady Mackenzie a faint smile of gratitude. She picked up her fork, took a small bite of food, then put down the fork. “Did you have a favorite governess?”
For heaven’s sake. Bernadette hadn’t meant Avaline to ask that question, but had used it merely as an example to spur Avaline’s own thinking of how she might engage this man.
Her fiancé put down his fork, too, and turned his head to her, so that he might pierce her better with his cold glare. “We didna have a governess,” he said, his gaze straying to Bernadette. “It is no’ the way of the Highlands.”
Avaline dropped her gaze to her plate.
The beast glanced across the table to Bernadette, as if he knew she was the one to have put the thought in Avaline’s head. Well she hadn’t meant for Avaline to take her so literally. “Then what is the way of the Highlands?” Bernadette asked pertly.
“Pardon?” he asked, clearly not anticipating a response from her.
“If you were not minded by a governess, then how were you raised? What is the way of the Highlands? A nursemaid? I had a nursemaid until I was eight years old.”
“We were raised by wolves,” he said. “Is that no’ what is said of Highlanders in England?”
The conversation at the table slowly died away, and now everyone was listening. Bernadette smiled sweetly. “I wouldn’t know what is said of Highlanders in England, sir. We rarely speak of them.”
Captain Mackenzie laughed.
Bernadette glanced at Avaline, silently willing the girl not to shake with uneasiness sitting next to him.
Down the table, Lord Kent’s voice rose with the unmistakable hoarseness of too much drink. “Enough of nursemaids and Highlanders and whatnot. Tell me now, laird, how does your trade fare? I might as well inquire, as it will all be in the family soon enough.” He laughed.
Miss Catriona Mackenzie, seated next to her father and across from Lord Kent, choked on a sip of wine, coughing uncontrollably for a moment.
“Well enough,” the laird said quietly, and leaned to one side to rub his daughter’s back.
“Aye, well enough when we avoid the excise men,” Rabbie Mackenzie said, and chuckled darkly.
That remark was met with stunned silence by them all. Bernadette didn’t know what he meant, really, but his family seemed mortified.
Lord Kent seemed intrigued.
Suddenly, Captain Mackenzie laughed, and loudly, too. “My brother means to divert us,” he said jovially. “He is master at it, so much so that we donna know when he teases us.”
Bernadette did not miss the look that flowed between brothers, but Captain Mackenzie continued on. “I am reminded of an occasion we sailed to Norway, Rabbie. You recall it, aye?”
“I’ll no’ forget it,” his brother said.
The captain said, “We sailed into a squall, we did, the seas so high we were pitched about like a bairn’s toy. A few barrels of ale became unlashed and washed over the side with a toss
