all that effort you’ve made with your Highland dress to go to waste.’
His eyes darkened. She felt the flush inside her spreading. ‘If it were not for the Rescinding, I would carry you off right now.’
‘I have gone to an enormous effort to get this Rescinding organised, Laird. You are not going to spoil it for me.’
‘No. I would not dream of it. I’m truly grateful, Ainsley.’ He kissed her cheek. ‘But just as soon as it’s over, my lady...’
‘I know. A Bonding! Whatever that entails.’
‘Haven’t you imagined it? I know I have. Lots of times.’
‘Innes! Let us concentrate on one ceremony before we start discussing another.’
He laughed. ‘Very well. I see your Miss Blair conferring with Eoin. Again. Is she spoken for?’ Innes asked.
‘She’s wedded to her career,’ Ainsley replied.
‘Do you know, you have a way of pursing up your mouth just at one corner when you fib, as if you’re trying to swallow whatever it is you’re determined not to say.’
‘I was not fibbing.’
‘You weren’t telling the truth, either.’ Innes smiled down at her. ‘I suspect your Felicity is a woman of many secrets.’ Innes put his arm around her waist, pulling her into his side. ‘I’m not really interested in Miss Blair’s private life, nor indeed Eoin’s. I’m more interested in our own. But first, it’s time for the Rescinding. Are you ready?’
‘What if I forget something?’ Ainsley asked, suddenly panicked.
‘You’ve made the whole thing go like a dream so far. Now all you have to do is to remember all the promises I make, lest I forget any. And I must forgive and forget.’ Innes rolled his eyes. ‘I cannot believe my father did this and meant it.’
* * *
The chair, like most of the Great Hall, was carved in oak and had been polished to a soft gleam. The canopy that covered it was of the same faded green velvet as the cushion. After handing Ainsley into the much simpler chair by his side, Innes sat down. He felt part foolish, part—good grief, surely not proud? No, but it was something close. The ghosts of his ancestors had got into his blood. Or having all those eyes on him had gone to his head. Or maybe it was this chair, and the hall, which was only ever used for formal occasions. His father’s birthday had always been celebrated here. The annual party for the tenants and cotters. His and Malcolm’s coming of age.
No. This was a time to look forward, not back. Innes jumped up. The room fell silent. He picked up the sword that lay at his feet, the wicked blade glittering. The sheath lay beside it. Carefully, he placed the sword inside the sheath, a signal of peace, and handed it to Eoin, who was once again playing the part of the nearest living blood relative. All of this was prescribed in the book that Ainsley had shown him. The Customs and Ways of the Family Drummond of Strone Bridge, it pompously declared itself in faded gold script. Mhairi had been insulted when he’d laughed. Ainsley had apologised on his behalf. Later, she’d teased him, calling it the Drummond Self-Help Manual. Now he was simply glad Ainsley had read it so carefully for him.
‘Friends,’ Innes said, ‘I bid you welcome. Before we begin the ceremony, it is traditional to toast the departed.’ He lifted the glass of whisky that lay ready, nodding to Ainsley to do the same, and waiting to make sure everyone watching had a glass. ‘Slàinte!’ he said. ‘To the old laird, my father. Cha bhithidh a leithid ami riamh. We’ll never see his like again.’ He drank, surprised to discover that the toast had not stuck in his craw quite as much as he’d thought it would. Perhaps it was because it was true, he thought to himself wryly. He was making sure of it.
Innes put his glass down. ‘The laird has met his maker. With him must be buried all grudges, all debts, all quarrels. A forgiving and forgetting. A Rescinding. A new beginning. And I promise you,’ he said, departing from his script, ‘that it is not the case of sweeping the dirt out of one door and blowing it into the other. That is one change. The first, I hope of many. This Rescinding is an old tradition, but today it will be done in quite a new way. No recriminations. No half measures. No payback. That is my vow to you. Let us begin.’
He sat down heavily. Sweat trickled down his back. He never made speeches. The words, his words, had not been planned, but they were his, and he’d meant them. Scanning the room anxiously, he waited for the reaction. They were an inscrutable lot, the people of Strone Bridge. The lightest of touches on his hand, which was resting by the side of his chair, made him look over at Ainsley. ‘Perfect,’ she mouthed, and smiled at him. When she made to take her hand away, he captured it, twining his fingers in hers. He felt good.
* * *
Ainsley waited anxiously. Innes had been nervous making his speech. His palm was damp. He’d been treating the Rescinding almost as a joke, at the very least a mere formality, but when he spoke it was clear that he meant every word he said. Such a confident man, and such a successful one, she had assumed speech-making came easily to him. It was oddly reassuring to discover it did not. She couldn’t decide whether she wanted there to be lots of petitioners or few, but she was vastly relieved when the first came forward, for none at all would have been a disaster.
The man was a tenant, and by the looks of him, one of long standing. ‘Mr Stewart,’ Innes said, ‘of Auchenlochan farm. What is it you wish from me?’
The old man, who had been gazing anxiously down at his booted feet, straightened and looked Innes firmly in the eye. ‘I petition the laird to forgive two wrongs,’ he said. ‘For my son, John Angus Stewart, who left two quarters rent unpaid on Auchenlochan Beag farm when he sailed for Canada. And for myself, for failing to inform the laird that the rent was unpaid.’ Mr Stewart looked over his shoulder at the rest of the room, before turning back to Innes. ‘The laird did raise the rents far beyond the value of the farms, it is true, and many of us here felt the injustice of that, but...’ He waved his hand, to silence the rumbles of agreement emanating from behind him. ‘But it was his right, and those of us who took advantage of his failing to collect were wrong, and they should be saying so now,’ he finished pointedly.
Innes got to his feet, and said the words as specified in the Drummond manual. ‘Angus Stewart of Auchenlochan, and John Angus Stewart, who was of Auchenlochan Beag, your petitions are granted, the debt is Rescinded.’
Mr Stewart nodded, his lips pursed. Before he had reached his wife, another man had come forward to proclaim another unpaid rent, and after him another, and another. Some went reluctantly, some resignedly, some went in response to Crofter Stewart’s beady-eyed stare, but they all went. The debts Innes was waiving amounted to a large sum of money. Ainsley couldn’t understand the old laird—the man was something of a conundrum—putting rents sky-high on one hand, then failing to collect them on the other. Since Mhairi assured her the laird’s mind had not wandered, she could only assume that it must have been severely warped. Twisted. That was a better word.
As Innes continued to forgive and forget, the Rescinding began to take on a lighter note. A woman admitted to burying a dog along with her husband in the graveyard of the Strone Bridge chapel. ‘Though I know it is forbidden, but he always preferred that beast’s company to mine, and the pair of them were that crabbit, I thought they would be happy together,’ she declared, arms akimbo. Laughter greeted this confession, and Innes earned himself a fat kiss when he promised the dog and the master’s mortal remains would not be torn asunder.
Whisky
