"Tell me, was it your decision not to sweep the floor or dust the furniture?"
The girls exchanged glances. "I told you we should've—" Kirsty began, then bit her lip.
Aileen lifted her chin and said with an edge of defiance, "It was a busy day yesterday. There were more important things to do than to sweep a floor that Himself wouldna notice. Men don't."
"Did Mrs. Findlay tell you that?"
Aileen shrugged. "She inspected the room herself."
"I see. So this is how the women of Roskirk honor their laird? Leaving him with a dirty bedchamber—on his wedding night?" She spoke quietly, but Kirsty burst into tears.
"I'm sorry, ma'am. We honor the laird, truly we do. We didn't mean—" She looked at Aileen and broke off, sobbing into her handkerchief.
Aileen said nothing. She didn't look particularly repentant.
"I'll be speaking with Mrs. Findlay shortly," Jeannie said. "And some time after that I'll be taking tea with my husband's uncle. While I'm gone, I want this room swept, scrubbed and polished until it shines. When I return, I don't want to see a speck of dust or a single cobweb."
"Yes, m'lady," Kirsty said.
"If you've no other duties for me, m'lady, I'll help, too," Mairie said, and Jeannie nodded.
"And what if Mrs. Findlay wants us for something else?" Aileen asked. It was a clear challenge to Jeannie's authority.
She gave the girl a cool look. "I'll explain to Mrs. Findlay why you've been detained." She turned to leave and seeing the tumbled bedclothes, added, "Oh, and put fresh sheets on the bed, please." She tried not to blush.
"But it's no' washing day—" Kirsty began.
"Whisht, Kirsty," Mairie hissed, pulling a face in silent explanation. Kirsty looked puzzled at first, then turned bright red. Jeannie's face felt quite as hot.
There was nothing wrong in the maids thinking she'd gone a virgin to her marriage bed—that had been the point of Cameron's gallant gesture, after all— but she still felt guilty. And embarrassed.
She swept from the room, her cheeks aflame. Marriage in a castle was so very . . . public.
Chapter Ten
Cameron straddled the ridge board of the roof as he hammered down battens. The rafters were already in—they were making good progress. The roof belonged to the cottage of Bridget Fraser, a young widow with three wee bairns. Bridget's man had been killed in an accident the previous spring.
Cameron had sent his cousins off to clear away the debris of the wrecked bridge, and had organized several other, more skilled men to work with him. Bridget's roof was the worst damaged by the big storm. And having originally been made generations before with bits and bobs of driftwood, it had shattered under the onslaught of the storm and now needed a whole new framework as well as new thatch.
"Thank you so much for this, Laird," Bridget said when he arrived. "My father-in-law has sheltered us since the storm, but it's no' a big cottage and with three lively bairns underfoot, well"—she grimaced—"he's a good man, but no' the most patient of beings."
Cameron laughed. Bridget's father-in-law was famously irascible. It was one of the things he'd taken into account in deciding whose roof would be repaired first.
He hammered briskly, enjoying the activity and the thin morning sunshine, and glad to be able to make the repairs that had gnawed at him while his uncle was in control.
And Bridget had called him Laird. It was still a new enough appellation to make him smile. He was laird at last, with a wife and all.
A wife. In name only at this stage. She wanted courting first. Courting! And poetry! He wasn't the kind of man who spouted poetry. He glanced at Robbie Ross, busily laying thatch at the other end of the roof.
"Robbie, when you were courting Jessie, what kind of things did you do?"
Robbie snorted. "No' enough, I can tell you. Jessie's da' kept his eye on us the whole time. And if it wasn't her da' with us, it was her ma, or her granny."
Cameron grinned. "Aye, but apart from no' doing what you itched to do, what did Jessie like about the courting?
Robbie didn't look up from his thatching. "Och, she liked me to bring her little gifts. I gave her a hair comb once that pleased her well, things like that. Mostly we sat with the old folks looking on, trying to think of things to talk about. But usually after a few minutes her da' would find me some wee job to do around the place, and after that Jessie or her mam would make me a cup of tea and that was it—off home for me. A quick kiss if I was lucky, and most of the time I wasn't."
Robbie sat back, viewed his progress and reached for another bundle of thatch. He glanced at Cameron and added, "You made the right choice, man—skippin' the courtship and going straight to marriage."
