Tempting The Laird

“Yes, why indeed?” Mr. Orlov seconded as his hand strayed near Miss Mackenzie’s, his fingers touching her thumb. “You do not mean to deprive us of your lovely company, surely. You must stay the summer, Miss Mackenzie, for I shall be highly offended if you do not.”

Miss Mackenzie laughed. “You might be offended for all of an afternoon, sir, but I’ve no doubt you’d find suitable company, aye?”

“Oh, she means to stay,” Norwood said dismissively. “She’s been too long in the Highlands.”

“Too long in the Highlands, as if that were possible!” Miss Mackenzie playfully protested. “You know verra well that I’ve an abbey to attend to, you do, Uncle Knox. I intend to leave in a fortnight.”

“An abbey!” Mrs. Templeton said, and snorted. “I would not have guessed you a nun.”

Miss Mackenzie did not take offense to that purposeful slight. She laughed again, delighted by the remark. “On my word, I’ve no’ been accused of being a nun, Mrs. Templeton. But I’ve wards that need looking after, aye?”

“You’re far too young for wards, Miss Mackenzie,” Mrs. Wilke-Smythe said graciously.

“She is indeed, but she speaks true,” Norwood says. “My niece and her dearly departed lady aunt have provided shelter for women and children for a few years now.”

Shelter for women and children? Wards? Hamlin looked curiously at Miss Mackenzie. He himself had a ward. That she had a ward—several of them, by the sound of it—aroused his curiosity.

She looked around the table at everyone’s sudden attention to her. Her laugh was suddenly self-conscious. “Why do you all look at me this way, then? Have you never done a charitable thing, any of you?”

“’Tis more than charity, my darling,” Norwood said.

“What women?” Mrs. Templeton demanded. “What children?”

“Women who’ve no other place to go, aye?” Miss Mackenzie explained. “They’ve taken up rooms at an abandoned abbey on property my family owns, that they have.”

“Why have they no place to go?” Miss Wilke-Smythe asked with all the naivete of her age.

“That’s...that’s no’ an easy answer, no,” Miss Mackenzie said, and shifted uncomfortably. For the first time since Hamlin had made her acquaintance, she seemed at a loss for words and looked to her uncle for help. “It’s that they are no’ welcome in society or with families for...for various reasons.”

“Good Lord,” Furness said. “Do you mean—”

“Aye, I mean precisely that, milord,” she said quickly before he could say aloud who these women were. “Women who have been cast out, along with their children.”

That was met with utter silence for a long moment. Mrs. Wilke-Smythe looked at her husband, but he was staring at Miss Mackenzie.

Privately, Hamlin marveled at her revelation. The sort of charitable work she was suggesting she did was the kind generally reserved for Samaritans and leaders of the kirk. Ladies of Miss Mackenzie’s social standing might embroider a pillow or collect alms, but they did not generally participate in a manner that would put them into direct contact with such outcasts. Or at least, they would not house them. It appeared that Miss Mackenzie was more than a pampered woman of privilege.

“What do you make of it, Montrose?” MacLaren abruptly asked him. “Seems the sort of thing you’d run across now and again in the Lords, does it no’? Social injuries, poor morals and the like?”

“They donna have poor morals,” Miss Mackenzie said, her voice noticeably cooler. “Or if they have poor morals, it is because the poor morals were forced onto them.”

MacLaren ignored her, his gaze on Hamlin. “Well? What would you say to someone with Miss Mackenzie’s passion for the depraved?”

“They are no’ depraved!” she said, her voice rising.

“Yes, your grace, what do you say to it?” the countess asked him.

One reason Hamlin was intent on gaining a seat in the House of Lords was to address social injustice, to move Scotland forward, away from the rebellions of the past. Change was needed. Many people had been displaced by the rebellion, he knew, but even he was taken aback by this. Women and children living in a run-down abbey? He glanced at Miss Mackenzie, who was watching him without any discernible expectation. He realized she didn’t care what he thought of it. That also intrigued him. “One canna dictate or impose on the charitable intentions of another, aye?”

“One can if it’s wrong,” MacLaren said.

Miss Mackenzie’s gaze narrowed slightly, and she looked away.

“For God’s sake, Rumpel, take that arrangement away, will you?” Norwood complained. “I can’t see Cat from here.”

The butler moved at once to remove the offending peonies.

“Catriona is a philanthropist,” Norwood continued, looking around at them all.

“Philanthropy!” Countess Orlov suddenly laughed. “Of course, that explains it! I understood something much different, but now I understand it plainly. The Orlov family is among the greatest philanthropists of Russia.”

Miss Mackenzie’s face had turned a subtle shade of pink. “’Tis no’ philanthropy,” she said low. “My family is verra generous with their resources, aye, but ’tis a wee bit different for me. I verra much want to help them. By the saints, I donna understand anyone who’d no’ want to help them. Their lives have unfurled in ways through no fault of theirs, and life can be verra cruel to women, it can.”

“Oh, dear,” Mrs. MacLaren muttered despairingly. “Do you mean that life has been cruel to you, then?”

“To me?” Miss Mackenzie clucked her tongue. “No’ to me. I’ve had every privilege. But to women born to less fortunate circumstances, aye? Women without a family fortune to gird them, aye? I’ve wanted for nothing in my life, no’ a thing. But these women? They’ve wanted for compassion and love, a place to call their own. They’ve wanted food for their children and shoes for their feet. Some of them have come with hay stuffed into their shoes to keep the damp from seeping in. Can you imagine it, any of you?”

It was the height of indelicacy to speak of these things at a supper table, but Hamlin found her response to be intriguing and, frankly, righteous. Everyone needed to understand the inequalities that existed in their world.

“I wouldn’t know about that, but life has certainly been cruel to me,” Mrs. Templeton said bitterly, prompting Norwood to pat her kindly on the hand before she swiped up her wineglass and drank. Mrs. Templeton seemed to have forgotten she was dressed in silk and dripping in jewels. She clearly didn’t understand what cruel meant.

“What madness is this?” Furness demanded of Norwood. “How is it your family has allowed one of your own to...to consort with such women and in such a public manner?”

“I beg your pardon, sir, but my uncle doesna speak for me,” Miss Mackenzie said calmly, although the color was high in her fair cheeks, and her grip of the table so tight that Hamlin could see the whites of her knuckles from where he sat. “Griselda Mackenzie, God rest her soul, turned an old abbey into a safe haven for the forlorn and the lost, aye? I donna know all the circumstances that brought these women to Kishorn, but it never mattered to her, it did no’—what mattered was that they’d lost their husbands and fathers and brothers, with no one to provide for them, or had escaped situations in which their bodies were used for the pleasure of men.”

Mrs. Wilke-Smythe gasped with alarm. Her daughter’s eyes rounded.

“None of them had a place to go, no’ until Zelda revived the old abbey for them.”

“But that’s...that’s hardly proper,” Mrs. Wilke-Smythe said uncertainly.

“Neither is it proper to leave them in the cold with no hope,” Miss Mackenzie retorted.

“But what do you do?” Miss Wilke-Smythe asked, clearly enthralled by this unexpected side of Miss Mackenzie, while her mother withered in her seat, clearly undone by the world beyond ivy-covered walls. “Do you mean you are with them?”

Miss Mackenzie let go her grip of the table and touched a curl at her neck. “Aye, I am. I see after them, that’s what,” she said with a shrug. “I see that they have all they need.”

“My niece is to be commended,” Norwood said firmly, but it was clear to Hamlin that few others in this room, with perhaps the exception of Vasily Orlov, shared his view. “Frankly, it is unconscionable that there are those who would cast out these women and children from the safety of an old abbey when they can’t properly fend for themselves,” he continued.

“Who would cast them out?” asked MacLaren.

“Highland lairds,” Miss Mackenzie said. “They donna like them so close, aye? They can find no pity in their hearts, can see no value in them. They view them as hardly better than cattle.”

“How do you presume to know what is in the hearts of the lairds?” Lord Furness demanded.

“Englishmen, too,” she continued, ignoring him. “They want the land for their sheep. They mean to seize the property. The Crown has determined it forfeit.”

“On what grounds?” MacLaren asked gruffly.