Though she spoke to Ewen, the old woman at the door seemed to be addressing Lily. The servant was looking at her expectantly, and Lily realized that she must be quite the curiosity, having been secreted up to the house unconscious. Remembering her orders to be silent, Lily merely smiled weakly at the woman. This satisfied her, for she bustled right over, put the tray down at Lily’s bedside, turned to Ewen, and said, “Aye, well, you’ll let me know when you need more of me. ”
“Thank you, Kat, you may go. ”
Kat bobbed deeply to Ewen and slipped out through the closing door. Lily noticed that the maid acted much more deferential to him than to Robert. Though, considering
Ewen ’s fearsome demeanor and looks, she couldn ’t blame the woman.
“Well then and where are our manners?” Robert sat forward in his chair and, placing hands on knees, managed to make his already straight posture even more perfect. “Introductions are in order. ”
Ewen scowled at Robert’s nonchalance and the suggestion that all matters were somehow settled. Lily had to admit she felt like scowling too. A lot more than introductions were in order, as far as she was concerned.
“Lily, may I present my brother—or shall I say foster brother?—the formidable Ewen Cameron, seventeenth captain and chief of Clan Cameron. ”
Lily wondered at their use of the word brother. It was clear that there was no way on earth the lithe blond in gold and blue silk by her side was related by blood to the commanding figure with wild hair and full Highland regalia. Even their accents were vastly different. Robert ’s accent was thick, but no worse than those of any of the men she would chat with at the pub over a dram of whisky. She found this Ewen, though, to be barely intelligible. She couldn’t quite put her finger on it, but something about the burred and rounded edges of his speech was unusually stilted to her American ear. She could barely follow his extraordinarily thick brogue and would be surprised if Ewen had ever stepped foot outside of the Highlands in his life.
Lily was unsure what her approach should be. “It … it’s nice to meet—”
Ewen turned the full force of his gaze onto her and interrupted, “Once again, lass, what can you do?”
The question felt more like an accusation from the commanding Scot. Feeling vulnerable, she tried to pull the covers up tighter below her chin, even though she was already practically strangling herself with the sheet. She spied Robert out of the corner of her eye craning his neck in interest, as if he were examining some new biology specimen, and Lily thought she understood the exasperation she sensed on the part of his elder brother.
“Wh–what?” Lily cursed herself at how feeble that had sounded.
Ewen ’s voice was gruff with impatience. “Lass, I said, what can you do? If you’re going to stay, you need to make yourself useful. Do you cook?”
Lily felt a mingled sense of relief and then panic, first as she recognized that these two strange men had accepted her, and then that she was expected to stay on in their household.
“Well?”
“No. ”
“No?”
“No, I don ’t cook. ” Lily lived on burritos and pepperoni pizza. Assembling a mean ham and cheese sandwich was the extent of her culinary prowess.
The clan leader looked dumbfounded.
“Are you good with household accounts? Managing a maid staff? Sewing? Other needlework? Tending the garden? Minding the horses?”
As she shook her head in response to his litany of questions , the clan leader’s frustration was becoming quite clear.
“Well dammit, lass, what are you good for? What is it you do for your husband to help mind your home?”
Lily’s panic turned to anger. Was he planning on setting her up into indentured servitude? “I’m not married,” she snapped.
Robert finally intervened, preventing any further escalation. He took over the interrogation loudly and slowly, as if he were translating for a child. “Now”—he stumbled for the briefest of moments on her name “Lily, if the cl— an is to take you under its protection, we need to find a place for you in the Cameron household. You weren’t married, ever?” She caught the condescension in his voice.
As Lily shook her head no, the two men exchanged a brief look of disbelief. By seventeenth-century standards, Lily was certainly beyond her marrying years, but it was obvious from her pale skin, unblemished hands, and lean body that she’d never had to do a day of hard labor in her life.
“So, did your father take care of you?”
Again, she shook her head no.
“Ahhh, I understand.” Robert shared a knowing glance with Ewen as an almost childishly naughty smile lit on the corner of his mouth. “ So, you were a, shall we say, a working woman?”
Lily began to say that, yes she was a working woman, when his insinuation finally hit home. Her face reddened, and, trying desperately to keep her temper in check, she fumed,
“NO! I am most certainly not, not that! ”