The Bachelor's Bride (The Thompsons of Locust Street #1) - Holly Bush Page 0,44

and everyone knows you were out here kissing Mr. Pendergast.”

Elspeth hurried down the hall, checking her hair as she went. Surely no one would know that she’d been kissed and her world had been turned upside down. She hurried to the settee, not looking at anyone else in the room.

Aunt Murdoch turned to Muireall. “It’s time. Rory and Cullodena couldn’t have meant forever. A destiny can’t be a secret, you know. A destiny is a pronouncement all on its own. They knew that this family would fight for its rightful place and that someday the battle lines would be drawn. That day has arrived, Muireall. Take up the charge, girl. Take up the charge and let your soldiers know what they fight for. Your father would expect no less of you, of any of you,” Aunt said and looked around the room at each of them.

“Mrs. McClintok? Come into the room and bring Robbie too,” Muireall said. “You are our cousin, after all.”

“Cousin?” the housekeeper said.

“Your mother was sister to Rory, their father, although there was an argument of some kind, and your mother and father moved far away as soon as they were married,” Aunt said. “Rory kept track of his siblings, and that included your mother, even though they did not communicate for twenty years. When he found it necessary to move his family to America, he discovered you, his niece, had come here with your husband and son and that your husband had been killed in a coal mine not long after you arrived. He contacted the minister where you were living and asked him to recommend that you apply as a housekeeper for the newly arrived Thompson family.”

Everyone in the room was silent, all staring at Mrs. McClintok as she held her hand to her chest, her face pale. “Yes. The reverend came to my home and told me that a family from Scotland would be arriving and would need a housekeeper. We are Thompsons, then? Robbie and I?”

“You are MacTavishes. From your mother’s side. She was the next child after Rory in his family. Did she ever tell you her maiden name?”

“She said it was Daniels. She said her surname was Daniels.”

“That was her and Rory’s father’s middle name.”

“Sit down, Mrs. McClintok, please. You are white as a ghost,” Kirsty said. “Robert, Payden, get some brandy for Mrs. McClintok and carry in the tea tray.”

“We are cousins, then? Robbie and I?” Payden asked as he went to the door. “Excellent!”

Elspeth sat quietly, as did James and Kirsty. Mrs. McClintok was asking Aunt some particulars about relatives, but Elspeth was not listening. Her stomach was roiling now, and she knew with some certainty that her world would shift in the next hour or so. Would it shift so much that Mr. Pendergast, Alexander, would continue to be part of it? She hoped. She certainly hoped so.

Robbie and Payden brought in the tea cart and sat side by side on the floor while Kirsty passed the tea and the brandy to Mrs. McClintok and James. Elspeth looked expectantly at Muireall.

She took her time looking each of her siblings in the eye. She was grim-faced but determined, it seemed to Elspeth.

“What I am about to tell you must never be told outside our family. The reason is that our brother’s life will be in considerable danger, and we will never risk him.”

“James can take care of himself,” Payden said. “How ridiculous of you to think he is some poor defenseless sap.”

Elspeth had seen Payden get under Muireall’s skin on many occasions. He was the age where he was no longer a boy and yet not quite a man, and he had the sharp mind and tongue to be a nuisance—a loved nuisance, but trying all the same. But Muireall did not look disturbed at all. She looked at him with love and tenderness.

“But it is not James who we are concerned with. It is you, Payden.”

He shrugged. “Why would you be concerned with me? Other than when I don’t do my studies to your satisfaction. I do my chores, I—”

James knelt in front of him. “You are the only son. You are the heir.”

“That can’t be,” Payden said. “You’re my older brother!”

“I’m a cousin, like Robbie here. My parents died when their ship sank near Edinburgh while they were traveling down the coast of Scotland. My mother was the youngest sister of Rory, your father. I was only a year old when it happened, and your father and