A Very Highland Holiday - Kathryn Le Veque Page 0,28
doona think to be offering to share his bed; we’re a reputable establishment.”
“Never! I wouldn’t—that isn’t—what—” Vanessa gaped and shuddered for a reason that had nothing to do with the cold. Her driver had left her out there to freeze to death while he’d purchased a room with her fare? She should have listened when her instincts had warned her off hiring him.
Her case, growing heavier by the moment, threatened to slide out of the circle of her arms and down her body, so she bucked it higher with her hips and redoubled her efforts to hold it aloft with fingers she could no longer feel. “Is there somewhere nearby that might take me in?” she called, coughing as a particularly icy gust stole her breath.
“Aye.” He jerked his chin in a vaguely northern direction. “The Cairngorm Tavern is not but a half hour’s march up the road.” He said this as if the angry wind did not threaten to snatch her up and toss her into the nearest snowdrift.
Swallowing a spurt of temper and no small amount of desperation, Vanessa squared her shoulders before offering, “What if this rank idiot can pay you double your room rate to sleep in the stables?” She pointed to the rickety livery next to the sturdy stone building. ’Twas the season and all that. If it was good enough for the baby Jesus, who was she to turn her nose up?
At this he paused, eyeing her with speculation. “Ye’ll pay in advance?”
A knot of anxiety eased in her belly as she nodded dramatically, her neck stiff with the cold. “And triple for a warm bath.”
He immediately shook his head, his jowls wobbling like a winter pudding. “Doona think I’ll be spending me night hauling water for ye and yers.”
“J-just me,” Vanessa said, doing her best to clench her teeth against their chattering. “N-no m-mine.”
“No husband? No chaperone?” For the first time, he looked past her as the storm finished swallowing the last of the early evening into a relentless chaos of white snow and dark skies.
“I’m—I’m alone.” Vanessa told herself the gather of moisture at the corner of her eyes was the sole fault of the untenable weather. Not her untenable circumstances.
A banshee-pitched shriek sliced through the wail of the storm. “Rory Seamus Galbreath Balthazar Pitagowan, ye useless tub of guts and grog!” The door was wrenched out of the innkeeper’s hand and thrown open to reveal a woman half his height but twice his width.
She beat him about the head and shoulders with a kitchen towel, the blows punctuated by her verbal onslaught. “Ye’d leave this child to freeze to death? And the night of the solstice? If no one were here to witness, I’d wake up a widow tomorrow, ye bloody heartless pillock! Now go make up Carrie’s chamber, lay a fire, and heat water for this poor wee lass’s bath.”
Mr. Pitagowan’s arms now covered his head to protect it from the stinging abuse of his wife’s damp towel. “Carrie’s chamber? But…me love…it’s haunted. And what if she—”
“I’m sure the bairn would rather sleep with a ghost than become one, wouldn’t ye, dearie?”
At this point, she’d sleep next to the Loch Ness Monster if she could get warm. Besides, the very idea of a haunted bedroom in an ancient structure such as this one couldn’t be more tempting. She would be warm and entertained. “Oh, I don’t really mind if—”
“And tell young Dougal to put a kettle on!” Mrs. Pitagowan hollered as her husband plodded away, looking a great deal shorter now that his wife had cut him down.
Arms truly trembling now, as much from the weight of her burden as the cold, Vanessa took a step toward the door, which remained blocked by a large body. “Do you mind very much if I come insi—?”
“Are ye hungry, lass?” Mrs. Pitagowan’s hand rested atop her ample belly, which was accentuated by the ruffles of an apron that might have struggled to cover a woman two stone lighter.
“I’m actually colder than any—”
“The wee mite is starving to death, just look at her!” she shouted after her husband, snatching the case from Vanessa before she could so much as protest. “So, make sure to set aside a bowl of stew and bread!”
Panicking about her case, Vanessa held her arms out. “Oh, do be careful, that’s ever so fragi—”
“Well I doona ken why ye insist on standing out there in the cold, little ’un, come in before I can snap yer skinny wee arms