She’d known the keep would be large, as it was a castle, after all. But this estate had to boast at least a hundred rooms, perhaps more.
Mena took another moment to close her eyes and silently send a whisper of gratitude to the Blackwells for arranging this new life for her. Here might be that isolated place at the end of a lane where she could exist in quietude and seclusion. Just as she’d imagined at Belle Glen.
She hoped the carriage debacle would be her only unpleasant surprise for the rest of the day. If she avoided anyone like the frightening Highlander she’d met on the road, she’d likely succeed.
His men had been nice enough, one of them even going so far as to drive the carriage to Ravencroft. But his savage visage had unsettled her, so much so, her heart had yet to slow from its frantic pace.
What was it about a ferocious man that terrified her so? To date, it had been so-called civilized men that had caused her harm.
But the power in the Highlander’s body as he’d strained and lifted the carriage with his men had impressed her to a bewildering degree. It had to be his sheer, inconceivable size. And the magnitude wasn’t only pertaining to his towering height, but the breadth of his shoulders and the depth of his chest. Some of that had to be the cloak he wore, didn’t it?
Mena knew Dorian Blackwell as a well-built man, strong and broad. And likewise Christopher Argent filled a doorway with impossibly wide shoulders, his like not often seen in the boroughs of London. But … Mena didn’t think she’d ever witnessed a feat of strength to match what she’d seen today. Never cast her eyes upon a man so large and well hewn. His kilt had revealed more than it covered as he’d used his tree-trunk thighs to lift the carriage. His neck had corded and jaw clenched in a most … captivating manner. The disturbing notion that something even more intriguing was happening beneath the thick cloak still hadn’t abandoned her thoughts.
Lord help her, she hadn’t been able to look away.
Once he’d galloped off into the mist, she’d had a strange feeling, much like she’d done after stumbling upon an uncommon creature in the wild, and watching it leap into the shadows. The sense of disenchantment in the knowledge that such a glimpse was rare and extraordinary, and one was likely not to experience it again.
Which was for the best, she decided. Who knew what a man like that was capable of?
Mena sobered a bit when the carriage passed the entrance with the grand stairway and circumvented the keep toward a wide but decidedly less grand portal in the back.
The servants’ entrance.
Right. Now was the time to remember not who she had been, but who she was meant to become.
She filled her lungs with a bracing breath, though nothing could have prepared her for the streak of color in the form of what she supposed was a footman, who danced down the few stone steps. He opened the door with a flourish, covering the space with an overlarge umbrella.
“Miss Philomena Lockhart?” He swept her one carpetbag right off her lap before she had the chance to reply, and gave her the most graceful bow she’d ever seen. It was much like being accosted by a sunrise. “I am Rajanikan Dayanand, valet to Laird Liam Mackenzie, Marquess Ravencroft, and I have arrived for the purposes of collecting you and conducting you to the keep.”
The word vibrant aptly described both the lean young man’s manners and his wardrobe. A bright orange and gold silk kurta shimmered from beneath his crimson sherwani, what Mena understood to be the name of the long, lushly embroidered coat favored by the Hindu people. His legs were wrapped in bolts of umber silk, the same color as the long scarf draped around his neck.
Mena took his outstretched hand and ducked under the umbrella with him as they trotted up the stairs and into an alcove off the kitchens that served as a cloakroom.
“Thank you, Mr. Dayanand.” She shook a few stray drops of moisture off her wool pelisse as he wrestled the umbrella closed and stowed it in the stand.
“Everyone calls me Jani.” His smile was luminous and his black eyes sparkled. Beneath all the opulent drapery he wore, his true age was indecipherable. He could have been fifteen or twenty-five, though his skin was the color of teak, and just as smooth.
“Jani, then.” She offered her hand. “I am—”
“Miss Philomena Lockhart, yes, I know. We’ve all been very curious to meet you.” He swept his hand to the cluster of staff gathered in the kitchens on various perches all staring at her in peculiar silence.
A collection of maids were gathered around a large table laid with tea, as a kitchen girl paused in the middle of clearing the evening meal to gawk. A handful of footmen, livery, and ground workers sat on rough-hewn stools at the cooking island, their meaty hands wrapped around tankards of ale as they’d been chatting with a portly cook as he turned a large spit adorned with what appeared to be some sort of lake fowl. They were all filthy and exhausted, peering at her from behind bleary eyes and sooty features.
“How do you do?” Mena pleased herself by saying around the heart beating in her throat as she executed a slight curtsy.
She suddenly felt a pang of guilt for not getting to know her servants better. Though in her husband’s household, such familiarity would not have been tolerated. She’d been utterly isolated, even from the kindness of her staff.
The men at the cooking island nodded back to her, their stares oddly concentrated as a few of them mumbled something that she thought was whit like?
Hoping it was a local greeting, she replied. “It’s a pleasure.”