“Perhaps, Miss Mena, that is because most of the Mackenzie people do not think so well of the British or their armies and corresponding titles,” Jani said sagely, hanging her pelisse and returning to the trunk.
“Just so,” Mena murmured. It had been a hundred years since the Jacobite rebellion, and yet in places like this, where tradition ran through the bones of every baby born, prejudices remained strong. She’d never been particularly political, but she remembered her father’s strident opinions against what he considered the English empire’s overreach.
Curious about Jani and his relationship to the marquess, Mena asked, “How long have you been in the laird’s employ?”
“Ten years,” he answered cheerfully.
“How much of that time have you spent here at the keep?”
“Very little, though I am quite happy to be staying. I have seen many countries and many wars, and somehow they were all in places that are very hot. I am not meaning to be complaining, but I admit that I am excited to see the snow.” He beamed at her before lifting one of her thin, white undergarments from her trunk and examining it curiously.
Mena snatched it from him and hid it behind her.
Dark eyes sparkling with naughtiness, Jani allowed himself to be directed toward the trunk containing her shoe boxes.
Sorting through her own underthings, she shoved them in a few dresser drawers before turning back to him. “May I inquire … that is … do you remember much about the late Marchioness of Ravencroft?” she ventured.
He nodded, stacking boxes dangerously high on one arm. “Lady Colleen. She was quite mad.”
“Mad?” Mena’s heart started. “As in, she belonged in an asylum.”
“Yes.”
Oh, no. Mena turned, so he could not see the fear tightening her features. Though she doubted he could over the mountain of boxes he hauled toward the turret.
My, but Millie LeCour did get carried away at the cobblers.
Biting her lip, Mena remembered back to her encounter in the library earlier that morning. An encounter with a demon? Or with her own madness?
She struggled to keep her voice casual as she asked, “Would it be terrible of me to inquire about how she … how she died? I’ve heard the children discuss it, but I’m not certain of the particulars, and I thought it cruel to ask.”
“They are ignorant of the particulars, as well,” he called from around the dividing wall. “For they are too brutal.”
“Oh?” Her heart bumped against her chest. She burned to know, but didn’t dare ask him to elaborate, so she remained quiet, hoping he’d fill the silence.
Luckily, he did just that. “She had terrible fits. So bad that the marquess had to keep her from the children. One night, she climbed up to the widow’s walk, and threw herself from it.”
Oh, dear Lord.
“Why?” Mena whispered, horrified. “Were the children in residence?” Had the marquess been?
Jani appeared around the wall shaking his head. “The children were with their maternal grandmother in London, and the laird and I were not even in the country. The marquess was called back from Rajanpour for the funeral. That was maybe more than nine years ago. Though the children think that an illness took her, and the marquess would be very angry if he found out they knew different.”
“They won’t hear it from me,” she promised.
So what had been the meaning of the ghostly encounter in the darkness of the library this morning? She’d been so tired, hadn’t she? So utterly exhausted, perhaps she’d imagined it. Perhaps she was remembering it wrong and this was all the fault of an overwrought imagination.
Needing a change of subject, she asked, “What about you, Jani? How old were you ten years ago?”
“I was a very small boy, maybe seven.”
Working alongside him to pull out all her skirts, she pressed, “That’s awfully young. Your parents allowed you to work for the marquess at that age?”
“My parents were part of a rebel force that fought the British and the East India Company. They were killed when the laird’s regiment … moved on our village. Everyone was killed, but me.” His voice remained genial, pleasant even, but his features darkened with something bleak and indefinable.
“Dear God, Jani!” she gasped. The petticoat Mena had been folding slid from her fingers and fell in a heap at her feet.
He shook his head, the deft movements of his fingers never ceasing. “It was so long ago. Time has a way of softening all tragedies, and after a while, it is easier to forget the pain of it.”
Horrified, Mena tried to focus on their task, but she simply couldn’t bear it. “But Jani, how can you bring yourself to work for him? To live under his roof and serve him?”
His dark, gentle eyes lit on her as he smiled sadly. “Because he offered me revenge.”
“What?” Mena could hardly believe what she was hearing.
“The marquess was a captain then. He and his lieutenant found me picking through the rubble searching for food. I was so angry that when I saw them I threw things, even glass. I screamed at them and spat at them. His superior took out his pistol and was about to put me down when Ravencroft stopped him. I remember being very frightened when he approached me. I never had seen a person so big before. So tall and wide. He subdued me and picked me up. Then he took me to his tent and fed me. I was so angry, but also starving.” Even in the dim light of the fading evening, the youth’s hair gleamed a brilliant black, and it matched the darkness in his eyes. “Do you know what he said to me while I ate?”