Page 58 of The Iron Earl
Following her, Evalyn turned sideways and scooted through the narrow opening.
A library, or a museum of some fashion, greeted her on the other side. Heavy drapes covered the windows, blocking the daylight and leaving only the roaring flames in the fireplace to lend light to the room. Books lined the lower cabinets—not taller than her waist—that ringed the spacious room, and above them paintings of every shape and size filled the walls. Filled the walls from bookcases to ceiling. Naught but slivers of plaster showed between them, the frames of all manners—from elaborate gilded masterpieces, to deep mocha-colored carved mahogany ones, to simple raw wooden casings.
Evalyn spun slightly in the room, instantly uneasy.
She’d lived in her stepfather’s home where mounted animals of all sorts filled the rooms, their glass eyes immortalizing them in ever awake states, so she knew what it was to have soulless eyes watching her.
But this room sent a shiver down her spine. In every painting that hung on the walls—most of them portraits—eyes followed her. Female eyes. Male eyes. Eyes of children. Eyes of the elderly. Blue eyes. Green eyes. Brown eyes.
Men on horseback. Women in full court dress, adorned with jewels. Families seated, wolfhounds at their feet. Medieval scenes. Tartan clad men. Every portrait that had ever been painted on these lands, plus a hundred more, had to have been hanging in this room.
The chamber of eyes watched her as she stepped into the room. Followed her as she came to a halt on the middle of the Axminster carpet that lined only half of the stone floor.
Glared at her movements.
Judged her.
Hundreds of piercing eagle eyes that stared at her from every direction.
The shiver that had run down her spine skittered back up to prickle the skin on her neck.
“That will be all, Maggie.” A craggy voice cut into the stale air and made her jump. She spun to the sound, finding the profile of an elderly man sitting in a wingback chair turned toward the enormous curved stone fireplace.
Maggie backed out of the room, pulling the heavy door closed with her exit.
“Don’t just stand there. Move over into the light, girl.” The voice, cracking with age, yet so commanding, made Evalyn hop and cautiously approach the fireplace.
She stopped three steps away from the wingback chair and turned to Lachlan’s grandfather, locking her arms straight along her sides. She’d done this too many times before, her gut churning. Present herself for inspection. Inspections that she inevitably failed.
But this was Lachlan’s grandfather. Her future. A future she was starting to allow herself the smallest margin to believe in, even though she knew it was foolish to do so.
She braced herself, looking to him.
The man was older than his voice. Deepset lines on his face were almost swallowed by the number of smaller wrinkles cutting across his skin. Hazel eyes she recognized—the very same as Lachlan’s—squinted at her through the folds of skin.
His wiry grey eyebrows arched, or at least she thought they did, as it was hard to discern what did and did not move on his face.
His right fingers on the plush arm of the chair lifted, his crooked forefinger extending out, though curled with creaky bones that wouldn’t let his finger truly straighten to point at her. “Well, yer a bonny lass, if nothing else.” He sent his forefinger in a circle. “Let’s hear ye speak.”
“Hear me speak, my lord?”
He cringed, his layered wrinkles collapsing onto one another as his head snapped back. “I’d hoped to the last it wasn’t true—that whelp bringing home a blasted Englishwoman for a bride.”
She bowed her head and her voice settled into the well-practiced docile tone that she always maintained with her stepfather. “I understand that an English-born woman is not what you wished for in a wife for your grandson.”
He jabbed his finger in the air at her. “Ye think I care about yer birthplace, child?” His eyes narrowed at her, almost disappearing into the folds of his transparent skin. His palm slammed so hard onto the arm of the chair she was afraid it would shatter his bones. “Well, I do. But I care more about the damn betrothal that was the key to the Vinehill future—key to keeping our people on our lands. That union was to gain us the best flock in Scotland and stability for our lands.”
Evalyn kept her head inclined. “I apologize for the disappointment, my lord. This union was not planned upon by either Lachlan or myself.”
“Eh? Not planned upon?”
She shook her head. “No. I was merely to accompany Lachlan here to Vinehill, and then I was to become part of the household, possibly work in the kitchens.”
“Then why—did ye lift yer skirts for him and the fool boy fell besotted?”
A flush wrapped around her neck. “Ah—no. That is not what happened at all.”
“Good, good—then we can fix this, child. I can have papers for a divorce drawn up today.”