Wickham Read online

  Wickham

  The Curse of Clan Ross: Bk #4 (Previous Edition: What About Wickham)

  L.L. Muir

  Green Toed Fairy

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Excerpt from JAMES

  GET MORE BOOKS written by L.L. Muir

  About the Author

  License notes…

  To my grandmother

  ~and fellow writer~

  Lorraine Muir

  A sweet woman with a sense of humor

  that would sneak up on you and leave you in tears.

  A delicate version of Indiana Jones,

  Lorraine’s only weakness was snakes.

  Prologue

  Two months after Quinn and Jules were married in a bathroom…

  Close on Jules’ heels, Jillian hurried into the manor’s library, slammed the door shut, and locked it. Montgomery and Quinn, on the other side of the thick wood, were just catching on to what was happening.

  “Jillian!” Montgomery barked. “Ye canna mean to leave us out here, surely. What’s the harm in holding yer hand while ye read the wee book?”

  She would have laughed if she wasn’t so very nervous about the contents of her grandmother’s diary. They’d all just returned from Edinburgh where they’d retrieved the package a lawyer had left for her twin sister, Jules. It obviously contained a book, but they’d been anxious to see what their wealthy grandmother might have enclosed with it. When they’d opened it in the car, however, all it held was an old journal, which made the contents seem all that more important.

  So their nerves got the best of them and they decided to wait until they were back home to examine it.

  With their newly discovered ability to hear each other’s thoughts, she and her sister had decided, silently, they would read it together without the men hanging over their shoulders.

  It was a nice perk, being able to carry on little conversations in their heads, especially when they both were married to such over-protective, hovering husbands. So, when they’d neared the family house, Jules had sent her a quick thought.

  Library. Run.

  They’d giggled all the way from the car, but they weren’t laughing now.

  “Juliet, lass!” Quinn took his turn trying to sweet-talk his way through the door. He and Jules hadn’t been married long enough to leave each other for long periods of time. Jillian almost felt sorry for him.

  “Quinn, don’t worry,” Jules said through the crack. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “Monty?” Jillian hollered. “I think you two had better go into town and stock up on some rations. This might take us a while and I’d hate for you to starve.”

  “Rations?”

  “Yes, rations.” She smiled at her sister and waited.

  “Come now, Quinn,” Monty said. “Jillian needs chocolate. Which means the babes need chocolate.” Footsteps receded down the hall. “And I think we’ll need a few pizza pies if we’re going to lay a proper siege to that door.”

  She and Jules sighed in unison. Jillian went to the wet bar and fixed them both sodas with ice before joining her sister on the comfortable couch.

  Jules offered her the still-closed book. “Do you want to read first?”

  Jillian shook her head quickly. “Oh, no. It was left for you. You read it.”

  “Chicken.”

  “Absolutely. I knew the woman, remember?”

  Jules sighed and sat back. She took a sip of her drink and Jillian took the glass from her and set it on the coffee table.

  “Here goes.” Jules opened the cover and started reading aloud.

  Chapter One

  Wicked…

  I’m a wicked, wicked girl, and I know it.

  I got it into my head that I wanted to go spend the summer with Cousin Mary in Scotland, and I knew Daddy wouldn’t let me go, come Hell or high water. So I figured I’d just have to make him want to send me.

  And what would make an over-protective papa like mine want to send his daughter as far from home as humanly possible? A budding romance with the most undesirable pick of the Wyoming litter, of course.

  Teddy Martin.

  Poor Teddy. I don’t think he knew what hit him that spring.

  His daddy was a drunk. His mother worked at the Pine Lodge, which was really a bar, but kids weren’t supposed to know that. Most people I knew would rather die than confess their menfolk were at a bar, but saying your daddy’s down at the Pine Lodge wasn’t embarrassing because kids weren’t sure what went on in a lodge.

  On the other hand, it was embarrassing to admit your mother even had a job—didn’t matter where she worked. So Teddy had two strikes against him. Because of his parents, people didn’t expect much of Teddy; maybe that’s why he didn’t seem to expect much of himself.

  When I sat down under Teddy’s usual tree, spread out my poodle skirt, and opened up my lunch one April day, he jumped to his feet like he thought I’d brought a bee’s nest to nibble on. It took me five minutes of whispering to him to get him to sit back down. Another five to get him to smile at me—though it wasn’t very convincing. And by then it was time to return to class. I felt real bad he didn’t get his lunch eaten. He probably cursed me for the rest of the day, every time his belly growled, but how else was I going to plant that first seed, I ask you?

  Since that first seed needed a little water, I didn’t go straight home from school that day. I held back so the girls I usually rode with had no choice but to leave without me, or they’d get their own butts blistered for getting home late. Then I took a nice leisure-like walk out around Donny’s pond—we don’t remember what it was called before Donny Golightly drowned in it.

  Donny, thank heavens, wasn’t anywhere to be seen that day.

  Now, I chose that route because, when I told people later that I missed my ride and took the shortcut around Donny’s pond, no one was going to believe me. First of all, it wasn’t any shortcut, and second of all, even the older boys aren’t brave enough to walk around Donny’s pond alone, even in daylight. And this was all due to the fact that Donny supposedly got restless from time to time and made an appearance.

  I was far too determined to get to Scotland to let a lonely ghost bother me. I confess, I’m not easily scared. Daddy says money will do that to a person. Mother says it’s alcohol. And they should know. My father, Thomas Nimmo MacKay, was a Scottish engineer who never spoke enough for his brogue to be catchy. He hit oil just where he’d figured it would be. Mother hit alcohol with the same confidence, but she wasn’t a drunk. Drunks drank in bars and hid out in alleys, like in the movies.

  When I got home that day, I told our cook, Gay, where I’d been. She told my mother, of course, since she was the unofficial liaison to my parents. My mother, Laureli Waterford MacKay had, by then, heard the news about me eating lunch with Teddy Martin. Gay’s r
eport added the necessary water to the seed, and a fine little horror story had sprouted by the time my father got home from the oil field.

  Of course, neither my mother nor my father would have taken the time to consult with me, to ask if any of that particular horror story were true. That just wasn’t done. Facts were facts. No need to check ‘em.

  I was informed, by Gay, that I was to keep away from Teddy Martin for the rest of my life, or until I was dead, whichever came first. My parents, like always, thought a good stomp on a weed from an expensive pair of shoes was all it would take to make the thing shrivel up and die. They just didn’t know how many more seeds I had in my pocket.

  I waited a week before I picked on Poor Teddy again. Halfway through a film strip, he asked the History teacher, Mr. Checketts, if he could use the restroom. Everybody knew, including the teacher, Teddy wouldn’t be back. Soon after, I asked if I could go to the ladies room, so when I wasn’t in my seat when the lights came back up, the next seed was tucked a good two inches into warm, moist soil.

  I had to be careful about watering that one. Wind of it might take a day or two to get back to my parents, I figured, so I didn’t want the rain to fall too soon.

  I thought I was a fairly clever woman at the time. (I’d turned 18 near the beginning of the school year, so I thought it was quite generous of me to even show up after that.) In my substantial wisdom, I’d sent two letters to Cousin Mary a couple of weeks before I ever started planting seeds. I’d never actually met this cousin, that I could remember, but we were pen pals. But the important detail was that she lived far and away from Wyoming.

  I sent her two letters because there was no doubt in my mind that my aunt Maude Mary would insist on reading Mary’s letter after her daughter was finished with it. So, the first one was your typical “hello” and “wish you were here” kind of letter. The second one I taped shut, wrote “private” across the seal, and tucked it inside the first.

  In that one, I pled with my cousin to suggest to her parents that I come to Scotland as a reward for graduating high school. I only told her that I was planning to pester my parents so they were in the mood to get rid of me.

  The only risk was the possibility of Maude Mary having no qualms about opening Mary’s mail, finding the hidden note, and telling my parents what I was up to. But that was a risk I was willing to take. Success would be priceless, for if my plan worked, I would be able to brag for the rest of my days that I’d traveled to Europe. No one in Wyoming traveled to Europe, and I was pretty sure, except for Mr. Checketts, they’d all forgotten Europe even existed.

  When I could feel the tension rise in my house, with my parents speaking low behind closed doors, I went immediately to the fireplace in the formal living room and started a small fire. A fire was rarely lit in that particular fireplace because it was built from white stone and cleaning it was rather a mean thing to require of the staff. So it didn’t take long for Gay to come a’ running once the smell of smoke left the room.

  By then, I’d already burnt a pile of papers that looked very much like stationery. Of course Teddy Martin wouldn’t have used stationery for love letters—he wouldn’t have been caught dead writing love letters in the first place—but Gay wasn’t likely to think of that. She’d only wonder why I’d been so desperate to destroy some papers that I’d gone and built a fire in the white fireplace.

  The tension rose to the point that my father actually paced outside his bedroom, and I almost wished I’d paid more attention to my Gaelic vocabulary so I might have understood a little of what he said.

  When neither of my parents were adequately provoked to have a conversation with me, I thought the seed and rain combination needed a little sunshine, a little heat to get things moving. So I walked into the formal living room, where Daddy alternately paced and glared at the ashes in the fireplace. I innocently lowered myself into a wingback chair and smiled up at him.

  He froze in his tracks, turned a deeper shade of red than the shade he’d been sporting, and left the room. The string of curses he left in his wake were probably expected to stand in the stead of a true conversation because (and I know my father thinks this way) he allowed his feelings on the matter to be known.

  Thwarted, but only for the present, I retired to my own room where I filled four pages of a steno notebook, practicing my signature with various combinations of my name and Teddy’s. I tried Ivy Delilah McKay Martin. That was tiring, so I filled two pages with simply, Ivy Martin. And to go in for the kill, I filled the last with Mrs. Theodore Martin and Mrs. Ivy McKay Martin.

  I had no idea if Teddy’s name was Theodore, but it was a good guess. And again, neither Gay nor my parents would be interested in that detail. At the last moment, I realized the pages were lacking in emotion, so I drew small hearts all along the edges of each page. By the time I was done, I stopped and asked myself if I might have a tender feeling or two for Teddy, the newly decorated margins were that convincing.

  I folded the pages carefully and went to the laundry. When I found a skirt that had yet to be laundered, I stuffed the papers in a pocket.

  “What are you doing, there?” Gay walked up behind me and rested her chin on my shoulder. It was her idea of affection, and as much as I would have liked to tease with her, I had a more important role to play.

  I pulled the pages back out of the pocket and hid them behind my back as I turned. Since Gay was not stupid, she knew I was hiding something. She also knew me better than anyone else and would be the first to catch on if I was a poor actress, so I stuck to the truth as much as possible.

  “None of your business,” I said, and stuck my nose in the air. “I have the right to privacy like anyone else, don’t I?”

  Gay took a step back and looked me over. I suppose being nervous about my acting played to my favor. She simply rolled her eyes and held out her hand.

  “Hand it here,” she said as if she had no doubt I’d comply.

  I looked down my nose at her. “No.”

  I can honestly say that after the age of perhaps five, that might have been the first time I’d denied Gay anything. She was a warm woman. A no-nonsense kind of gal that did her job, reported to my mother because that was her job, and didn’t let the world put her in a foul mood if she didn’t want to be there.

  She wasn’t obnoxiously cheerful either. There wasn’t a dishonest or heartless bone in her body. And it was for those reasons I felt like a mean dog for using her the way I had.

  She raised her eyebrows in surprise. Then raised them higher still when I continued to stand my ground. If she’d have gotten angry and stomped off to visit with my mother, I’d have been in the clear. But she didn’t.

  She puckered those yellow and gray brows of hers over the oldest pair of puppy eyes you could imagine, but it wasn’t Gay that started crying.

  Oh, no. It was me.

  I cried for a good five minutes before I could catch my breath. I’d say she hugged me to her bosom, but it was more like the area where her bosoms used to be. She was nearing sixty and if she wore a bra, she wore it around her waist like a belt. Decades of cooking had made more of her to love, and more of her to hang, and she’d given up the fight a good ten years before. She always said by the time she was seventy she’d be able to just put her bosoms in her pockets and not have to worry about a bra again. I believed she was already past worrying at all.

  It was a fact, she wasn’t one to worry much about anything, including my crying. And she just laughed when I stopped.

  “That was a long time coming, Ivy McKay. If you’d cry more often, it wouldn’t last near as long.” She pushed my hair off my face and gave me a hankie from her pocket. “Now, you want to tell me about it? Is it this Martin boy? Broke your heart, has he?”

  She patted a kitchen stool. I sat on it while I emptied my nose. When I handed her the hankie, she just stuffed it down into her pocket like it didn’t bother her a bit.

  “I hope you don’t forget about that,” I said, eyeing her pocke
t.

  “Clean ones in the right, dirty ones in the left,” she said, patting her right pocket like it was full of five-dollar bills. “Now, about this Martin boy...”

  It was no use. I could never lie to Gay—or at least, not for long. So I told her everything.

  She sat next to me and listened, holding a clean hankie to her mouth while I talked. When I opened up the papers from the steno notepad and showed them to her, she broke out in what I thought were heart-wrenching sobs. Turned out she was laughing herself sick. She even had to run off to the bathroom at one point. I was disgusted with myself for sticking around, waiting for her to come back and laugh at me some more, but I needed to know what she was going to tell my parents.

  She came back with a sober look on her face and snatched the papers out of my hand.

  “I’m sorry, young lady,” she said. “I’m going to have to show these to your mother. You should have never tried to hide them from me in the first place.” She winked at me. “Now, if I were you, I’d march up to that room of yours and wait to see if you get any supper.”

  She dried her eyes, paused to consider the hankie before stuffing it into her left pocket, then toddled out of the kitchen like she was on a mission.

  Gay was going to play along!

  After the shock wore off, I ran to my room. As it happened, I did get supper, but it was delivered to me. Apparently my parents still weren’t ready to speak to me and sent Gay with a tray. But Gay looked worried, and Gay never worried.