Tea, Lycanthropy and Other Virtues

Chapter Twenty

"It's going to be a fine day for the festival games," Owen Banfield said, with a glance at the predawn sky.

Hugh and Owen were loading the wagon with everything they'd need for a day at the festival and quite a bit they wouldn't.

"It's Scotland Owen. It can always rain," Hugh said, throwing in a couple of axes.

"Aye, but I have a feeling," the gamekeeper said.

Hugh smiled. It was hard to be gloomy on a festival day. His father had loved to compete and Hugh's mother had loved all the music and vendors. It had been one of the few times he could remember when everyone in his family had been happy.

"We had hoped the lady would come for the day," Owen said, stopping to scratch Hugh's large mutt and then the entitled corgi.

For a moment Hugh wondered how the gamekeeper could even know about Constance, and then he realized he was talking about Hannah.

"We?" Hugh asked.

The young man's cheeks colored slightly. "The Campbells, my sisters and I," he said with a nod in the direction of the farmer's cottage. "We all used to be thick as thieves back in the day."

It was true. Hannah still wrote the sisters. He currently had letters in his jacket pocket he'd promised to deliver for her. His heart twisted. No doubt Hannah would have loved to come home for the festival.

"She has company at the moment," Hugh said, wondering if it would be such a terrible idea to let her visit once in a while. Though the weeks had bled into each other and they were already creeping back up on a full moon so now wouldn't have been a good time, anyway.

"Ain't that nice," Owen said with a genuine smile. "It will do my ma's heart good to hear that. She's been worried since Lady Connor's passing."

"How is your mother?" Hugh asked, loading the hampers of food the cook had packed.

Owen climbed into the wagon and took the reins. "She went down with the Campbells yesterday to camp."

Most of the villagers and farmers would have done that. The peddlers would have arrived yesterday, even though the games started today. And it would last a couple of days after the annual sheep shearing competition. It was a tradition for the two Lords and their gamekeepers to compete to see who could shear the most sheep. It was meant to be a friendly competition, one where the Lord's fell in the mud or got kicked by sheep, to the amusement of everyone else. But Lord Baines was the other Lord, his estate several miles on the far side of the village. Hugh double checked the horse's tack. Who knew what that man was capable of?

The bad blood between their families went back to the reformation, when Baines's family had fled to Scotland. Still, what had happened in Bunsall was another level of hate. Hugh still couldn't quite wrap his head around it. Baines and he barely even crossed paths. He did not know what he could have done to make the man want to frame him for murder.

"Watch yourself today," Hugh said as he climbed into the wagon and they started down the treelined drive.

"Something wrong, sir?"

"Let's just say my dislike of Lord Baines is worse than it was. I'd very much appreciate it if you could keep an eye on me. The wolf doesn't always behave."

Owen spit over the side of the wagon. "That man is a disgrace to Scotland, practically running his people off their land."

Hugh let the urge to growl pass over him, concentrating instead on the heather dotted sheep fields rolling by.

Mr. Carlson had speculated that Baines might be after something more than just disgracing Hugh and his family's name. He had suggested, rather forcefully, that Hugh go to the house of supernaturals in parliament and tell them what Lord Bains had tried to do. But Hugh had no intention of dragging Constance's name before a group of people he was ashamed to be part of.