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Taking a moment to gather her equanimity, she smoothed her palms down the front of her ice-blue and ivory gown and arranged her features into a benign expression. These people wouldn’t catch her making calf-eyes at the duke. A widow comported herself with more finesse than that.

Berget gave her a cheery little wave and a bright smile. Barely pausing in inhaling their food, Graeme and Camden nodded a cordial greeting. The Kennedy brothers certainly knew how to eat. Sion had been no different.

She made her way toward the remaining empty chairs at the foot of the table. Servants scurried here and there, serving the guests and retrieving more food from the kitchens. They were efficient, organized, and courteous. Trentwick claimed a superbly trained staff.

A pair of footmen cleaned the great fireplace’s hearth of ashes, their actions supervised by a hunch-shouldered wisp of a woman wrapped in a worn Kennedy tartan. Her white hair hung to her waist, and the ravages of time had left deep grooves in her aged face. Nonetheless, her faded blue eyes sparked with liveliness, belying her advanced years.

Ah, the duke permitted the redding tradition—the removal of ashes from the hearth as part of the Hogmanay celebration. In all the years she’d lived at Killeaggian Tower, the servants had swept the hearths clean the last day of the year when the family was otherwise occupied.

Did Keane also participate in first-footing?

Probably. Why wouldn’t he?

Not only was he the laird and a duke, but he was also tall, dark, and handsome, personifying the luckiest visitor a guest might have after the stroke of midnight.

Giving him a surreptitious glance from beneath her lashes, Marjorie pressed a hand to her quivering tummy. She well understood that sentiment.

Alas, with her red hair, she was the worst guest to have step across the threshold and was thoroughly unwelcome in any home at the stroke of midnight the last day of the year. Though she’d lived in Scotland ten years, she’d never visited a single home for first-footing, nor had she ever been invited to participate.

Scots were highly superstitious.

Sliding her brothers-in-law, currently heartily engaged in clearing their plates, a considering glance, she wasn’t certain whether that had been an oversight or a deliberate act.

Although she mightn’t believe in the folklore herself, she wasn’t so full of self-importance as to disregard or ridicule traditions and rites others highly valued. To do so was the height of arrogance, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness.

Previously, Marjorie hadn’t taken offense that her coloring was feared, and assuredly she didn’t this Hogmanay either. After all, she had no control over the shade of her hair or eyes.

That was the good Lord’s doing and, in truth, she quite liked her hair.

What was more, she made a point to praise her daughters’ flaming hair as well, lest they come to think of themselves as inferior. God help the man or woman who belittled either of them because of the color of their locks. No marauding Vikings were going to break down any doors this century, so the fear was misplaced.

A boisterous masculine laugh brought an end to her wayward musings.

After seeing to her morning ablutions and dressing with admirable alacrity, Marjorie had swiftly checked on Cora and Elana. Finding them in the throes of a fit of giggles as they dangled feathers from strings for Sphynx and Chimera to pounce upon, she’d kissed their heads and promised to return later and play for a while before she rushed to the great hall.

A nagging fear that something had happened to Keane, and that was why he hadn’t kept his word to seek her out upon his return to the keep, had grown to such an extent that she was practically frantic by the time she’d all but hurtled into the great hall.

Fool, she chided herself. Keane didn’t mean anything by asking you to wait up for him.

But she had waited, hands pressed to her belly to calm the unease coiling there. Until the clock struck one. Even after dousing the candles in her chamber, she lay wide awake staring up at the pleated canopy. Ears pricked, she’d listened for Keane’s knock upon her chamber door.

It hadn’t come.

Throughout the afternoon and evening yesterday, Marjorie had discreetly asked several servants if there’d been any word about the fire. No one had information to impart, or if they knew something, they weren’t talebearers. Another reason to appreciate Keane’s dedicated staff.

She didn’t dare inquire about Keane directly for fear of rousing suspicions, but she’d opted to take dinner in her chamber but had then left the tray untouched. Worry had quashed her appetite.

Repeatedly, she’d wandered to the window, brushing aside the heavy brocade draperies, and peered into the starless night. Apprehension, trepidation, and self-recrimination twisted around and around in her mind and middle.

How, in the span of four and twenty hours, could she have gone from thinking Keane Buchannan a colossal churl to fretting over his wellbeing to the extent she felt ill?

Well, that scorching, sense-shattering, knee-buckling kiss might’ve had something to do with it. Praise the saints, what he did to her.

Marjorie had experienced passion with Sion, but no kiss—no kiss—had rendered her an incoherent, jelly-kneed ninny. What was more, Keane’s kiss had awakened a yearning she’d thought dead. The desire to lie with a man, to wrap her arms and legs about his hard, muscular body and take him deep within her. To experience carnal bliss again.

Slipping into an empty chair beside Bethea, she returned her friendly smile.

“Good mornin’ to ye, Lady Marjorie.”