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help her tie the ribbon every morning.”
    “ Then I shall make certain to comment on its beauty. Thank you.” McKenna gave Sarah a quick hug, watched her leave, and then pulled a paper and pencil out of her pocket. She sat in a chair and started to make a list of what more they needed for the upstairs sitting room. The room faced the front yard with a grand view of the town through the trees, and she expected to spend a lot of her time there. A lamp would be nice and a table and chairs for playing cards.
    McKenna leaned back, closed her eyes, and sighed. “Olivia will hate it no matter what we put in here.”

    Just before bed and in the privacy of their third-floor sitting room, the servants gathered to share the pies Halen made for them the day before.
    “‘ Tis nearly morning in Scotland,” Alistair mentioned, helping himself to a piece of pie. “My eyes see darkness outside, but my mind thinks ‘tis time to get up.”
    “ I am the same,” said Jessie.
    “ Is the duchess truly as awful as you say, Sassy?” Halen asked.
    There was a shortage of chairs, but sitting on the floor was nothing new to Sassy and she quickly made herself comfortable. Before she answered the question, however, she glanced at Alistair. When he didn’t give her that warning look, she felt free to answer, “She be worse than the put-her.”
    “ The put-her?” Prescot asked.
    “‘ Tis what we called Old Mrs. Forthright. Each and every night we prayed God would put-her out, you see.”
    Sarah giggled, handed Sassy a piece of pie and then sat down beside her on the floor. “A put-her, the duchess is too, then?”
    Sassy signed. “I was forced to add the duchess to my prayers right after I got a good tongue whipping from her on the ship.”
    Said Jessie, “Mr. MacGreagor will not put the duchess out; he loves her. When they first married he was so smitten, he knew not half of what he was doin’.”
    “ He was much younger then,” Blanka reminded.
    Keith nodded, “He has grown up a lot in the time I have known him.”
    Halen scoffed. “And what do you know of growing up, or of being in love? You are a boy yourself.”
    “ I am twenty-three, I’ll have you know. I…”
    Jessie ignored Keith, “‘Tis not easy to fall out of love. I still love a lad, even though he be the worst sort of lad, and I have not seen him in twenty years.”
    “ Mr. Hannish will not let love keep him from seein’ her for what she is,” Donnel said. “I have known the MacGreagors since the children were small. Their father was a stern, but loving man who kept them well rounded up. He dinna abide nonsense, and neither will his son. Mark my words, Olivia MacGreagor is more nonsense than her husband will abide.”
    Charlotte looked positively joyful to hear it, did not notice Sarah watching her, and would not have cared if she did. Charlotte’s hopes were high, very high indeed.

    CHAPTER 3

    Just as Sarah said, there were housemaid uniforms aplenty on hand but they needed alterations. The next day, in an empty room not far from the kitchen, Charlotte put the Singer Vibrating Shuttle Sewing Machine to good use and became the Mansion’s in-house seamstress. While she loved to sew, especially on such a nice new machine, she had a few complaints.
    “ I am so tired of sewing the same color cloth all day long. I cannot quite decide if the cloth is blue or gray,” she whined when Sarah walked into the room.
    “ Perhaps this will help.’ She showed Charlotte where the seam of her white apron was coming apart. “Can you fix it?”
    “ With pleasure, it will only take a minute.”
    Sarah walked to the window and looked out at the tilled ground where Hannish hoped to plant a rose garden. Alistair was outside looking at it too, and when he spotted her, she nodded. For a butler, Alistair was a friendly sort, a little prim and proper perhaps, but not all starch and vinegar the way some butlers were. It was plain to see he had taken Sassy under his wing, and