As she walked beside him through the entrance hall and across to the dining room, she felt the two guineas click together in her pocket. She had thought to give them to Lady Adella. Now she wasn’t quite certain what to do with them.“The past seems disturbingly alive,” the duke said thoughtfully, eyeing the rows of bagpipes strung from nails about the walls. Indeed, he thought, he felt like he’d chanced to walk into another world in another time. A huge battle ax hung from the mailed hand of an empty suit of armor. What he assumed was the Robertson colors, a plaid of red, yellow, and green, were draped in dusty folds about a red coat of arms in the shape of a shield above an empty, cavernous fireplace.“Yes,” she said, “particularly during a winter storm blowing from the sea. The winds whistle down the chimney and make the tartans quiver and billow out, as if they were alive.” She shut her mouth. Talk about boring him with talk of her halibut that all of them had eaten for two days.
