Lady Eilean

Chapter 4

Initially, I thought Alex's departure was a temporary punishment. As the months passed, it became clear that he would remain on the Mainland — permanently. When the mood would strike, I would sit down and write long-winded letters to him. Explaining how I had not meant to send him away, that I wished he was still here, that we could still friends. Telling him in no uncertain terms that I was lonely without him, that I was sorry. My half-finished letters only made it as far as the fire where the paper curled as it burned.

Eventually, my guilt abated. Soothing myself into non-action with reason and rationality, I could numb the pain of his absence. I told myself he was too busy to think about me. No doubt he was happy running his own estate, learning the ins and outs of Lordship. Plus, my brothers had found me less tolerable as they grew older — why shouldn't Alex? As a young man, he would need more appropriate friends. My letters would only annoy him. What claim did I have on the Lord of the Fist of the Mainland? I was no one of consequence, a silly girl from a small island far, far away. I offered no advantage to someone as grand as Alexander Leslie. My usefulness started and stopped with my ability to marry and have children.

After Alex left, my education changed. Mother again stepped in as my primary teacher and math, science, and debate were replaced with dancing, etiquette, and penmanship. Deportment and embroidery overtook my life. Where Alex and I had once filled the day with pranks and jokes, now I was expected to plan imaginary dinner parties and perfect my memorization of the hierarchy of Lairds of the Islands.

When not squirming under my mother's instructions, I was strictly confined to the castle grounds. In a matter of months I became cordoned off, separate, removed from the life of freedom and laughter I had once known. I only saw my father and brothers at mealtimes. They ignored me entirely. Most days would pass without a word of consequence being uttered by my mouth.

I became an alcove dweller. Slipping silently down corridors; silk-slippered feet sliding over the cool, polished floors. I was alone. I listened at doorways, curious to know what lives people might enjoy on the other side of them. The servants caught me regularly, but they would only cluck at me sadly — as if they understood. As if they pitied me. My brothers would find me tucked behind a door or buried deep in the curtains of a window seat. Once revealed, they would raise their eyebrows in surprise and then leave the room without a word. I assumed they thought I was a servant shirking my work.

The part of me that laughed, that enjoyed living, that looked out of the window and noted the weather packed up and folded itself away. Forced deeper inside myself, I hid behind perfect manners, a demure disposition, and the void of a voice long silenced. The only thing I felt was a vague sort of fuzziness. If asked a question, I would have to blink several times to focus on the person who had addressed me and ask them to restate their query. A fog of monumental heaviness seemed to shroud me in perpetual nothingness. Life happened around me, but not to me. I forgot what it was to look forward to anything; I drifted from one hour to the next without purpose or care.

One day, a few weeks before I turned sixteen, Mother came into my room. Slumped down in a chair with my leg dangling over the arm, I wasn't thinking of anything. The warm spring breeze wafting in from the windows drifted over my skin. I forced myself to enjoy the sensation of the fresh air as my skin goose-bumped.

"Eilean, you shouldn't sit like that," was Mother's weary greeting.

Without reacting, I sat up and placed my hands in my lap. I offered her the seat across from me with textbook perfection. My manners were impeccable. Mother sat.

"We are going to hold a Standing," she said, once she had settled into the chair.

I stiffened, the buried soul within me worried I was to marry at last. I didn't want to be married, but at least someone might appreciate my existence if I was.