The Legend of Lady MacLaoch by Becky Banks Page A

the front room of the two-story converted stone house, our world chattered and bustled like a chimpanzee cage. Boxes lined the walls, cluttering the reception area—piled in front of the receiving counter and behind it as well—and filling what little walking space there had once been around the room’s few desks. The one private office, off to our right, was partially filled with boxes as well. From the noise, it seemed like the place was packed with people, but there were only three women. All three were talking at once, to each other and on the phones.
    “Oh my,” Deloris said for us both.
    “Maybe we should come back later,” I said.
    “Aye, I would, but I’m afraid that one of these boxes is from the historian, and if we don’t get it today, we might never see it again.”
    In that light, I quite agreed. If we didn’t rescue that box, wherever it was, it might get unpacked or shipped or have done to it whatever was happening to the rest of the mess that surrounded us. I noticed that the boxes weren’t all filled with books and other documents, as I’d assumed. They were labeled in curly script: napkins, stationery, glassware, candles. Deloris seemed to be reading the labels at the same time.
    “Oh! The gala!” she cried, as if in an epiphany. Right then one of the women finally hung up her phone and made her way toward us.
    “Deloris!” the woman exclaimed as she picked her way through the room and around the counter to greet us. “What brings ye down here?” She sounded as though she had just run a long distance.
    “I’ve come to meet Clive for some old clan documents,” Deloris said cheerfully, then seemed to remember I was standing next to her. “Rather, she’s come for the documents. This is Cole Baker from America. She’s doing a spot of history searching. That’s why we are here. Though it looks like the gala must be coming up, aye? We don’t mean tae bother ye.”
    “Och, aye. The gala will be here in just a few days and that rotten woman—” The clerk interrupted herself to call back to one of her two colleagues still on the phone. “Mary, have ye gotten ahold of Eryka?”
    Mary shook her head in response.
    “Och!” our host said, stamping her foot. “Damn woman had the delivery driver unload all this here and no’ down at the castle where it should have been. And she has the gall tae no’ show up taeday. That’s all she had tae do, arrange for delivery, and look, look at all this!”
    Deloris and I looked around again at the boxes. I thought of what Deloris had said the day before. A woman named Eryka who wanted to be a part of the MacLaoch clan. Personally, I felt she wasn’t trying hard enough if she had anything to do with the mess around us.
    “We’ll not take up much of yer time, but do ye know which one of these boxes is for us?” Deloris asked and then added, “Or if any of them are?”
    “Which one is for ye? I dinnae understand.”
    “Oh, yer historian gave me a call this morning about clan documentation that he would be bringing down here tae the administrative offices. Did he no’ tell ye?”
    “Och, Deloris, I’ve spoken tae a number of people this morn. It would be possible that I talked with Clive, but I’ll tell ye I’ve no’ see him unless he did bring them in when we were filling up the lorry tae take another load down to the castle. In that case we’d ha’ missed him, and it’d be in the office behind ye.” She looked at the room behind us but didn’t stop her breathless ramble. “And, in with all this, we started moving things tae the chieftain’s flat at the castle, so now we have more boxes than we know what tae do with. I just hope we dinnae give him champagne glasses and hand out at the gala his personal affects!” she said, giving a short humorless laugh.
    But then the phone rang, and our host cursed her way back to her desk. She glanced back to us, but we waved her off.
    Surely it would be easy to distinguish between a box of party