Chapter 14
Willow
Turns out, Ramsay really did need the help. Whether he was willing to admit it or not. His phone rang almost constantly, his inbox pinged with incoming emails, and people knocked on the front door often enough that Ramsay's curses carried through from the back room.
I realized quickly that becoming a natural barrier between Ramsay and people who interrupted him would likely bring his stress down tenfold. While I hadn't managed to follow his edict about not entering his workroom, mainly based on the logistics of working in the shop and needing to get to the storeroom or use the small kitchenette, it did allow me brief glimpses into how the man worked.
And it was with a singular focus that had to be admired.
I'd thought, of course, that Ramsay would be the one crafting a kilt. But I didn't realize the breadth of his business, nor the sheer volume of acumen needed to manage so many moving parts at once. As predicted, I met with his manager, Sheila, who clued me into Ramsay's empire, and a quick search on Google showed me just how much Ramsay Kilts had accomplished. While Ramsay had recently tucked himself away in this little shop in Loren Brae, he truly had a veritable kiltmaking empire at his feet, which gave hundreds of Scottish people jobs and continued a time-honored tradition.
It was something he should be proud of, and I would tell him so, if he didn't glare at me every time I interrupted him.
I peeked in the back room, watching as Ramsay expertly measured and pinned, measured and pinned, methodically folding the kilt's fabric. His rhythm was smooth, his focus absolute, and I found myself entranced by the way his arm muscles bunched under his shirt as his large hands smoothed the fabric and neatly folded the next pleat. The tattoos winding up his thick forearms and disappearing under the fabric of his shirt made me want to move closer, to examine each design and ask him their meaning. He'd likely bite my head off, of course, so I stayed by the door instead, watching a master at work, even though my hands itched to join in.
I loved the process of creation. The feel of fabric under my fingers, testing the weight of a material, examining the stretch, the color, the sheen. All of it invigorated me, and I wanted to learn this too, even if making and designing kilts wasn't exactly what I wanted for my future. Any opportunity to learn a new skill was exciting, and for all I knew, it would spark an idea that would show up in a collection of mine down the road.
"I can hear you breathing."
"I'm pretty sure ‘don't breathe' wasn't in the rules, but I can double-check my list if you'd like."
"Breathe elsewhere." Ramsay continued to fold, never breaking rhythm, and I sidled closer, ignoring his grunt of disapproval. I was used to dealing with difficult men, Miles being one of them, and if those two were best friends, well, Ramsay shouldn't be too difficult to handle.
I just had to outshine his grumpiness.
"I like this tartan," I said, directing his attention away from the fact that I was breathing in his space. "It's a pleasing pattern."
Ramsay grunted again.
"The colors balance well. Is it for a certain clan?"
After our first client of the day had left, a groom planning for his wedding, I'd spent some time paging through the fabric books that Ramsay had in stacks by the fire, reading about Scotland's history of clan tartans.
"Aye, it's a Douglas tartan. Shared with several other clans, in fact. One of our more common and popular tartans."
"Wow."
At that, Ramsay glanced up at me.
"What?"
"A whole, like, fifteen words. Careful, Ramsay, or you'll be accused of carrying on an actual conversation."
Ramsay just leveled me a look, which I'm sure would be considered withering by many who weren't used to rude and consistently angry older brothers, and I inched closer to the table.
"Can I touch it?"
"Bloody hell." Ramsay paused, his hands holding a pleat in place, a pin at the ready. He looked up at me under heavy lids, his expression mutinous.
I shouldn't find this hot.
Pasting a wide smile on my face, I shrugged.
"It sounds like you're particular about the type of fabric you use. Where the wool comes from. How it's woven. Dyed. I'm interested is all."
"In what part of my explicit instructions to leave me alone in my workroom could you interpret to mean ‘come blether on in my ear while I'm trying to work'?"
"Jeez, that had to have been at least twenty words. You're doing great." I nodded encouragingly at him, and Ramsay's eyes narrowed. "Oh, I know that look. That's the look of a man who is dying to tell me all about how he sources his fabrics for his famous custom kilts. No problem, Ramsay, I've got all day. Go on…" I waved my hand in the air, as though ushering him to continue talking.
"What do I have to do to make this stop?"
"Answer my questions. Show me your process. Talk to me like a real partner and not an annoying kid sister."
At that, Ramsay looked up, and something flashed behind his eyes, before it was gone. It was enough to make me want to squirm on the spot, whatever his thoughts were, and a delicious tendril of heat unfurled low in my stomach.
"It's not a kid sister I'm thinking of you as."
Say what now?
I was going to need clarification on that. Like, immediately. I opened my mouth to speak, but his warning look caused me to pause. The seconds ticked by—the moment hung suspended between us—as a log snapped in the fireplace and rain pattered on the roof.
"I pride myself on continuing the Scottish tradition of weaving our own fabrics." Ramsay methodically placed a pin and then paused, gesturing to the fabric. I gingerly reached out, running my fingers over the tartan, testing the weight of it against my palm.
"Worsted wool," I said.
"Aye, worsted wool with a twill structure. When woven in a particular sett, it creates the tartan pattern."
I nod vigorously as though I know what a "sett" is, and Ramsay catches my implication and sighs.
"Go on."
"So this isn't mass produced then? It's woven on an actual loom? Do they still make looms like they once did? Or are they all commercial now? What about the dyes? Where do they come from? And the wool? Is this all done by hand … like in a hut down by the river? How long does something like this take to make? Is it expensive to produce? How do you determine your margins?" I rushed out, assuming he was not going to give me many opportunities to ask questions.
Ramsay looked to the ceiling, clearly attempting to muster the patience to deal with someone like me, and I beamed at him when he dropped his eyes to my face. Shaking his head slightly, he returned to measuring the kilt.
"I'll give you a wee lesson, lass, but then I need to finish pinning this kilt."
"Great, so …"
"Wheesht." Ramsay tucked a pin in the fabric and then straightened, disappearing from the room. "Cuppa tea?"
"Um, sure."
I wandered out of the workroom and added another log to the fire, before going to stand at the front window for what felt like the twentieth time that day. Dark clouds had moved in, rolling over each other in the sky, Loch Mirren a sheet of slate grey water. Shadows drew long across the shop floor, cut by the flickering light from the fire, and I shivered, my eyes caught on the loch. She held so many secrets, literal magick moving beneath her surface, and I still was processing everything I'd learned in such a short time.
I'd always been drawn to water, which wasn't wholly unheard of, being from the land of ten thousand lakes. I'd grown up spending long summers in the water, and my dad had always called me a fish because I never wanted to stop swimming. Our summers were so short in Minnesota that we made use of every moment we could. Because of that, I'd learned to really look at water, not just scan my eyes over it. I looked for currents, for changes in surface patterns, depths, that kind of thing. You couldn't live near water and not learn to assess the dangers of it. And to me, Loch Mirren was stunningly beautiful, but coldly dangerous. I would absolutely proceed with caution around her shores.
"Right then. Let's crack on with your lesson, since you'll no doubt be bothering about it if we don't."
"I can certainly Google it, if it's too much trouble." I smiled sweetly at his snort of derision.
"Google."
"It's a popular internet search engine. You have been on the internet, I presume?" I crossed the room to where he'd put a tea tray on the table by the fire, and settled into one of the tartan chairs, a pile of books at his side.
"I try not to."
"Aww, you're like an Amish person or something then, aren't you? How cute is that? Living in your little bubble. Weird how this Spotify playlist manages to bring music to your speakers though."
"I'm instantly regretting agreeing to this lesson."
"No, no, I'm sorry. I promise to be on my best behavior. Please. Explain to me what sets Ramsay Kilts apart from the others. I should know this, anyway, if I'm going to be speaking to customers." I pulled out my notebook and settled back into the chair, pressing my lips together to indicate that I wasn't going to interrupt him again.
Ramsay regarded me for a moment, letting the silence draw out, as though testing my resolve not to speak. I'll admit, I almost broke the silence, but I really did want to learn about the kilts, and I sensed I could only annoy him so much before he'd chuck me out the front door and call it a day. He'd already stormed out on me once, and I'd only been in Loren Brae a matter of days. Firelight danced across his cheekbones, the teacup looked like a toy in his large hands, and he looked every inch a dominating Highlander sitting in his tartan chair by his fire. I crossed my legs at the response in my body, seeing him like this, because just for an instant, I wanted to straddle him where he sat. To feel his large hands gripping my thighs, reminding myself how it felt to be locked against his muscular body. With his sharp jawline, dark hair, and thick muscular arms, Ramsay could have stepped on the set of Outlander and been mistaken for an actor.
Ramsay lifted a brow, and I realized something in my expression must have changed. Picking up my pen, I poised it against the paper, forcing myself to look away from him.
Damn it, but my boss was a hottie with a capital H.
"Ramsay Kilts has one of the only mills that still produces tartans in a traditional manner. We do use a commercial loom at times, for bulk orders, but will still bring most of the process in house so our weavers can check the fabric every step of the way. A traditional kilt has a clean-cut edge at the knee." Ramsay held up a swatch of fabric draped over the side of his chair, showing me the edge of the tartan. "This can only be produced by a traditional shuttle loom, granted though we've been able to motorize them, so our weavers don't have to pedal."
"No way, that's awesome."
"We're not opposed to modernizing where it makes sense." A ghost of a smile crested Ramsay's lips. "A shuttle loom is called that because of the wooden shuttles, which create a back-and-forth motion that allows a clean natural selvedge. A traditional kilting selvedge doesn't need to be hemmed."
I forced myself to not think of other back-and-forth motions that I wouldn't mind trying out with my very sexy boss.
"Versus a commercial loom? The edge needs to hemmed or tucked in?" I asked instead, making a note on my pad.
"A rapier loom will either leave threads loose for hemming or returned into the weave as a tuck-in selvedge."
"And …" I paused when Ramsay lifted both eyebrows at me. "Sorry. Go on."
"We order our raw yarn from various local spinners, who transform raw fleece into the perfect fibers for our kilts. We ship the yarn directly to our dyers who carry almost one hundred different colors. That way we can match shades quickly and move forward with orders. That being said … traditionally, tartans only came in black, white, red, green, and yellow as those were the colors of natural dyes. These days you have more options with synthetic dyes, obviously."
"And you'll use synthetic dyes?"
"I try to urge people to go natural with their color choices, but it's no longer a sticking point for me. So long as the yarn and the fabric are created with a careful eye to our history, I'm happy enough."
"A lot of the dyes are made nicely these days too."
"They are, and we do our best to find eco-minded ones. So, the yarn gets dyed, spooled onto bobbins, then onto cones, then onto pirns. Basically, smaller and smaller spools. The weaver will pull the yarns off the cones in sequence of the tartan's sett. Maybe it's sixteen green threads, then four yellow, then thirty green, then eight black and so on until the pattern is complete. Threads will always be in even number groupings."
"I may need a visual on this."
"I figured." Ramsay picked up a book and flipped it open, paging through until he found a photo of a shuttle loom. I was vaguely familiar with it, but now tried to place names to parts as he pointed out the shuttle, the pirns, and the cones.
"Once one sett is done, the weaver will start the sequence again, repeating the pattern, until the full width of the fabric is reached."
"Which is?"
"Twelve hundred threads for a heavyweight wool."
"Wow."
"Once the warp length is set, they move it to the loom, and we always keep a part of the last weave on the loom. We'll knot the new yarns to the old, pull it through the heddle"—Ramsay pointed to a gate of thin vertical wires—"and guide the new weave through."
"This is incredible," I said, beginning to understand the extent of effort that went into creating a tartan.
"The weaver sits at the front and will guide the new yarns through to tie on to the thread from its last weave. Then begins the actual weaving, and you'll see here the back-and-forth motion of the shuttle gives that nice clean selvedge."
Again with the back and forth.
"The weavers watch the loom, looking to catch any breakages, so as to fix any errors prior to completion. Once finished, it's off to greasy darning."
"Greasy?" I laughed at that.
"The fabric hasn't yet been cleaned and inspected. Our darners will examine the fabric both by sight and against the flat of their hands, looking for any breakages. From there, the fabric goes off to finishers. Unless you want a hard tartan, of course."
"A hard tartan?" I swallowed, my mind completely in the gutter. Ramsay's head dipped close to mine as he flipped through the pages of his book. He smelled like soap and leather, a clean masculine scent, and I wanted to run my hands through his hair.
"Aye, lass." Ramsay glanced up at me, his face close, and I could see the fire reflected in his eyes. "It's a term for what the fabric feels like before it's finished. A touch harsh, a bit uneven. True historians, the ones who like to do the reenactments, request it in that manner because they feel it's closer to how the fabric once felt in the olden days."
Ramsay handed me a square of fabric, a dark green tartan with red and yellow threads, and I ran my fingers over it.
"Okay, I see. It is rough, isn't it? A bit like burlap, maybe?"
"Aye. We'll clean it, removing any dust and grit it's picked up. Once we wash it, just in water, the fabric softens. We'll then press it and hang it on tenterhooks to dry."
"Isn't that a saying?"
"Aye, lass. That's where it comes from. To be on tenterhooks. Look." Ramsay flipped through his book until he found a picture of a stretch of tartan hung on a long row of narrow hooks. "After that, it's back once more to the darners for what we call a clean darning and then it's ready for me."
I could be ready for you.
Well now, where was my mind going? All I needed was a fire, a man with a sexy accent talking about my favorite thing, clothes, and I was ready to lift up my skirt and show him what I was about. While the thought had appeal, I mean, a lot of appeal, I also needed to stay focused on my job. This was my boss. My boss. Big bossman. Brother's best friend. Strict "No Touching" rule in effect.
Though it would piss Miles off, so that might be an added bonus.
"For you?" I cleared my throat and leaned back to take a sip of my tea, putting some distance between Ramsay and me before I did something stupid like asking him if he liked sequins on his bedroom floor.
"Aye. Then it's my time to shine. We hand stitch each kilt, measuring each pleat by hand, and deliver a final, custom-fit, tailored garment to their new owner."
"How much fabric is used to make a kilt?"
"Typically eight yards of fabric, but some are double length. In the olden days, the kilts were more than just something to wear. They'd also be used as protection against the rain or a blanket to bed down on in the wild."
"Ah, I get it now," I said, making a tsking noise with my lips. "Lazy men. You just rolled out of bed and wrapped your blanket around you, didn't you?"
Ramsay's mouth dropped open, amusement lighting his eyes for the first time since I'd seen him, though he pretended to glower.
"Och, I'd watch yourself, lass. That's my ancestors you're insulting. The kilt is a fine part of our history, worn for battles and trudging through bogs."
"Mm-hmm, sounds to me like you didn't want to leave home without your blankie."
"That's it, I knew this was coming." Ramsay shocked me by hauling me out of my chair and dragging me toward the front door. I laughed, seeing the smile he was trying to hide, and dug my heels in as he threw the front door to the shop open. Rain pelted the pavement out front.
"Noooo, Ramsay, stop. I take it back." I squealed as the first drops of rain hit my head.
"Bloody blasphemy," Ramsay growled, nudging me farther out into the rain. I twisted in his arms, pushing my butt against him, trying to leverage myself back inside the shop.
A motion on the surface of the water caught my eye.
"Wait. Ramsay. Oh my God. Look!" I straightened, no longer caring about the rain, and pointed at the water. "No, we have to help it."
"What is it, lass?" Ramsay's hands were at my shoulders, pulling me into his chest, instantly protecting me against whatever I'd seen.
"It's a kitten, I think. And it's drowning!"
A clap of thunder shook the skies, drowning out the soft mews for help I could now hear.
Ramsay took off at a run.