He and Mrs. MacKenzie hesitated at the double doors. Something should be carved on the lintel.
Beware, all who enter, thou shalt be judged lacking.
God forgive him, but he was glad the old man was finally dead.
“Y
ou’re angry with me.”
Shona didn’t answer.
Helen sighed heavily, which garnered her a quick glance.
“You shouldn’t have said anything,” Shona said.
“Why not? Should we starve, instead?”
She halted in the corridor, took a deep breath, released it, then forced herself to turn and face Helen.
“You surprised me. When I first knew you, I thought you such a timid soul, afraid of offending anyone. I suspect, however, that you aren’t like that at all.”
Helen blinked several times, but didn’t defend herself.
“You’re very fierce when you need to be.”
“I don’t like being hungry,” Helen said. “Or too prideful for my own good.” The latter sentence was whispered, but Shona still heard.
“Perhaps I was,” she said after a moment. “Thank you. There wasn’t anything else to do, was there?”
“Unless you wish to drink yourself into a stupor like Old Ned,” Helen said. “I take it there’s plenty of whiskey about?”
“We’re in Scotland,” she said, smiling. “Of course there’s whiskey about.”
“It’s what one neighbor would do for another,” Helen added. “After all, we’re in the wilds of the Highlands, alone but for Rathmhor.”
“We’re not all that isolated. The village is just over the hill. It’s become quite prosperous in the last few years, Fergus says.”
If they’d had any money at all, she would have shopped there. Unfortunately, they were down to the money she had in her reticule, a ridiculously small amount given that she lived in the largest house in this part of Scotland.
With any luck—a commodity that had been scarce of late—Gairloch would save them.
“Well, I for one hope Colonel Sir Gordon will hurry.”
“We’ve brown bread and jam,” Shona said. “In the basket.”
“No tea, however,” Helen announced dejectedly.
“I’m sure there are a few bottles of wine in the cellar. We could invent a new kind of repast. Sandwiches and wine.”
“What if we get tipsy?”
A condition devoutly to be sought. A few sips of wine might take away the edge of this day, dull the absolute misery she felt. No, then she would be as bad as Old Ned, who chose drunkenness to escape the ghosts of Gairloch. She had her own ghosts, but one of them was alive, well, and not far away.
The past was striking with too much force, and everything hurt. She was no longer a child, and she couldn’t withdraw to her room to hug her pillow and weep. Yet the grief she felt now was so unexpected that she felt off kilter, uncertain and strangely alone, even though Helen was standing next to her.
They entered Fergus’s room, the musty smell halting her in the doorway. Was the whole of Gairloch in disrepair?
Resolutely, she strode to the window, opening the heavy curtains and throwing up the sash. The wind around Gairloch was always fierce, as if nature were a warrior and pitted its strength against the castle.
“We need a day or two to air out all the rooms,” she said. “But this will just have to do. He shouldn’t have come.”
“Fergus is as stubborn as you,” Helen said, garnering her another look. “Well, he is, and it’s no good you looking at me as if I’ve turned yellow, Shona Donegal. It’s the truth and you know it.”
“I do,” she admitted. “I just didn’t know that you knew it.”
“You’re very personable people,” Helen added. “A pretty smile can hide a great many flaws, but it doesn’t mask the fact that the two of you very much want to get your own way.”
Shona stood at the window, gazing out toward the loch. “When I was younger,” she said, “I thought that if I wished for something long enough, or hard enough, I’d get it. It never quite worked out that way.”
“You married an earl,” Helen said.
She nodded. “True.”
“My second cousin was quite wealthy. Until he died.”
“True again.”
“Was that not what you wanted?”
Now was not the time to continue this conversation. Not when tears were too close to the surface.
“You could always marry again.”
An idea that had already occurred to her. Marriage had always been a woman’s salvation. Nor had being married to Bruce been a terrible experience. Her heart hadn’t been involved, but she’d felt compassion for him and a certain type of fondness. He’d been kind to Fergus and generous as well.
Perhaps another older husband, preferably wealthy, was the answer.
If she could bear it.
Love was not, after all, necessary.
But even marriage was not a certainty of financial security. Look where she was now, as poor as she’d been after her parents died. If she married again, she’d arrange for some provision to be made beforehand, in case of her husband’s death.
She was really tired of being poor.
“Right now what I want is for Fergus to be comfortable,” she said, smiling determinedly at Helen.
She removed one corner of the counterpane, and Helen moved to help her. Together, they stripped the bed, flipped the mattress, and while Helen went to fetch some of the less musty sheets, she went to the maids’ closet and found some rags and a broom.
A little work, that’s what she needed. Some physical labor to banish thoughts and feelings as well.
In the next half hour, they put Fergus’s room to rights, including filling and testing the oil lamps, refreshing the potpourri in the jar on the dresser, and placing a bouquet of late blooming heather near the bed, the purple blossoms attesting not only to September, but the fact that they were home.
She was grateful that the days were still temperate. The evenings would be chilly, as well as the mornings, but the cold wouldn’t start to seep into their bones for a few weeks. By that time, the Americans would have settled in, relishing their Scottish heritage.
They wouldn’t, however, be prepared for winter in the Highlands.
But they were wealthy and could well afford the coal to heat the rooms they wished to use. As for the Clan Hall and the Family Parlor, both were so cavernous that it made no difference that each had two tall fireplaces.
Her nose nearly froze on her face if she stepped more than ten feet away from a roaring fire.
“I won’t miss the winter here,” she said, shutting the window.
Helen didn’t say anything, but her look was dubious.
“I would think it would be lovely, what with the snow and ice. Does the loch never freeze?”
She shook her head. “It’s too deep, I think.”
“I’ve always liked winter,” Helen said. “Until I was alone. Then it seems like a cruel season, don’t you think?”
She didn’t know quite how to answer that comment. Luckily, Helen didn’t seem to expect one.
“I wish I’d married when I was younger. Now it’s too late, of course.”
Another comment for which she didn’t have a response. What could she possibly say? That marriage had been a blessing? That it had given her comfort? It hadn’t. It had simply been there, a partnership she and Bruce had shared. She’d attempted to be the wife he wanted, and he’d succeeded in being kind and generous to her.
But for the whole of it? Would she do it again?
Better to be miserable alone than to share that emotion with another person.
They retreated to the Laird’s Chamber once more. Old Ned had taken himself off somewhere, but Fergus had taken his place on the bed.
Her heart lurched when she saw him so pale. Fear was immediately replaced by anger. Why couldn’t Gordon have done what he’d said he’d do? Why hadn’t he remained in Inverness? Why had he brought Fergus here?
Stepping to the side of the bed, she placed her hand on Fergus’s clammy forehead.
“Don’t hover, Shona,” he said without opening his eyes.
“I’m not hovering.”
He opened his eyes. “I’m just resting,” he said.
“You’ve hurt yourself.”
“I’ve hurt myself,” he admitted. His wry smile touched a corner of her heart, reminding her of their childhood together. “I was trying to demonstrate that I’m not quite an invalid, but those stairs are damnable.”
Alarmed, she swept her gaze down to his leg.
“Your wound is worse?”
“No,” he said, sitting up. “It just hurts like the devil himself is jumping up and down on it.”
She glanced over at Helen who was looking as worried as she felt.
“Helen thinks we’re stubborn. You’ve just proven her point, Fergus,” she said. However irritated she was at him, she couldn’t harden her heart when he looked at her that way—the corner of his lip tilted in a grin, the look in his eyes unrepentant.
“What are you doing here?” she asked, helping him to sit on the edge of the bed.
“Especially when you expressly forbade me to come?”
“I didn’t.” Well, she had. “Not in so many words,” she said. “I wanted to deal with the Americans myself.”
“I don’t want to deal with them at all.”
She glanced at Helen, as if to concede that her companion was indeed right. They were two stubborn people, perhaps the most stubborn people in all of Scotland.
She had the feeling she would need every bit of her resolve before the sale of Gairloch was finalized, and before she left the past behind.
Chapter 6
S
hona awoke at dawn, lighting the oil lamp in the room she and Helen had claimed as theirs. She couldn’t bear to sleep in the spacious chamber she’d had as a girl. The view from the window was of Rathmhor, and a secret part of her was afraid that she’d stand there, fingers pressed against the glass, yearning to be seven years younger and desperately in love.
Love died.
A flower withered if not watered. A plant shriveled if not given care. Even the hardy heather could be destroyed.
If not nourished, love perished.
They’d claimed one of the guest bedrooms, a chamber overlooking the winding approach to Gairloch. The last person to occupy this room had been a guest at her parents’ funeral ten years earlier.
The sunlight through the window was sullen, as if grudging the start of day.
Shona felt the same.
The room smelled dusty, overlaid with a tinge of mildew. Were the windows in this wing secure? Or had Old Ned simply left them open to the rain? The smell was an admonishment, as tangible as the layer of dust over every surface.
She and Fergus had not been good stewards of their heritage.
Gairloch was the symbol of her clan’s honor, filled with so many memories that they could drown her if she let them. Every room held a reminiscence: her father’s booming voice, her mother’s smile, the sound of Fergus’s running feet.
Now she prayed for the courage to say good-bye.
She had no other recourse but to sell the castle. Instead of dwelling on the bad, she should think of the good. Once she sold Gairloch, she’d never have to see Gordon’s home. She’d never again have to think of the crofter’s hut tucked neatly in the woods, or the path to the loch and the brae where they’d had their picnics so many years ago.
If she sold Gairloch, they’d have enough money to go away to some warmer place, where Fergus could sit in the sun and brown, where the chilled wind didn’t hint of winter even in the middle of summer.
Fergus, however, was not cooperating.
For now, she would dust the fixtures, clean the floors, polish the fireplace andirons, sweep the corridors, and brush away the cobwebs. Perhaps she’d even sing in the shadows to banish the ghosts in the unused wings.
Her stomach rumbled, as if to remind her that dinner last night had consisted of only brown bread, jam, some beef tea, and the last of a jarred stew. By unspoken agreement, she and Helen had forced the stew and the beef tea on Fergus, ensuring that he ate, rather than drank, his dinner.
Old Ned had procured a bottle of wine from the cellar and Fergus had appropriated it, making headway to the bottom before their dinner was finished. Since they had no laudanum or anything else he might use for pain, she remained silent.
“Is this all there is?” Fergus had said at the beginning of the meal.
“We’re saving the oats for breakfast,” she’d said, with more good humor than she felt.
They’d exchanged a look.
“I simply didn’t plan well enough,” she said, unwilling to let him know the full degree of their poverty. “I should have arranged for provisions in Invergaire Village.”
“I hope you will, tomorrow,” he said, pouring himself another tumbler of wine.
She bit back in the remark she might have made. What could she say?
There isn’t any money, brother. There hasn’t been for the longest time. The sale of Gairloch is the only thing to save us.
He’d never questioned her inheritance from Bruce or the expenses of her Inverness home. He probably wouldn’t query her on the money to be spent in readying Gairloch for visitors. That question would be easily answered. She had none. Somehow, she would have to entertain the Americans with creativity and sleight of hand.
Prayers wouldn’t hurt, either.
In his defense, Fergus had other things to concern him, such as surviving his injuries.
Her stomach made its presence known again. The idea of breakfast was holding a great deal of interest, even if it was only boiled oats.
Helen, whose face had been buried in a very lumpy pillow, turned her head and blinked several times. Her hair was a nimbus of frizz; her face bore several wrinkles from the sheets. The disarray was disturbing, since Helen was normally so neat in appearance.
“Will he send some food today, do you think?”
Their thoughts were such twins of each other that she smiled.
“If he doesn’t, we’ll simply have to return to Inverness and sell my clan brooch.”
“Would you truly sell the brooch, Shona? It’s all you have left of your mother.”
Why had she told Helen that in a moment of weakness?
“Memories can’t be sold,” she said.
“There are a great many weapons in the Clan Hall,” Helen said.
She only nodded.
As laird, Fergus wouldn’t hear of any of the artifacts being sold. Every one of the swords saved from countless battles, shined and polished with edges kept honed, was sacrosanct, along with the shields, dented and bloody in spots, either indicating a victory or the death of a clan member. Some of the pipes hanging in the Family Parlor hadn’t been played since the first years of Gairloch. The reeds were clogged with dust and the bags hung in tatters, but they might fetch a few pennies.