In the long, cold months since then, Allan had not given her one word of encouragement. Not one word of hope that she might be included one day in these far off plans and dreams.
Even though they had continued to exchange letters and visit, their conversations always skirted the subject of the MacDougalls’ departure, or any deeper feelings either of them might possess. Harriet began to wonder if she’d imagined the years of tenderness and affection between them. The easy companionship she’d always felt with Allan, had always depended on, began to feel strained and awkward, and that loss grieved her as much as his actual departure.
Now, knowing this would be the last time she’d see him in who knew how long--perhaps, her heart whispered, forever--she longed for at least that easy companionship to be restored. If she couldn’t be Allan’s wife, then she still wished to be his friend.
“It’s a grand thing you’re facing,” she said as they stood by the bluff, looking out to a placid, slate-coloured sea. She plucked a sprig of heather and held it to her cheek. “All that adventure.” She inhaled the clean scent of the heather. If she closed her eyes she didn’t have to look at Allan’s face, the uncertainty reflected there.
“Ah, Harriet.” Harriet opened her eyes and Allan gave her a smile twisted with bittersweet hope and regret. “You know adventure isn't my calling, not like Archie.”
Harriet knew Allan's younger brother as a lovable scamp, someone who managed to get in and out of scrapes with equal ease. “Still, I imagine you’ll enjoy it,” she said a bit stiffly. “You’ve wanted to be your own man, same as your father, Allan.”
“Aye, I have.” Allan gazed out at the sea, his eyes as dark and fathomless as its calm surface. “I hope I’ll have that chance in the new world.”
“So you should.”
There was a moment of silence, awkward and tense. Allan forced a smile. “Father had been talking about emigrating for so long. I wouldn't wonder if half of Kilchoan thought we'd never leave.”
“They'll believe it now,” Harriet replied. “What with Mingarry Farm let out and all of you gone... there won't be a single MacDougall on the mainland.” Her voice was brittle, and she fought a rising sense of despair. How could they talk as if this leaving wasn’t rending at least one of them in two?
She turned away, wrapping her arms around herself to ward off the chilly breeze from the sea.
“Harriet...” Allan began but she spoke over him, afraid of the note of apology in his tone.
“I think Rupert and Margaret will get on at Achlic,” she said with false brightness. “I’m sure I’ll appreciate the company.”
Allan's younger sister and brother were staying in Scotland to finish their education. An arrangement had been made for them to board at Achlic Farm, with Rupert and Margaret taking lessons with Harriet’s brother Ian in Tobermory. “Ian and Rupert get along so well as it is...” she continued, stopping suddenly when Allan took her by the shoulders.
“It's not them I want to talk about,” he said, his voice sounding rusty until he cleared his throat with unaccustomed nervousness. “It's you... and me. I've just been working up the courage to say it.”
Harriet’s heart fluttered so she felt almost breathless, even dizzy with both trepidation and excitement. “You've no need of courage with me, Allan MacDougall,” she said, but her voice sounded strange to her own ears. She could hardly believe that Allan was only finding the courage
now
--now, when he was to sail with the dawn--to speak his mind, and perhaps his heart. “We've always had plain words between us.” She met his gaze squarely.
“I know.” Allan grasped her hands in his own. “And it's plain words I'll use. I love you, Harriet Campbell, and I always have, since the day I found you here, hiding among the rocks. It was meant to be, between us. I've always known it.”
“Oh, you have?” The note of cold scepticism in her voice took them both by surprise. These words were ones she’d longed to hear, but not now. Not now, when it was surely too late.
Allan frowned. “Surely you’ve known it.”
“If I did, it wasn’t because of your many words on the subject!” Harriet retorted, and Allan smiled wryly.
“I didn’t want to bind you...”
“Why not?” Her demand came out harsh, and she pulled away, her back to him. She couldn’t face him, face the useless promises he was making now, when he left on the morrow. She’d imagined this conversation so many times, had expected to feel joy, not pain. Not anger, and certainly not despair.
“Harriet...” Allan began. He sounded lost, as lost as she’d been all those years ago, curled up among the stones of Duart Castle. Her anger drained away and she closed her eyes, summoned a silent prayer for strength.
Straightening, she turned around. “What is it you want to say to me, Allan?”
He drew in a deep breath. “I know it's much to ask. I ask it anyway, for love of you and believing the love you have for me. Will you wait for me, Harriet? Wait for me to come back to this land when I've made my fortune and bring you home to the New Scotland with me?”
Harriet was silent. She struggled with the bitterness and resentment that surged up inside her at his presumption to ask such a thing of her, and so late! “You’ve known you were leaving for months,” she finally said when she trusted her voice to be even. “Why ask me now? If you loved me...?”
“I told you, I didn’t want to bind you...” Allan’s gaze was steady upon her but Harriet still sensed he was not speaking the whole truth.
“Bind me?” She shook her head, her words nearly carried away on the wind that was now rising, ruffling the surface of the sea. “What are you doing now, Allan, but binding me? Binding me to an empty promise, for you’re sailing on the morrow!” She felt tears sting her eyes and she blinked hard.
Anger flashed in his dark eyes. “My promises are not empty!”
Harriet was too furious, too raw with this new grief, to apologise. “If you’d asked me months ago, Allan MacDougall, we could have been married by now! I could’ve been sailing on
The Economy
with you, looking forward to our new life together, perhaps a bairn in my arms already!” Her heart raced at her own audacity, but now she couldn’t keep back the flood of regret and confusion. “Why?” she whispered.
Allan looked away, his expression wretched. “I... couldn’t. Perhaps I shouldn’t even ask you now, with my prospects so uncertain--”
“And leave me here, thinking you didn’t care? Have you any heart at all?”
Allan drew himself up. “Aye, I do, and more honour.”
“I’m not seeing that from here.”
Allan turned away, raking a hand through his dark hair. His whole body seemed to quiver with tension. “Ah, Harriet, don’t make me do this!”
“What am I forcing you to do?” Harriet cried. “You’re the one asking for promises!”
Allan sat on a tumbled rock, his fists in his hair, an expression of such ferocity on his face that Harriet nearly quelled her tide of angry questions.
When he spoke, however, his voice was calm and even. “When I tell you that I love you, do you believe me?”
Harriet swallowed. Despite the raw grief that threatened to tear her in two, of that she was sure. “Yes.”
“When I tell you I’ll come back as soon as I can, do you believe me?”
She scrubbed at her now-wet cheeks with her fists. “Yes.”
“Will you wait for me, then, Harriet? Can I take that promise with me? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t intent to honour it with my very life, my own soul.” He stood up, his expression fierce in its sincerity. He touched her cheek with his fingers, brushing away the damp tracks of her tears. “I know you don’t understand, and if I could explain, I would. It’s my own honor that keeps me from doing so.”
“I don’t understand why you cannot explain,” she cried and Allan smiled sadly.
“I know.”
“So,” Harriet said slowly, “I am supposed to understand something kept you from declaring yourself to me months ago? And you cannot tell me what it was?”
“I would rather not.”
She held up one hand. Her fingers trembled. “Answer me this. If you could have asked me to marry you, would you have done so? When you first learned you were emigrating?”
Allan rubbed a hand over his face, the answer drawn from him reluctantly. “Yes.”
Harriet stared at the strewn stones of Duart Castle, once a mighty fortress, now little more than mossy rock. It didn’t take much to ruin lives, she thought, only time. She raised her gaze to meet his own troubled one. He looked so tired, she thought, and so worried. She was used to seeing those dark eyes glinting with humour, not shadowed with worry and sorrow. And as she looked at him, as if to memorize every line of his dear face, she realized. “You did ask,” she said slowly. “Didn’t you?”
Allan pressed his lips together. “Harriet--”
“Tell me,” she implored. “Please, Allan. Surely it would not tarnish your honour to do so. How am I to go on not knowing? Not understanding?”
Allan managed a small, rueful smile, although his eyes were still dark with pain. “You seem to have grasped the nettle already.”
Harriet nodded. The new knowledge weighed heavily inside her, like a stone. “You asked my father,” she said, “and he said no.”
“I’m a man of little prospects at the moment, Harriet. I appreciate his position.”
“You’re the tacksman’s son! You’re richer than we are!” She spun away, her temper rising to the fore once more. She’d always been too given to high emotions, and no more so than now when it looked as if everything she’d ever wanted was to be denied her.
“We don’t own our land,” Allan said quietly, “the way your father does.”
“But you will in the New Scotland. Five hundred acres--”
“It’s an uncertain proposition, though. Life will be hard there. I don’t even know how hard, but I’ve heard tales of how harsh the land is. Snow three feet deep all winter long.”
She closed her eyes, her hands curled into fists at her sides, and willed her temper to recede. “What did he say to you, then?”
Allan was silent for a moment. “He told me to wait till I’d established myself, had my own land. Actually...” There was a wry thread of humour in Allan’s voice now as he continued. “He told me that when I was no longer hanging on my father’s coattails, he might consider my suit.”
“How dare he say such a thing!”
“He is your father,
cridhe
. You must respect him, as I did.” Allan reached for her wrist, stroking the soft skin on the inside with a movement so tender it made Harriet’s insides seem to dissolve. “Besides, he has the right of it. You deserve more than what I can offer you now. And in any case, you can’t leave Eleanor and Ian while they’re still so young, nor even Achlic. Not yet. Could you? If you had to choose?”
Harriet closed her eyes. She could still feel Allan’s fingers on her wrist, the gentlest and most thrilling touch she’d ever experienced. “I wasn’t given the choice.”
“I had to respect your father’s wishes.”
“He didn’t want you to speak to me at all,” Harriet guessed, and turned to see the flicker of acknowledgment on Allan’s face. “Then why,” she asked, her voice an ache, “are you now asking me to wait?”
“Because I’m weak.” Allan’s voice was rough with emotion. “Because I love you, and though honour bid me not speak, I couldn’t bear you not knowing. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing you.”
He cupped her cheek in his hand, and Harriet leaned into his palm. “I don’t know what brand of honour it is, that keeps men from speaking from their hearts.”
“Harriet.” He lifted her chin with his fingers, their lips a breath apart. “I love you. Do you love me?”
“Yes.” She could say nothing else; the truth was too strong in her heart. “There was never any question of that, not all these years.”
Allan drew her to him, and Harriet closed her eyes, savoring the feel of his roughened cheek against hers.
“I’ll come back,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “I promise you. As soon as I can. If you’ll wait for me--”
Harriet nodded in mute acceptance. So much could change, in both their lives. Who even knew what waited for him, on that distant shore? Or even what waited for her? Illness, misfortune, perhaps even death.
And yet...
Providence would see them through. By God’s grace they would, in time, be reunited. All she had to do was wait... and keep the faith. She lifted one hand to touch his cheek, the gesture one of farewell.
“Yes,” she said, “I’ll wait.”
CHAPTER TWO
Allan returned to Tobermory with a lighter heart, although worry and sorrow still picked at him. He hated seeing Harriet look so despondent. He wanted to remember her with laughing eyes, her red hair glinting in the sunlight as she teased or talked with him. He wished he had told her his intentions earlier, even though David Campbell had asked him not to, claiming his silence on the matter was fairer to Harriet. Yet David Campbell was a hard man, and Allan didn’t think he understood the bond he and Harriet had always shared.
Even so, guilt and regret added their weight to his heart’s burden. Should he have said anything to Harriet at all? If her father had had his way, Allan would sailed without a word or even whisper of his intentions. And yet surely such silence would have been far greater a grief for Harriet to bear than waiting. At least now she knew how he felt, and that his promise was his word and his honour.
Allan made his way along the harbor, seagulls wheeling over the choppy grey waters, their cries lost on the wind. Tobermory’s one inn was heaving with people on the eve of sailing, for over two hundred Scots would be descending into the dark hold of
The Economy
tomorrow morning. Allan was grateful his father had, with his influence as local tacksman, been able to secure two rooms at the inn for his family’s comfort. Many families would be sleeping in back rooms or barns that chilly night.
Despite the cheerful fire blazing in the hearth of one of the rooms, and the rich mutton stew that Betty had brought from home and heated over the flames, the mood was somber. They all had their own thoughts and worries, Allan knew. He wasn't the only one with a fond farewell to make.