The Secret Gift (16 page)

“I understand. Say, this is quite a bundle of biscuits to go over by phone. By odd coincidence, I happen to be traveling to Inverness tomorrow on another case. I’ll be in court up there most of the day, but is there any possibility you might be willing to meet with me for dinner? I know this brilliant little Italian place right by the river ...”

Sounded harmless enough. “What time?”

“Say, about seven?”

Libby quickly jotted the time across the Post-it note on which she’d written his name and number. “What is the name of the restaurant?”

“Oh, right,” he chuckled. “Might help for me to tell you that, aye? It’s Antonio’s on Church Street just across from the river. You can’t miss it.”

The pen hovered just above the note as a shiver chased along Libby’s shoulders. Antonio’s had been the name of her and her mother’s favorite restaurant in Boston. It was the only place they ever went for dinner when they went into the city. Of course, some would say there must be thousands of Italian restaurants called Antonio’s scattered across the globe. Still Libby couldn’t help but wonder if this odd coincidence was no coincidence at all, but instead some sort of indication from her mother telling her she was doing the right thing.

“Seven it is, Mr. Brodie. I’ll see you then.”

When she came back into the parlor, Libby found Aggie and Maggie still sitting in the parlor, their cards fanned out in front of them, twin sets of eyes trained inquisitively upon her. The theme song for their favorite television show,
The East Enders,
was just chiming in from the small set that stood in the corner of the room.

“I’ll be going to Inverness tomorrow,” she announced.

“Indeed?” Aggie said, hoping to inquire without having it seem she was inquiring. “Ehm ... to do with the car hire company, dear?”

“No. Everything seems to be fine with the car since Sean MacNeish looked at it. I’m just going for some sightseeing and dinner with the friend of a friend.”

“Oh, how lovely, dear,” said Maggie. Libby could see Aggie trying to get a peek at her sister’s cards. Maggie noticed it and lifted her hand out of eyeshot, shooting her twin a warning glare.

“I was thinking I’d go down early in the morning, take in some of the city’s sights, perhaps do a little shopping. I don’t seem to have brought a sufficient number of warm clothes for the climate here. Is there anything I can pick up for either of you while I’m there?”

Within twenty minutes, Libby had an itemized list with everything from artichokes to a seven-inch zipper, preferably mint green.

At dawn, Libby got up from her bed, dressed quietly in the near darkness, and slipped out before either of the sisters was awake. She took a scone from the basket and quickly brewed a thermos of tea, and was on the road for Inverness before seven.

The drive across the Highlands this time was comparatively more pleasant than that first, middle-of-the-night jaunt she’d taken upon arriving. The dawn crept slowly across the morning sky, shining on a clear day blessed with brilliant, glorious sunshine.

The Highlands in this, the far north, were the wildest, most beautiful, and most unspoiled landscape Libby had ever seen. Stark, staggering mountain faces, touched white with snow at the peaks, loomed like ancient guardians above dark lochs and peaceful rolling glens. She passed the ruins of ancient brochs where prehistoric man had once lived and crumbling castles where herds of red deer roamed as free and as wild as the clansmen who had once roamed there. Eagles soared overhead, swooping low over the high pine tops in search of their prey. Shaggy orange cattle and wooly sheep grazed lazily on rolling pastures until the farmer’s collie came barking and leaping to direct them to another field.

Libby was glad to have the day away from the village, for it gave her the chance to think, to think about the thing she’d been avoiding the past few days.

Graeme Mackenzie.

More than once since that night she’d shared the stew dinner with him, she’d almost taken the left instead of the right turn on the road from the Crofter’s Cottage, heading to the castle. She’d invented a handful of excuses—she’d left her favorite pen there, she thought he might like some of the sisters’ shortbread—all of them devised to hide the true reason, which was, quite simply that she wanted to see him again.

It was the first time in a long time that she had wanted to see anyone. Though she’d gone out with casual acquaintances, Libby really hadn’t allowed herself to “date” anyone since Jeff. She’d sworn she would never risk her heart again. It hadn’t been a difficult promise to keep. While most of the men she’d met had been perfectly interesting, none of them had sparked even the slightest feeling that would have led Libby to pursuing a further relationship. In fact she’d become so skilled at closing off her heart, she’d begun to think she’d locked it permanently.

Until Graeme.

When they’d been sitting before the fire that night sharing latté and conversation, Libby had thought that he might actually kiss her. God knows she’d wanted him to. She’d wanted him to kiss her so badly her blood had practically sung with it. Even as she’d been sitting there, staring at him in the firelight, she’d imagined him leaning toward her, could almost feel the heat of his hands as he took her shoulders and pulled her toward him.

Just the thought of it had left her pulse pounding and her insides twitching with need. And she had sensed that he’d wanted it, too. It had shone in the dark of his eyes, in the deepness of his heated stare. But then he’d ended that moment, ending it so abruptly it had left her dazed.

Had she imagined it, that spark, that awareness between them that had been so tangible, so real, it had rivaled the heat of the fire? She had to believe that he’d felt it, too. Why, then, had he done such an about-face at the very moment when they could have been exploring the attraction between them?

And they said women were complicated creatures.

Libby had taken her time in driving and reached the bridge that spanned the firth outside Inverness just after ten that morning. Following her trusty road atlas, she directed the car through a series of roundabouts and turning, winding streets, as she headed for the center of the town.

Inverness, she’d read earlier in her guidebook, was known as the Capital of the Highlands, tucked as it was nearly perfectly between east and west, far north and south. The River Ness, which fed off of the same firth she’d crossed upon arriving, meandered through the city center all the way to the loch of the same name, the very one where the famous “Nessie” was reputed to live.

In the middle of the town, tall church spires pointed to the sky, and old stone buildings pressed in on the narrow streets like crowding parade bystanders. As she approached the city center, a proliferation of tiny shops and restaurants began to line the streets on either side. It was a pleasant day, and streams of pedestrians were strolling along the sidewalks, shopping bags in hand. She found a parking lot as close to the restaurant as possible, and pulled into the nearest space. Shopping list in hand, she set off for a walk through the town.

Her first stop was the woolen shop, where she bought three thick Aran-style sweaters in various colors, with turtlenecks to wear underneath them, and a tartan lamb’s-wool wrap just because it had been cut from the Mackay tartan. At an outdoor shop, she exchanged her L.L.Bean duck shoes for a more comfortable pair of waterproof ankle boots, and bought a waterproof, insulated jacket called an anorak. Oh, and something the sales clerk assured her were a veritable necessity for the Highlands—a pair of knee-high rubber boots called Wellingtons. Anything waterproof, Libby quickly learned, was a true Highland necessity.

After leaving the shopping bags in the car, Libby set off to gather the items on the sisters’ shopping list. There was the grocers’, the chemists’, and a shop they’d specifically requested that sold their favorite brand of knitting yarn. A tea shop, the picture framers’, and then finally, the sewing shop. By the time she found the seven-inch mint-green zipper, it was nearly five o’clock. The daylight was waning, and most of the stores were closing for the day, but Libby still had two hours before she was to meet Mr. Brodie. She asked the shopkeeper at the sewing store if there was any place she might go to sit for a cup of coffee and some quiet time.

“Oh, that would be Leakey’s,” the lady replied with a smile. “Just around the corner on Church Street. They’ve a café and those big overstuffed chairs, and as luck would have it, they have extended hours tonight, till eight.”

Libby had expected a coffee bar, like the Starbucks back in New York. What she found, however, was a small billboard sign with the name Leakey’s written in colored chalk, standing on the sidewalk outside what appeared to be an old church. The scent of brewing coffee lured her inside the arched doorway, where a plaque on the wall read
GREYFRIARS HALL, FORMERLY ST. MARY’S GAELIC CHURCH.

What she found, however, was not a coffeehouse but Scotland’s largest secondhand and antiquarian bookshop.

“I’ve died and gone to heaven,” she whispered as she walked along a wooden floor that had previously been trod by generations of churchgoers. Inside, it was similar to Belvedere’s back in Manhattan, with ladders set before shelf after shelf of old, out-of-print books, but without the glass cases and protective white gloves. Here the patrons were actually allowed to look through the books, touch them, smell them, browse through them for an hour or so over a cup of coffee, and all without having to commit their entire Visa credit limit. Libby took a book from the shelf, opened it to the inside cover. Mr. Belvedere, she decided, would have considered the low prices they charged a sin.

Soft Celtic music was playing in the background, and for the first time in weeks, Libby felt back in her element. She chatted with the shop owner, Mr. Leakey, sharing stories about the book business, and by the end of their conversation, she had committed to a partnership whereby they could work together, Leakey’s and Belvedere’s, on those special requests from customers looking for particular titles. It was a method Libby used to find so many of her customers’ most desired “wants,” and she had a network of shops and sources with whom she kept in constant contact.

Libby spent the rest of her time just browsing the shelves for her own personal interest, getting so lost that she scarcely realized how much time had passed until she heard the tall clock on the wall chiming seven o’clock. She looked at her watch, confirming the time, and realized she was late for her dinner appointment with Mr. Brodie. She bid Mr. Leakey farewell, paid for her coffee, and hurried down the street toward the river and Antonio’s.

The restaurant was dark and candlelit inside with strains of Dean Martin singing about
amore
competing with the sounds of dining chatter and clattering plates. There was no mâitre d’ at the front to greet her, so she glanced around the dining room until she spotted an older gentleman who looked to her very like a solicitor. She approached his table quietly.

“Mr. Brodie?”

The man looked up from his lasagna. “No, I’m afraid not.”

“Oh.”

“Miss Hutchinson?”

Libby turned to see a man of about fifty, wearing a tweed jacket and crooked tie, with unkempt, wiry hair and spectacles that drooped at the end of his bulbous nose.

He looked so much like Dugan they could have been twins separated at birth.

“Mr. Brodie?”

“Aye, I would be the one.”

They shook hands, and he motioned to the chair across from him at the table set for two. Libby shucked off her jacket and draped it over the back of her chair as he quickly poured her a glass of wine from the bottle he had already ordered.

“I’m so sorry I’m late. I was at this bookshop down the street ...”

“Oh, Leakey’s? Brilliant place, isn’t it? No need for apologies. Court went a bit late today. I only just got here myself. Why don’t you have a look at the menu. We’ll order first, and then get down to business.”

Libby had been so busy shopping all day, she hadn’t stopped for lunch. She suddenly realized she was starving. The wonderful smell coming from the restaurant’s kitchen had set her stomach to rumbling the moment she’d come in the door. She ordered her favorite dish, linguine with white clam sauce, and a small salad. Mr. Brodie, who, judging from his round girth, was obviously accustomed to good food, settled on the veal piccata.

“So, Miss Hutchinson ...”

“Please, sir, call me Libby.”

“Libby, it is. Hamish here, then. So then, Libby, first I thought I would acquaint you with the property known as the Mackay Estate.”

He handed her a map with the boundaries of the estate marked out in red ink. Libby read the small legend beneath it, and then read it again.

It was over fifty thousand acres.

Fifty thousand.

The five and four zeroes sort of fifty thousand.

Libby was dumbstruck.

“It had at one time been part of a much larger estate,” Hamish explained, pointing to the map. “Over one hundred and fifty thousand acres, but over the centuries it’s been broken up, smaller pieces of it sold off to pay debts or for upkeep on the rest of the estate. The fifty thousand remaining today consist of two separate plots. The larger portion, over forty thousand acres, includes the village of Wrath and much of the surrounding countryside. The other eight thousand acres are located some forty kilometers east of the village near the much larger village of Tunga. The chief of the Mackay received that part of the property back in the late seventeenth century from the British Crown. It is the reason why it isn’t part of the original estate. That bit is where Lady Venetia lives today, at a place called Tunga House.”

The way Ian had spoke of Lady Venetia as an absentee landlord, Libby had expected she lived someplace far, far away, like London, or even her native Holland.

“I knew she was alive, but I didn’t realize she still lived in the Highlands, and so close to the village, too.”

They finished their dinner while Hamish explained the rest of the particulars about the estate, the annual income from rents, the costs, the potential improvements. They were sharing a slice of cheesecake over cups of cappuccino when Hamish leaned back in his chair, patted his satisfied belly, and asked, “So what will you do now that you’ve discovered all you have, Libby Hutchinson?”