Margaret gave her a fleeting, sorrowful look. “He told me to tell you he’d come back. He promised, Harriet.”
Harriet, her throat so tight now she couldn’t speak at all, only nodded.
Once in the quiet peace of the front parlor, Harriet allowed her grief to show, and tears trembled on her lids. She blinked them back, knowing they did her little good now. She still had too many responsibilities to give in to emotion now. Yet how she missed him! The wondrous new knowledge of his love for her made his absence much harder to bear.
Already she felt his absence painfully, and the fear of what his letter contained was like a stone lodged in her heart. Last night she’d resolved to trust him, but only hours later she felt her heart tremble once more with fear about doubt, and she despised her own weakness.
The letter still clenched in her hand, she sank onto the bench by the pianoforte, her most treasured possession. It had come with her grandmother to this house as part of her dowry. Her grandmother had taught her to play until she died when Harriet was seven, and then Harriet had continued to teach herself. She loved the comfort of creating music, the wonder of hearing new sounds from her fingertips.
Yet the instrument held no appeal for her now, and it was in the still silence of a summer’s afternoon that she broke the seal on Allan’s letter.
Dearest Harriet... I acted a wrong part in taking any obligation from you, and others might say a dishonourable one. My honour bids me to set you at liberty, which I hereby do in releasing you from that promise which I hold dearer than my own life. You may have an opportunity of getting yourself settled in life more suitable to your merits than I have a prospect of, but never with a man that will adore you half as much as I do. Whatever my fate nothing could give me greater happiness than to hear of you being well settled. Providence is kind and may have something in store for us that we are not aware of. Until we meet again, adieu.
The letter slipped from Harriet's fingers.
Well settled?
Fury and fear mingled within her, lodging in a burning lump in her chest. How could it be his wish now for her to be married to another? A full day had not yet passed since his declaration of undying love, yet now she wondered if it was only so many cheap words.
Where had his hope, his faith in their future, gone? His promises? Why had he set her free, when he’d spoken only yesterday of binding her to him! Yesterday he’d wanted her to wait--and now? Harriet shook her head and tried to stem the tide of despair and confusion that threatened to overwhelm her. Allan was setting her free, but it felt like she'd been put in a prison... a jail of uncertainty and doubt.
She heard the front door open and close and then the heavy tread of her father's footsteps as he came in for his midday meal. Harriet swallowed the resentment that lodged in her stomach like a hot coal. It was because of her father that she was not on
The Economy of Aberdeen
right now, on Allan’s arm as his beloved and wife.
Yet she knew she could not speak of it to her father. He would not countenance such a discussion, even if Harriet could even work up the courage to say a word. Sighing, she folded Allan’s letter back up and slipped it into the pocket of her apron. What was done, she knew, was done. Any anger or resentment she felt towards her father served no purpose now. Still, the ache in her heart did not ease as she rose from the pianoforte’s bench. Work needed to be done, the midday meal, and her father’s comfort, seen to.
David Campbell stood in the doorway of the kitchen, as haggard and surly as ever, his sparse grey hair damp with sweat from where it had been flattened underneath his knitted cap, now held twisted in his hands.
“Where’s Harriet, then?” he demanded. “I need my tea.”
“I'm here, Father.” Harriet kissed her father's weathered cheek, shooting Margaret a calming glance at the same time. It wasn't easy getting used to David Campbell's unfriendly ways. She managed it only by grit and the grace of God.
“I suppose Ian's up to no good,” David groused as he washed his hands in the basin by the pump. “It's time that boy was doing proper work. I was in the fields at fourteen, learning the land my father paid for with his very life.”
“Which is why you always wanted Ian to have lessons,” Harriet replied calmly. She had heard many times how her grandfather had worked in the fields he’d so proudly bought until the day before he died of a heart attack--undoubtedly from a life of hard labour. Harriet moved with quick, agile grace around the kitchen, taking a cloth and reaching for the fish pie that had been resting on the warming shelf over the hearth. “Ian is receiving the education you never had, Father.”
“Much good it will do him,” David said with a grunt. He glanced at Margaret, his expression turning shrewd. “Well, then. Sandy's finally done it.”
“They're on the ship, yes,” Margaret answered, her eyes flashing.
“Never thought he would. Had a good position, though, didn't he, as tacksman? Still, there's nothing to being your own man.” David's chest puffed with pride. “We've the largest landholding on the island. Free land...” His face darkened for a moment, and Harriet tensed for another diatribe. What had her father found fault with now? Then his expression cleared, and he said firmly, “the land's ours, always has been.”
“And always will be,” Harriet finished with a smile. She knew how proud her father was of being a landowner. “We all look forward to hearing of the MacDougalls’ good fortune, I’m sure,” she added, and her hand slipped inside her apron pocket to feel the weight of her letters. She wished Allan had them for the long ship journey, to remind him of her, to comfort him in the moments of doubt and discouragement he would face, as surely as she would.
“In due time.” David shot her a speculative glance, and Harriet thought she knew just what he was thinking. No doubt he was wondering if Allan had spoken to her.
Let him wonder, she thought with a sudden burst of savage satisfaction. Let her father feel one slight grain of the uncertainty and doubt she’d harboured over the last months, and even years. She knew the thought was unworthy of either her or Allan, and she forced the bitterness away. Surely now was a time for peace... if only she could find it.
“Let me get your supper, Father. Margaret will call the others to the table.”
As Margaret left the kitchen, Harriet bustled around, laying plates and cups. David watched her, a brooding expression on his face.
Harriet felt his heavy gaze upon her and she looked up from the table. “Is everything all right, Father?”
“As well as it can be.” David rubbed a hand over his whiskered jaw. “I suppose you’ve said your farewells... to all the MacDougalls?”
“Allan was here,” Eleanor piped up as she came into the kitchen, a mischievous grin lighting her elfin features. The other followed behind and took their places at the table. Grace was said and the meal served before Eleanor could continue, blithely ignoring Harriet’s sharp warning glance.
“Harriet and Allan took a stroll down to Duart, and when Harriet came back she was as flushed--”
“Eleanor!” Harriet cut in sharply. “Enough. You’re gossiping like a fishwife.”
Eleanor blushed in shame, and Harriet bit her lip. She’d no cause to shout at the younger girl. Eleanor did not know the whole truth of the matter, and neither did Margaret by the confused look she was giving Harriet.
“But of course you’ve said, Harriet!” she exclaimed.
“Said what?” David snapped.
A silence, heavy and brooding, descended on the table. Even Ian and Rupert, their heads bent together over some nonsense, looked up in perplexity.
Margaret flushed and glanced at her plate, clearly realising she’d spoken amiss. Harriet sighed and decided honesty was the better course, even if such plain talking incurred her father’s wrath. “Allan asked me to wait for him, Father. I’m sure you’ve guessed it already. When he returns, his fortune secure, he will ask me to marry him.”
David fixed her with a gimlet stare. “And you’re prepared to wait?”
Her heart fluttered--was it with excitement or fear? “I am.”
“It’s as lief he’ll never return,” David warned her grimly. “If he survives at all, he’ll make his fortune and find his own bride in that new land.”
Margaret opened her mouth in angry denial, but Harriet stayed her with one firm hand on her shoulder. “Perhaps, but I trust Allan, and I’m willing to take the risk.”
“We’re not a gambling family,” David snapped, and Harriet could have almost laughed at his sheer orneriness.
“This is not a wager, Father,” she said, “but a trust in God and His hand upon both me and Allan.”
They didn’t speak of it again, and David returned to the fields with a piece of cold mutton wrapped in muslin to see him to dinner. Harriet turned back to a kitchen filled with dirty dishes, a garden outside that needed weeding, and the washing to take down. A woman from Craignuire had been coming three days a week to help her with the heavy work, but she’d stopped a month ago, apparently on her father’s orders, and Harriet felt the burden now.
Margaret returned to the kitchen, tucking an unruly tendril of hair behind one ear. “Shall we get on with it?” she said cheerfully, and Harriet, tired and overwhelmed by the happenings of the last day, suddenly felt near tears.
“Ah, Harriet.” Margaret pulled her into a quick, fierce hug. “Dinna fash yourself. He’ll return, you know he will.”
“It’s not that.” Harriet let out an inelegant sniff and dabbed her eyes with the corner of her apron. “It’s everything. I almost envy him, Margaret, and the grand adventure they’ll all be having.”
Margaret stepped back with a shiver. “I don’t. Have you not heard how wild that land is, Harriet? Endless snow and cold, and the natives--”
“I’m sure there are tales to tell around a fire,” Harriet said, “but they’re just tales.”
“It’s a hard place, there’s no denying,” Margaret said, and then her face suddenly fell. “But you might be there in a year’s time! I’m sorry, Harriet--”
“And you will be as well,” Harriet reminded her with a small smile. “Your father intends to fetch both you and Rupert back within a year or two, doesn’t he?”
“Yes,” Margaret said, but she sounded hesitant, and Harriet wondered just what had made her friend and kinswoman so eager to stay behind.
The rest of the day went smoothly enough, with Margaret helping Harriet and Eleanor with the housework. David returned for the evening meal, but he was too weary to talk much, and the little group around the pine table was mostly silent. It was only when Harriet was alone in the kitchen, wiping down the table, that David finally spoke at all.
“You're a good daughter to me, Harriet,” he said gruffly, and Harriet ducked her head in mute thanks. “But I wish you'd been a son.”
Harriet smiled and said nothing. She'd heard this many times before. No matter how well she managed her father's house, having been housekeeper since she was Eleanor's age, beating rugs, churning butter, and baking bread, it would never be enough. She could never be the boy her father had wanted. She understood that, and the importance of a son, yet she still felt a helpless sense of loss at her father’s words.
“A son to help me manage the farm,” he continued heavily, his shoulders slumping. “I'm an old man now, and I can't do it alone.”
“You can hire help help,” Harriet suggested, and David scowled.
“It's time Ian gave up his lessons. He'll be a man soon. His place is with me.”
Harriet strove to keep her tone reasonable. She knew arguing with her father when he was in this mood did no one any good. “He'll take time out for lambing,” she reminded him gently. “And he’ll be learning with Rupert now. There's plenty of men to help from the village.” David hired two such men already, but clearly it was not enough, or at least not what he wanted.
“Why should I hire a man when I have a son?” David demanded.
Harriet couldn't answer. This argument had been going on for months. Ian was desperate to continue his lessons. He'd a far better head for books than cows or corn. Harriet continued to stand between him and their father, in an attempt to keep him with the tutor in Tobermory for as long as possible. Now she wondered just how long that would be.
David looked like he wanted to argue, but then with a sigh he shook his head and retired to one of the front rooms of the house that he used as his study. Harriet sank tiredly into the rocking chair by the fire. She reached into her apron pocket as she had several times already that day to feel the bundle of letters Allan had returned. They were both a comfort and a wound.
Would it always be like this, she wondered as she gazed into the orange embers of the fire. Would the rest of her life be spent waiting, smoothing over the ruffled waters of this family while dreaming of the day when she’d have her own?
Since the death of their mother, Harriet had always stood between David and her siblings. It wasn't easy. Ian and Eleanor were both sensitive children, and David had turned into a sour, embittered man when his beloved wife had been taken from him in childbirth.
It was only catching the glimpses of the loving father she remembered that kept Harriet strong, determined to bind her family together with ties of love. Yet those glimpses had become rarer, and the recent knowledge of her father’s refusal to consider Allan’s suit made her wonder how she could continue to endure.
Eleanor came around the corner of the kitchen, her toes peeking from underneath her nightgown, one tawny plait lying over her shoulder. “Will you read me a story, Harriet?”
“You can read them yourself,” Harriet protested, but Eleanor simply held her hands out in mute appeal. Harriet knew it wasn’t the stories, but rather the closeness, that both of them cherished. Smiling tiredly she rose from the rocking chair.
“All right, then.”
Upstairs, with her knees drawn up to her chest, her nightgown tucked neatly around her ankles, Eleanor looked younger than her eleven years. Harriet felt a fierce pang of love for the little sister she’d raised like her own child. She’d been twelve when Eleanor was born, and her mother had died. In the course of a single night Harriet had left her childhood behind, and taken on the burdens of the household as well as a bairn. David’s sister, her Aunt Elsie and a widow, had helped for a few years until illness had claimed her as well. Then Harriet had truly taken on the running of Achlic Farm... and she’d never stopped.