And then other things that were not written down—Alasdair, Rory and Archie laughing uproariously. An evening getting viciously, cat-spittingly drunk. The empty, lonely silence after his grandfather’s funeral.
Memory after memory crashed over him. Waves of incidents and accidents and life and bloody living. All the lost years stretching back through his mind. All the feelings that had made him into the man he was supposed to be.
“Ewan?” Greer’s voice was fretful in the dark.
“I’m here.” But he was not—he was thousands of miles and years away in the past, searching for her.
“What are you doing on the floor?” Greer dragged a blanket from the bed to cover her nakedness. “Those are my letters.” She came to quietly take one of the precious folds of paper from his hands. “I know them by heart.”
“I’m learning them by my heart, as well.” He reached to pull her down to his side, though he still looked intently at the sheaf of letters he had not yet read clutched in hands. “These are my letters. I wrote them. I remember these things. I can see this”—he poked one of the letters near the top—“house in Rome, painted that awful hot rusty pink. And the sublime view out the window up the long line of white marble steps.”
“The Piazza di Spagna, number seventy-four.”
“Just so—we talked of it earlier.” He felt as if he were finally in control of fitting the puzzle pieces together, pushing them forcefully into place.
She placed a sleepy kiss on his bare shoulder. “They’ve helped you remember.”
“Aye. Some. A great deal.” So many images flooding his mind’s eye. But still there was a void, an emptiness where she should have been. “These words bring the images to my mind—these places—and the faces of these people. But…” He probed his memory, pushing against the impenetrable wall that kept him from any memory of her.
“But?” She was still smiling, still waiting in happy expectation of his moment of clarity—the moment when it all came back to him.
But it hadn’t.
“I’m sorry,” he began. “I just can’t seem to remember anything more.”
“Anything more about…?”
“About you.”
The pain in the liquid depths of her beautiful brown eyes gutted him. But he had to be honest. He could not lie about this, that was so important. “I am sorry, my love. I know how much this means to you.”
“It does.” She did him the honor of not hiding her disappointment, though she was clearly holding herself very carefully in check. Her gaze went to the letters still crushed in his hand. “There are still some more you haven’t read that might…”
“They might. I hope they do.” He pulled her close to kiss her forehead, put she eased away. “I want it more than I can say. But I must also say that I am sorry they have not yet.”
“Please don’t apologize for something that can’t be helped.” Her answering smile was over-bright. Carefully considerate of him. “I do want you to know how much I loved—and still love—these letters. You taught me so much and shared so much. You sent me books, and paintings, and we wrote of…everything. Poetry and dogs and parents and travel and philosophy and kisses…everything.”
“Kisses that you saved for me.”
“I did. Every last one.” She took a deep breath. “It was exceptional, our communication. Our openness. Quite exceptional.” Another quick exhalation, before she took his face between her hands. “But you are exceptional still. You are remarkable all to yourself, without any of this. You asked me last night if I would love you if you were not Duke of Crieff, and my answer is, and always will be the same—I love you. I love your kindness and your sly wit and your honor. No other man would even consider if he was worthy of his birthright, and that is why I love you. Because you are a man for others—a man who will always put others’ needs before your own. You always have and you always will, no matter what you remember and what you forget.”
“My God, lass. My lass. My Greer.” He pressed kisses into her palms and pressed his cheeks to her hands as if he were swearing fealty. Because he was. “I can promise you one thing—and this is that I will never forget you again. Ever. You are a part of me now—a part I will never forget.”
She kissed his cheeks, one to a side—a solemn benediction and sweet forgiveness all at the same time. “You will so long as no one ever hits you over the head and hurts your brain or tries to murder you.”
He could see the unspoken fear shining in her eyes—what both she and Dewar and his friends feared—that whoever had been unsuccessful in killing him would try again.
“There is no guarantee of anything in this life but death, and I have already cheated that once,” he assured her. “My memory may never come back. I may never be fully fit to be the Duke of Crieff again. But I will pledge myself to try. For you I will dare anything.”
“Not for me,” she disagreed with that quiet smile. “For Crieff. You always remembered Crieff. Right from the beginning, then it was the only word you could say—Crieff. Crieff belongs to you, just as you belong to Crieff. You belong there.” She gripped his hand as if she could impress her surety upon him. “You are Crieff. Nothing, no memory or lack of memory, can change that.”
I am Crieff.
He had to remember. He had to remember for her. He had to remember her—it felt important to see her, to place her into the puzzle of his past in order to find his way into the future. He felt incomplete without her.
Ewan returned to the letters scattered across his lap. “So you wrote back to me—answered all these letters?
“Everyone. Except the last.” Her quiet smile warmed the corners of her eyes. “The last, I meant to answer in person.”
“Then they will be at Crieff, your letters to me?”
“Perhaps.” She did not look hopeful. “Perhaps you saved them. Or perhaps not. Though I should hate to think they were lost or destroyed. But perhaps I have grown sentimental.”
“Nay. I would have kept them.” He was sure of it. He was a thoughtful, methodical man—his friends, as well as his own best understanding of his character, had told him so. “I’ll go there, tomorrow, to look for them along with everything else—and Dewar.” He couldn’t forget the man who had done so much for him.
“But we should all go with you,” she cautioned. “We should be with you in case…things don’t go according to plan.”
In case he didn’t remember. Because that was his only plan—to hope that his memory would come to his reuse and lead him home.
But not this moment. At this moment he was going to gather his lass up and take her back to bed where they could nestle until they were warm. “I’ll find them lass. I’ll find you,” he swore. “I promise you.”
Ewan woke before the first dim rays of dawn, haunted into wakefulness by the images and lessons of the night. The images and lessons that forced him to confront the fact that while it would be easiest if Malcolm simply slipped away, it would not be right. Not for Crieff.
And so he kissed his lass and tiptoed back to his assigned room before they might be discovered together, and make the impropriety of disappearing from the dining room table together any greater. But he could not rest. He could not sit. He could not wait one moment longer.
If he was Crieff, he owed it to Greer, to himself, and to Crieff, to be Crieff. Now. No more waiting.
So compelled was he to get to Crieff as soon as possible, that he wore his borrowed velvet evening suit rather than take the time to find more suitable clothes. So compelled was he that he did not wake the stable boys or grooms, but slipped a bridle over Cat Sìth’s head, found a suitable saddle and mounted alone, following the drive that wound away from the house.
He took the main road that followed the course of the Shee Water south as it carved its way down glens and across the middle of straths. The sky had lightened to a bony, whitewashed grey by the time he drew rein at the Inn at the bridge, pausing only long enough to water the horse, before walking toward th
e bridge itself, rather than going west toward Crieff.
His hands went suddenly clammy, and his skin chilled with the uneasy, eerie feeling that crawled up his neck when he crossed to the center of the narrow stone bridge.
He had been there before—stopped in the middle of this bridge.
Ewan dismounted to try and stop the disorienting feeling of vertigo that came from being atop his tall mount on the narrow span suspended a hundred feet above the river. But perhaps that was what had happened—he had become disoriented and fallen, hitting his head on the stone.
The feeling of falling was so overwhelming, he could see it in his mind’s eye, the tumbling spin of grey stone, blue sky, and green leaves that had been swallowed in enveloping, cold blackness.
He straightened his shoulders to shake off the feeling and walked back to the wide solidity of the roadway on the north side of the bridge. He had to stand there for a good long minute, peering hard at the steep banks of the river. Imprinting into his mind the sight of the granite boulders glistening at the water’s edge. Waiting for memory to prompt him into action before he remounted and headed west along the branch of the Shee Water that flowed slowly south by west, letting the morning sun warm his back as he made his way along the road. Letting the babble of the water drown out the blether of doubts and uncertainties clamoring in his brain.
But then the burn was telling its own tale—buoying him up and carrying him along like a boat, except that he was the boat, and the water chilled him to his bones so completely he was numb even to the pain. But not to the knowledge that he was dying.
That was it—he had fallen into the water because he was dying.
The awful knowledge of how close he had come to death—how close he might yet come again—made him restless to take some action. Anything to chase the chill from his bones.
He spurred Cat Sìth to a dead run, letting the stallion’s gallop eat up the miles. Ewan spared no eyes for the road—he kept his eyes on the burn, trying to keep that strange feeling of suspension for as long as possible, letting his battered brain find its own way, winding like the course of the water toward the raft of memories floating just out of reach.
Ewan finally drew rein at the last turn of the burn, where it veered north toward the village. There at the bank, an eddy of water formed a shallow pool that caught flotsam, like logs and leaves and tree limbs.
And men—the eddy had caught him.
That strong swirl of water had saved his life, tossing him into the bank, forcing him to crawl onto the warm land as the cold numbness of the deep water wore off.
He had used the reeds and bracken as hand holds to push through the mud and leaf mold and pain that nearly took his will to live, to reach the side of the road. He had staggered to his feet for a few paces before the pain and blindness and blood loss made him collapse in the middle of the road. Here he had fallen.
And she had appeared above him, a bright, golden angel of mercy. A last chance for redemption. A way forward, but not back.
He slowed Cat Sìth to a walk as he approached the village, wanting to go it slowly up the high street, to glean as much information as possible from each and every moment, each and every piece of knowledge that might make the journey onward easier.
The world seemed to be waking up around him—doors and windows were being pushed open. Shopkeepers stood on their stoops, gawp-faced and slack-jawed at the sight of His Late Grace, the Duke of Crieff, alive and in breathing in their midst.
The village looked different from his newfound memory—the orderly disorder of buildings, homes and shops that made up the fabric of Crieff village looked a little scaffy and shabby, down at heel, as if the Scots’ pride that kept the village neat and tidy had taken a turn for the worse.
Here and there a fellow spoke. “My Laird,” or “Yer Grace.” On a corner a merchant’s wife dropped into a low curtsey, while at another, a lad bearing a bushel of apples, set down his load to knuckle his forehead in respect.
Ewan nodded in acknowledgement to those he thought he recognized as well as anyone who looked him in the eye. Aye, I’m back, he wanted to say. I never did leave. I never would. This was his home—this glen, with this village and these people. He served them just as assuredly as they served him.
He was tempted to stop, to take their assurances to bolster his confidence, to put off the moment of reckoning at Castle Crieff as long as possible. To keep from the awful moment of discovery, or lack thereof. To hold back the uncertain future for just one minute more.
To keep him from feeling diminished.
But he could not stop, could not slow the press of time, though he dismounted when he reached the tall stone pillars of the gates of Crieff, and pushed the ancient wrought-iron gates wide. He took his time, walking up the long arching avenue of lime trees his grandfather had planted in his youth. “Look forward into the future, my lad,” the grand old gentleman used to say. “Plant trees for your grandsons and make gardens for your granddaughters.”
Ewan looked ahead to the right to see that garden—nine walled acres with blossom-filled borders surrounding a long pond made for curling in the winter. He could feel the heavy weight of the polished granite rocks in his hand and remember the blissful slide of the ice beneath his feet as the rock slid home.
Home was more than the magnificent grey stone keep rising out of the granite ledge at the edge of the home loch behind. Home was this experience, this confluence of past and future. This knowledge. This belonging.
Ewan gave in to the urge to remount and come to Crieff like a laird, instead of the prodigal he felt. Beneath him, Cat Sìth crossed the wide gravel forecourt in a trice, the crunch of his hooves keeping time with the mad tattoo of Ewan’s heart.
Come what may, this was his home. This was where he was meant to be. Hell mend him if he let anyone take that away.
The Lady Greer Douglas
Engelshuis, Vaarstraat,
Antwerp, Belgium
6 June, 1792
Dearest Greer,
Thank you for your wonderful descriptions of places that I am happy you are enjoying far more than I ever did. I am a man for home, happiest at Crieff with my dogs and my friends and my people. I am settling in to fill grandfather’s well-worn boots, though there are days when the task seems too great. But as the great Sir Isaac Newton informed us, to see further, it behooves us to stand on the shoulders of giants. And so I do.
Crieff was more than just Grandfather—it is the living memory that is MacIntosh, the steward of the estate, stoic and reliable, and Dewar, the craggy old keeper who, despite his wizened size and age bestrides the moorside like a stag. It is Mrs. Peddie, the housekeeper, who was raised at Crieff and has worked all her days at our castle, with her intimate knowledge of each and every room, as if her head held a catalogue of all of the castle’s precious and rare objects and works of art. They are the giants of Crieff.
I am off to the moor with Dewar, and hope that after our business in assessing the timber and checking the grouse count are done, I may make my way to Glas Maol, there to work on etching my initials more deeply next to yours. And thinking up something more to do with you, besides just kissing.
Imaginatively Yours, E
His Grace of Crieff Ewan Cameron
Castle Crieff
Perthshire, Scotland
18 July 1792
Dearest Ewan,
Oh, how I long to be home this very moment and help you exercise your imagination! I am all afire to discover what you have in mind besides kissing and kissing and kissing. I long to have secret looks and private smiles that are for you, and you alone. I am meant to be visiting the Rubenshuis, the home and studio of the great painting master, Rubens, but my cheeks are hot and my breath is all bottled up behind my stays for thinking of you. Today I am done with travel and education and erudition. Today I want only you.
Your adoring, impatient G
Chapter 29
Greer came instantly awake with the certain feeling
that something was wrong—that she was already too late. The flat light of a grey, windy day showed it was already well past dawn and into the morning.
She hurled herself out of bed, into the first clothes that presented themselves in her wardrobe, and down the hall to the green bedchamber—the bed was cold, the bedclothes entirely undisturbed.
He had never slept there.
She flung herself down the stairs to find the others. “Where is Ewan?”
While Cairn, Carrington and especially Mama and Papa hardly knew where to look or what to say in answer, Quince simply smiled. “We—well, I—assumed he was with you, sorting out your…difficulties, as it were.”
“We have no difficulties. Or we would not if he had only waited for help—I fear he has already gone for Crieff without us.”
“Oh, holy burnt scones,” Quince swore. “Men.”
“Aye,” her husband rejoined, as he put down his cup “So very like women. Let us go then at once.”
“Aye. I’m for Crieff.” Greer ran for the door.
“Not alone.” Her father’s command was like thunder. “There’s been altogether too much time alone together as it is,” he muttered, before he fixed on Greer a stern paternal glare. “You will take your own best advice—we all will—and go together, in an organized fashion. I will take the road in the carriage.” He moved to ring for Malloch.
“I’ll go over the moor on Nicnevin.” Greer was wasting no time on embarrassment. “Ewan may be searching for Dewar, but I fear that Gow may be searching for them both. And as little as I like Malcolm Cameron, I like Gow less.”
“So noted,” Quince said. “I’ll go with you.”
“As will I,” her husband added. “Whither thou goest.”
“Is there some other path I ought to take?” Archie Carrington asked Papa.
“I’ll send Jock Keith to guide you on the path to the south toward the village of Crieff. In fact, I’ll send out all the ghillies to fan out across the land looking for them both.”
MAD, BAD & DANGEROUS TO MARRY (The Highland Brides Book 4) Page 30
