by Julia London
Lottie lifted her tankard and tapped Catriona’s. “Thank the saints for that.”
With a good night’s sleep in her own bed, Catriona’s mood was improved the next morning. Particularly when she walked into Glenna’s room at first light and threw the drapes open on her window.
Glenna howled at the intrusion.
“Come on, then,” Catriona said. “We’re a boat ride away from your final resting place.”
“My what?” Glenna exclaimed.
Catriona smiled sweetly. “I mean, Kishorn Abbey.”
“Good,” Glenna said petulantly. “I donna like it here in this drafty castle with its musty smells and strange sounds at night.” She stretched her arms high overhead. “Will someone bring breakfast, then?”
Catriona rolled her eyes and walked out to prepare for the boat trip to Kishorn Abbey.
* * *
WHEN GLENNA FIRST laid eyes on the abbey, she looked distraught. She stared, slack-jawed, at the decrepit buildings, as if she couldn’t comprehend it.
Catriona gleefully ran up the ancient steps to the abbey. Rhona MacFarlane was the first to reach her and greeted her with a hug. “How happy we are you’ve come home!” she exclaimed. “Come, see the others.”
“Aye, I will,” Catriona said. “But, first, may I introduce Glenna Guinne Graham,” she said, and gestured for Glenna to join them, which she did, complaining about the danger of falling as she picked her way up the steps. “Glenna has come to the abbey to stay,” Catriona said.
“Fàilte!” Rhona said, and opened her arms to Glenna.
Glenna stared at her as if she were covered with muck.
Rhona lowered her arms.
“Glenna is with child,” Catriona said.
“I beg your pardon!” Glenna protested.
“And she’s no place to go. So she has come here, seeking a roof over her head. Is that no’ right, Glenna?” she asked, and looked pointedly at her charge.
Glenna sighed. “Aye, it is.”
“You are most welcome here, aye?” Rhona said, and put her arm around Glenna, ignoring how Glenna tried to pull free. “I’ve a perfect room for you, with a view of the loch.”
They walked through the ruins, through a flock of chickens running about, past the milk cows meandering into the old narthex, and past women and their children at work. One by one the women stopped what they were doing and nodded at Glenna, called out a greeting to Catriona.
Glenna kept her gaze on the path before her, looking, oddly, a wee bit frightened.
The room Rhona showed them to was plain, but had a small bed, a bureau with a basin and a window that overlooked the loch.
“This is to be my room?” Glenna asked, looking around. “It’s small. Is there nothing larger?”
“Nothing larger. It’s a safe place for you, Glenna,” Catriona reminded her.
Glenna walked to the bed and sat. And then she lay down, rolled onto her side and put her back to Catriona and Rhona. Catriona almost chastised Glenna for being so rude, but Rhona shook her head and drew her out of the room.
“I beg your pardon, Rhona,” Catriona said. “She’s a wee brat.”
“Donna fret, Miss Catriona. She’s no’ the first of us to be unhappy with the place her life has led her. Come now, we’ll have some tea. I have news!”
“Aye,” Catriona said. “So do I.”
They went to the common room, where several women joined them, one of them brewing tea, another cutting cake. They took seats around a rough-hewn table that Rabbie had made for them.
“I’m afraid I’ve bad news,” Catriona said, wincing as she looked around at their hopeful faces. “My uncle Knox, the Earl of Norwood, gained us an audience with the Lord Advocate.”
“Oh, aye,” Rhona said with a wave of her hand. “That, we know.”
“You know? How?”
“Lady Mackenzie came to Kishorn to tell us, she did.”
Catriona looked around at their faces. They did not seem to be bothered by her news, not one of them. “So you know that we might have a wee bit of time, but likely will no’ be able to keep the abbey, then?” she asked, to make sure they understood.
The women nodded.
“But...but do you understand what it means?” she pressed.
“Aye,” Rhona said cheerfully. At Catriona’s disconcerted look, Rhona reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “We’ve a plan, Miss Mackenzie, a fine one, aye?”
“A plan? What plan?”
“We’re to be weavers!” blurted one of the women who was heavy with child.
Catriona was confused. Weavers?
“It’s true!” Rhona said gleefully. “Did no one tell you, then? It was Mrs. Aulay’s idea, it was. She told us that her father once determined their clan would produce flax linen, but though he purchased the looms, he had no flax. It didna go as planned, the poor lad.”
Catriona had heard quite a lot about Lottie’s late father and was not surprised that he had struck out to make flax linen without flax. “I don’t understand.”
“That tale gave her the idea, and when she considered how many sheep were wandering about, and how much wool was being shorn at Balhaire, she wondered, why no’ spin it and weave it, then? Why no’ make the woolen cloth instead of sending it off? Lottie Mackenzie is a clever lass, she is.”
Catriona shook her head. “But how? We know nothing of weaving.”
“We donna know it, no. But it happens that the MacGregors do a wee bit of weaving, they do, and Captain Mackenzie, well, he had a chat with them, and it seems as it’s no’ so difficult, no’ when one has the wheels and looms, and Mr. Rabbie Mackenzie, he said he could verra well make the wheels and looms if he had a pattern, and naturally, the MacGregors did. So...we’re to be weavers!”
The women looked at her with eager faces. They were pleased with the plan, and Catriona had to admit, it was as good as any. Gainful employment. A product they could sell. Catriona wanted to be thrilled for them, but something was niggling at her—they hadn’t needed her to determine what to do. Together with her family, all of whom had promised to look after the abbey while she was away, they’d devised their future without her.
“But...but where will you live?”
“Auchenard,” said one. “Until we’ve another place, that is. Lord Chatwick has said he’d be pleased for us to reside there, as he rarely comes to Auchenard.”
Auchenard was an old hunting lodge the family owned and where Daisy and Cailean had forged their love for each other. The lodge belonged to Daisy’s son by her first marriage, to Ellis, Lord Chatwick. It was true that Auchenard, just down the loch from Rabbie and Bernadette, sat empty most of the time, and Catriona wondered why she and Zelda hadn’t thought of it.
Rhona and the others laid out the details of their plan to Catriona that afternoon. It appeared they’d thought everything through, and with Catriona’s family to fill in the gaps, it was readily apparent that...well, they didn’t need her.
Kishorn Abbey didn’t need her anymore.
When it came time to return to Balhaire, Catriona walked slowly through the ruins. She paused in the middle, looking around her. For more than a year, she’d devoted all her time to the abbey and the residents here. It was hard to believe that it would disappear, and these women, who had given her such purpose in her own life, had found their voice and their path. That’s what Catriona had wanted for them, wasn’t it? Aye, it was...but she couldn’t help but feel sad and a wee bit dejected that it had happened without her.
Rhona strolled beside her, talking about looms and wool cloth, oblivious to Catriona’s grief. They reached the entrance and Rhona said, “Ah, there’s the lad who will row you, then. Time to go, aye?”
She meant, of course, that it was time for Catriona to return to Balhaire. But the question echoed in Catriona’s head. Time to go.
Time to leave this part of your life behind.
“Oh, dear, I almost forgot!” Rhona said. “One moment, Miss Catriona.” She hurried into the habitable side of the abbey and, in a few moments, appeared again, waving a folded paper at her. “I near forgot! This is for you! I promised I’d no’ give it to you until the future of the abbey was decided, aye?”
Catriona looked at the letter and recognized Zelda’s flowing hand. She gasped—Zelda had left her a letter after all, and she took it with a fresh surge of grief. She smiled gratefully at Rhona. “Thank you. I thought...” Her words trailed off.
Rhona smiled with great empathy. If anyone understood what Zelda had meant to Catriona, it was Rhona. Zelda had meant the same to her in some ways. “You’ll come again to see after Mrs. Graham, aye?”
Catriona looked at the abbey. What was there for her now? “I’ll be here until the end, that I will, Rhona.”
Rhona gave her a tight hug, then waved as Catriona walked down the steps to the water’s edge.
On the return to Balhaire, Catriona read the letter Zelda had left her:
My dearest Catriona, the apple of my eye, as near to my own child as if I had birthed you. My greatest desire was to give you everything I know, but as I lie here on my deathbed and think of my own life, I know there is one last thing I must impart—you must live with no regrets, leannan. You’ve been given the gift of a privileged life, and you must live it and love it. No looking to the past. No mourning what might have been, for whatever has been was meant to be. No worrying for the future, for whatever will be is meant to be. No fretting over wagging tongues. I’d not have lived my life as I did, with many loves, and many disappointments, and many joys, had I looked back or fretted over talk or worried what was ahead.
My days are growing shorter, and soon there will be none left, and I have no regrets for a life well lived. Now I move to the next astounding thing. You will be sad when the abbey comes to its end, and I suspect you will fight against it. I hope you will live with no regrets, and that you’ll not look back, but only forward to the next astounding thing. Above all, do not listen to what others say of you—that is the truest freedom of spirit you can know. Mo chridhe, how much joy you have given me.
Your loving Zelda
Catriona read the letter twice more before she folded it and put it in her pocket. She loved Zelda so very much...but she was not Zelda.
She couldn’t help but look back at the summer of Hamlin and not regret it. It was incredibly painful to have loved so hard only to have lost that love. She wished for one more day with Zelda, one chance to ask her how she’d endured the loss of Uncle Knox. She wished she could ask how Zelda had possibly believed there were more astounding things to happen for her after that loss.
To Catriona, it seemed that the best of her life had come and gone under a yew tree.
And now that the abbey would be no more, there was nothing for her. Nothing to look forward to, nothing to give her joy, nothing at all ahead of her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
A FORTNIGHT HAD passed since Catriona’s return to Balhaire. Three and a half weeks since she’d left Dungotty. Twenty-two days since she’d last laid eyes on Hamlin, and every day that passed she felt more breathless than the last. As if she could not breathe properly. As if her lungs had all but collapsed on her.
Catriona managed to keep her wits about her by throwing herself into the task of learning about the business of making wool cloth. In fact, she’d just come from the Isle of Skye, where she and her sister-in-law Bernadette had paid a call to Catriona’s dear friend Lizzie MacDonald and Lizzie’s brother, Ivor MacDonald. Ivor had, at varying points of Catriona’s life, tried to court her. He was in the business of exporting cloth now, and when he wasn’t blushing at her over a bolt of it, he was explaining to her the market for it.
Ivor MacDonald was a good man. But he was not the duke.
Catriona and Bernie were returned to the shore on the mainland and were picking up their things when Bernie noticed a ship in the cove. “Who has come?” she asked curiously.
Catriona turned to look at the ship. It was unfamiliar, flying a British flag. “I donna know. Shall we have a look, then?”
“Not me,” Bernie said. “I’m famished! I could scarcely stomach Lizzie’s tea cakes. Did she make them with mud, do you suppose?”
Catriona laughed. “The tragedy is that she fancies herself a good cook.”
Bernie shuddered, then laughed. “I’ll see you in the hall, shall I?”
Catriona waved her on and started in the direction of the cove, but when she reached the top of the path, she noticed a man walking up. He was at the bottom of the path, but Catriona would recognize that auburn hair anywhere. That was Mr. Bain. She blamed him for the appearance of Glenna Graham in her life.
She stood with her arms akimbo as he made his way up the path. “What are you doing here, then?”
“Aye, feasgar math, Miss Mackenzie.”
She stared at him with shock. “You speak Gaelic?”
He smiled in a manner that suggested he had a secret. “I’ve come in the company of your uncle, Lord Norwood.”
“What? My uncle! He’s no’ expected! But why have you come with him?”
“I’ve taken a position in his household, madam.”
“An diabhal toirt leis thu!” she exclaimed without thinking.
“The devil will no’ take me today,” he said with a cheeky half smile.
Catriona was shocked that he was in her uncle’s employ and spoke Gaelic. What else was the man hiding? “Where is my uncle?” she demanded.
Mr. Bain turned, and there behind him, she saw her uncle laboring up the hill and cursing every step.
“Uncle!” she cried with delight, and brushed past Mr. Bain. “We were no’ expecting you!”
“Yes, darling, I know, you were not. For the love of God, is there no one who can help an old man up this bloody hill?”
“If it please, my lord, I’ll have a litter sent down,” Mr. Bain said.
“You’ll do no such thing,” Catriona scoffed. “I will help him.” She put Uncle Knox’s arm around her shoulders and began to walk with him. “What a delightful surprise, Uncle Knox. Did Mamma send for you?”
“She did not. I have come because I have important news and thought it best to deliver it myself. And to see my sister before I am too old to make this wretched journey.”
“What news?”
He paused halfway up the path to catch his breath. “All right,” he conceded. “I’ll tell you, as you ought to hear it before anyone else, darling. First, you should know that the vote was taken, and your Montrose is now a sworn member of the House of Lords.”
She blinked. Of course she’d wondered. She’d tried to picture it, but other than seeing Hamlin’s face, she’d been unsuccessful. She had no understanding of how those things went, of how votes like that were taken.
“Have you nothing to say?” Uncle Knox asked.
“No, I...I am no’ surprised, aye? But you could have sent a letter, uncle. You didna come all this way to tell me that.”
“No, indeed.” He sucked in several more breaths, his gaze fixed on her face. A smile slowly appeared, crinkling in the corners of his eyes. “I didna come to tell you that—I came to tell you how he became a member of Parliament.”
“The vote,” she said.
“Aye, the vote, but there was a bit of mayhem before the vote was taken, as Montrose refused to accept the vote without first clarifying a few things for the gentlemen who would cast their votes.”
She couldn’t guess what her uncle was talking about. “What things?” she asked, her brows sinking into a frown.
“First, he insisted on telling the truth about his former wife. He told them quite plainly that he’d been cuckolded and left high and dry, so to speak, with the care of her ward. And t
hen he explained that she had come back to him with another man’s child in her belly.”
Catriona gasped. She gaped at Uncle Knox. “He didna! I donna believe you!”
“Believe me, for it is true. I witnessed it with my very own eyes, I did.”
“You? Why were you at the vote?”
“Well,” he said with a bit of a shrug, “I had some business with Mr. Bain. But never mind that—Montrose certainly did say that,” he said, his grin growing wider. “He went on to say that had it not been for Kishorn Abbey, he would have been forced to take the adultress and her bastard child in, as it was the only decent thing to do, and that with their vote, he intended to fight for all of Scotland, for the meek and the poor as well as the privileged among us, and if any of them took issue with his cause, they ought not to vote for him.”
Catriona covered her gaping mouth in disbelief.
Uncle Knox put his hand on her arm. “But they did, Cat. They voted for him. All but Caithness, that is, who, I have heard, felt a bit duped by MacLaren. Nevertheless, Montrose was voted in with the slimmest of margins, and he is to London now.”
Catriona laughed with delight. Pride and love surged through her, and she wished she could tell Hamlin how proud she was. “Thank you, Uncle Knox. Thank you for coming all this way to tell me. You’ve made me verra happy with this news.” She hugged her uncle.
“You think I came all this way to tell you that?” he asked, and laughed. “No, darling. I have come on an errand for the Duke of Montrose himself.”
“What errand?” she asked. She couldn’t imagine what errand might lead her uncle here.
“Well, God save us all, lass, no man could find Balhaire without a guide, could he? You’re bloody well far into the Highlands, aren’t you?”
It took a moment for his meaning to register with Catriona. Her stomach dropped. She was suddenly shaking, her thoughts raging about her head like a summer storm. She gripped Uncle Knox’s arms. “What do you mean, uncle? Speak plain—is he here?” she asked, her voice quaking with hope.
