Angel Harp: A Novel

by Michael Phillips

  It was a stalemate!

  Most love triangles were fueled by self-centered love. But here was a case where everyone was so concerned for the others, no one would make a move.

  All three of the loves were so strong, and so based in selflessness, that we were all willing to give up the love we felt for the good of the other two. In the same way that I would not willingly hurt either of them, neither Alasdair nor Iain was willing to hurt each other for love of me.

  Suddenly everything fell into perspective. It explained why the letters of the past months had been so newsy but impersonal, why, with so much on all three of our hearts to say, nothing was being said!

  It explained the looks. It explained the silences.

  We were all thinking it, but no one was saying anything!

  Now that I understood what had been going on—or thought I did—what of the future? Were Alasdair and Iain destined to live outthe rest of their lives as a couple of Trappist monks, and I as anun?

  I wasn’t sure I liked the prospect.

  What else could the future possibly hold? How was such an impasse to be broken?

  The question jolted me. Suddenly I realized the implications. What did I mean by breaking the impasse? Didn’t it imply that at some point a decision would be made, that one of the “loves” would emerge from the uncertainty?

  That, too, was an astounding thought. It also had huge implications.

  Suddenly I saw them clearly.

  I couldn’t just live in Canada as if nothing had happened. My life had changed.

  A destiny, a future, lay ahead of me.

  I needed to find out what it was.

  In the same way that all this had begun with my realization that I didn’t want my dreams to die, neither did I want my destiny—whatever it was—to just fade away. Whatever future I might have, whatever future I was meant to have, I didn’t want it to die either.

  If it was a terrible thing when dreams died, was it also a terrible thing when you allowed your destiny to die?

  One thing was obvious: If anything was going to happen, I was the one to decide what it was!

  If there was to be a decision about which man declared his love for me, it would be mine to make, not theirs. The choice was up to me, because neither of them would ever say a word.

  I had to decide which man I really loved… loved enough to spend the rest of my life with.

  I could not run from it nor escape it. I had to face my destiny, and the love in my heart. I had to discover what these loves meant, and toward what future they were meant to lead.

  If there was indeed a stalemate, I was the one who had to break it.

  Chapter Sixty-eight

  Presumptuous Return

  Gae bring my guid auld harp ance mair,

  Gae bring it free and fast,

  For I maun sing anither sang,

  Ere a’ my glee be past.

  And trow ye, as I sing, my lads,

  The burden o’t shall be,

  Auld Scotland’s howes and Scotland’s knows,

  And Scotland’s hills for me!

  I’ll drink a cup to Scotland yet

  Wi’ a’ the honours three.

  —“Scotland Yet”

  I flew into the Aberdeen airport on KLM via Amsterdam. No Heathrow, no long train ride.

  This time I did not come as a tourist. I had only one destination—

  Port Scarnose. I did not rent a car. I would take the bus. I wanted no encumbrances, no possessions, nothing to tie me down. No one knew I was coming. I had a mission, and I determined not to let anything distract me from it. If this went badly, or I made a complete fool of myself, I wanted to be able to beat a hasty retreat back to the airport. I did not even bring a harp.

  I brought nothing with me but my heart.

  And that was hidden safely away.

  Well… hidden, perhaps, but not so safely.

  It was the second week of April. I had been away for half a year, but it seemed like it had been half my life. And I suppose it was half my Scotland life.

  I took the Bluebird bus from the airport to Fochabers, and there caught the westbound bus to Port Scarnose. I decided to walk to my destination from the hotel where I had booked a room. Wherever my fate led me, I knew this was a decision that would affect me for the rest of my life.

  It was unbelievably presumptuous to think that the looks and silences and misty eyes of six months ago might still mean what I thought they meant. Ever since I had begun making plans for a return visit, my initial determination changed to terrible doubts. Doubts assailed me from every side, telling me how stupid this was.

  The whole plan was unbelievably stupid!

  The closer the moment of truth got, the more persistent became the doubts. Once the bus began to slow down and I saw the Port Scarnose town center ahead, with all the flurry of emotions the sight brought with it, the doubts became so overpowering that I almost decided to stay in my seat and just keep going. Maybe I had hoped there would be yellow ribbons tied all over either the church or the castle, and that music would start playing and I would suddenly find myself in the middle of a country love song.

  What was I doing?

  No woman in her right mind walks up to a man and says, “Hi. I know you didn’t propose, but I’m ready to marry you anyway because I think you might have wanted to if the circumstances had been different.”

  The bus stopped.

  Timidly I stepped down onto the pavement, my heart beating like a drum. What if someone like Mrs. Gauld or Olivia Urquhart saw me getting off the bus? Word would fly through town in less than an hour!

  Or worse—what if Iain himself happened to be walking by?

  I glanced around in the dusk as the bus left the town. Everything looked so wonderfully but strangely and nostalgically familiar.

  Yet I felt like a stranger again. I had no cottage, no “home.” I had booked myself by phone into the Buchan Arms, the town’s only hotel, for one night.

  I looked hastily about again, drew in a deep breath, and set out. It was cold, bitterly cold and windy—like nothing I had felt here before. The wind blasted against my face, accentuating all the more the folly of my coming. A depressing wave of loneliness swept over me.

  I made it to the hotel, less than a two-minute walk, without seeing any familiar faces. No one was outside, anyway. It was freezing! I walked through the doors with a great sigh of relief.

  I was all the more glad not to see Iain inside. I knew he liked the hotel’s restaurant. He and I had eaten here together two or three times, but I didn’t think anyone in the hotel would recognize me.

  Thirty minutes after my arrival I was seated on an uncomfortable bed in a small, chilly room, wondering all over again what preposterous presumption had led me here.

  It was late in the day, just before six o’clock. By now it was dark. I was exhausted from the flight. I went downstairs to the dining room, ordered a salad and a bowl of soup, which I ate in silence, keeping an eye on the window and the pavement outside. No one I recognized walked by or came in. The place was nearly deserted.

  I went back upstairs to my room, took a shower, and was sound asleep by seven-thirty.

  I slept hard. I needed it. I never get over jet lag in a single night. Previously it took me a week. But a good first night certainly helps your brain and senses recover, even if your body clock remains out of whack a while longer.

  I awoke to an even drearier day than before—gray, cold, windy. If I’d hoped a change in the weather might inject some optimism into my spirits, I was in for a disappointment.

  My indecision was the worst of it.

  Had I known what I was going to do, maybe it wouldn’t have been so depressing. Never had I prayed so hard. Yet the only answer was silence. I had somehow assumed that during the plane flight and bus ride, coming ever closer and closer, my final decision would become clear and obvious. But if anything, the long hours of travel only increased my uncertainty.

  I began to get s
eriously cold feet. What if, in the end, fear of hurting one man prevented me loving the other?

  What if… ?

  I could hardly deal with it!

  I couldn’t let myself come between them. Maybe this had all been a huge mistake!

  Throughout my growing doubts and fears and cold feet, the unbelievable presumption weighed ever more heavily upon me. What if I made an appearance at one place or the other, only to find out that both men had married since my visit?

  That would put me in my place.

  The very thought nearly made me get on the Bluebird and leave Port Scarnose for good. What if there now was a Mrs. Iain Barclay, just as I had wondered during my first visit to his home?

  But an inner compulsion kept urging me to do what I came here to do.

  I had to see it through.

  That afternoon I finally mustered up the courage to go out. I bundled up tightly in my warmest coat and wrapped a scarf about my head so thoroughly no one could possibly recognize me. If I saw someone I knew, I would turn away or hide my face long before they could recognize me. Just so long as I didn’t see Iain walking along the street.

  He would know. He always knew.

  I went out and walked through the village. I walked past the cottage that had been my former home. It was dark and uninhabited.

  I walked past the Urquharts’, once the home of such wonderful, happy music, then past Mrs. Gauld’s B and B.

  I made my way along the Scar Nose, where the sea was gray and stormy and wild. I began walking out on the headland path, but did not go far. It was too cold and windy. Ranald’s warnings about the danger of the cliffs floated through my mind, and with them, for some unexplained reason the image of Olivia’s face. I didn’t want to think about her right then.

  “God, help me know my heart!” I cried aloud in the wind.

  But there were no revelations.

  I walked back into the village and again toward the hotel. As I went I could not help myself, my steps led me onto the street where Iain lived. I was so cold by now, frozen to the bone, but I slowed and continued on.

  There was his house a block ahead. The windows were lit. The familiar car sat in the drive.

  I stopped. My heart was beating.

  I stood for a minute, maybe two, the wind whistling about my face. I couldn’t do it. Doubts, presumptions, and what-ifs rushed back upon me like a flood.

  I found the words of my prayer quietly filling my brain and heart—God, help me know my heart. Then slowly a peace began to come.

  I turned around and walked away, then veered up a side street and hastened on. Ten minutes later I walked back into the Buchan Arms, booked another night, and hurried quickly up to my room where I threw myself on my bed.

  Chapter Sixty-nine

  Decision

  I think of thee when some sweet song is breathing,

  Awak’ning thoughts of early happy days;

  When fairy hope its brightest flowers was wreathing,

  And seem’d the future one unclouded blaze.

  Oft does some song, some olden song, thus sounding,

  Thrill o’er the mind like music o’re the sea,

  Fond mem’ry wakes our life with bliss surrounding,

  And as I feel the spell I think of thee.

  —“I Think of Thee”

  I did not go out again that day.

  The following morning showed signs that perhaps the sun might break through. After a downpour about eleven, suddenly the sun came out. The storm obviously wasn’t entirely gone, but it warmed a little. It appeared that the next downpour might hold off for several hours, maybe for the whole afternoon.

  Somehow the moment I got up, I knew this was the day. It was the day I would face my destiny and decide on my future. If I could not, then I would leave town, go back to Aberdeen, and await my return flight a week later.

  Throughout the morning my resolve increased. The peace that had begun the previous afternoon increased.

  I prayed. I thought. Gradually I determined that when I next left my room, I would not return until the decision had been made.

  I summoned the final measure of courage a little after noon. I left the hotel and walked out along the promontory and up to my favorite familiar bench. It was wet from the rain, but I sat down on the back of my coat and gazed out at the turbulent sea.

  I drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly. “God,” I whispered, “I don’t know what to do. I have never needed your help as much as I need it now. I know that you guided me all through the years, even when I wasn’t aware of it. Now that I am aware of it, I need your help. What you have given me is so wonderful, so overpowering. I have before me two loving men of character and worth…”

  My prayers stopped briefly as I gazed out to sea. Slowly, as if borne on the gentle sea breeze itself, Gwendolyn’s sweet voice came back to me:

  May I call you Mummy?

  The words brought a smile to my lips. Dear Gwendolyn! “Mummy and Daddy loved baby… that baby was me.”

  I waited. Slowly I sensed clarity dawning through the mental mist. The peace deepened.

  Calm settled upon me. I stared down upon the rocks, the waves moving in and out splashing up and over them, the gulls flying about on the windy currents, the great sea of God’s love, moving and flowing and spreading out to fill all men and women as it had filled me.

  I continued to sit. I waited… until finally I knew.

  I smiled to myself and drew the cold sea air into my lungs. Now that the answer had come, I knew that it felt right. It was what I had felt the afternoon before. God had shown me what was in my heart.

  I waited a few minutes more just to be sure, then rose and made my way back down the slope just as I had the first day I had come here last summer. No rain chased me today, and I walked slowly. Again I made my way through the streets of the village I had grown to love.

  I walked and walked and walked. Now that I had made my fateful decision, I was in no hurry to make the long walk. I was at peace.

  When at last I reached my destination and saw the familiar door in front of me, I paused, drew in a deep breath of final resolve, then continued the last several steps. I reached out my hand and lifted the knocker.

  A minute later footsteps came from inside. Slowly the door opened.

  “Hello, Alicia,” I said as she opened the door. “Would you please tell Mr. Reidhaven that he has a visitor who has come to inquire about a certain diamond necklace?”

  Chapter Seventy

  Unusual Script for Love

  Ye ken whar yon wee burnie, love, rins roarin’ to the sea,

  And tumbles o’er its rocky bed, like spirit wild and free.

  Come when the sun in robes of gold, sinks o’er yon hills to rest,

  An’ fragrance floating in the breeze, comes frae the dewy west.

  And I will pu’ a garland gay, to deck thy brow sae fair;

  For many a woodbine cover’d glade, an’ sweet wild flower is there.

  There’s a’ of nature and of art, that moistly weel could be,

  An’ O! my love, when thou art there, there’s bliss in store for me!

  —“Morag’s Faery Glen”

  When Alasdair saw me a minute later, he stopped and his face went pale.

  He gasped in disbelief.

  The look of joy flooding his eyes was so childlike, so happy, almost in a way so innocent—if such can be said of one who was a man of the world like Alasdair Reidhaven, Duke of Buchan, but who was now, late in his life, becoming a man of a very different kind—that it took my breath away.

  Chills swept through me and my eyes blurred with liquid.

  “Marie!” he said in wonder, almost as if he thought I was a ghost or a specter out of his imagination.

  At the sound of his voice, all my doubts and fears vanished and I hurried toward him. He received me with open arms. We stood for what seemed like forever—trembling, crying, laughing, disbelieving.

  “I think perhaps I am now ready,
” I whispered at last. “That is, if you still want me to wear the diamond necklace you wanted to give me.”

  “Oh, Marie!” he said “There is nothing I want more. But what about… I mean, have you seen—”

  “Alasdair,” I said, stopping him before he could say it. “I have seen no one else. I came back to you.”

  Needless to say, again I had to change my flight plans. My return ticket to Canada was now one I didn’t know if I would ever use!

  It was agony to walk up to Iain’s door later that same day. But Iain had to hear it from me. I had been there before almost twenty-four hours earlier. It was then that I had begun to know that my destiny for now lay behind a different door than his.

  The moment he saw me standing in front of him on his porch, a hint of “the look” flashed like a beam of light from his face, but then I saw him pull it back. His eyes swam, but he did not allow whatever he might be feeling to spill over. He saw the expression on my face, and I knew he knew.

  I told him that I had come from the castle, where Alasdair had proposed to me and that I had accepted him.

  Only then did he approach and hug me warmly, as a brother now, and with congratulations for us both. I knew his words were utterly genuine. He was an extraordinary man.

  The day after my visit, Iain called on Alasdair to personally congratulate him and to offer his services, if Alasdair and I so desired, for the ceremony. Because of the history between the two men, and the similar circumstances fifteen years earlier, I’m sure Iain knew that Alasdair and I would shrink from asking him to participate.

  He preempted our concerns by making the offer himself. I knew it was from his heart. He was sincerely and honestly happy for us—I think for Alasdair most of all. Never had I so clearly witnessed an example of one man truly placing another man ahead of himself. However much he may have loved me himself, I also knew that Iain Barclay was genuinely pleased that I would be marrying Alasdair instead.

  It fit no Hollywood script where men compete for a woman’s affections. In its own way it was even more wonderful. Iain loved Alasdair in the full sense of brother loving brother. Alasdair’s happiness meant more to him than his own. To see Alasdair happy made him happy!