by Candace Camp
“That’s it!” Violet jumped up, suddenly charged with excitement. “The date is the key. And the symbol, too.”
“Aye, that entry in the journal tells us when and where.” Coll, too, stood up.
They went straight to Faye’s journal when they returned to Duncally and checked the date of Faye’s entry. It was, as Coll remembered, December 6. It seemed flimsy enough evidence, and Violet worried that they were building their plans on a paper chain of guesses and ambiguous hints. Still, it was the best chance they had.
The days passed incredibly slowly. Though Violet did her best to keep her attention focused on the excavation of the ruins, her mind was often somewhere else. If she was not thinking of the upcoming exploration of the tomb, she was thinking about Coll. Happy as she was to have his affection again, something was missing. When she caught him watching her unawares, she often saw that same trace of sadness in his eyes—or perhaps it was regret. He wanted something more from her. And she could not banish the nagging feeling that perhaps she wanted something more as well.
They were awake long before dawn on the day they would go to the barrow. Violet was too jittery and anxious to sleep. She got up before dawn, leaving Coll sprawled across the bed, and went to huddle in front of the fire, stirring it into life. Before long Coll awakened and joined her by the fire.
It took only minutes to dress in their warmest clothes. They had gathered their supplies the night before and set them by the front door, and now they left the house in the blackness before dawn. Coll carried a coiled rope, a shovel resting on his shoulder, and Violet held the lantern that lit their way down the twisting path.
They talked little as they went, for the dark hush of the night discouraged speech, and the anticipation bubbling in Violet left little room for any thought save that of the adventure before them. They climbed the side of the barrow, and Coll lowered the lantern again, following it down into the tomb. Violet crouched by the opening, watching him, and it seemed suddenly cold and lonely here in the dark by herself. Coll looked up and smiled, beckoning to her, and Violet swung down to join him.
The lantern created eerie shadows and pools of light along the corridor, but at least it was warmer here than crouched above on the barrow. They settled down to wait. After a time, Coll turned down the lantern to its dimmest glow, the shields covering every side but one, so that the sunlight—if it came—would show clearly.
The dark was almost palpable, deep and brooding in the utter silence. It grew paler so gradually that it was hardly noticeable, but suddenly Violet realized that the far end of the corridor was no longer black.
“Coll?”
“Aye, I see it. Dawn’s come.” They walked closer to the entrance. The light came in bit by bit, a wide, pale band that ended before the corridor widened out into the large chamber.
“Well, I was expecting something a bit more dramatic.” Violet frowned. Within minutes the light began to recede, the clear demarcation on the wall fading. Soon there would be only the general paler darkness that had lain in the barrow the first time they entered it.
“Perhaps it looks grander on the solstice. The angle and direction will change slightly every day.” Coll took the shovel and drew a line across the floor. “Here is approximately where it ended. I hoped it would be a bit more definitive, but I’ll start in the center on the theory that symmetry is a natural tendency.” He raised the shields on the lantern, giving the scene more light, and plunged the shovel into the ground.
“I would not think it would be buried far beneath the surface. She was pregnant and in something of a hurry.”
“I agree. I’ll work my way out all around this point.”
Not many inches down, the shovel struck rock. Coll shifted to a spot a few inches away. Time passed with little said, only the slice of the shovel and the clank when time after time it struck rock. The search area spread out methodically until finally Coll had exposed a large square of earth between the two stone walls.
He rested his forearms on the shovel and regarded the floor in disgust. “There is nothing here. I think we were wrong.”
“Once again.” Violet sat down on the floor. She had been growing increasingly certain of the same thing. “Oh, Coll . . . I was so sure we had figured it out.”
“My grandmother was too clever by half.” Coll set aside the shovel and squatted down beside her.
“Or we are not clever enough.”
He gave her a wry grin. “Or that.” He glanced around them. “I could dig up the entire floor.”
“It seems a great deal of work, and it’s not as if we’re sure the gold is buried here. Really, when you think about it, shouldn’t the ground be disturbed if she had dug a hole? I realize it’s been sixty years, but the place was sealed up. The elements would not have been at work inside here.”
“She would have smoothed it over, but still . . . I would think there would be some difference.” Coll considered the matter. “We’re on top of solid rock. The soil is very shallow. If something were buried here, there should be a hump. Yet it’s level. I don’t know how large the bags were, but . . .”
“You’re right. I fear it’s not in the barrow at all.”
“It seems a very good hiding place.” He glanced around. “I doubt anyone’s been inside here in all that time.”
“I hate to give it up as a possibility.”
“But you think we should?”
Violet sighed. “I don’t know where it could be. The stones lie flush against one another. There are no spaces between them wide enough to hide a sack, even a small one. No one person could have moved those stones covering the burial chambers, much less a pregnant woman. Where else is there to hide it except the floor? And after today, that looks less and less likely.”
He curved his hand over her cheek. “I’m sorry. I wish I could find it for you. I’m not sure where else to look.”
“Neither am I.” Violet felt unaccustomedly discouraged. “I think I shall set the matter aside, at least for the moment.”
“You still have your ruins,” he said encouragingly.
“Yes. And they are wonderful ruins.” Violet smiled at him and kissed his cheek, curling her arms around his neck. “You are a kind man, Coll.”
“I dinna know if it’s kindness.” He looked seriously into her eyes. “I want you to be happy.”
“I want the same for you.”
“Then you need not worry. How could I not be happy when I’m with you?”
Violet tightened her arms around him, squeezing him to her, and buried her face in his neck. She wished with all her heart that she believed him.
Coll rubbed the fine sandpaper over the wood, then smoothed his thumb across the piece, testing for roughness. He traced the line of the figure’s cheeks and jaw, the curve of her lips. It didn’t do her justice, of course; he could not re-create the exact set of her jaw or the look in her eyes. It was a fair representation of her physically, but the beauty came across too soft, without Violet’s characteristic strength.
He set the wooden head back on the table, absently stroking it as he gazed across the room. He wondered where Violet was right now. Probably in the library, her head bent over a book. The last few days she had left the ruins early and spent the remainder of the afternoons in the library, searching for a clue they had overlooked in Faye’s journal. Violet did not admit defeat easily.
A smile touched his lips. He could picture her, her head propped on her hand, her eyes intent on the page before her, oblivious of all else. A strand of her hair was bound to have come loose by now and trailed down over her neck. He wished she were sitting with him in his house, where he could glance over at her as he worked and enjoy the picture she made. Where he could know she was here and safe and his.
Coll sighed and shoved to his feet. Violet would doubtless treat him to a scorching lecture if she heard him say that. She belonged to no man. He understood that . . . in a way. As for the rest of what he felt, well, it was better all around just
to leave it alone. He was not about to return to those hellish days when he had separated himself from her, even if it meant concealing how her refusal to marry him still ate at him.
He went to the window and stared out at the gray day. He had never dreamed he would be caught like this. He had assumed he would eventually find the right woman, that he would live out his days in love and contentment. He would marry her and be a devoted husband and father. But for him he had been sure there would be none of the emotional fires that had afflicted others—the jealousy and fear and raging lust that drove a man mad. Not for him his father’s impulsive, careless life nor the shattering heights and depths that had marked Damon’s courtship of Meg. He would never know the searing terror he had seen in Isobel’s eyes when she thought Jack was about to die nor the stark despair when Jack thought himself betrayed by the woman he loved.
No. He was a steady man. A careful man. Responsible. Yet here he was, his heart like an open wound, aching for a woman who would not be his. Coll Munro, who’d never feared much of anything, and now his heart quailed inside him at the thought that one day Violet would finish her work here and be gone, leaving him behind. He could not give himself to her or have her for his in any way other than physically. God knew, he seemed scarcely able to live without having her in that way. But he yearned for the rest of it, as well.
Coll ground his teeth. Reaching up, he yanked down his coat from the hook and pulled it on as he left the house. Without conscious thought, his feet turned toward the road to the village. Head down, he walked to a small, whitewashed house in Kinclannoch.
He paused outside it a moment, gazing at the door. He didn’t know what he was doing here. Still, he’d come all this way, and it seemed even more foolish to turn and leave now. He rapped sharply on the door, and at his father’s answering call, he stepped inside.
Alan McGee was in the middle of the cottage, a pile of clothes in his hands, and glanced over at his visitor, his eyebrows soaring up. “Son! Weel, I dinna expect to see you today.”
Coll took in the open valise on his father’s chair and the stack of shirts in his hands. “I see you’re leaving again.”
“Aye. Near yuletide there’s ayeways a job to be had fiddling in Edinburgh.” Alan set the clothes in the bag and hauled it off the chair. “Come, sit doon, and I’ll gie you a cup o’ tea.” He cast a questioning look at Coll. “Or a wee dram, perhaps?”
“Aye. Whiskey would be good.” Coll saw the surprise, quickly hidden, on his father’s face. “Am I such a stickler, then, that you dinna think I’d take a dram?” Coll flopped down on the chair and folded his arms, knowing he sounded surly, but somehow unable to keep from it.
“Och, nae, the surprise is you taking one with me.” Alan pulled a jug out of a cabinet and poured a healthy splash into each of two glasses.
“You talk as though I never see you.”
“Oh, nae, we see each ither at a dance or if I gae up to Duncally to visit you.” Alan’s blue eyes danced.
Coll scowled. “I dinna ken why I came here.”
“That makes the both of us. But it doesna matter, does it?” Alan gave him the winsome smile that had sweetened many a temper and won hearts the width and breadth of the country. “You are here now, and we’ll drink to that.” Alan lifted his glass in a salute.
Coll sighed and drank, watching as his father poured two more shots into the glasses. “I never was in this house much.” It was as much apology as explanation. “Gran wasna . . .”
“Welcoming?” Again Alan’s eyes twinkled. Coll had never understood how his father could find the world so amusing. “Nae, my mither was not an easy person. She dinna like Janet overmuch.” Coll snorted, and Alan dipped his head in acknowledgment. “True, she dinna like anyone overmuch. But she hardened her heart to my Jan—mithers are like that. Hard to blame them for wanting their lads to be happy.”
“Were you not happy?”
“With your mither?” This time, sorrow was in his father’s smile. “Och, that was when I was the happiest, with Janet. She was a bonny, bonny lass, your ma. And not just the way she looked, you ken; she was bonny in every way. Sometimes still I can hear her laugh, and it makes me smile. I should hae said, my mither wanted me to hae what she counted as happiness. It wasna ever my idea of it.”
“If you loved Ma so, why did you always leave?” The words were out before Coll knew it, and he glanced away, chagrined.
“I never left her, Son.” Surprise colored Alan’s voice. “You canna think I dinna want to be with Jan. Or you and Meg. I would hae taken you with me, wherever I went, but your ma was tied to this place. She couldna leave any more than I could stay here ayeways. Meg’s the same, though not as much so.” Alan’s brow wrinkled, and he swirled the whiskey in his glass, staring into it. “I hope your sister’s man understands that.”
Coll grunted. “That one will stay or go as Meg pleases. You dinna need to worry. Mardoun’s a bloody arrogant Sassenach, but Meg’s his center. He’ll not leave her, any more than—” Coll broke off and drained his glass. This time it was he who picked up the jug and poured again.
“Good, then. You’d understand that better than I. The not leaving, I mean.”
Coll shrugged and downed the whiskey.
“What is it, Coll?” His father watched him. “What’s troubling you?”
“How did you do it?” Coll’s voice came out quiet but fierce, and he leaned forward, setting the glass down hard on the table. “How did you stand to be with her and not really have her? If you loved her, how could you not want to marry her?”
“Whoever said I dinna want to marry Janet?” Alan asked reasonably. “Surely you dinna think I was the one who wouldna take the vows?”
“No. I know. But did it not eat you up inside? Knowing she would not let you—” Coll shook his head, unable to find the words, and curled his fingers into his palm.
“I take it this is about the lady with the ruins. The one with the lovely name and the eyes like a doe.” Coll shot him a sullen glance, and Alan hid a smile. “Och, weel, Son, there are some women you canna own.”
“I do not want to own her. Why do you assume that? Why does she? Am I such a monster? Am I so overbearing, so dictatorial?”
“Dinna play the fool, Coll. You know no one thinks you’re a monster. But you are the sort of man who—who fills up a room. Who does things. Fixes things. Takes charge. You want people to be . . . better than they are.”
“I dinna ask her to change. I certainly would not demand it. And she’s no shy flower, despite her name. She’ll argue you into the ground over whether some bloody rock should be up or down. She has no fear of me or any man.” Coll jumped to his feet as if unable to sit still and began to pace the small room. “She knows I would never hurt her.”
“Of course you wouldna.”
“Or force her.”
“Clearly.”
“Or push her to do anything.”
“Weel, now, there I dinna think you can say you would not push if you thought it for the best.”
Coll swung around to glare at him. “As if she would not do the same! She is the pushiest woman I have ever met. She likes to argue. She likes to poke and prod at me until I want to—” He broke off and plopped back into the chair. “Well, you know what I want to do.”
“I’ve a fair idea,” Alan agreed wryly. He chuckled. “Ah, she sounds like a grand woman, Coll.”
“She is. I just want . . .”
“Yes? What is it you want of her?”
“I want to be with her. I want to marry her. I want to give her my name. I want her to bear my children. I want to see her hold them and cuddle them and scold them. I want a life with her.” Coll sighed, bracing his elbows on the table, and dropped his head into his hands, fingers pushing into his skull. “And she does not.” He looked up at his father, his eyes desolate. “She does not love me.”
“She told you this?”
“No.” Coll grimaced.
“Then how do you know?
”
“It’s clear, is it not? She will not marry me.”
“So you believe your mither did not love me because she wouldna marry me? That she lied when she told me she did?”
“Nae! Ma did not lie. Everyone knew she loved you.”
“However foolish that was of her.”
“I dinna say that.”
“Weel, I suppose I should be thankful for that.” Alan sat back, studying Coll, folding his arms across his chest in a mirror image of his son, which anyone other than the two of them would have recognized. “But this woman, your Violet, is the sort of woman who would lie about it?”
“No! Not at all. She’s damnably blunt. She never said she loved me; she never pretended to.”
“She must hae given you some encouragement for you to ask for her hand.”
Coll shrugged.
“Och . . . getting words out of you is a miserable business. Does the woman hae no interest in you? No interest in men? Does she want nothing to do with you?”
“Oh, no, she’s fine with that! Bedding down is perfectly acceptable to her.” Coll stopped, looking abashed. “No, I should not have said that. I dinna mean—you must not think—Violet is not loose. She’s not known any man but me—oh, bloody hell!” Coll jumped to his feet again. “I canna talk to you about that.”
“I’d just as well you not.” Alan paused, frowning. “But I dinna understand. I thought you said you could not be with her. But now you’re saying she would be happy to have the . . . um, sort of life that Janet and—”
“Yes!” Coll flung out his hands. “Yes. She, apparently, would like that. She does not care that I canna take her hand or that I have to mind how I look at her in front of Mardoun’s servants. It doesna bother her that I have to sneak into her bed at night and out again before the maids get up. Indeed, she said why worry about it, as if that would not make her a scandal on the tongue of everyone in the glen. I dinna want to have to pummel every man who makes a remark about her—and I canna do so with the women. But I will not have her scorned. I will not be the sort of man who exposes her to their gossip.”
