I exhaled, disappointed. There was lip gloss in various flavours, a pocket knife, mascara, a rumpled pouch with tobacco and matches, chewing gum wrappers, and the same peppermints favoured by car rental Deborah. There was a red polka dot scarf, broken glasses, and the missing coat of arms from room nineteen at the hostel. But no royal-blue box—no ring.
I should have been frustrated or angry, but going back into the bedroom, I looked at my cousin and felt only a strange maternal worry. She seemed so fragile—even innocent, though I knew she was nothing of the sort. I tucked her foot under the blanket and, for a moment, even considered that it might all have been a giant misunderstanding. Maybe Charlie didn’t steal the ring. Maybe all she wanted was to be found and brought home. But when I remembered Uncle Carl’s pinched face and his pretentious plans for his daughter’s future, I seriously doubted it.
“Hey,” someone said quietly behind me.
I spun around and almost upended the tray in Aidan’s hands. A creamy soup sloshed about.
“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you.” He calmly licked the spilled soup off his hand.
Now I was gaping at his mouth. He raised an eyebrow. I could feel myself blushing and pointed awkwardly at my chin.
“You’ve got . . . soup . . .”
“Really? Where?” He looked at me with an amused expression that made his eyes sparkle.
“Here.”
I touched the spot under my lips again, but suddenly felt silly and reached out. He kept still while I wiped his chin, my fingers brushing against his mouth by mistake. My heart was racing.
“Your aunts are afraid you might starve any minute now.” He turned away from me and carried the tray to the small table in the corner. “Their instructions were to make sure you eat this soup—to feed you myself if necessary.” He pulled out the chair and looked at me encouragingly. I sat down and propped my elbows on the table.
“I’m not hungry at all,” I said, my stomach growling.
“That’s what Ian said.” Aidan nodded seriously. “His resistance lasted exactly two spoonfuls, and then he finished off almost the entire pot. Consider yourself lucky that I managed to save a bit of Finola’s Cullen skink for you.” He pulled out the second chair and handed me a spoon so big it could have been a ladle. “Are you going to eat or do I have to help you?”
I took the spoon out of his hand. When I dipped it into the thick, creamy liquid, I caught a whiff of something smoked. The soup was hot—and delicious.
“What’s in it?” I gasped, burning my tongue.
“Watch out. It’s hot,” Aidan said belatedly, and enumerated the ingredients on his fingers. “Haddock, potatoes, onions, butter, cream, and—”
“Is haddock a kind of fish?” I wrinkled my nose since I don’t particularly like fish—though this Cullen skink was wonderful.
“No, sheep’s balls,” Aidan replied phlegmatically.
“You’re joking.”
“Nope. I never make jokes.”
I rolled my eyes and suspiciously stirred the soup. If Scots didn’t die from eating it, I probably wouldn’t either. Besides, Finola would never serve her guests something so grotesque. Or so I told myself. But I made a mental note to Google “haddock.”
Aidan watched while I ate. He said nothing until I pushed the empty bowl away, leaned back, and closed my eyes.
“What is it?” I asked since I could feel that he was still looking at me.
“May I ask you something?”
I half opened my lids and nodded lazily.
“Have you found what you were looking for?” Aidan, his head resting on his hands, looked to Charlie, of whom not much more was visible than a tousled head of hair and the foot that once again had inched its way out from under the blanket.
“I found my cousin.”
“You were talking about a ring.”
“Oh, that.” My dismissive gesture was too exaggerated and I knew it. I swallowed, trying to sound convincing. “That’s just a silly superstition. An old family story.”
Aidan was silent for so long I felt like I’d said something deeply stupid.
“No need to do that,” he finally said.
“Do what?”
“Try to make me believe you don’t take the story seriously—because you do. I can see it in your eyes. Besides, your larynx twitches when you’re lying.” He touched my neck. “And right now, you are fibbing mightily.”
He got up and moved his chair closer to mine.
“We Scots have believed for millennia in a supernatural world peopled by spirits, fairies, and other mystical beings. We tie ribbons on fairy trees and worry about being drowned by a kelpie. We’re afraid fairies might steal our children, we chase kobolds away from our houses with offers of hand-sewn coats, and we dance around bonfires. We look at ghosts as being people like you and me, and we greet them as we pass.” Aidan leaned forward and lowered his voice. “So I’m absolutely the right audience for your story, however mystical it might be. As a Scot, I’ll believe every word.”
“But it goes all the way back to the Thirty Years’ War,” I whispered.
“Well, I haven’t got any other plans for tonight. You?”
“Well, I could . . . streamline the story a bit,” I said. How do you summarise a story that has overshadowed your whole life?
“Once upon a time . . .” Aidan prodded me.
It seemed that he was neither making fun of me nor pulling my leg. He was only pushing the first domino tile that, in turn, would set the mile-long row in motion.
“Once upon a time . . . there was a young Silesian officer . . . who fell in love with a lowly seamstress.”
Aidan nodded in encouragement.
“The love between Ludwig and Emilia was something special—but Emilia was not of noble birth and she was Catholic—something Ludwig’s Protestant family would never tolerate—so the couple kept their relationship secret. When Emilia became pregnant and rumour began to spread, Ludwig’s father had him sent to the Bohemian front at the beginning of what became the Thirty Years’ War.”
I fidgeted with a loose thread on my jumper for a few moments before continuing.
“But before he left, Ludwig had a ring made as a token of his eternal love and as a formal pledge of marriage to Emilia. The only thing Ludwig’s parents feared more than the wrath of god and the contempt of society was losing the love of their son. So they reluctantly admitted the young Catholic and the blemished, yet-to-be-born fruit of her womb into their high and noble house.”
“Tough titty for Ludwig’s family,” Aidan mumbled.
I slowly shook my head. My stomach turned every time I thought about the way poor Emilia was treated. “Ludwig was supposed to be working in the office at command headquarters, but a mistake was made. He was sent into battle and was blinded in the trenches. His parents told Emilia that he had died. They sent him secretly to a Swiss sanatorium, where he recovered very slowly. In the meantime, Ludwig’s family spread a rumour that the child wasn’t Ludwig’s, and then they chased Emilia out of the house shortly before she gave birth.”
Aidan sighed deeply, which made me smile. He showed so much empathy that I wanted to touch his face, but stopped myself by squeezing the edge of the table.
“She was lucky, considering. A blacksmith in her village was willing to marry her and to raise the child as his own. He was a decent, kind-hearted man who had long cared for her, and he didn’t care what people might say. Emilia accepted his proposal.”
“Very pragmatic, your ancestor. Reminds me of someone,” Aidan said in a tone that immediately put me on the defensive.
“Do you really imagine she had a choice?”
Aidan raised both hands as if I were pointing a gun at him.
“On her wedding day, Emilia dressed in her mother’s wedding gown, removed Ludwig’s ring with a heavy heart, and gave it to her younger sister. ‘Wear this ring when you marry the man who will make you happy for the rest of your life,’ she said, and made Maria promi
se to hand down the ring to her daughter, and she then to her daughter. Emilia married the good blacksmith without a ring and without any hope for true happiness—she was still in love with Ludwig.”
“Then what happened?” Aidan moved closer to me.
“Emilia died,” I whispered. “She died in childbirth, as did the baby.”
“No!” Aidan cried out.
We both jumped and then looked at the bed. Charlie didn’t even stir. I couldn’t suppress a nervous giggle, which made Aidan grimace.
“What happened to Ludwig?”
“He made it back home, but when he learned that Emilia and his daughter were dead—”
“Don’t tell me. I can guess.”
“Ludwig took his own life in 1619, six months after Emilia’s marriage to the blacksmith.”
Aidan turned to the window.
“My direct ancestor wasn’t Emilia,” I said quietly, “but her sister Maria. Ever since then, all women of my mother’s bloodline marry under the blessing of the ring. And all the brides who didn’t wear the ring at the wedding for one reason or other—”
“Died.” Now Aidan was scrutinising me.
“Yes, either they died or there was some other calamity. What’s certain is that every marriage that took place without the ring ended no later than six months after—more often than not tragically. Maybe it was just coincidence or the relationships fell apart due to incompatibility, which happens all the time.”
I suddenly had a strange thought. Until that moment, I’d never actually doubted that Justus and I were well matched. We’d always just worked—like a watch you forget about because it’s always on your wrist. Being with Aidan, on the other hand, was like carrying around an overactive alarm clock that constantly reminded you to stay awake. I realised I was staring at Aidan and quickly looked away.
“To this day, my grandmother is convinced that a couple’s happiness depends on the bride wearing that ring at the wedding.”
“Do you think she’s right?”
“Maybe? I don’t know anymore. I mean, I spent so many years committed to not believing in all that mumbo jumbo that I actually suppressed some very strange events.”
I felt goosebumps on my arms, thinking of a distantly related aunt who had hanged herself in the basement of her Berlin apartment. Instead of a note, they found two airline tickets for an around-the-world honeymoon trip in her name and the name of her new husband. Why would someone about to fulfil her lifelong dream commit suicide?
I was surprised at how good it made me feel that Aidan didn’t think I was crazy. He just sat there—chin in his hands, forehead furrowed—as if he were deciphering a code.
“What do you think?”
Aidan took my hand, turned it palm up, and gently traced the many lines with his thumb while searching for words. Then my mobile phone rang, shattering the intimate moment. Aidan’s expression hardened and he let go of my hand.
“I believe you have to find this ring, and you definitely shouldn’t get married without it.”
This was not the answer I had expected.
“You’re probably right,” I said quickly, noticing how aloof I suddenly sounded. “My grandmother is incredibly important to me and it would be awful if she didn’t come to the wedding. I mean, we chose the buttercream cake specifically for her.” With a forced smile, I gestured to Charlie. “I just hope the little monster didn’t toss the ring into one of your lochs—I’m a lousy swimmer.”
Aidan ignored my lame joke. I glanced nervously at the still-squawking phone on the windowsill. Why hadn’t I left it in my room?
“It’s only two weeks away and I can’t wait, sort of. Justus says—” But Aidan didn’t give me the chance to talk more nonsense.
He got up and pushed his chair in, lining the legs up meticulously with the legs of the table.
“I’m not concerned about your grandmother, Josefine,” he said when he was done. “And I don’t know Justus. But I do know you and don’t want you to be unhappy, whether it’s because of the ring or because of a falling-out with your grandmother. That’s all. Now I think it’s time for me to go.”
And he was gone, leaving me alone with Charlie and a gaping hole inside that had nothing to do with the fact that I was still hungry.
14
I woke up in a small bedroom with an oriental-looking rug, the sun already trying to squeeze through the heavy curtains. I was lying on top of the blankets instead of under them, still fully dressed, unable to remember how I got there. I only remembered the door in Charlie’s room, white with a copper handle, and the sound it made when it slammed shut behind Aidan. At some point afterwards, I must have dragged myself here and passed out.
Groaning, I turned on my stomach and pressed my face into the pillow. I was not interested in what the morning had to offer, or the day, or those that would follow.
I held my breath, even though blood was already pounding in my ears. I would simply lie here until I died. With any luck, my problem would dissolve on its own. My problems. Plural.
Seconds later, I had to come up for air. All right, maybe suffocating myself wasn’t a good solution to my problems. I squinted at the Laura Ashley wallpaper until I realised it was a pattern of thistle flowers. That woke me up completely.
I all but flew across the hall, flung open the white door, and stopped short. The two people on the bed jerked apart. Charlie looked at me with wide-open eyes as if I was a ghost, and Ian quickly turned away. He wasn’t fast enough—I saw he was crying.
“I’m sorry,” I stammered, and went to leave.
“Please don’t go, Jo,” Charlie croaked.
She still looked frail and exhausted, and had difficulty speaking. Her face was covered with red dots. But her eyes were radiant and the trademark mischievous sparkle was back. She sat very straight with her hands in her lap.
“I could come back later.” I looked at Ian, who was now standing at the window.
He turned to me with such a sad look that I wanted to go over and hug him. But the sight of a very much alive Charlie pulled me in all directions like a bunch of kids fighting for the same doll.
It had been easy the day before. Fear for my cousin’s safety had trumped everything else. But the danger was past now. Something else had reclaimed a place in my heart, advising me to suffocate the little monster with Finola’s ruffled pillows.
Ian and Charlie exchanged a look.
“I’ve got something important to take care of.” Ian walked by me stiffly, like a condemned man on the way to the gallows. He lightly touched my arm as if trying to apologise for letting me see his tears.
I watched him leave, unsure what moved me more—Ian, who openly showed his emotions, or the intense connection between him and my cousin that remained in the room even though he had left.
“His father has cancer,” Charlie said quietly.
“I know.” I hoped for Aidan’s sake it hadn’t been Finola but Aidan who’d told him.
“So, are you going to come give me a hug? The nice French doctor said I’m not contagious anymore. Pas du tout.” Charlie strained to clear her throat. “Is something going on between him and Aunt Li?”
I couldn’t find words, couldn’t move. Was I in shock?
Charlie put on a face I knew far too well. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
She was pushing the wrong button. She might not even have done it on purpose, but I hated it when she made puppy-dog eyes to get out of trouble. She had made this face when she drove Li’s fancy car into a wall and then sobbed so uncontrollably that Li bought her a car of her own to console her. I, on the other hand, got an hour-long sermon when I brought Li’s bicycle home with a flat tyre—even though it was Charlie who had insisted on riding on the luggage rack.
“What makes you think I’m mad?” The bitterness in my voice startled even me, but I couldn’t stop now. “Could it be because you dragged me on a wild goose chase across half of Scotland a few weeks before my wedding? Maybe because I put my j
ob at risk and jeopardised my marriage? Should I be mad because I was scared to death on the plane, had to spend four days with our crazy aunts, and have barely slept or eaten this whole time? This trip has been a rain-soaked nightmare where everything that can go wrong does.” I took a deep breath and snarled, “While you luxuriated in your oh-so-perfect love story, I’ve been through hell. If it hadn’t been for Aidan . . . God, Charlie! Yesterday I thought you were going to die.”
I was strangely satisfied when I saw her dismay.
Quieter, but with no less hostility, I continued, “Oh no, dearest cousin, I’m not mad. I am so furious that I’d beat the living daylights out of you if you weren’t still sick.”
“Aidan?” A tiny smile played around Charlie’s lips. “I knew it. I knew it would work.”
“Excuse me?”
I felt my jaw drop. Instead of hanging her head in shame, Charlie was beaming as if she’d just won the lottery.
“All we wanted was to open your eyes.” Her voice almost cracked in excitement. “Get you off the hamster wheel you’ve been running on for years. If I understood it right yesterday about what’s going on between you and Aidan, then our plan with the ring was dead on. I’m so happy you finally realised what a complete moron Justus is!” She clapped her hands and giggled like a ten-year-old watching the scene in Peter Pan where Captain Hook gets eaten by the croc.
“Wait!” I raised my hand.
It wasn’t the fact that my cousin, supposedly delirious with fever, had eavesdropped on my conversation with Aidan. It also wasn’t much of a surprise that she’d stolen the ring to make me go on this trip, and her “moron” comment was not out of character. It was something else that rang every alarm bell in my head.
“Who is ‘we’?”
A deep-seated, smouldering hunch made its way to the surface of my consciousness, where it transformed into a bubbling, neon-coloured certainty.
Charlie went pale. “Oh shit!” She burrowed deeper into the pillows and pulled up the blanket as if she wanted to hide under it.
The silence between us simmered for a while. The longer I looked at my cousin, the more certain I was. She was breathing hard, fumbling for words. But I beat her to it.
Kissed by the Rain Page 19
