by Jill Barnett
Calum gave up. He shoved his glasses back up his nose with a stiff finger and shuffled the stacks around his desk until they were aligned and in alphabetical order, then he looked back at Eachann who was dusted with walnut shells. “Where are the women?”
“In the kitchen.”
“The kitchen? Why the kitchen?”
“Women belong in the kitchen.” Eachann cracked another nut. “Besides, I told them your favorite foods were doughnuts and blueberry pie.”
“Your favorite foods are doughnuts and blueberry pie.
Eachann grinned. “I know.”
“I want to get rid of those women and you’ve got them cooking pies?”
Eachann shrugged and tossed a piece of nut in the air and caught it with his open mouth. “I was hungry.’“ He looked at Calum. “Stop your worrying. They’re too busy trying to impress you with their recipes to be following you around. Besides, I locked the kitchen door.”
“Where’s Fergus?”
Eachann used a piece of walnut shell to point at the open doorway.
Calum looked, but the doorway was empty. He waited to the sound of cracking nuts and the annoying patter of walnut shells on his clean carpet. Finally he called out, “Fergus!”
Nothing.
“Fergus MacLachlan, I know you’re bloody well out there!”
Nothing.
“Get in here, old man.”
“I’m coming . . . I’m coming . . . ” A tall old man with shoulder-length hair as white as seafoam came walking through the open door. He scowled at the room in general from a craggy time-and sea-weathered face. “Do ye ken I canna hear ye? Ye’re bellowing like a foghorn. Ye need tae respect yer elders, laddie.” He squinted at the stallion, then his gaze shifted to Eachann, who pointed toward Calum. Fergus planted his hammy fists on his hips, turned, and scowled at a bust of Robert the Bruce that stood on a mahogany column pedestal near Calum’s desk. “I dinna be deaf, dumb and blind, ye ken.”
“I’m over here,” Calum said dryly.
Fergus turned again and squinted at him. He didn’t say anything, but his whiskered chin jutted out like a mule.
“I told you no more women.”
“Aye, that ye did, laddie, that ye did.”
“Take them back, old man.”
Fergus only stood there as if he had grown roots.
“I’m going to tell you this once more. Do not bring women to this island. In fact, you won’t be going ashore again.”
“I wouldn’t have sent him this time,” Eachann said.
“I didn’t send Fergus. I sent David. Do you think I don’t know what I’m doing?”
Eachann just shrugged and tossed his horse a piece of nut.
“If ye ken what yer were doing, Calum MacLachlan, ye’d have wed a long time past. ’Tis a puir thing ye’ve done, laddie. A puir thing . . . ”
Eachann groaned under his breath. “Oh God . . . Here it comes again . . . ” He sank deeper into his chair. His horse rested its muzzle on his shoulder and watched Fergus from heavy-lidded equine eyes. Calum just stood there waiting for the same old lecture.
“ . . . All the auld lairds must be a writhing in their graves. ’Tis a sad day for the clan MacLachlan.” Fergus took a deep breath and shook his big white head. “Yer great-great-grandfather, the MacLachlan Himself, dying at Culloden Moor, spilling his blood for the sake of the clans, and here ye are with no woman, no bairns.” Fergus shook his white head. “Och! This world is no’ for the auld ways.”
Calum glanced at his brother who was mouthing the words as Fergus spoke.
“ . . . And yer great-grandfather, but a laddie he was when he fled to France with the Bonnie Prince, and lived in exile, he did. But did he think of Himself? No, he dinna. He spent years finding a new home for his people. He sailed across the sea, coming here to this wild place and searching till he found this island.”
Fergus paused, then waved his arm around like an evangelist in a room full of sinners. “Aye, will ye look around ye? At yer isle? ’Tis like a bonnie Scots’ isle. Then the puir mon sailed back to Scotland and brought his starving clan. Lost his wife he did, yer ain wee grandmother died on that voyage.
“Here ye are, over a hundred years after yer great-great-grandfather, yer own namesake, the great Calum MacLachlan who died for his prince at Culloden, and ye canna even honor the dead MacLachlans by marrying one puir, awee, little woman.” Fergus sighed dramatically.
By then Eachann was quietly snoring, his stallion’s muzzle resting on his head.
Calum planted his hands on his desk and leaned forward, enunciating each word. “Take . . . the women . . . back.”
“If ye dinna ken when ye need a thing, well, I ken when ye do.” Fergus raised his chin, crossed his arms and just stood there. “And ye need a wife, Calum MacLachlan.”
“One of those women?” Calum shouted so loudly that Eachann woke up with a start.
“And what ’tis wrong with them?”
“Fergus can’t see worth a damn, brother,” Eachann said. “He has no idea what’s wrong with them.”
“I’ll have ye ken, Eachann MacLachlan, I can see as weel as ye!” Fergus bellowed at the bust of Robert the Bruce.
“Fergus.”
“Aye.” Fergus turned toward Calum’s voice.
“One of those women is old enough to be my grandmother.”
After a few silent seconds, he admitted, “Aye, I suppose Sallie’s a tad long in the tooth.”
Eachann gave a sharp bark of laughter. “She doesn’t have any teeth.”
“Ye need a wife, Calum MacLachlan. Ye need a family. Ye need wee bairns. MacLachlan bairns. Like Eachann. Yer brother’s four years younger than ye and he has bairns.”
“Two bairns,” Eachann added with a grin that was cut short when Fergus muttered something about another letter, scowled, and began to fumble through his coat pocket.
“Ooh, here it be.” He handed Eachann a vellum letter that they all recognized. There had been at least ten such letters from his children’s school in the last year.
Fergus slapped the letter in his hand and gave Eachann an equally quelling “you need to be married” look. “Ye’ve no wife, either.”
Eachann only shrugged. “I’ve already had one.”
“Yer bairns need tae be here, with MacLachlans, not at some auld school where strangers are raising them into wee heathens. They need a mother.”
“Why? I never knew mine.” Eachann cracked another nut, tossed it into his mouth, then scowled and spit it back into his hand.
Calum shook his head. Perhaps Eachann did need a woman. He needed something.
Eachann looked up at them. “Like I was saying, I never knew our mother and look how I turned out.”
“I am, laddie. That I am.”
Eachann said something to his horse, then stroked the beast’s muzzle.
“Ye have more caring fer yer horses, Eachann MacLachlan, than fer yer ain wee bairns.”
Eachann froze and was silent and tense. All his cockiness had fled. He just stared down at the unopened letter with an odd and shuttered look.
Fergus had gone too far this time, Calum thought, looking from that bullheaded old man to his equally bullheaded brother.
But Fergus must have realized his mistake because he too was silent. The air grew thick and for just a moment there was no sound in the room except for the perennial ticking of the Bayard mantel clock.
Finally Eachann looked up, his jaw tighter than it had been a moment before, his eyes narrower. “I’ll take care of my bairns, old man.”
“They need a woman’s touch and they need tae live here, with the MacLachlans. The bairns need tae live with their ain father, lad.”
Eachann didn’t say a word.
Fergus turned to Calum again. “And ye’re the laird of the clan MacLachlan, the last Calum MacLachlan and ye dinna have any bairns. Eachann’s bairns dinna have cousins. Bairns need family, lads. If ye dinna be wanting to do a thing about it, I will.”
“Tell me, old man. You expect me to get bairns from that old woman?”
Fergus shrugged. “She was the first one I could find.”
Calum stood there completely silent.
But Eachann wasn’t. “Where did you look, under a rock during a full moon?” He glanced at Calum. “Perhaps he found her out scavenging for eye of newt.”
Fergus scowled at him.
“Skin of toads? Bat wings?”
“Jest all ye want, Eachann MacLachlan. But ye and yer brother still need wives.”
“And you want someone like that hausfrau to be the mother of the next MacLachlan laird?” Eachann began to laugh.
Fergus scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Weel . . . She came for free.”
“Free?” Calum’s head shot up and he stared at Fergus.
“Aye.”
Stunned, Calum remembered all the different women Fergus had been bringing to the island, and in his head, he began to mentally count them—money and women. “You mean all this time you’ve been paying them?”
Fergus said nothing, which meant that was exactly what he’d been doing.
“You paid them money to come here when I told you no bride, no wife, no women?”
“I dinna have tae pay all of them.”
“How many?”
Fergus was quiet, but his lips were moving as he counted. Finally he looked at Calum. “Sixteen.”
Eachann burst out laughing and Calum knew why. Fergus had brought eighteen women to the island on the past year.
“Two came for free, brother,” Eachann said, his expression showing that he was trying not to laugh again.
“Those puir foolish mainlanders think the MacLachlans are ghosts,” Fergus said indignantly. He paused for a minute, as if he were waiting for Calum or Eachann to speak. When they didn’t, he picked Calum to glare at. Then he jammed his fists on his hips again and said. “Why are ye shouting at me, Calum MacLachlan. Ye were the one who paid the last one tae leave.”
“That’s because she kept climbing into his bed, old man.” Eachann looked at Calum. “You should have married that one. Then even Fergus here couldn’t say you weren’t carrying on an old clan tradition.”
Calum didn’t know what the hell Eachann was talking about and one look at Fergus said he didn’t either.
Eachann gave them both a wicked grin. “Like our forefathers you’d be sleeping with a battle-axe by your side.”
When neither one of them laughed, Eachann just shrugged and muttered about the sad lack of humor in the MacLachlan clan.
Calum turned back to Fergus. “How much did you pay them?”
“I dinna keep count.”
Calum began to pace, running a hand through his black hair as he thought about how he’d spent those two months running from three different women when the unpredictable weather had prevented them from returning to the mainland. It had been absolute hell.
“The red-haired lassie, now she be a MacGunnagh from Nova Scotia,” Fergus said proudly. “She’d be a perfect wife fer ye.”
Calum stopped pacing. “The twitchy one with the wild hair?”
“Wild hair? You should have seen her eyes,” Eachann mumbled, then shuddered.
“Pure-blooded Scots, she is.” Fergus stood a bit taller and puffed out his chest. “Her mother was—”
“Her father’s sister,” Eachann finished, then cracked three nuts in one hand and gave Fergus a grin.
Fergus fumed for a silent second, then turned and marched angrily toward the door. He muttered something about the great laird MacLachlan’s no-guid spawn, then he smacked right into the door molding.
Dazed, he stood there for a moment, his forehead against the molding like he was nailed to it. He muttered something inaudible and looked all around him to get his bearings, then turned back and glared at Eachann first, then locked his squinting eyes on the bust of Robert the Bruce. “Ye need wives. And I’ll no’ stop till ye have them. Someone has tae care about seeing tae the MacLachlan blood.” And with that he stomped out of the room.
Calum called out after him, “If you bring another woman to this island, the only MacLachlan blood anyone will be seeing, Fergus, is yours.”
There was a crash and a loud Gaelic oath. A few seconds later the front doors slammed shut.
Neither brother said anything for a moment, then Calum unlocked a drawer and took out a bag of money. He tossed it to his Eachann. “Pay them off again and have someone take them back to the mainland.”
“I need to go to the school.” Eachann stood and held up the letter. “I’ll take them back.” He moved toward the doorway, but stopped at the bust of Robert the Bruce and patted it on the head. Imitating Fergus, he said, “Don’t worry, Robbie me lad. Ye need a wife, and old Fergus will be bringing ye the Venus de Milo any day now.”
“You wouldn’t think this was so damn funny if it was you they were chasing.”
Eachann just laughed the way he always did when Calum was in this fix.
“Look. Just get rid of the women. Pay them off. And hurry. I don’t relish having them stuck on the island like the last ones were.”
Eachann clicked his tongue twice and his horse trotted over to his side. In one swift motion Eachann was up in the saddle. He rested one arm on the saddle pommel and grinned down at Calum. “Stop your worrying, brother. I’ll take care of it.”
He ducked down low over his horse and they started to ride out of the library, but Eachann stopped halfway through the doorway and turned back around. “I’ll see those women are off the island.” He gave Calum a cocky salute and added, “Just as soon as those pies are done.”
Chapter 7
If a person offends you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance, and hit him with a brick.
—Advice to Youth, Mark Twain
The arithmetic master was unconscious for almost five minutes, Mr. MacLachlan.” Miss Hessian Harrington’s distinct and nasally voice pierced through the walnut door between the schoolmistress’s office and the small salon next door.
Seven-year-old Kirsty MacLachlan jabbed an elbow into her brother Graham’s bony ribs, wiggled in front of him, and peered through the keyhole in the salon door.
“I was there first,” Graham whined in a whisper.
She turned around and stuck her scowling face just an inch from his, which always worked in her favor. “Shhh! I can’t hear them.”
Graham called her a troll under his breath, but she’d let that pass this time. If she kicked him, he might holler and give them away. She shifted so she could block her brother with her backside and petticoats, then she turned her head just a bit to better see her father.
He stood with his arm resting easily on the marble fireplace mantel in Harrington Hall’s genteel office, which was filled with skinny-legged tables and oval chairs painted gold on the edges and with ugly feet that curled up like fists warning you to stay away. The cold wood floor had Turkey rugs with some odd dark blue patterns that were supposed to be trees—which made Kirsty wonder if the trees in Turkey were blue—and frail-looking imported porcelains sat everywhere and gave her an uneasy feeling whenever she was in the room. Those china figures looked as if they would crack into little pieces if you spoke too loudly.
Her father looked as out of place in the office of Harrington Hall as Kirsty felt in this school. It was odd to see him standing there. She knew the room; she’d spent many unpleasant moments standing before Miss Harrington’s stiff-looking desk while the schoolmistress lectured her on conduct becoming a proper young lady, especially a Harrington pupil.
So to see her father standing there with pastel French porcelain figurines next to his thick arm was very odd. In her mind he belonged on the island, riding one of his horses or standing next to that tall hemlock tree where his head almost touched the highest branches. She hadn’t many memories of him, but she remembered how wonderfully her father could ride. She thought perhaps he h
ad taken her for a ride on his horse once, but she wasn’t certain if it had happened when she was barely old enough to remember, or if she just wished it to be.
Her memory seemed real; she could imagine his tanned hands on the thick leather reins of one of his powerful horses, before he had pointed up at the bright pearly ball of a moon and told her the misty ring around it was a sign that rain would come soon. Sometimes, in the middle of the night while the other children were sound asleep, Kirsty would wrap herself in woolen blankets and sit cross-legged beneath the window, looking up at the vast dark sky above her. If there was a ring around the moon, she always thought of her father.
But now she could look at him, see him in person. She wedged her eyeball a little closer to the keyhole. In one of those hands of his, he held a letter which he’d been staring at with a serious and thoughtful look. Kirsty wondered what he was thinking about when he looked at the letter. Did he think about them? Graham and her?
They thought about him and whispered about what they imagined he was doing when they were supposed to be studying geography. Kirsty didn’t give a holy cow where the Himalaya Mountains were or what direction the Ganges River flowed.
She cared where her father was. He was all she and Graham had left. If they could just wake up one day and suddenly have no mother, that meant the same thing could happen to their father. To anyone.
After that realization, Kirsty never slept well and woke up shaking and crying a lot. She hated that weakness about herself and stole pillows and blankets from the other children so she could muffle the sound when she would wake up already crying.
She wondered if her father ever had nightmares. Did he think about their mother sometimes like she did? Did he cry when she left them? She couldn’t imagine her father crying.
