by Raina Wilde
“Thank you for your time.” He stood, and shook hands, stiffly, with the lawyer. The man stood and showed them out of the office.
Outside, Callum was explosively alive, energized as Isabeal had never seen him.
“So. We know my father killed her, and probably her doctor too. We know there is no way to prove that. We know he sent a letter to your father afterwards. What we need is that letter.”
Isabeal nodded in vigorous agreement.
“We could stop for a meal at the Saddler's Arms; put together what we have learned.” Callum suggested. Isabeal agreed.
Ten minutes later, they were sitting in an upstairs room in the inn, with the fire roaring behind them and a jug of wine on the table, roast lamb weaving its aromas in between those of the fire and the tapers and the spices in the wine. Their heads were together, and they discussed the information, talking together in low voices.
With what they knew it seemed clear that Callum's father and her father had together plotted his mother's death. They used her, Daniel McNott's newborn daughter, as a pawn in their plotting: Her hand for Callum, her dowry for the MacLennans, in exchange for the disputed land when she came of age.
They talked for a while, and then concluded. There seemed nothing else for them to do, but to confront her father. He held the last concrete piece of evidence.
“We should go. Ask him.” Callum said, voice electric. “Confront him with what we know.”
Isabeal nodded, eyes round. She hated her father, but feared him, too. To confront him would be...would be terrifying, and electrifying all at once.
She hesitated, nervous. It was almost too much to take in. But they had to strike, quickly, while her father was still not expecting the blow. Before he had wind of their investigations.
“We should go tonight?”
“Yes.”
They nodded to each other, squeezed hands and mounted their horses.
***
The ride to the McNott lands was dark and wild and long. By the time they arrived, it was late in the evening, the sun low and orange between the black shadows of the trees. Isabeal was exhausted. Standing in the courtyard of where she had once lived, she suppressed a shudder, looking up at the dark towers. Had this ever really been her home?
Beside her, Callum was a reassuring presence. He was dressed in a green velvet cloak, and was calm and level, all the anger in him gone now, replaced with a gentle resolve. She placed a hand on his arm, his presence a reassurance.
He smiled back at her, and put a hand on her arm. “Together in strength?”
Isabeal grinned and nodded. “Yes.” Her voice was firm, resolved. “Yes.”
They climbed the stairs together, and found their way, past the surprised chief of the household, to her father's office on the topmost floor of the main tower.
There, the confrontation was brief.
“And what, precisely, are you suggesting?” Her father's voice rang out around the dark room, quiet and menacing.
“That you conspired in my mother's murder.” Callum's voice was unwavering. He stood in front of her father, back straight, clad in MacLennan green, gaze entirely level. Isabeal, at his side, could not have been more proud.
“And...you can prove this?” His voice was rich with scorn.
“We could.” Isabeal's voice was clear, ringing to fill the chamber with a righteous anger. “If you gave us the letter.”
“You...”
Her father rounded on her, fist raised. His eyes had widened, however, at the mention of the letter. He regained his calm, smoothly.
“What letter?” His voice was carefully scornful. “You should keep your wife in better order, Sirrah. She should not threaten powerful men.”
“She is my wife.” Callum's gaze was level, his brow eyes kindled with warm anger. “What you say cannot touch her.”
“We know about the letter.” Isabeal continued. Her voice was trembling, but she said it anyhow. She squeezed Callum's hand.
“Nonsense.” Her father laughed.
“The lawyer, John Price, told us.” Callum's voice was level. “He was my mother's lawyer. He read her will, and my father gave the letter into his care. For you. The day after the death.” He said it slowly. “You knew.” Callum shook his head, looking at Isabeal's father with bitterness and distaste.
“You knew,” he repeated, “and you kept silent. For your gain.”
At the mention of John Price, her father had gone pale. “The lawyer...he lives?”
“Yes.” Callum's voice was level. “The doctor had an interesting story, too.”
“The doctor is dead.” Her father said it hastily, flatly.
“He is.” Callum agreed. “How did you know that?”
Her father stood facing them, mouth open and then closing, drawing in air. “Because...because I...”
“Because he told you.” Isabeal finished clearly. “In the letter.”
Her father looked at her, eyes wide with disbelief and something almost like fear.
“You...” He advanced on her, menacing.
“No.” Callum shook his head, placing Isabeal behind him protectively. “Not her. None of this is her fault. You did this. You and him.”
“I...” Isabeal's father backed away from them, across the room, until he reached his desk, sitting down heavily. “Leave. Now. Before I have you thrown out.” He waved his hand weakly at them, gasping for air. “Go!”
They left. Outside, in the hallway, they turned to each other, embracing, wordlessly. They were right. They had the truth, now. Now they were both free: to move on, to move forward, and to heal.
***
June was always a good month for travel, Isabeal thought. Not too hot, not too cold, and with almost no wind to bother one.
Riding down to the coast with Callum had been a pleasant trip, even with the coaches behind, bringing their baggage. Then they boarded the ship, and all weary warmth of a June ride had changed into a flurry of excitement and wonder, and Isabeal had lost herself in the joy of the moment.
Callum and Isabeal stood on the prow of the ship, looking away from the sun-soaked bay in Scotland, and out across the play of light on the water. Somewhere out there lay France, and their new life.
Two days after their confrontation with Isabeal's father, Callum had written a note to his father. He explained what they knew, asserting that they had proof if he required it of them. All he required was that his father release him from his duties, leaving the inheritance of the Lairdship to his younger brother James, and that he come into his inheritance from his uncle.
He and Isabeal had sold the beautiful house, keeping much of the furniture, which they loaded into a carriage to take with them.
A month later, when the sale had been concluded, they found themselves on a ship to France.
“Callum?” Isabeal smiled, from where she stood under his right arm. “It's exciting, isn't it?”
“Yes.” Callum kissed her, his smile gentle. “It is exciting.”
“We'll...we'll make our own home there. Away from...”
“Yes.”
That was why they had decided to move. To move away from all the intrigue and the hate; ties that had manipulated and held their lives for too long. To begin to live as themselves.
Isabeal felt her arms tighten around his waist. They stood for a long while. He kissed the top of her head, silently.
“My friend in France seems eager to welcome us.” Callum smiled, warmly. His friend and cousin Lance had left the country years ago, and set up a business in France, importing whiskey. He had made himself a healthy sum and retired. He had helped them to purchase a small house with Callum's inherited wealth.
“Yes.” Isabeal smiled warmly. “I am excited to meet him and his family.”
“Good.”
“And to see our house.”
“Yes.” Callum smiled.
The thought of their own home, one that was truly theirs, not on loan from their families and tainted with th
eir intrigues, was truly great.
“Will it...will it have a garden?” Isabeal asked, smilingly.
“Yes.” Callum grinned. “It has a garden. And a terrace. And a second story, with a balcony.”
“And plenty of windows?”
Callum grinned widely. “Lots of windows.”
“A summer house?”
“No...no summerhouse, I'm afraid. Perhaps we could put one in...? In the knot garden?”
“Perhaps.” Isabeal smiled. “If I can grow climbing roses all over it?”
Callum groaned in mock exasperation. Together they stood and watched the coast of Scotland swallowed in inky darkness, while the sunset spread across the surface of the sea before them in gold and green and pale chartreuse. Their arms were around each other, and their eyes were fixed on the horizon. Whole, and close, and happy.
Free.
The sun sank slowly into the sea as they watched, the coast slipping, forgotten, into the darkness behind them both. They kissed, and went down to their cabin. Hand in hand and side by side. The distance between them, which had been so immense, and peopled with a thousand secrets, was as empty now as the horizon, and as easy to cross. A heart's beat apart, and a hand's touch away.
For then and always.
THE END
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Forbidden Highland Love
Highland spring is delicate and brittle, the air cold and scented fragrantly with heather blossom. This spring, on the coast at Sutherland, was no different. The year was eighteen hundred and forty two, and the first tender sun shone slowly into the solarium, where Frances sat with her companions.
Laughter rang around the warm space, and the bright sound of young voices. Frances herself was then only eighteen years old, delicate and lovely as a flower, with long, straight, white-gold hair and a soft, elfish face.
“What's that supposed to be?” A girl looked over her shoulder, squinting at her embroidered work.
“Oh, Lettie! It's bluebells, can't you see?”
“It's not me that can't see!”
General laughter erupted, accompanied by a rueful smile from Frances.
“It might not look like a bluebell,” she smiled, “but at least I've sewn five already.”
The others laughed again. Lettie grinned and Frances smiled back.
They all bent back to their work. The sun shone down, making gentle haloes around heads of blonde and red and chestnut hair. Frances McCraig, daughter of Laird James McCraig, sat in the centre of the group, serenely lovely in her white gown, with her pale hair loose about her shoulders. Even in such lovely company, she shone like a pale candle in a darkened room.
A girl with bright ginger hair in rich tousled curls walked quietly over to Frances during the lull.
“Frances?”
“Yes, Jess?”
“...Nothing.” Jess hung her head.
“No. It is something. You've been crying.” Frances' voice was gentle, not probing into her friend's secrets.
“It's just Arthur.”
Frances sat quietly.
“He...he's going away on the last day of the month. To the border with Father's forces.”
“Does he have to go?”
“I don't know.” Jess sounded wretched.
Frances knew she loved Arthur, a distant scion of her family, and had since they were small girls playing in the woods around the keep. She was sure he would not leave Jess for anything, if he felt he had a choice.
“Well...can't your father spare him the duties?”
“I...Oh, Frances. Do you really think it would work?” Jess's face was transformed, smile dimpling her bright cheeks.
“Of course I do.” Frances smiled back. “You silly,” she added gently, a laugh in her voice, “did you really think that he would not?”
“Yes!” Jess's ginger head bobbed up and down in vigorous agreement.
The two friends laughed together, pale hair mixing with gold as their heads touched, bending over their embroidered linens.
At that moment, Frances' old nurse appeared in the doorway. Her face was stiff, tear-lined, as if she had been crying. The girls looked up, shocked.
“Frances? Your father asks to see you.”
Silence.
“Maggie? Is something wrong?” Frances' clear blue eyes were wide.
“Best that you come.” Her nurse swallowed hard and stood back for Frances to walk out of the door ahead of her.
They walked up the corridor and mounted a staircase, crossing into the northern tower. Near her father's study, the castle grew darker, and smelled instead of new plaster and old dust, of shadows and books and cold.
Maggie knocked on the door and let Frances through.
“Father?” Frances' voice echoed in the draughty space. She was a tiny form, white-dressed, a simple shift hanging to her feet, hair loose. “You summoned me?”
This was rare. Her father was perpetually distracted, deep in books or laws or studies.
“Yes.” He nodded. He too, swallowed. “Will you sit?”
Frances moved wordlessly to the chair opposite his desk.
“Daughter, you know we have had trouble on the border. Debts.” He swallowed. She nodded, once.
“Well,” he paused, “I had to come to some sort of...settlement.”
Frances waited.
“I...the price asked was...your hand in marriage.”
What? Frances lost focus a moment, dazed by the news, gaze cloudy and worried.
“And...the Laird on the border is, as you know, not an easy man.”
Not an easy man...no! Father!
Frances felt suddenly helpless. Now she knew why her father looked as if he had been crying. But it could not be true.
“Not..?”
“I am afraid so, daughter.” He was not looking at her.
“No! Father, please.” Frances' voice had real fear in it.
“My daughter, I can do nothing about it.” Her father did not look at her, his head bowed. “Laird McNeil is not a...not what I wanted for you. But he has benefits, I am sure. He is wealthy, for one. You will not starve. He is powerful. Well-settled here. You will be safe.”
“But, father...” Frances was crying, now, tears filling her huge blue eyes, making them watery pools, soft-edged and endlessly deep.
“No. My child. I would not do this to you if I could do anything else.”
Frances nodded, eyes closed. The tears fell then, rolling down her cheeks.
Her father, with an uncharacteristic tenderness, reached over and laid a hand on hers. He said nothing. There was nothing at all to say.
Frances nodded again, and stood to leave.
“Good day, Father.” Her voice was shaky. She swallowed, and walked away.
“Good day, daughter.” Her father looked after her for a long while, then turned to his papers, looking suddenly old.
Upstairs, in the tower room she had loved for years, where she had lived since she was a small child, Frances lay on her bed and looked up at the ceiling. She was beyond weeping. Maggie knocked at the door. Her maid knocked. She did not reply.
Laird Jamie McNeil was...unthinkable. He brutalised his last wife into an early grave, was never sober, and had impugned the chastity of more women than anyone could remember. He was a hard-drinking, uncivilised, boorish lecherer, of whom even the servants were afraid. And this was to be her husband? From now until the end of her days? She closed her eyes. Shook her head. She would rather die. The thought of him touching her filled her with a gut-crawling revulsion. She had met him once, five years ago, and even then the way he had studied her had made her flesh crawl. How could he be her husband?
“Father...no.”
Frances cried herself to sleep.
***
The waves crashed below the cliffs. Frances sat, looking out blindly to the wav
ering horizon. This was her favourite walk. She should have felt happy there. That day, after receiving the news from her father, she felt inside as frozen as the ice-grey water, as empty as the blank sky above, filled with emptiness and wheeling gulls.
No.
Just that word. Beyond it, only emptiness. She sat on a rock overlooking the sea, and watched, the wheeling gulls and the waves, so far below they looked like wrinkles on a cloth. Her heart and mind felt as shattered as the splintering crest of water, breaking on the rocks. Nothing.
Frances stood. It was getting late. How long had she sat there? Many hours, uncounted. She only knew that she needed to move, if she was not planning to die of cold on the cliffs. In early spring, it could still be cold enough to freeze a person to death when night fell.
Who cares if I die? Frances asked herself. I would rather be dead. Why am I walking?
Frances walked, stumbling, blue with cold, inland. It was becoming dark.
Father? Her mind asked it blindly as she walked. Far away, down the curve of the coastline, she could see vivid orange lights, cold beacons in the windows of fishing-village huts. The sky above was wind-torn grey, and darkening fast.
Frances was still thinking of her father. You mismanaged your own resources. For that, you punish me? She stopped, closed her eyes against the images flooding her mind; of Jamie McNeil brutalising the servant girls, making crude comments about his last wife at their banquet table, drinking himself into semi-consciousness and either fighting or fondling the servants who came to move him.
She stumbled on. It was becoming truly dark, the mist rolling in. It would be impossible to see after another hour, and the cold was eating her, freezing her down to the marrow. She could not feel her legs below the knee. All she could see was a white shale path below her, gleaming in the last light of the evening. If she closed her eyes, she could hear her steps in the loose stone.
I will die here. She kept her eyes closed, and walked on.
Suddenly, the night exploded into pain, and hardness, and stars pulsing before her eyes. After a moment of stunned agony, she realised she had walked into a wall. Reaching out to feel it, she felt whitewash and plaster. She stood, swaying. Her head pounded. She heard a strange, whimpered cry rising in her own throat. Then she collapsed, the blow to the head overwhelming her.
