Master of the Highlands

by Veronica Wolff

Page 38

 

  “Aye, uncle, I don ’t yet know what the man’s about, but reports have it he ’s building more than a wee fort. Scouts say he ’s putting up an entire bloody garrison. He found I wouldn’t abide his pretty words nor his dirty bribes so he reckons constructing it with my own timber might make me repent. ”

  “And our General Monk will find it no easy task to finish this wee outpost of his?”

  “Aye. That’s precisely the plan, uncle. ” Ewen kicked his horse into an easy canter and added with a husky laugh,

  “That’s it precisely. ”

  Chapter 23

  Lily sat at Ewen’s desk, mustering her courage. She ’d spent the morning racing around the keep in an effort to sort out her new puppy, and had quickly realized that dog ownership was much more than long walks and games of fetch. Even the most basic task of feeding posed a challenge. Convincing the cook that a mere animal merited scraps of meat from the laird’s table had been no small feat.

  Before she knew it, the day was half over and she had yet to begin John ’s lessons. She had decided to make her absence up to him with a special art project, but had yet again found that, in this century, the easiest tasks became formidable. Lily thought nothing could be simpler than helping John with a pen and ink drawing—or quill and ink as she was calling it—but she was having trouble tracking down something as meager as a pot of ink.

  And so she sat, frozen. Lily knew that the laird sat at his desk to write letters, and she assumed that somewhere within its hulking mass there was ink to be found, but she was nonetheless nervous about the prospect of poking through his things.

  The desk was a solid, well-built piece, made of a glossy, reddish brown wood Lily guessed to be mahogany. She had smiled at the apples in the corner, resting in a dainty ceramic bowl that looked out of place on such a masculine piece of furniture. So much for her gripe, she thought, that there was no fresh produce in old Scotland.

  Ewen ’s tidiness surprised her. A candle, a small sheaf of papers, and a few gray feathers resting in a simple silver quill holder were the only other things to adorn the desk’s surface.

  She helped herself to one of the tiny red and yellow apples and, puckering at the sour taste, considered which drawer to open first. Three of them flanked her on either side, sturdy and squat atop fearsome clawed feet. A long thin drawer was in the center, a bronze key still in its latch.

  She reached out to open a side drawer and balked, struck by last-minute panic. Perhaps she was crossing a line here. She had looked for Robert—he ’d surely have some ink to lend her—but he had been nowhere to be found. Tapping her fingers on the bronze drawer knob, she hesitated. If Ewen left the desk’s only key in the latch, she thought, how sensitive could its contents be? The ink was for his son, and he surely had some in here somewhere.

  Convincing herself that the laird wouldn ’t grudge her, she opened the top drawer and was surprised to see the collage John had made of the seashore. Shuffling it to the side, Lily stared in disbelief. The drawer was stacked full with John ’s artwork. She had often wondered what became of all of his creations. She always made certain to display her favorites, and had just assumed it was Kat who whisked away the rest during one of her many cleaning binges. Lily hadn’t considered that Ewen might be squirreling away his son’s projects. In fact, she hadn ’t even realized he’d been paying attention.

  But now, rifling through page after page of John ’s earnest drawings and collages, Lily’s throat clenched. The laird obviously loved his son, but it was unexpected to see how he treasured him so.

  What else didn ’t she know about Ewen? Compelled to discover more, she opened the next drawer, and the next. It felt like such an intimate look at the man, and seeing the things that he cherished fascinated her.

  She gently leafed through a stack of yellowed letters, tied up with string, addressed to Ewen’s father. They had been written long ago in a woman ’s hand. His mother’s hand, Lily deduced.

  Amusement lit her eyes as she opened the next drawer, so orderly, and full of clean parchment that was stacked neatly and arranged in two piles according to size.

  The next drawer held a small stack of essays, each bound with a leather cord and dense with black script. They looked to be obscure treatise s on science and nature.

  Lily was utterly enthralled, now hungry for what other secrets she might uncover, for other glimpses of the man. Ewen ’s doings, his pursuits, his heart.

  She opened the top middle drawer to find a gorgeous walnut box nestled perfectly inside. It had a leather lid attached by delicate brass hasps, and bore a gilt hound medallion at its center. The sharp smell of pitch filled her senses as she slowly opened the box. A grid of small compartments neatly organized several pots of ink, blotting sand, a nib cutter, a beautiful seal made of turned wood, and red sealing wax.

  She had her ink. She should go.

  But Lily couldn’t stop herself. There was one drawer to go, on the bottom right. Surely just an inconsequential drawer, she thought, easy to walk away from, yet she couldn’t fight the compulsion. Not giving herself a chance to think twice, she leaned over and pulled.

  It was empty but for a small leather-bound volume. Lily picked the book up and studied it. A floral design was stamped in an oval around the title, written in an elaborate gilt script. Poems by someone named William Drummond of Hawthornden. A bewildered smile warmed her face. She wouldn’t have thought the laird to be a man of verse. Captivated, she opened the book and began to peruse its pages of sonnets, some lovely, some florid, alternating Scottish imagery with abstruse references to Greek mythology.

  As she read, Lily noticed a spot toward the middle of the book that kept separating, as if the binding had been broken and wanted to return to a well -read page. She placed the book flat on the desk and flipped to the spot, marked, she saw, with a small scrap of paper.

  As she turned the bookmark in her hands, a current of energy snapped along Lily’s body. She knew this little scrap of paper well. It was a quick, she thought inferior, sketch she ’d dashed off in the gardens one evening. She had tried to capture the dramatic fall of late-afternoon light on an herb bed and, unsatisfied and frustrated, she’d set the drawing aside and promptly forgot it.

  Baffled, she turned to the poem that Ewen had marked. As she read, fire crackled through her, as if she had to will herself whole or she would fragment, dissolving into a wisp of smoke and air.

  Then is she gone? O fool and coward I!

  O good occasion lost, ne ’er to be found!

  What fatal chains have my dull senses bound, When best they may, that they not fortune try?

  It was a poem of regret. Of a chance not taken. Of denying the will of fortune, that same fickle instrument which h ad sent her to Ewen.

  Why would he have such a poem? In her mind, she heard his voice, rich and deep, calling “Lil’ ”. Her recollection of him was vivid, as though, despite a great distance, she could sense his summoning. Vertigo, like the earth suddenly falling from her body, dizzied Lily, and she felt something inside her answer. And a thought, radiant and clear, rang through her head. To suspect Ewen ’s love for her and feel this elation could only be possible if she loved him in return.

  Comprehension came to her like the sun through parting clouds. Lily understood that although she came from another time, her heart belonged to Ewen, and here, in this poem, she read the glimmer of his own desire.

  Her mind raced with the possibility of leaving the world of the future behind forever. Could she stay? Would he even want her to? Though the prospect didn’t scare her, neither did she know if she’d be ready to say good -bye to modern America forever. Lily had always assumed that someday she ’d mend ways with her mother; to close that door now was something to be considered.

  She may not know what her own future held, but she knew what she would have of her present. The past months had been physically challenging—a dizzyi
ng, sometimes violent struggle. And yet, as she read and reread the stanza, something clicked into place, as if her body and heart and mind were, at long last, grounded and in harmony.

  The poet had written that only in following the impulse of the heart did one avoid ruin. And now, hopeful that Ewen might dare try his destiny, Lily felt the freedom to pursue her own heart ’s desire.

  “’Tis about time, fool lad. ” Smoke from Gormshuil’s pipe curled about the old woman ’s head, filling the small cave with the sweet smells of cherry and bark. “What, are you not well? Come in with you. Sit, sit, boy, that ’s it, down by the fire mind you, or you ’ll catch your death. ”

  Ewen moved to sit down across from the old witch, and after all these years found he still had to force himself to meet the intensity of her watery blue gaze. Gormshuil clicked the clay pipe between her teeth and shot Ewen an arch grin that made him feel like a boy of ten rather than a man full grown.

  “Aye, that’s the way lad. I ’ve waited for you nigh on one moon now. ”

  Ewen could find no words, and Gormshuil ’s cackle broke the silence. “You’re gaping like a dead fish, you are. I hope you use prettier manners on your new lassie than with an old cailleach like myself. ”

  “You ’ve my apologies. ” Ewen’s deep voice resonated off the cramped stone walls. “Though I don’t ken your meaning. I ’ve no lassie. Or rather, there’s a lass, but she’s not mine. I ’ve come merely to find her way home. ”

  Gormshuil once again laughed. “No lassie, eh? So say you, boy. ” She took a couple shallow, distracted pulls on her pipe, and the thick coils of smoke made her eyes half-lidded and teary. Just as it seemed she had forgotten his presence in the cave, the old woman’s voice cracked into song.

  “Came a lass to Alba,To her an ancient shore. She traveled along the star road, Come seeking a hero of yore.

  Leaves of deadly nightshade, The white Lily pricked red, When she braved the road to Alba, Her fate, a hero long dead.

  “Nay lassie indeed. ” She barked another laugh, and clarity abruptly replaced the distant gaze in her rheumy eyes as if emerging from a trance.