Whence Came a Prince

by Liz Curtis Higgs

  “This is none of your concern, Rose.” Lachlan did not withdraw his empty hand but shook it at her sister as though reminding Leana to do her duty. When Jamie started to speak, Lachlan’s head jerked in his direction. “Not a word, Nephew. Leana kens the debt owed for her months away from home.”

  The coins spilled into his waiting hand.

  “What need have you for silver?” Lachlan said smoothly, wrapping the money with his handkerchief. When he stuffed it in his waistcoat pocket, the coins formed an unsightly bulge over his heart. “Do tradesmen present you with bills expecting their due? Does Colin Elliot greet you with a tally of purchases when you appear at the grocers door? On Whitsunday past did an endless parade of servants, herds, and hinds stick out their grimy hands, waiting to be paid for the term? You are home now, Leana, and have no use for silver. Wealth is for men to earn, manage, and disburse as they see fit.”

  Rose could not stomach another word. She stood, pushing her chair back hard enough to scrape the floor. “I have lost my appetite. Should anyone require me, I shall be in my room.” Grabbing her skirts, she swung toward the door just in time to see Leana stand as well.

  Her sister lifted her chin, her eyes still moist, but her gaze clear. “I shall be in my room also, altering one of my gowns so I might wear something more appropriate for supper.”

  The sisters exited the room without waiting for a response. Leana led the way, with Rose so close behind that she nearly trampled Leana’s hem. Lachlan shouted both of their names, but neither woman turned back. Instead, they hurried through the entrance hall and up the stair as three servants came round the corner from the kitchen, mouths agape.

  Rose didn’t dare speak, fearing she might laugh or cry or both at once. They had turned their backs on Lachlan McBride! She was almost ashamed of how wonderful it felt. “Leana,” she whispered when they reached the corridor outside their bedrooms, “will you truly sew this afternoon? My hands are shaking so, I would stab myself ten times just threading the needle—”

  “Oh, Rose.” Leana suddenly turned and pulled her into a fierce embrace. “You were so brave standing up to Father like that.”

  “Me?” Her voice, pinched by tears, was reduced to a squeak. “You were the campie one. ‘I sold it,’ she said. Just like that.”

  “Having you in the room helped.” Leana patted Rose’s braid, still holding her close. “My brave sister.”

  Rose gave a noisy sniff. “Perhaps ’tis the babe inside me making me strong.”

  Leana was quiet for a moment. “ ’Tis Jamie’s love for you and yours for him that make you fearless. Father cannot hurt you now.”

  “But what about you?” Rose leaned back, her jubilant mood fading. “This is your home. Father could make the years ahead quite miserable indeed.”

  “Except I, too, am loved,” Leana reminded her.

  A bubble of fear rose in her throat. Not Jamie.

  “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us.” Leana hugged her once more before letting go. “Not our earthly father, Rose. Our heavenly one. I am well loved, and so are you.”

  Rose pressed her handkerchief to her mouth, too full of emotion to speak. She was loved. Not by her father, perhaps, but by everyone important to her. Jamie especially. And Leana always. She peered down the corridor toward the stair. “I’m afraid we’ve left my poor husband to face Father alone.”

  “I do not envy Jamie the next hour,” Leana agreed. “We’d best be to our rooms. Unless I am mistaken, Neda will bring us each a tray when Father is not looking.”

  “Good.” Rose patted her stomach. “My appetite is not lost; it is very much found.”

  “Take my tray, then.” Leana leaned forward and briefly pressed her cheek to Rose’s, a tender gesture from their childhood. “Eat well, young Rose. Grow a healthy son or daughter for your Jamie.”

  Your Jamie. Rose wondered what those words cost her sister, fearing the price.

  Forgive me, Leana.

  Nae, it was time to stop thinking it and start saying it. Forgive me, Leana. The words lodged in her throat. Say it, Rose.

  “Leana, I am … so sorry.” Flooded with guilt, Rose could not look at her sister. She grasped her hands instead. “About Jamie. About Ian. About … oh, everything. It must be so … difficult for you. My loving Jamie … my caring for Ian …”

  “Rose, ’tis not hard for—”

  “But it is hard.” She looked up, determined to be heard. “I see it in your eyes. I hear it in your voice. I’ve broken your heart, Leana, time and again. I have, I have. And you keep forgiving me, when I do not deserve it.”

  “Dearie.” Leana shook her head, squeezing her hands tight. “Mercy is a gift, freely given, freely received.”

  “Are you … certain?” Rose searched her face. “Have you truly forgiven me?”

  Leana’s smile was grace itself. “How could I not, when I love you? Don’t you see? You are my only sister and my dearest friend.”

  “And you … are mine.” She began crying again, harder than before. “Please forgive me. Please … please.”

  Chin trembling, Leana kissed her brow. “ ’Tis already done, Rose. Long ago.”

  Twenty-One

  And is there any moral shut

  Within the bosom of the rose?

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON

  Such a long face,” Jamie chided her. “Will you not tell me what troubles you, Rose?”

  She strolled beside him down the lane, her skirt hems brushing the wet gravel. After an endless day of rain, the skies had cleared during supper and bathed the countryside with sunlight, making the wet hedgerows glisten. Jamie had suggested Rose join him for an evening walk, allowing Leana to enjoy a quiet hour with Ian. Both sisters had jumped at the chance. Would that he could always make them both happy.

  Rose slowed to admire a cluster of wild thyme with its rosy purple heads and long oval leaves. “The next two months will put a dreadful strain on Leana—watching the two of us together, spending hours with Ian, dreading the day she must bid him farewell.” Rose leaned over to pluck a sprig of thyme from the soggy ground, then crushed the leaves and inhaled the aromatic scent. “ ’Tis more than any woman should bear.”

  They had talked of little else since Leana’s arrival yestreen. He inclined his head toward the road, hoping to guide Rose’s thoughts in a different direction. “Come, let me show you what I found in one of Glensone’s fields.”

  Rose brushed the fragrant wildflowers from her hands as they approached a meadow enclosed by a dry stane dyke. “Jamie, it looks like every other field in Scot—oh!”

  Baby rabbits were everywhere, hopping after their mothers, scurrying along the dyke, disappearing down holes no bigger than their tiny bodies. There were dozens of them, their velvety brown ears and white tails flicking through the wet grass, greener than ever after the rain. Rose clasped her hands with delight. “Aren’t they dear? And so many.”

  Jamie grinned at her. “Just the remedy for my unheartsome wife.”

  She sighed with contentment, her gaze following one rabbit, then another. “We must bring Ian here.”

  “Morning or evening—that’s when rabbits are likely to show.” Jamie slipped his arm round her waist. “Though I fear you may have to bring the lad yourself if you’re wanting to come soon. Tomorrow’s the Sabbath, and Monday noon the herds come for the shearing.”

  “You’ll be in the sheepfolds most of the week, won’t you?” He heard the plaintive note in her voice. “From daybreak ’til the gloaming, aye?” Whenever he spent a long day on the hills, Rose often waited at the door come nightfall, watching for him with an anxious look on her face. Perhaps because Leana was older, she’d not needed his constant attention quite the same way Rose did. Like the flower she was named for, young Rose seemed to wilt without careful tending.

  “Only a few days,” he promised, “and then we’ll have hundreds of fleeces to show for our labors.”

  “Hundreds?” She made a face at him. “
All of them will need cleaning and carding, I suppose.”

  “They will indeed. A summer’s work for you and the lasses. At least Leana can help with the spinning.”

  There. He’d said her name with a fair amount of ease that time. Not hesitating, not stumbling over it. While Leana was in Twyneholm, he’d seldom had that problem. But now that she was home again, her name had flesh to it. Lavender was no longer an herb in the garden; it was the scent of Leana’s gown passing him on the stair.

  Rose gazed up the road that led to Troston Hill Farm and the wild moorland beyond. “I’ve not seen Lillias Brown lurking about the parish. Have you?”

  “Nae, lass, I have not.” Rose had told him about her eerie conversations with the auld witch last spring and how much they’d frightened her. Jamie felt certain his wife would not knock on the door of Nethermuir again.

  “One of her predictions did come true,” Rose said. “Lillias told me, ‘There is ane man for ye, lassie. And ye ken his name well.’ ” She reached up to brush the stray hair off his brow. “I do know his name. In fact, I share it.”

  “So you do.” He clasped her hand and kissed the narrow silver band he’d placed there. “Mistress McKie.”

  Rose smiled once more at the tiny rabbits, as though they might twitch their noses at her in response, then the couple turned toward home. The evening sun threw long shadows across the road in front of them while they walked. “My sister has yet to touch her wheel, but her needle was busy today. She’s altering one of her older gowns. I don’t have the heart to tell her how plain it makes her look. She will ne’er catch a gentleman’s eye wearing such dreary attire.”

  “What gentleman?” Jamie asked a bit too sharply.

  “Any proper suitor who might wish to court her.” Rose slipped her hand round his arm and gave him an affectionate squeeze. “Now that things are settled among the three of us, my sister is free to marry again.”

  Jamie looked down at her, his steps slowing. “Is that her … desire? To marry?”

  “She’s not spoken of it, but ’tis every woman’s desire to marry. And to have children.”

  He stared at the rolling pastureland to the south, not really seeing the hillocks and craggy rocks, too stunned by Rose’s offhand suggestion. Would Leana marry again? Could she marry after all that had happened? And bear another man’s children?

  “He’d have to be very wealthy indeed,” Rose said, “to earn Father’s approval.”

  “And be willing to … to accept …” Jamie didn’t let himself finish. Not when his thoughts were unkind and fueled by the worst possible motive. Did he imagine because he could not have Leana, neither should anyone else?

  “Be willing to accept what?” Rose teased him. “Leana’s shocking behavior at dinner today? Leaving the table without Father’s permission?”

  Grateful for the diversion, Jamie pretended to look stern. “But who bolted to her feet first?”

  “I did,” Rose said, proud of herself.

  And rightly so. Jamie had all but applauded when the McBride sisters stood up to their father, even if it meant enduring an icy meal across a noticeably empty dining table. Lachlan had choked down his food in a fit of choler and left the table. Jamie had enjoyed a second helping of everything Neda’s kitchen had to offer, soup to pudding.

  Rose stopped to shake a pebble from her shoe and held on to Jamie as she wriggled the leather slipper back on her foot. “I’d say Leana’s remark this evening required more pluck than my earlier one.”

  Jamie could not remember a shorter hour of family worship. After they’d recited a few brief psalms, Lachlan announced his text for the evening: a single verse chosen with intent. “Children, obey your parents in all things.” He’d read slowly, serving up each word on a plate garnished with bitterness. “For this is well pleasing unto the Lord.”

  When Lachlan finished, his blunt finger still stabbing at the verse on the page, Leana had said in her calmest voice, “Will you not read the next verse, sir?” He’d glowered at her while Leana had repeated it from memory: “Fathers, provoke not your children to anger, lest they be discouraged.”

  “Can you believe she said such a bauld thing?” Rose nearly skipped, so lively were her steps as they approached the mains. “My sister knows her Buik, she does.”

  “ ’Twas courageous,” Jamie agreed. Such boldness would serve Leana well when she faced the man alone come Lammas.

  His gaze landed on the sheep pastured nearest the house, a healthy flock of ewes and lambs, the latter’s necks still red and easily identified. Only the older sheep would be sheared beginning Monday. The lambs would remain unshorn until next summer, making it easy to count them again next week and be certain of the tally.

  Twenty score. All mine.

  “What are you smiling about, Jamie McKie?”

  He laughed, pulling her into his embrace, not caring who might see them. “I’m thinking about a certain lamb.”

  “Are you now?” Her blush was bonnier than any sunset and quite as pink. “A lamb yet to be born, perhaps?”

  “Nae.” He kissed each heated cheek. “A frisky lamb that gamboled into my life on this very road one October day.”

  Her breath tickled his ear. “You were dripping wet. Rising out of Lochend like a kelpie seeking to lure me to a watery grave.”

  “Kelpies haunt rivers and fords, not lochs,” he reminded her. “And you were dressed in peasant garb, bleating about your thirsty sheep and your overturned watering trough.”

  “Which you managed to turn upright, like some kind of etin.”

  “Make up your mind, lass.” His scowl was playful. “Am I a water demon or a giant?”

  Rose wrapped her arms round his neck. “You’re the heir of Glentrool and the man I love.” With that, she kissed the smile off his face and every lucid thought from his head.

  Twenty-Two

  Of this alone even God is deprived,

  the power of making things that are past never to have been.

  ARISTOTLE

  I niver thought to see that tairt in our parish again.”

  Leana flinched at Lydia Taggart’s harsh words, spoken loudly enough to echo down one empty pew and up the next. On such a fine Sabbath morning many villagers were still out of doors, waiting until the bell was rung before finding their seats. Instead of joining them, Leana had entered the kirk early, hoping to take her place without being noticed. To no avail, it seemed.

  Rose reached over and tapped her hand. “Don’t fret,” she said softly. “No one heeds a glib-gabbit woman like Lydia.”

  Who would have imagined her sister would be the one offering support at this unsettled hour? Leana knew the parish would grow accustomed to her presence in time, but this first Sunday might be very trying indeed.

  Her father had taken his usual seat farther down the pew, looking as grim as his surroundings. Though sunlight poured through the broad windows on either side of the pulpit, it only served to illuminate the austerity of the preaching house. Enclosed wooden pews faced the pulpit on three sides, as plain and straight as the parishioners who sat in them. No ornamentation courted the eye; no celestial design pointed to the heavens.

  Even so, the Almighty could be found there by all who sought him. Leana gazed at the high-ceilinged room in which she’d spent so many hours, grateful for two things in particular: The stool of repentance was not on display this Sabbath day, and neither was she.

  Voices floated in the door, mingled with birdsong though not with laughter—not on the Sabbath. Leana was certain she heard Ian’s blithe crowing above the chatter. Jamie would bring him in at the last and hold Ian in his lap throughout both services. The three of them had discussed the subject on the hourlong walk to the kirk and had agreed that if Jamie tended Ian, no one would blether about which mother was caring for the child.

  At the muted clang of the bell, Leana glanced over her shoulder. The kirk would begin to fill now. There was Isabella Callender with her gray hair gathered in a tidy bun and her
soft pillow of a nose. On the first morning Leana had compeared on the stool, it was Isabella who’d clasped her hand at the kirk door. Whate’er betides ye, may this day be the worst. That Sabbath had not been the worst day of her life; leaving Ian was the worst. However painful the summer might prove to be, the joy of seeing her son again far outweighed the sorrow.

  “Look who’s come home.” A young woman with marmalade hair and eyes the color of Scottish bluebells sailed into the pew in front of them, children in tow.

  “Jessie!” Leana cried softly, leaping to her feet. Jessie and Alan Newall of Troston Hill Farm were her nearest neighbors and dearest friends in the parish. Crushing her gown against the hard back of the pew, Leana hugged Jessie tight, then leaned back to admire her family. “Look how Rabbie has grown. Come, let me see your bairn.”

  She held out her arms for Jessie’s new son, not four months old, while the rest of them found their places. His skin was pale, like Ian’s, but his downy red hair marked him as a Newall, with freckles in his future. “What a fine lad you are,” Leana crooned. She took one last look before handing him back to his mother, then turned to his older sister. “Annie, my posy, ’tis grand to see you, too.”

  Almost three, Annie was a smaller version of her mother in every detail, from the ringlets in her hair to her thin-lipped smile. Eyes fixed on Leana, the girl sounded out her name—“Le-a-na”—then clapped, clearly proud of herself for remembering.

  “Good for you, lass.” Leana longed to gather the child in her arms. But the beadle was aimed toward the door, indicating the start of the morning service, and Jamie would be along any moment with Ian. “We’ll talk after the service,” she promised, cupping the girl’s soft cheek. “Will you sit in my lap while we eat our cold dinner?”

  Annie nodded, sending her red curls dancing, then turned round at her mother’s urging.

  “Later,” Jessie said with a wink, then faced the pulpit just as Jamie appeared in the aisle with Ian. The boy’s face broke into a cherub’s smile when he saw his mother.