by Karen Ranney
“She’s the one who saw Gilmuir finished,” he said, smiling at her down the length of the table. “My only discontent with her is that she insists upon sculpting my face from time to time. There are better subjects for her talent.”
“I concur,” James said, raising his goblet. He and his wife, Riona, had arrived only an hour earlier.
The remaining MacRae was as different from Hamish as her husband was from Alisdair. Douglas had the curious aloofness she’d noted in Hamish upon first meeting him, and she wondered if it were caused by the same type of deep emotion. He’d met her eyes twice during the dinner, and twice looked away. Yet when addressed, he answered quickly enough, and his smile was often in place. Nevertheless, Mary had the thought that he was far from there. Not at Gilmuir at all, but some other location.
A loud banging on the massive oak and iron-banded door interrupted what Leitis was saying.
Alisdair stood, excusing himself, a grin on his face.
“He looks very pleased,” Mary said, watching him.
Hamish turned and smiled at her. “He has a surprise for our mother.”
A moment later, a giant of a man with bright red hair and a large grin entered the great hall in a limping gait. Leitis stood and stared at him, fisting her hands in her skirt. Mary couldn’t decide who was the more fascinating to watch, Leitis, the stranger, or the rest of the MacRaes.
“Well, sister,” he roared, “it’s not a ghost you’re looking at. Have you no greeting?”
Leitis began to smile, crossing the room to be enfolded in a bear hug. The two clung to each other as the rest of the MacRaes watched.
“It’s her brother, Fergus,” Hamish explained. “They haven’t seen each other for over thirty years. Until Alisdair came back to Scotland, neither knew the other was alive.”
There were more introductions as Fergus brought his wife forward. Mary learned that they had been sweethearts as young people but had not been reunited until a few years ago. There was also a bond of kinship; the woman she met was Iseabal’s mother.
Room was made for them easily at the table. Aislin and Robbie had been put to bed hours ago, but Riona’s baby was passed around to be greeted and kissed. As she watched them, Mary could feel herself becoming part of a large and warm family.
Gilmuir was as wondrous a place as she’d always heard, but not simply because of its magnificent architecture. The MacRaes lent it life.
“You must tell me how Hamish truly is,” Leitis said, interrupting her reverie. She spoke under cover of another burst of laughter. “You know men; they rarely tell the truth if they think it might upset us.”
Mary nodded, understanding only too well. “He’s better now than he was,” she admitted. “There’s some movement in his fingers, and it’s my hope that he regains the use of his arm. But it will take time, I’m afraid.” She couldn’t wait to try the electrical machine on his arm. All she had to do was convince Hamish. He’d looked decidedly unenthusiastic from the moment he’d unveiled Mr. Marshall’s surprise gift.
“And you,” Leitis said, patting her on the wrist. “I suspect you have a great deal to do with it.”
Hamish was seated on the other side of her. Every few moments, he’d glance in her direction as if he weren’t quite sure she was real. These hours at Gilmuir felt like time in an imaginary land. Hamish was laughing, sharing memories with his family. She was welcomed as she’d never thought to be. The verdict two days ago seemed very far away as was the realization that she could never return to Inverness again.
Or remain in Scotland.
She exchanged a look with Hamish and forced a smile to her face, determined to forget for a while at least.
Leitis was given the baby once again, and she cradled the infant in her arms. Ian leaned over and smoothed his finger across his wife’s cheek.
“If you continue to cry on them,” he said, “they’ll forever think of you as their weeping grandmother.”
“I can’t help it,” Leitis said. “Babies make me cry.” She smiled down at James’s son, born last August. “We’re soon to have another grandchild as well,” she said softly.
Douglas abruptly stood and left the room.
Riona only laughed when James looked at her.
Iseabal held up both hands when Alisdair’s interested gaze fell on her. “I’ve no news to tell you,” she said. “I swear.”
Hamish sent an even more inquiring look at Mary. She smiled and shook her head.
“Douglas is the father,” Leitis said.
“Douglas?” Each of the MacRae sons intoned their youngest brother’s name in shock.
Hamish set down his goblet and stared at his father. The older man was nodding soberly, and didn’t look at all pleased.
“He’s too young to be married,” Hamish said.
“On that, I agree,” his father said. “But it hasn’t stopped him from becoming a father.”
“What about the girl?”
“Won’t have a thing to do with him,” his mother said.
“She’s some damn count’s daughter,” Ian said tightly, “with an inflated view of herself, evidently. Sort of a noblesse oblige attitude the French are so famous for.”
Hamish sat back in his chair. “This just keeps getting worse. She’s French?”
Alisdair sent him an amused look. “At least she’s not English.”
“She’s taken herself off, and the count refuses to tell us where she is. We don’t know what’s to become of the child.”
There was only silence as they all looked at one another. An unwanted child could easily disappear.
Another clanging sound from the door knocker made Alisdair stand. He left the room to return a few minutes later, Brendan at his side looking worn and tired. After being greeted by his parents, he pulled away and nodded at Hamish and Mary.
“Now are you going to tell me what secrets you’re hiding?” Ian looked at his sons, and then Mary.
At their silence, he stared at Hamish. “Well?”
Hamish smiled and reached for Mary’s hand. “What makes you think we’re hiding anything?”
Ian gave an exasperated sigh and looked at Leitis. “Your son seems to think I’ve no sense at all.”
Hamish smiled, and reached for Mary’s hand. “It isn’t my tale,” he said, “but Mary’s.”
For a moment, she didn’t want to say anything. Doing so would jeopardize her new standing in this family. They’d welcomed her without reservation. The story might cause them to as easily repudiate her. Who, after all, would want a murderess in their midst? Even an accidental one?
She glanced at Hamish. He nodded once, smiling, and she realized it didn’t matter what anyone but Hamish thought of her. She told them everything, omitting only her time with Hamish at Castle Gloom. Those memories were for them alone, and didn’t warrant the scrutiny of others.
She didn’t know what she expected of the MacRaes, but each of them only nodded when she finished.
“I’ve had a taste of justice,” Alisdair said, “when I first came back to Scotland. Magnus Drummond owned MacRae land, and threatened me with the courts. I doubt I would have been able to get my rightful land back. They dispensed an English kind of justice.”
Hamish made room for Brendan to sit beside him. “The Grants and Mr. Marshall? Are they safe?”
Brendan nodded. “Mr. Marshall is on his way to London, and the Grants haven’t been implicated in Mary’s disappearance. What about your plans? Does Alisdair have a ship?”
Hamish and Alisdair exchanged a glance. “The new ship won’t be ready for months,” Alisdair said.
“All the better,” Brendan said. “I’ve one you can use.”
Hamish studied his brother. Slowly, he began to smile. “You’re giving up the sea?”
“Inverness has a great many attractions,” Brendan said. Alisdair passed him a goblet and a plate and he began to eat.
“Is one of them a blond-haired girl by the name of Elspeth?” Mary asked.
“It is,” Brendan said, smiling.
“Does she know?”
He nodded. “And her father, as well.”
Mary smiled, pleased.
Brendan turned to Hamish. “You need a ship, and I need to make arrangements for mine. You’ll be doing me a favor if you take the Moira MacRae.”
“Are you certain of this, Brendan?”
“I am,” he said. “It’s time I settled down, found my land legs. Inverness will suit me well.” He grinned at Hamish. “Besides, it will do me good to be a thorn in Charles Talbot’s side.” He sobered, regarding his brother with earnest eyes. “I was all for convincing you to stay at sea when you wanted to do the same. I was wrong then, Hamish.”
“If I had,” Hamish said, “I never would have met Mary.”
“One of these days, you’ll be thanking me for that. Without my intervention, you wouldn’t have met her at all.”
“Without your interference, you mean.”
Brendan grinned again. “Perhaps.”
“Have I nothing to say about that?” Mary asked, her gaze veering from one MacRae brother to the other. “If I hadn’t agreed to treat Hamish, we never would have met.”
There, that silenced both of them.
“Will your crew agree to sail with me?” Hamish asked. “I’ve lost a ship and all my men.”
“Not through any act of your own,” Brendan said loyally.
“You know as well as I how superstitious sailors are.”
“Take Daniel on as first mate,” Ian said, from across the table. He’d been listening to his sons’ conversation, but hadn’t commented. “Daniel’s aboard my ship,” he said. “He’s driving me insane with his superstitions. He’ll sail with you because you’re a MacRae. Take him with you. And all his cats. He’s got three now, and I sneezed all the way across the Atlantic. No sailor would ever think you unlucky with Daniel and his cats.”
Hamish grinned his acceptance.
Ian looked down at his plate, then over at Leitis. “You’ll do me a favor, Hamish, if you’ll take Douglas with you as well.”
Hamish and his father exchanged a look.
“He wants to learn about the sea,” Leitis said. “Besides, the change will do him good.”
Hamish nodded.
In the buzz of conversation, Hamish turned to Mary, grabbed her hand, and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “You should see Brendan’s ship. The Moira MacRae is long and sleek and built for long ocean voyages.”
“Who’s Daniel?”
“A cantankerous first mate who’ll fill your days with one superstition after another. He’s a trial and a nuisance, but we think highly of him nonetheless.”
“You never said you wanted to go back to sea.”
“I’d like to show you the world, Mary MacRae.”
She felt a smile building up from her toes. “I’ve always wanted an adventure, Hamish. Wherever you wish to take me, I’ll go.”
“I’ve our voyages all planned in my mind. We’ll do some trading, but we’ll travel for the love of it. You can see the world, Mary, and study medicine as well.”
“I doubt if I’ll have the courage to treat another patient,” she said, offering him the truth. He stood and took her hand. Together they walked some distance from the table.
“Why would you say that?” To his credit, he looked genuinely surprised.
“Look what happened.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead, and then pulled back.
“My father wishes that he’d never fought the Scots as he once did. There are scores of deaths at his hands, no doubt. Iseabal would probably wish to have treated her father differently. Fergus would have come back to Gilmuir after Culloden. Each member of my family has his own regrets. Yet they’re all decent people, all good people.”
He tilted up her chin with one finger. “I would willingly put my life in your hands. If I have faith in you, you must as well.”
“As simple as that?”
“As simple as that,” he said, smiling.
Impossibly, it was. His gaze was clear, his emotions visible for anyone to see. There was no doubt that he meant what he said, and that he loved her, truly, deeply, completely.
She blinked away her tears, feeling as if they were simply a release for all the happiness she felt bubbling up inside. How could she contain all this joy?
“I’ve never been to sea before,” she said, placing her hands on his chest, feeling his heart beat loud and strong beneath her palms.
“If you’re not a good sailor,” Hamish said, “we’ll have to find a remedy for you.”
“A dose of Hamish, at least once a day,” she teased, making him laugh.
Bending, he kissed her lightly.
“Will you miss Scotland?” he asked sometime later.
“I’ve never left before,” she said smiling, “so I don’t know. But with you at my side, it will be a grand adventure, I think. Under those circumstances, how can I regret anything?”
He smiled at her, and Mary felt her heart stutter.
She was reminded of when she’d first seen him, standing on the steps, his face in shadow. She’d thought, then, that he had a great force of presence. Now, she knew exactly who he was, and her initial impression had been correct. Yet he was also vulnerable, thoughtful, and had a sense of humor that always amused her.
He was a survivor, most definitely. A man with a past, who had done some acts he would always regret. Hamish MacRae wasn’t a paragon without sins. Ah, but neither was she.
But together, they were perfect.
Epilogue
“I ’m not as young as I once was,” Leitis said, “and I feel it in every single bone in my body. It’s not fair that you look so hale and hearty in return.” The hill in front of them looked a great deal steeper than it had when they’d begun this walk.
Ian only grinned at her and held her hand more tightly. “I remember you as a child, running over these hills,” he said. “You beat me at every foot race, I remember.”
“That was a very long time ago.”
“It seems like just yesterday, though, doesn’t it?”
She smiled. “I don’t feel one year older inside, Ian. It’s outside where I’ve changed.”
“You look the same to me, my love.”
She stopped and studied him, thinking that he was the one who appeared unchanged by time. Aging suited him somehow. His face had mellowed with the years, but if she narrowed her eyes just so, she wouldn’t think him any different from the English colonel who’d once captivated her heart. Or the boy she’d loved even as he bedeviled her.
They walked in silence up to the cairn stones. He found the one he wanted unerringly, as if decades hadn’t separated the visits. A three-sided stone structure protected a shard of wood in front of the grave. As a boy, he’d carved the cross for his mother, but now there was little left to it.
Kneeling, he paid his respects, and she turned, granting him the privacy to do so. She looked out over the landscape. In front of them was Gilmuir, restored to its former glory. No, she thought looking at it with a mother’s pride, better than it had been before. Alisdair had created a monument.
Below, Hamish unerringly led the sleek and beautiful Moira MacRae into the firth. He’d looked so happy to be going to sea again, and Mary appeared filled with awe as they’d rowed out to the ship. Even Douglas had lost his remote expression, showing an interest in something for the first time in months. What would become of him? She sighed, thinking of the untenable situation he’d left in France. She watched the ship for a while, sails full-bellied, eager for the ocean and the rest of the world.
A song she hadn’t heard in years occurred to her as she stood there. The MacRae Lament.
We are an island, a people of pride.
We are a past never to die.
In good times or bad we’ll always endure
In the home of our hearts—Gilmuir.
She knew something now that she hadn’t known as a girl.
Gilmuir would always link them, but love would bind them together.
“Are you weeping?” Ian said, coming to stand at her side. “I thought you were done with that.”
“I thought I was,” she admitted.
“They’ll be fine,” he said, extending his arms around her. “Hamish is an exemplary captain, and Douglas could have no better mentor.”
“I know.” She nodded against his chest. “I like Mary, too. She’ll be a good influence.”
“On both of them,” Ian said, smiling.
“I like all their wives. I didn’t expect to, isn’t that strange? But I would have them as friends, each and every one of them.”
“It’s a good thing you feel that way,” Ian said, amusement coloring his voice. “I doubt any of our sons would give his wife up because you disapproved.”
“They love as fiercely as their father, I think.” She pulled back and smiled up at him.
“Or their mother,” he countered.
The sun was low on the horizon, casting shadows over the hills. In a few hours, night would come to Gilmuir once again. But there would be no sadness in the darkness. Only the sound of laughter as candles were lit and voices rose in teasing toasts. The wind would blow across the headland and carry the scent of the sea over the hills, ruffling the grasses and sighing through the pines.
If ghosts were disturbed, they would be temperate ones. Their heads might turn in the direction of the old fortress made new again. Some might momentarily grieve that they were no longer living and couldn’t participate in earthly joy. But most would smile in remembrance, and feel a last, lingering pride in their descendants before slipping away into eternity.
Author’s Note
M atthew Marshall is loosely based on John Wesley, the eighteenth-century traveling minister. Wesley, too, was fascinated with medicine, especially the electrical machine. In 1767, the Middlesex Hospital in London purchased an electrical machine to treat its patients. Iron deficiency, anemia, Raynaud’s Syndrome, tuberculosis, and goiter were some of the diseases treated with the apparatus.
Medicine was practiced by two groups in the eighteenth century—those few individuals who were academically trained or who learned what they needed to know as apprentices of physicians who had attended university, and wise women and men, including clergymen, who practiced an irregular type of medicine. Although there was a gulf of differences between the academics and empirics (those who used a trial-and-error method of treating patients), there were several beliefs they shared in common. The idea of obstruction was one of the major tenets of eighteenth-century medicine. Mercury was considered one of the meritorious elements to aid in relieving obstructions since it is fourteen times heavier than water. Not until the twentieth century did practitioners come to understand how lethal mercury is.
