Elias and Dunstan both had their grandfather’s nose. “They’re good sunglasses and cost a pretty penny.” Papa had also asked a pouting eleven-year-old Elias to keep them safe for him until he and mum got back from the islands.
“Elias, let the castle go, and build something here with Violet. She’s in love with you, and that gift doesn’t befall a man every day. She loves you, not your farm, not your title, not your sunglasses. You.”
Dunstan spoke not with the ringing conviction of a barrister before the court, but with a cousin’s heartfelt plea.
“I can’t turn my back on the legacy I alone am in a position to protect, Dunstan. You’re not wearing the title, you don’t hold the keys to that castle. Zebedee claimed to have seen the ghosts of Auld Michael and his Brenna on those parapets. Those are our ghosts, our parapets. You’d let them crumble into the loch.”
“I’d sooner see the stones crumble than your happiness thrown aside,” Dunstan said, turning down the street that led to his office. “I expect Auld Michael and his Brenna would tell you the same.”
“You and Jane are soon to start a family,” Elias observed. “If you had to choose between your own happiness, and that of your children, which would you choose?”
Dunstan’s steps slowed. “How do you know we’re soon to start a family? Did Jane say something?”
“You’re a Cromarty,” Elias scoffed. “And Jane is enthusiastic about your company, for reasons known only to daft lady lawyers. I’ll send along a Speyside for the christening.”
“Come to the christening and keep your damned whisky. Bring Violet, too.”
Violet, who was deadheading petunias or moving the fence that contained her sheep so their pasture rotated. How Elias would have preferred to spend the morning with her, doing hard, honest work, rather than flattering a greedy banker.
“I notice, Dunstan, you aren’t admonishing Violet to sell her farm, as her mother wants her to, and fly away to Scotland with me.”
“In the first place, you have doubtless been too pigheaded to ask the lady to come to Scotland with you. In the second, Violet appears to have nothing but that farm.”
She had Elias’s heart, did she but know it. “What do I have besides the damned castle and the earldom’s assets?”
Jane was sitting on the front stoop outside the law office, reading some large brown book in the sunshine. She looked both prim and pretty, her hair up in a bun, her perch that of a school girl. Dunstan came to a halt, his gaze on his wife.
“Elias, you idiot, you have us. You have your family, you have a damned doctorate, and a beautiful farm. You have Violet’s happiness in your keeping, and you’re prepared to toss it all aside for a god-damned castle and a bunch of god-damned ghosts.”
“Not for the castle itself,” Elias retorted. “For the legacy I owe my children and yours, for the honor of paying debts incurred by the earldom in good faith, for the—you’re not even listening.”
Jane had caught sight of them and waved, her smile as radiant as summer sunshine off a still loch.
“Yes!” she said, springing off the steps. “The doctor’s office called, Dunstan, and they said yes! Our due date is late November, and I am so happy—”
Dunstan caught her around the middle and spun her about, his brief case forgotten on the crooked sidewalk.
“Yes!” he roared, hugging her tightly. “Ah, wee Jane, such news, such happy, wonderful news! Elias, I’m to be a father, and Jane is to be a mother, and you’re to be a cousin again of some degree. Yes!”
Kissing ensued, and hugging, and carrying on of a sort no mortal man could begrudge the happy couple. They disappeared into the office, arm in arm, and left Elias to retrieve Dunstan’s briefcase. Rather than join the joyous—delirious—pair inside, Elias took the seat Jane has vacated on the stone steps.
The heat wasn’t so oppressive to him anymore, the humidity not so cloying. Across the street, geraniums splashed bright red against a sky-blue exterior.
Dunstan and Jane were building something in Damson Valley, something as formidable as a castle, though on any day, their future could be snatched away. A plane crash, an illness, a drunk driver…
Tragedy could strike without warning.
Elias kept that gloomy reality to himself, as he had for years in the company of family, because another gloomy reality had arrived to push it aside. Tragedy could sunder a loving family without warning, and a castle could spend centuries crumbling into the loch.
While the castle stood, it was a symbol of safety and security, a fortress, much like the bustling hive of law enforcement in the made-over railroad station.
A castle could also, however, become a prison from which no escape was possible.
* * *
“You can’t do this to me again,” Violet muttered, hugging one upset, battered Rhode Island Red to her chest. “I spend all morning looking for you, and what do I find? A heap of bloody feathers where my Brunhilda should be.”
Hildy remained quiet, though she was a voluble little clucker by nature.
“You two,” Violet said, addressing Sarge and Murphy. “Go find the fox or coyote or varmint who did this to Hildy, and beat the crap out of them.”
Murphy hopped around, Sarge looked puzzled.
“Fricassee of fox,” Violet said, marching off toward the house. “Coyote casserole in a rattlesnake remoulade.” Though if Hildy had tangled with a snake, she’d either gotten the better of the fight, or been spared a hunting bite.
The dogs trotted at Violet’s heels, as did nagging worry. Scouring the property for Brunhilda this morning had been a distraction from a phone that hadn’t rung, texts that hadn’t arrived. Elias’s meeting at the bank should have ended an hour ago, and—
The black pick-up came around the curve at the edge of Violet’s property and turned into her drive. Violet waited on the porch, Hildy in her arms.
Elias emerged in jeans and a white button down shirt, his backpack over one shoulder, his sunglasses hiding any expression. Violet didn’t need to see his eyes though. She could tell from his walk, from his posture, that no mortgage would be approved.
“You’re housebreaking chickens now?” Elias said, prowling up the porch. He kept coming, until he kissed Violet on the mouth. “Hello, Brunhilda. I’ve seen you looking better.”
Now, the damned bird cooed.
“She got loose last night and nearly came to a bad end,” Violet said. “Is my valley coming to a bad end?”
“Let’s sit,” Elias said. “Mr. Hirschman was very pleased to make my acquaintance, full of bonhomie, and fascinated by what I had to say.”
“He turned you down flat. I need to clean Hildy up.” Violet also needed to cry, and say very, very bad words. Re-arranging several tons of hay might help, or driving her truck straight into Max Maitland’s office.
“You suspected I’d fail,” Elias said, tugging off his glasses, and hooking them on the collar of his shirt.
“You haven’t failed, Elias, you’ve been out-maneuvered by the home team,” Violet said, leading the way into the house, and down the hall to the laundry room. “You’re on Maitland’s turf, and Max is determined, not stupid. This is partly my fault because I got a development ten miles north of town stalled at the re-zoning phase a few years ago. Hold Hildy.”
Violet shoved the hen at Elias. Hildy made happy-hen noises, though if the idiot chicken only knew how close she was to the stew pot, she’d have been flapping off to West Virginia at a dead run.
“Hirschman didn’t say no,” Elias replied, stroking the back of Hildy’s neck with one finger. “He listened, he asked relevant though hardly brilliant questions, and he agreed to consider the mortgage application most carefully.”
Violet retrieved an ancient, clean kitchen towel from the stack above the washing machine, got down triple anti-biotic, cotton balls, and a nifty veterinary scrub that was both anti-bacterial and anti-fungal.
“This stuff costs a fortune. Knock over the bottle and you’ll
owe me a mortgage.” Violet spread the towel on the top of the dryer—upset chickens could be very untidy. “Put Hildy on the towel but keep hold of her too. Pet her, distract her, soothe her.”
The next part went more quickly than many of Violet’s chicken-doctoring encounters, simply because Elias was there to look after Hildy while Violet cleaned and disinfected various minor wounds.
“She likes you,” Violet said, when Hildy was once again cradled in Elias’s arms, and the medical supplies had been put away. “Chickens have a reputation for stupidity. They aren’t stupid, but they can’t fly to speak of, they aren’t much for fighting, and they taste good. What’s a girl to do when she’s lost in the dark past her bedtime?”
Elias shifted the hen to one side and wrapped an arm around Violet’s shoulders. “I hate to fly, but I’d love for you to fly to Scotland with me. Dunstan says I’ve been remiss—pigheaded—in not making that invitation explicit.”
“That meeting must have gone really badly,” Violet muttered against Elias’s throat. He always smelled good—clean, spicy, alluring—even when he was holding a beat-up chicken, and bearing bad news.
“Hirschman implied that he doesn’t lend vast sums to people who own farms they’ve no idea how to work, and his bank doesn’t lend vast sums to Scotsmen who’ve no intention of investing the money here in Damson Valley.”
Meaning Elias had made plain his intention to leave the area. “No doubt Hirschman will cheerfully lend a vast sum to Max Maitland, so that a gazillion mortgages, car loans, lines of credit, credit cards, savings accounts, and retirement plans come his way. I hope the bankers are the first to starve when we run out of arable land.”
Hildy clucked, and Elias stepped back. “I should have reminded him of that,” he said. “I was too eager to leave the man amid his pots of money. Dunstan and Jane are expecting. Jane confirmed the news when we got back from the bank.”
Violet unhooked Elias’s sunglasses from his collar, because they were tangling in her hair. “That pleases you?” she asked, setting the sunglasses on the dryer.
“This news pleases Dunstan and Jane. If they were obnoxious in their marital bliss before, they are transcendently unbearable now.”
Elias looked pleased though. Pleased for his cousins, and pleased that he’d been with them when the news had been confirmed.
“You’re a good guy, Elias. Let’s get this hen confined to quarters.”
As they returned Hildy to her sisters, and wedged straw bales behind the trough that had provided a means of escape from the chicken yard, Violet mustered her courage.
“What did you mean when you invited me to fly to Scotland with you?” she asked. “Did you mean, sell my farm, leave here, give up on Damson Valley and let Maitland and his McMansions have it all while I take up castle living in the wilds of bonnie Scotland?”
Elias kicked the last straw bale to jam it against the trough formed of a single hollowed-out tree trunk.
“You make coming to Scotland sound like a defeat,” he said. “It’s not as if”—another hard kick— “Scotland is some remote hinterland devoid of culture.”
He was getting his manly ego into those kicks, and he was not making sense. Violet was gratified by both developments, because they confirmed that Elias was truly upset with the bank’s refusal to mortgage the farm.
“Elias, I would love to see Scotland someday, but right now, I’m more interested in keeping your farm under cultivation. What do you say we print out the application forms for the conservation easement—unless you’ve decided to sell to Maitland?”
His sunglasses were back at the house, so Violet could see the determination in his gaze as he surveyed the property across the road and the view down the valley. The brilliant sun was chasing off the last lingering hints of spring, and bringing out the valley’s summer plumage. Corn shot skyward on either side of the highway, trees were in full leaf, and the pastures were blankets of verdure.
The valley was beautiful. Elias, with straw on his jeans, and that look in his eyes, was beautiful too.
“I do not want to sell to Maitland,” he said. “For many reasons, my castle among them, I do not want him to have this valley. I grasp the importance of maintaining what’s good and deep-rooted, Violet. This valley is your castle. I take it you’re not keen on moving to Scotland?”
Violet’s heart gave a sad, silent lurch south. “That’s complicated. I’m keen on you, Elias, but how well would I adjust to Scotland, knowing the price of my happiness was the ruin of a thousand acres of productive farmland? If your farm goes into development, and I give up at the same time, a half dozen of my neighbors will likely throw in the towel too. I can’t have that on my conscience. I’d be no better than Hirschman.”
Elias spoke of castles, but not of love, marriage, or a secure future. He and Violet had known each other only days, and Elias was still holding a return ticket to Scotland.
And that was fortunate, because if he had spoken of undying devotion, a shared future, and true love, Violet was nearly certain her already bruised heart would dissolve into a thousand, weeping pieces. Perhaps he’d spared her that speech out of kindness, for Elias was a kind man.
“To the computer, then,” he said, laying an arm across Violet’s shoulders. “I was in a hurry to discuss the meeting with you. I stopped to change but neglected my lunch. Can I beg a sandwich from you?”
Violet wished he’d beg an afternoon in bed from her, but understood his reticence in that regard as more kindness. The easement application was complicated, and a plate of sandwiches and two hours later, they still hadn’t dotted every i or crossed every t. Frolics in bed—and further discussion of trips to Scotland—would have to wait.
“A wee dram might make this exercise less tedious,” Elias said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “How does one go about creating a forestry plan?”
And certifying that the farm had no wetlands, and guaranteeing the soil types, and providing the metes and bound description of the property, procuring a title search, for starters. The list of to-do’s was long and expensive.
“I’ll start with my forestry plan,” Violet said, “and see if I can adapt it for your property. We should probably nose around in your woods first, just to make sure your trees and my trees are more or less alike in species, age, and distribution.”
Elias added something—perhaps a walk in the woods—to their list. “Can Maitland foil this application the way he ruined my chances at the bank?”
Well, damn. “I don’t know. Maryland seems to have relatively ethical politics, but the tail wags the dog. Agriculture is the number one industry here, and yet, the population density around Baltimore and the Baltimore-Washington corridor means agricultural interests aren’t well represented politically.”
Elias tossed his pen onto the legal pad he’d been using to make notes. “Scotland faces similar challenges, complicated by questions of Gaelic cultural preservation, maritime interests involving hundreds of islands, environmental and energy concerns that don’t always play nicely together. It seems as if politics attracts some of the very people least suited to holding the public’s trust.”
Violet put the computer into sleep mode. “In other words, does Max have enough pull at the Agricultural Land Preservation Foundation to deny you an easement? I want to say no, of course not.”
“I’ve been here less than a week, and he’s already cut off access to the largest bank,” Elias said. “Dunstan and Jane think if the largest bank won’t extend me credit, neither will the smaller institutions.”
“We have only a couple other banks in the mortgage business out this way,” Violet said. “You’ll apply to both of them?”
“Dunstan will pick up the paperwork this afternoon, but I will still be a Scotsman who doesn’t know how to farm and doesn’t intend to invest in this valley.”
Violet smacked him on the arm. “You discouraged?”
He kissed her. “I’m Scottish. We don’t know the meaning of the word. Wil
l you come to dinner tonight with me and the happy couple?”
Violet was tempted, but another friendly dinner, another evening spent getting to know Elias’s family could go nowhere.
He’d invited Violet to dinner, he’d invited her to Scotland. Neither gesture changed the reality that, whether by selling development rights to the state, or selling land to Maitland, Elias would use that ticket home.
While Violet would stay in the valley she’d fought so hard to protect.
* * *
In the morning, Dunstan and Jane tooled off to work chatting happily about car seats, names, and which of the farmhouse’s unfished rooms to turn into a nursery.
Elias completed the two remaining mortgage applications, but one required proof not of an American address—Dunstan and Jane’s law office would have sufficed—but of an American residence.
Elias could claim he lived at the Hedstrom property, but that would be a lie. He finished the application using his Scottish residence, but his mood was soured to be once again defeated before he’d even toed the starting line.
His emails included word from Angus of pending appointments to three more charitable boards, though the organizations couldn’t officially name Elias until their summer director’s meetings, and the appointments would not take effect until the autumn quarter.
“Which means,” Elias informed Wallace, “no director’s fees until the new year. By which time, my masons will have walked off the job, grumbling to anybody who’ll listen that Elias Brodie doesn’t pay his crews.”
Wallace had been occupying the sill of the study’s open window, his bulk aligned along the screen. He stretched, righted himself, and would have walked across Elias’s keyboard, except Elias caught the cat and rose with Wallace in his arms.
“I blew it,” Elias said, settling into the recliner with the cat. “I asked Violet to come to Scotland, but I blew it. Bad timing, bad terms.”
I ’d love for you to fly to Scotland with me. Dunstan says I ’ve been remiss —pigheaded —in not making that invitation explicit.
As if Elias had been inviting her to Aberdeen for a golf weekend. He was still remiss, but as he dozed off, with the cat purring on his chest, he couldn’t put his finger on where, exactly, he’d come up short. Violet had asked for clarification—brave woman—but Elias hadn’t obliged. He’d grumbled, he’d mumbled, he’d prevaricated, in other words.
Elias In Love Page 20
