Kissing the Countess

by Susan King

  But the Wilkies came to join them then, as did Finlay and the Murray sisters. Kenneth Grant came toward them, too, dangling a silver flask in his hand. He held it out and turned to offer it to Catriona. She refused with a shake of her head.

  "It's more invigorating than lemonade," he said. "I think we could all use a little of it up here. That wind cuts like a knife."

  She realized, from the edge in his tone, that Grant had been drinking a little already. "We don't need a spirited drink when we're walking along the Beinn Alligin ridge," she said.

  "Of course not," Grant agreed. He smiled. "But it's customary among mountaineers to sip a fortifying liquid when one reaches a peak. Usually it's brandy, but since this is Scotland, I have whisky for the occasion." He sipped again.

  "We haven't reached the peak yet, so I advise putting that away so you can keep a clear head," Evan warned, glaring at him. "A sip is customary, not a whole flask."

  "We're nearly at the top," Grant said, and saluted the peak above with the raised flask. "We'll soon scramble over these rocky pinnacles and reach the Black Notch, the fairy's own hollow. A few sips should definitely mark that occasion." He indicated with a sweeping hand the surrounding conglomeration of black ledges and steps that formed three rough pinnacles that they would soon scramble over or walk around.

  "Up there," Grant said, "getting to the summit of the Eag Dubh, the Black Notch, is no real challenge. We can take the high ridge and keep going. But to really climb Beinn Shee, one must scale the Black Notch, not go around it. No one has ever done that. Not you, Lord Kildonan, nor your lovely countess's brother, or Mr. Finlay here." He nodded. "Lady Kildonan," he said. "Why don't you tell us the story of the Eag Dubh?"

  She stared up at him and saw Finlay's face harden into anger. Stunned, she could not imagine that Grant meant for her to tell the story of her brother's tragic fall or her father's injury. But there was another story, and she nodded, glad to deflect her brother Finlay's attention from Grant.

  "Its full name is the Eag Dhubh na h-Eigheachd," she said, "which means the Gash of the Wailing. This part of the mountain has been avoided for generations by shepherds and others. Legend says that sometimes crying or wailing can be heard from the great split in the mountain and that it may be the call of fairies caught within the rock. But these are not fairies who might be disposed to help humans—these are darker creatures who lie in wait or are trapped in the center of the earth. Evil creatures," she went on. "Some say the wailing sound is the voice of the mountain crying for a sacrifice. They say that when the voice is heard, it does not stop until... someone dies there."

  The others stared at her for a moment. Reverend Wilkie began scribbling in his notebook, and his wife looked pale.

  "Oh," Jemima said. "I wish we had heard that story before now. I might not have come up here." Beside her, Emily nodded vigorously.

  "It's just the wind wailing through the stones," Evan said.

  Grant nodded. "It's silly to think it anything more—but it's a good story, nonetheless."

  "Lady Kildonan," Arthur said, coming near them. He had been walking around one of the rocky pinnacles. "You asked me earlier about crystals on this mountain."

  "Aye!" She turned, glad for the distraction.

  He held his hand out, opened his fingers. "Look what I've found. Something very precious—a whole cluster of crystals and quite lovely ones." In his palm, several of clear crystals, faceted and multipointed, glittered in the light.

  "Oh," she said, getting to her feet. She took them from him, smiling with delight. "Where did you find these? I must see!" He turned, beckoning, and she followed.

  The others got up as well, and Arthur led them behind a high rise in the rock, almost like a protective parapet. At the base of the curving section, Arthur pointed to a bed of small, perfect crystals that sparkled and spilled out of the many crevices in the black rock.

  Gasping, dropping to her knees, Catriona looked at the crystals and traced her fingers over them in wonder. While the other women exclaimed and knelt to examine them, Catriona scanned the bed for the fairy crystal that Flora had mentioned.

  Though the rocky parapet shadowed the area and lent some darkness to it, she saw nothing that glowed with its own light. She glanced up at Evan, who knelt beside her.

  "Beautiful," he murmured.

  "Aye," she agreed. "But not what I'm looking for."

  "Still," he said, reaching out and snapping off a small, jewel-like cluster to hand to her, "they are lovely, and you may want to bring some down with you."

  She nodded and snapped off another, finding that it broke away easily. The crystal was perfectly shaped, glossy as thick glass, and though she was thrilled with the discovery, she felt that it was not quite what Flora had sent her to find.

  Chattering and enjoying themselves, the others harvested a few crystals for themselves—there were so many, Catriona saw, once she stood again and looked around, that the great black rock seemed to sprout them like flowers and mosses.

  Mrs. Wilkie stepped back and turned to take some of the crystals she had found to her husband, when she suddenly cried out, falling to her knees on an incline covered with scree—broken and unstable stones. "Oh!" she gasped, beginning to slide downward. Anna's feet and skirts seemed to dangle in midair as she scrabbled for a hold on the rock.

  Catriona whirled to see Evan, Wilkie, and Finlay run toward her. Evan reached her first, dropping to his knees and stretching out his hand to grab her and pull her at him. Pulled up to her knees, Anna cried out and threw herself at him. Wrapping his arms around her, Evan murmured to calm her until her husband reached them. Helping Anna to her feet, Evan stood back as John Wilkie turned his wife into the safety of his arms.

  Heart thumping, breathing hard, Catriona hurried over to them as Wilkie led Anna up to the safer area around the natural parapet. Weeping, shaking, Anna walked with a limp, and her husband carefully sat her down on a rocky ledge.

  "Her ankle—" Wilkie said, turning toward Grant. "You're a physician, sir."

  "Let me look." Grant knelt beside Anna and took her booted foot in his hand, probing and testing, while she winced. He sat back. "I do not think it's broken, but it is badly wrenched. We will have to wrap it tightly for some support. And you will have to make your way back down the mountainside somehow. Can you do that, Mrs. Wilkie?"

  She nodded, her pretty face pale.

  Catriona knelt beside Anna, taking her hand. "Have you got bandaging?" she asked Grant.

  "I brought some things in my knapsack in case of injury." Turning away, he fetched some strips of linen while Catriona unfastened Anna's boot and eased her foot free. Even through the woman's light woolen stocking, she could see that Anna's ankle was swelling. Grant came back and began to wrap the cloth around the stockinged foot and ankle, making a snug bandage. Anna did not wince, but was clearly in pain.

  "You'll need some of this, madam," Grant said, handing her his flask. "Drink, and no pretty protests."

  Accepting the flask, Anna swallowed, grimacing, and swallowed again.

  "I'll take her down to the glen," Wilkie said.

  "You'll need help—she may not be able to walk the whole way," Grant said. "I'll go with you."

  "You'll will need an experienced guide to go down," Finlay said. "The descent is not same route as the ascent. I'll go, too."

  "I'll leave with you too. Anna will need another woman with her," Jemima said, and glanced at her sister. "Emily, will you come, too? We can come here again before we leave Kildonan."

  Emily nodded, brown eyes wide. "The climb and the view are wonderful, but to be honest, I have no desire to climb that Black Notch." She looked nervously toward the massive split mountain peak. "I think I've seen enough of Beinn Alligin and Beinn Shee. I'll come with you. Anna needs us."

  Evan looked at Catriona. "We should all go. Then. We'll call it enough for now, and come back soon as we can."

  Catriona hesitated, glancing toward the massive divided profile of Beinn She
e. Having come so far in search of the precious crystal that Flora had asked her to find, she did not want to leave yet—but she could not explain that to most of the others. Only Evan knew about her search for the fairy crystal, and only Evan and Finlay would understand her need to fulfill that quest in order to learn Flora's fairy music.

  "Of course," she said. "Anna needs us. We'll all go down now." She fingered the clear crystals in her pocket and hoped they would be enough to please Flora MacLeod.

  Evan took her arm. "I think Lady Kildonan and I will linger here for a little while. She is entranced with this place, I think, and I'd like to learn a little more about it myself. Go on ahead, and we'll join you directly. I know the way down."

  "It is a romantic spot," Arthur said, grinning quickly. "But don't linger for long."

  "We won't," Evan said. He still held Catriona's arm and stood with her while the rest of them gathered their things and began to make their way down carefully. Grant and Wilkie helped Anna, one to each side of her wherever that was possible, and she limped with determination and grit. Catriona ached just to watch her, knowing the young woman was in genuine pain and had a long way to go before her companions could safely carry her.

  Then she turned to Evan. "Thank you," she said.

  He nodded, smiling. "Now," he said, turning to glance around. "Where do you suppose those fairy crystals could be hiding? And what the devil do the wee rascals look like?"

  Catriona laughed. "You are the geologist, sir, not I."

  Chuckling, Evan took her hand and drew her along. "Come carefully, madam, and we'll cross over to Beinn Shee—and we'll hope the mountain is not in the mood for sacrifices today."

  Chapter 26

  Easing around the last of the rocky pinnacles that thrust up from the mountain, Evan scrambled upward along a rough ledge of rocky slabs that formed a natural stair around the chimney-shaped pinnacle. From that point, the ridge resumed, leveling out to swerve up and dip sharply, like the undulation of a dragon's back. The dip formed a beallach, a gap or hollow in the ridge. From there, the shape of the mountain soared again to form the high cone of Beinn Shee.

  Evan studied the approach for a moment, then turned to look at Catriona. "This might well be slippery," he said. "Place your feet where I place mine—I'll find the stable footholds for you."

  She nodded and came up behind him, her skirts and plaid snapping and billowing in the wind. A gust snatched her bonnet from her head so that it dangled by its black ribbons. When she tried to tie it more tightly, it flew free, sailing out and down.

  Evan led her along the spiny ridge and down into the beallach, where they paused to gather their breath. Overhead, he noticed that the clouds had grown darker and heavier recently.

  "Rain," he said, looking up. The winds blew cold and fast, and he felt the slight push of every gust. "We'd best hurry."

  Moving ahead of her, he picked his way cautiously, placing his feet carefully, balancing a foot on either side of the ridge, nearly razor-backed in places. Each time he glanced over his shoulder, Catriona was walking resolutely behind him.

  He felt a swell of pride, and love, too, warm and filling, to see her graceful, lithe progress and the courage she so calmly displayed. He stopped to smile back at her.

  "You might not like to take risks, my lass," he said, "but you manage them beautifully when you have to. I think I'd better call you Catriona Dana," he went on. "Brave Catriona."

  She laughed. "Your Gaelic is better than I thought."

  "I have a little," he called back. "Just enough."

  He moved onward with Catriona in his wake, the wind streaming over both of them. Now that he was traversing the incredibly steep angle that led across the ridge from the pinnacles to the higher peak, he was sure that some of their friends would have refused this part of the climb. Just as well that they had turned back earlier, he thought.

  Scrambling up the sharply inclined slope of Beinn Shee, its rounded side composed of variegated rock coated with moss and with thin patches of snow caught in crevices, Evan slowed to catch his breath. The mountain beneath him had an immense primeval power, dark and heavy, an upheaval of the ancient earth. Clinging to one of its points, he felt minuscule, incredibly exposed and vulnerable, with the world far below.

  But Catriona was right behind him, and he felt the energy of his deep need to protect her and to help her with what she had come here to do. He scrambled onward, relieved to reach the top. He had been on higher, taller, grander mountains—but he had never been on a mountain that projected this much force, this sort of fierceness.

  Feeling slightly dizzy, he paused at the top to catch his breath and resisted the urge to look down. Instead, he looked out, along the mirrored sweep of the long loch and beyond, toward the sea and the isles, floating beneath a film of drifting clouds.

  A drop of rain spattered his hand, and another one. The clouds were so close that the air he sucked into his lungs felt damp and soft, as if he breathed the vapor of the rain clouds.

  He glanced down and extended his hand to help Catriona the rest of the way up, and she sat beside him, breathing heavily.

  The great peak was a simple cone, steep but not impossible to climb. The split down the center, however, created two dangerous cliffs that faced each other, one a bit higher than the other. The two sides were connected at the bottom by a pitch of rubble and turf that careened downward, jagged rock and patches of snow. A bank behind the split, forming the back of the hill, provided an alternative route that joined the rest of the ridge.

  Seated on the highest point of the cone, Evan stretched forward to look down inside the towering cleft. Beside him, Catriona did the same, and gasped softly.

  "Ach Dhia," she said. "I've never seen the inside of this so close. Eag Dubh, the Black Notch, is aptly named."

  "A wicked-looking thing," he murmured.

  The rock inside the cleft was composed of raw, rough black gneiss, craggy and even bristly in places, the black rock slick with dampness and coated with moss and dabs of snow. Hundreds of feet deep, the two cliffsides plunged straight down like a massive, primordial chimney. Gusts whistled through the separation of the cliff faces, a span of fifty feet or so. Its floor of snow-coated rubble hurtled downward at a precipitous angle that joined the mountain face to drop thousands of feet to the glen floor.

  "My God," Catriona said. "You tried to climb this?"

  "Fool that I am, I did," Evan said. "I managed to come partly up the lower vertical face on this side before I fell. I hit the bottom slope and kept on going, making tracks in the snow all the way. I landed on a ledge far below and somehow made my way across the hillside and found the drover's track."

  She sighed heavily. "My brother died here," she murmured.

  "Yes," he said. "It was exactly here?"

  "He was found just a bit further down the slope. He fell while attempting to scale the notch. Finlay and my father found him days later. He might have been saved if they had discovered him sooner. He was not as lucky as you," she whispered.

  He took her gloved hand and brought it to his lips. "I am a very lucky man," he said quietly, and he kissed her fingers. Then he shifted to face her. Wind whipped past them, blowing her skirts about her legs, the gust strong enough to push them where they sat at the edge of the cleft.

  He had so much to say, and there was no time for it here, now. He ached to tell her that he loved her, that in falling from these cliffs not so long ago, he had fallen into the rest of his life.

  There would be time for that later. For now, he would help her in her quest, and then they would go home and start again in peace. With no time for explanation, he could only express his heart to her the best way he knew how.

  He leaned close and kissed her, pulling her to him, seated with her at the top of the world—the top of their world—which he wanted them to share forever. Now he knew for certain that he could not sell Kildonan. His heart would never allow it.

  Somehow he would find a way to pay off the es
tate debts and his own debt from his promise to support the families affected when his bridge had collapsed so long ago.

  Few knew of his promise. He kept it from all but one of his solicitors. He sent cheques regularly to three widows and their children, and he was in the midst of setting up bank trusts for them once some of his lands had sold.

  That tragedy suddenly seemed so very long ago, such a distant time, something that had happened to a different man.

  Now, perched on the crest of this strangely magical hill, looking down into what seemed the center of the earth, Evan felt as if the gash in his soul had begun to heal.

  Loving Catriona, surrendering himself and his stubborn, protected heart to love, he had felt a sort of miracle working on him, like light shining upon shadow to reveal life and beauty.

  Smiling, he kissed her again, felt her arms wrap around him, felt her forgiveness rinse over him. He drew back.

  "Let's find that fairy bauble, madam," he said, "and get down from this wicked height. I've got to get you home, where we can do justice to each other quite properly."

  She laughed a little, seemed weepy and relieved as she kissed him again. Then she glanced around.

  "Flora said the fairy crystals exist only on Beinn Shee. But I saw no crystal clusters as we came up the hill."

  "Nor did I. But I wonder—" He leaned forward, chest down and hands gripping, to peer over the edge into the abyss, down the expanse to sloped snow and jagged rock. "Those walls are the perfect bed for crystals. They're filled with crevices and creases, split open eons ago. Crystals seed themselves somehow and grow there—or so it seems. It's not well understood."

  Catriona flattened out on her stomach beside him and extended her arm down along the rock face, groping within reach of her fingers. "Evan! There are crystals here—I can feel them but I cannot see them, or get hold of any. See if you can."

  He stretched his arm down as far as he could, and he, too, could feel the encrustation of crystal growths inside the cracks and creases in the rock. His fingers touched the smooth and delicate planes of crystal wands sprouting here and there. "There are quite a few of them—they must be everywhere along the sides of these cliffs. The rock is Lewisian gneiss—"