Men of Midnight Complete Collection

by Emilie Richards

  “I also saw cattle huddled in a mountain pass. They were Highland cattle, the old ones.” She paused. “I dinna know what that meant, but as soon as I’d seen them, they were gone.”

  “I’m from here, ye know,” Geordie Smith said. He was sober this morning, had been sober for months, and he had been particularly pleased to be included on this expedition. “Well, me mother’s people are from Ballachulish, anyway. And I spent me holidays here often enough as a lad.”

  “Does what I’ve told you mean anything?”

  He shook his head.

  “The pass was walled in by mountains. Perhaps someone here at the hotel will know.”

  “Walled in, ye say?” Geordie scratched his head. “I wonder, could it be Coire Gabhail of which yer speaking?”

  “What’s that?” Duncan asked.

  “It’s a corrie below here a bit. It’s an odd place, that. It has a floor as level as the counter in your pub, Duncan. Gearr Aonach rises to one side of it and Beinn Fhada the other.”

  “Coire Gabhail means the corrie of capture,” one of the men, a teacher in the village, said. He shrugged when Duncan cocked his head in question. “My family’s from Skye. I learned Gaelic as a child,” he explained.

  “Aye, that’s it,” Geordie said, slapping his leg. “The corrie of capture. That’s where the Glencoe men kept the cattle they stole, or so the tale’s told. In those times it was no’ so uncommon for one clan to steal from another, but the men of Glencoe were fair fly about it. They would drive the cattle in the corrie and hold them there, and none could be retrieved.”

  “Mara?” Duncan asked.

  “There were mountains on each side, like walls. And it was lonely.”

  Duncan heard tension in her voice. He wanted to put his arms around her, but he knew he would be rebuffed. “Do you think Corrie Gabhail might be the place you saw?”

  “Aye. It might.”

  “We’ll need to get back in the bus, then,” Geordie said, taking charge. “And drive up the road a bit. Then there’s a footbridge over the Coe, or there was when I was a lad.”

  “How long will this take?” Duncan asked.

  “With the snow and the cold?” Geordie shook his head.

  “Most of the day?”

  “Aye.”

  “Mara, this will be our only chance.” Duncan didn’t care if she did pull away from him. He reached for her hands and chafed them in his own. “By the time we’re in and out, there probably won’t be enough daylight left to look anywhere else.”

  “I have one chance then?”

  “It’s not up to me. It’s the weather that will limit us.”

  “I say we go to the corrie.”

  As one, the men headed back toward the bus. Duncan was surprised by their easy acceptance of her decision. Mara didn’t follow, and neither did he. He didn’t drop her hands. “They’re good men,” he said.

  “They believe in me.” For a moment at least, all that was wrong between them vanished. “They’ve accepted this as if the sight is a talent like playing the piano or painting still lifes. I’ve worked all my life to hide who I am, and they’ve accepted me without question.”

  “Mara…”

  “We’d best go, Duncan. If we have only this chance, then we’ve got to make the most of it.”

  “You don’t have to go. You could stay here, at the hotel. Now that we know where we’re going, you don’t have to come. You could rest, maybe even take a room and sleep until we get back. It’s warm there and dry.”

  “I have one chance, and if that’s all I’m to be given, then I’ll be there for all of it.”

  “My stubborn lady.”

  She pulled away then, as if the intimate tone of his voice might be her undoing. He watched her cross the lot to the minibus.

  * * *

  Mara was less certain than she appeared to be. She had stared out the window on the trip to Glencoe, clearing her mind and opening herself to visions that might lead her to the exact place, but nothing had come to her. Now as she and the men walked she only felt fatigue.

  She was in the middle of the line, a place the men had silently chosen for her. She sensed their desire to protect her. They had encouraged her when the walking had gotten difficult, sung to her, told her stories. She couldn’t remember a time when she had been the recipient of so much goodwill.

  She had found a home in Druidheachd. She had never believed such a thing possible. At best she had hoped for a place where she would be left alone. Instead she was slowly, surely being pulled into village life. It had begun at the Johnsmas Fair. She had exposed herself to anyone canny enough to understand why she had grabbed the children. Then she had faced half the village over the reception desk of the Sinclair Hotel, and what questions there were about her integrity had apparently been answered.

  In the midst of an isolated Highland village with its roots firmly planted in the seventeenth century, with its superstitions and its fears of ghosts, goblins and things that went bump in the night, she had found a home.

  And a man she loved.

  Duncan walked behind Geordie at the front of the line. She could watch the proud set of his shoulders, the masculine thrust of his hips and ramrod straight line of his back. She loved him, this arrogant, stubborn Scot-American who refused to see anything except what was put squarely before him. And perhaps it was that quality—or fault—that she loved best about Duncan, because he was a man who refused to compromise anything. When he believed in something, he believed in it with all his heart, and when he loved…

  “It’s time we took a break,” he said now.

  Duncan turned and searched for her with his eyes. When he found her, he frowned. “Mara, you look like a snowflake would knock you to the ground. Sit on that rock over there and take a break.”

  “No, we have to keep going.”

  “You’re not going anywhere. Not until you’ve rested.” He advanced on her, passing Roger who had walked between them as if to shield them from one another.

  “We must keep going or we will no’ find them in time.”

  “It’s taking longer because every step is like ice-skating, and because it is, you’re completely done in.” He put his hands on her shoulders. “Please.” He lowered his voice. “Mara, don’t do this to me. I’ve got enough to worry about.”

  They had hiked beside a wide burn for what seemed like miles. The burn tumbled through a gorge fringed with birches, and their path was narrow and slick. At some point when the sun had risen high enough to be seen above the mountains, they had stopped to rest and drink strong hot tea supplied by Roger. But they had not come nearly as far as they had expected.

  “I’ll rest, but only for a few minutes.” She found a wide rock beside the stream and sat. Behind her she sensed the men breathing a collective sigh of relief.

  She was exhausted. At times she felt as if she were floating. She had stumbled and nearly fallen twice, and once she had been so overcome by dizziness she had believed the future was about to present itself again. But nothing had presented itself to her except doubt. If she could fly with the eagles, if she could soar above Glencoe and look down upon it again, she would be sure they were in the right place. But she was earthbound, and she couldn’t be sure at all.

  “Is there room for two?”

  She moved over to let Duncan sit beside her. “What will you say to Lisa when we find her?” she asked.

  “What a strange question.”

  “It will be the measure of what sort of man you really are.”

  “What should I say?”

  “I can no’ tell you that. It must come from your heart.”

  “It will depend on whether my daughter is alive and well.”

  She put her hand on his. “She is, Duncan. I’m sure of it.”

  “And Lisa?”

  “Alive.”

  “I hope so. I don’t wish Lisa any harm.”

  “Do you no’?”

  “I told you, I’ve made mistakes.”

>   “This is no’ one of them.” She withdrew her hand.

  “Are we one of them?”

  “This is no’ the time to talk about that. There are too many things still to be settled.”

  He stood, rebuffed. “I’m going to go consult with Geordie and see if he has any idea how much farther we have to go.”

  They started out again a few minutes later. A half hour or so farther in they came to a pile of enormous rocks that blocked the burn and seemed to spell an end to it.

  “We cross to that side now,” Geordie said. “But the rocks are slippery. We’ll have to go one at a time.” He started across even before he’d finished speaking. Duncan should have gone next, but he waved Roger in front of him. “Come on, Mara, I’ll go first, but I’ll stay in easy reach if you need me.”

  She waited until he had made a good start, then she followed. The rocks were icy, even more so than they looked, and her knees were weak. She struggled to maintain her balance, but she slipped again and again. And each time she did, Duncan was there to steady her.

  On the other side he held out his arms and sheltered her against him as she struggled for breath. “You did well, lady. I know how hard you’re working to keep up.”

  “We have to move on.”

  “We can’t forget that we have to go back the way we’ve come, Mara. And we have to leave time to rest and still be back to the bus by dark. It will be safe to go a little farther, but we can’t keep going for miles and miles. There just isn’t time.”

  “I will no’ be turning back until April and her mother are with us.”

  He stepped away from her. The others had crossed and were waiting. “Let’s go,” he said tersely.

  She tried to make her mind a blank, but no matter how hard she tried, there were no images, not even the most obscure. She was aware only of the cold, of the struggle to lift one foot and plant it in front of the other, of the murmur of the burn that suddenly reappeared on the other other side of the rocks and led them into the corrie.

  Everyone stopped and stared. The corrie was a level stretch of meadow, snow-crested now, but probably green and sprinkled with wildflowers in warmer weather. On either side the sheer rocky face of mountains closed it in, and the burn flowed through the center.

  There was little to block their view. For as far as they could see there was nothing except snow and mountains and a burn flowing far beyond them.

  A new wave of dizziness swept over her. Mara closed her eyes against it. She could feel her body sway in protest, but she was powerless to stop it. Then she saw cattle, shaggy, black and stocky, and she heard the laughter of men as they herded them into place. The image flashed across her mind, then disappeared along with the dizziness, but in that instant she knew they had come to the right place.

  “They’re here,” she said.

  “I don’t see a tent. There’s no sign anyone’s been here since the snow,” Duncan said. “I don’t see a single footprint, and I don’t know if you’re going to make it another mile.”

  “They’re farther in.” She started along the burn. The walking was easier here, flatter and at a lower elevation where less snow had fallen. She turned when she realized the others hadn’t followed. “I will bring them out alone if you dinna follow me,” she said. “And then what will your wives and children say tomorrow when they find that a woman did the rescuing alone?”

  Roger broke into a grin, and Geordie laughed out loud. Only Duncan didn’t smile. “Come, Duncan.” She beckoned. “Your daughter’s waiting.”

  The sun was high in the heavens when Mara saw the tent. It hadn’t been visible from a distance because it was tiny and white like the surrounding snow, and there was no movement near it to attract their eyes. She pointed. “There! Where the burn curves.”

  Duncan stopped and shaded his eyes from the glare of sunlight on the snow. Then he started to run, and several of the men loped after him. She purposely slowed her pace and waved the others ahead.

  By the time she reached the tent April was outside of it held tightly in Duncan’s arms. She saw tears on his cheeks, tears he probably wasn’t even aware of crying.

  “Are you really all right, Springtime?”

  She was crying, too. “Mommy’s not.”

  “I know. But she’s going to be all right. We’re going to get her out of here.”

  “I couldn’t wake her up this morning. I tried, and I couldn’t.”

  “You did the right thing by staying in the tent with her.”

  “She made me. When she was still awake she told me not to go outside. I wanted to find you.”

  “Mommy was right. She knew what to do.”

  “She slipped on the rocks by the river and hurt herself and we couldn’t leave. And then it got so cold and she made me wear all her clothes and sleep under her sleeping bag, too. Then she fell asleep and I couldn’t wake her up.”

  Duncan looked up and saw Mara. “Mara’s here, Springtime.”

  Still clinging to him, April turned her head. When she saw Mara she gave a small cry and stretched out her arms. Mara took her and held her tight.

  Roger backed out of the tent and stood. “Duncan, it looks like she’s got a broken leg and maybe a concussion. She’s got a knot on her head and her skin isn’t much warmer than the snow.” He looked at April, then he motioned Duncan to one side and finished his assessment out of earshot.

  “Is she going to be all right?” April asked. “Is Mommy going to be all right?”

  “Yes, dearest. I know she is. The men will carry her back to the road, and then we’ll drive her to the nearest hospital.” Even as she said the words she watched the men team up to efficiently slide Lisa from the tent in a sleeping bag. Mara looked at the face she had only seen in a photograph and felt a deep compassion.

  Geordie covered Lisa with the remaining sleeping bag while the rest of the men took down the tent and used the frame and canvas to construct a stretcher.

  Duncan crouched beside her, and Lisa’s eyes opened. Mara couldn’t look away.

  “April?”

  “She’s right here. She’s fine.”

  “I thought…I’d show you I could take care of her.” Tears seeped down Lisa’s cheeks.

  “Hush now. We’re going to get you to a hospital.”

  “You’ll never let me see her again…”

  “Don’t worry about that now.”

  “She’s my…”

  Mara looked away. She couldn’t bear the pain on the other woman’s face. Lisa had lost her daughter forever. After this Duncan would never allow her to have contact with April again.

  “Yes, she’s your baby,” Duncan said. “And we’ll work something out so you can visit her. I promise. You shouldn’t have taken her, Lisa, but you did everything you could to keep her safe. I’ll always be grateful to you for that.” He stood.

  April squirmed in Mara’s arms, and she set her on the ground. April ran to her mother’s side. “Mommy!” She grabbed Lisa’s hand.

  Lisa threaded her fingers through April’s and closed her eyes.

  “Let’s go,” Duncan said.

  Deftly the men placed Lisa on the makeshift stretcher and lifted her, two to a side with April still holding Lisa’s hand. Then they started through the corrie.

  Duncan watched them for a moment, then he turned to Mara. “You’ve given me back my daughter.”

  “And you’ve given her back to her mother. It’s a good day’s work.”

  “After today your place in Druidheachd will be secure forever.”

  “Aye. I’ll be the seer who lives on the mountain. There’ll be respect and even friendship from those courageous enough to risk it. It’s more than I’ve dreamed of in years.”

  April called to them. Mara started after the men, but Duncan put his hand on her arm. “Mara…”

  “Dinna confuse gratitude with anything else, Duncan.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?”

  She couldn’t answer, because she didn’t know for certa
in. There was very little that she knew now that she had found Lisa and April. The strength that had carried her this far had disappeared, and love and fear warred inside her.

  “We’re not finished,” he said. April called to him again, and he dropped his hand and started toward the others.

  He turned after a few paces. She was still standing in the same place. “We’re not finished, my lady. And if you think we are, it’s one of the few times you really can’t predict the future.”

  CHAPTER 18

  The hotel pub was crowded, as it had been every night in the week since the weather had changed. There was no better place to commiserate with friends about a summer that had been too short, or to talk about the mysterious rescue of Duncan’s ex-wife. In the far corner Geordie, drunk on attention and not a drop of liquor, was relating the story for the eighth night in a row.

  “And so it becomes the best tale ever told in a Druidheachd pub,” Iain said to Duncan. “Reduced to that.”

  “Don’t underestimate it. There’ve been tales told in here for centuries. If Geordie’s is the best, I’ll go down in history.”

  “And that’s how your name will be remembered.” Iain lifted his glass in toast. “At least it will be remembered when you’re back in America or wherever you’re off to.”

  “What makes you think I’m off to anywhere?”

  “Carlton-Jones tells me you’ve been negotiating with him on a price for the hotel. You’re a good businessman, Dunc. Anyone else would have taken what he offered for this pile of rubble.”

  Duncan leaned back and signaled Brian for a dram. “I’ve been interested to see how high he would go when pushed.”

  “And?”

  “It’s safe to bet there’s no one else anywhere in the world willing to pay what he is. It should give us all pause. He bears watching.”

  “Why? Just consider yourself a fortunate man. You found your buyer right off.”

  “No.” Duncan downed his drink. “I didn’t.”

  “You’re not going to let something as insignificant as Martin’s wee weasel eyes stop you from taking his offer?”

  “I’m not taking anybody’s offer. It’s the Sinclair Hotel. I’ve spoken to Fiona. We’ll be keeping it.”