Heather Song

by Michael Phillips

  Added to the peculiarity of what she had done was the fact that my belongings had not been taken to just one place but were spread out through several rooms of the basement. All these doors still had very old locks that had not been recently changed. During the years of my marriage, I had never even been in most of those lower rooms. I had no idea where the keys were kept. Nicholls took charge of the search, but reported to me that the keys were not in their customary place, and what keys he was able to locate were not complete. Olivia proved singularly unhelpful, professing ignorance where the rest of the keys might be. She offered no hint as to why Alasdair’s and my things had been so spread out in so many places…when she was obviously the one responsible!

  After a week, Nicholls managed to find most of the keys scattered in out-of-the-way places, and he was able to unlock most of the rooms. Nearly all the clothes and books and furniture were soon removed to safer, warmer, dryer conditions.

  But one mystery remained. The Queen had still not been found.

  The Ring, the Shamrock, and Limerick had all joined the Aida and Journey back upstairs in my studio. The broken strings had been replaced and all were back in tune. Within a month or two I hoped they would be joined by their newer cousins being shipped from Canada, the two new Merlins, Cairn and the Bard.

  But where was the empress who towered above them all?

  I began to grow genuinely worried. I told Nicholls to turn the basement upside down. There remained three or four rooms he had not been able to open, he said, though the rust on the locks showed no signs of having been disturbed in a century. He very much doubted Olivia had stored anything behind them. Nevertheless, I told him, the Queen had to be found, even if it meant breaking locks apart and tearing doors off their hinges to locate her.

  “What’s that big brass key there on your ring?” I asked Nicholls as he was detailing his search efforts to me. “It is unusual and very pretty.”

  “That it is, my lady,” he said. “But I doubt it’s of any use. Never opened a lock I knew of, though it’s been part of the basement key ring ever since I can remember. Probably just a decorative key someone had made.”

  I had laid eyes on Olivia only two or three times during the week and a half since my return to the castle, and then only from a distance. We had not once spoken since the incident involving the two lawyers. Finally my anxiety over the whereabouts of my cherished pedal harp outweighed all other considerations. For the first time since leaving for Canada, I climbed the stairs and walked along the familiar corridor toward the apartments Alasdair and I had shared together for three happy years. This had once been my home, my place of refuge, my inner sanctum of happiness with a man I loved. Now it had become, if Mr. Crathie’s reports were to be believed, the GHQ of one who, if she prevailed, would strip me of everything I held dear, and if Alicia’s perspectives were accurate, of one who would destroy me if that was what it took.

  I drew in a deep breath and knocked on the door.

  For several long seconds I heard nothing. Then footsteps approached and the door opened.

  There stood Olivia. She looked straight into my face without the slightest movement of muscle, eyebrow, or lips—utterly dispassionate, as if she had known it was me before opening the door. Her silent nonexpression was neither inviting nor repelling, encouraged nothing, repulsed nothing. It was just empty, devoid of feeling.

  She stood staring straight into me like a corpse, and waited.

  “I am sorry to disturb you,” I said, trying to keep my voice from quivering, “but I need to know where you took my pedal harp. Nicholls has located the others, but has been unable to find the large one.”

  “I am afraid I have no idea,” Olivia replied at length. Her voice contained no more feeling than her expression. It was not the answer I expected.

  “I, uh…then, who would know?” I said. “You did have my things moved?”

  “As you were no longer here, I saw no reason to clutter up my home with things I had no interest in.”

  “Then where did you take my big harp?”

  “I really cannot say. I assumed it was with the others.”

  “It was not.”

  “Then I do not see how I can help you. It is apparently no longer with us.”

  “What do you mean? You’re the one who had them moved.”

  “I hired a man from the village to see to it.”

  “What instructions did you give him?”

  “To take everything to the basement.”

  I let out a sigh of frustration. She was not being terribly cooperative.

  “Then what is the man’s name?” I asked. “I will talk to him.”

  “I am afraid I don’t remember. He may have been an itinerant.”

  “Are you saying he is no longer in the area?”

  “I really have no idea.”

  “And that is it, then? You refuse to help me locate my harp?”

  She stared daggers back at me, then slowly closed the door in my face. It had been a stupid thing to say. I had unnecessarily alienated her, just as Mr. Crathie had warned me not to.

  I sighed again and slunk away, irritated at both myself and Olivia.

  Even without the presence of their reigning monarch, however, the ensemble harps still made lovely sounds when Ranald and the ladies arrived on Thursday of that week. What a time we had! I could only imagine Olivia’s fury if word reached her about Ranald’s visit. But I hardly thought about her. It was wonderful to hear laughter and music again from my studio. All four were anxious for me to put them to work with new pieces to learn, and begged to resume their weekly lessons.

  Those were two requests I would never refuse.

  But I remained nervous about the Queen.

  Chapter Forty-one

  Accusations

  It was by a woman’ treacherous hand,

  That I was condemned tae dee.

  Upon a ledge at a window she stood,

  And a blanket she threw ower me.

  —Robert Burns, “MacPherson’s Lament”

  Whether coincidentally or not, two days after the brief encounter in the doorway of my former apartment, Olivia suddenly walked into my studio. I was alone. It was Thursday, a little after noon. I was preparing for the ensemble get-together later in the day.

  “Hello, Marie dear,” she said, not exactly smiling, but in a soft and friendly tone. “I thought you should know that I will be away for a few days, so obviously the castle will be in your hands.”

  I was so stunned by her appearance and unexpected tone that I sat not knowing what to say.

  “I feel bad about your missing harp,” she went on. “I have asked Adela to jog her memory. I am certain it will turn up. It is no doubt in one of the rooms that we have not been able to find the keys to.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “It is kind of you to help.”

  The next day Olivia left Port Scarnose for London.

  Her recent puzzling changed tone sent me into a new round of conflicting thoughts and feelings about everything. I wondered if I had misjudged her, even misread the conversation at her door, wondered further if perhaps she and I could both remain in the castle and live and work together in harmony. Ever since she and Gwendolyn had come walking along the headland path and I had seen them for the first time, Olivia Urquhart had been a woman of mysterious dimensions whom I could not for the life of me understand. Nothing with her was straightforward.

  When I mentioned these thoughts to Alicia, she came as close to being angry with me as I had ever seen.

  “Marie,” she said, “you cannot let her weave her spell over you. You have to see through it. Remember, I was under it for thirty years, and it nearly cost me my life. She never turns on the charm without some ulterior motive. That soft mesmerizing voice is a facade to lull you to sleep. Don’t succumb, Marie.”

  I must say that Olivia’s absence was a relief. I took to walking every day. I hadn’t realized how much I had missed it, nor what a silent, invisible burden Olivi
a’s presence in the castle had become. With her gone, I realized that without knowing it, and in spite of the affection shown by so many, I had yet been a little reluctant to venture out as much as I might have wanted to, afraid that Olivia’s all-seeing eye knew my every move.

  Now the village drew me again, as it had when I first came. I walked everywhere—through its streets and along its promontories and beaches. I resumed all my favorite walks, from up toward the Bin to Ranald’s croft to the Salmon Bothy to the Crannoch viaduct loop. I greeted people with a newfound openness and walked with a renewed lightness in my step. I determined to get out every day, to be out among the people, Alasdair’s people, and now my people. I walked along the coastline all the way from Findectifeld to Findlater.

  Meanwhile, in Olivia’s absence, we widened our search for the Queen to include every room in the castle. But still we were unable to turn up so much as a trace.

  Early in the week following Olivia’s departure, a big storm blew in, dumped half an inch of rain, roused the sea into a cauldron, and then left as quickly as it had come. Storms were always blowing in and out of northern Scotland. Ask a local what is Scotland’s weather and he will say that whatever you’ve got in the afternoon will be different from what you had that same morning. Within thirty-six hours the sun was back out, shining gloriously, and inviting me to my favorite place—the sea.

  I laced up my hiking boots and grabbed my jacket and went to ask Alicia if she would like to join me.

  “I can’t. Mrs. Gauld invited me for lunch. I was actually a little surprised, but glad, too. Where are you going?” she asked.

  “To the coast. I think I’ll go to Seatown and along the shoreline to the Salmon Bothy.”

  “Oh, Marie, I wish you wouldn’t go that way,” she said, “not today, not after a storm.”

  “Why not?”

  “The rocks may be slippery and the swell still big. Especially if it’s a high tide. People get swept off along there, or slip on the moss and algae.”

  “I’ll be careful.”

  “Be very careful, Marie. The North Sea is far from tame.”

  “Not a tame lion?” I suggested with a smile.

  “Not at all tame. They think that’s where poor Winny may have been when she was lost.”

  “Ranald’s daughter?”

  Alicia nodded. “They think she may have been out walking along the coastline there east of Crannoch and slipped on the rocks. She was never found. They think the tide washed her body out to sea, probably between Logie Head and Findlater.”

  “She must have been alone, then. How does anyone know where she was?”

  Olivia said she saw her in the distance the morning she went missing—walking that way.”

  “Logie Head is a long way from town. How would Olivia possibly have seen her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What about her mother—Ranald’s wife…How did she die?”

  “She fell from the cliffs. She apparently slipped, just like I almost did. Though it hadn’t rained for days when her body was found down at the bottom west of Findlater. It’s always been a mystery why she fell. But that is the irony, both mother and daughter were claimed by the rocky coastline.”

  After hearing that, I promised to be doubly careful. “Poor Ranald,” I said, “to lose both a wife and a daughter. I cannot imagine the grief. How he can be so optimistic and enthusiastic about life after all that. He is a remarkable man.”

  “I wish I had seen him for what he truly is sooner,” sighed Alicia. “I am thankful you helped open my eyes when you did.”

  I set out from the castle on the Crannoch road, reached the village, made my way along Grant Street to Seafield Street, turned and descended to the harbor, and thence made my way past the pet cemetery and eastward along the narrow path that hugged the shore. The tide was about halfway out and did not appear dangerous. But, mindful of my promise to Alicia, I kept a watchful eye out for sleepers. As I went, I grew reflective.

  Since returning to Scotland and with everything my return entailed, I had obviously been thinking almost continually about my future. With my father gone now, too, and with this latest development brought about by Alasdair’s affidavit and the invalidation of our prenuptial agreement, my fortunes were radically altered. The previous two weeks had reconciled me to the fact that everything in my life was changed, that I could never again be who I was before.

  I was fine with that. If Alasdair wanted me to be the duchess, then I would be faithful to that. I would embrace it and enjoy it. But I could not envision myself living forever secluded away in the castle. I would rather live in town and open a harp studio in my home. I also had to make an attempt to heal the rift with Olivia, even bring her into the affairs of the estate if possible. In time, why not give her half of it? She was Alasdair’s sister, after all. She had more right to it by blood than I did. If she wanted to play the aristocratic role, why not let her share in Alasdair’s estate?

  My thoughts and plans, however, were abruptly altered when Mr. Crathie called at the castle about two weeks after Olivia’s departure. The expression on his face was grim. His bombshell certainly brought an abrupt end to my idealistic hope that Olivia and I might work harmoniously together in the future.

  “Your sister-in-law has been busy,” he said.

  “What do you mean?” I said. “She’s gone.”

  “Yes, and now we know why. I received these papers today from one of the most prestigious barristers in London. It is a formal affidavit to be added in support of her suit contesting the duke’s will. Copies were sent by overnight courier to both myself and Mr. Murdoch in Edinburgh.”

  “Is there any major change?” I asked.

  “Not in what she is asking for, only in the allegations she is bringing forth in support of her claim. She is still contesting your right to everything.”

  “So what new information is in this affidavit?”

  “It is not a pretty picture, Mrs. Reidhaven,” he replied. “Are you sure you want to know? Would you not rather I simply seek to handle it through legal avenues?”

  “No, I want to know. Please tell me everything, Mr. Crathie.”

  He hesitated a moment. “Extortion is the primary focus of the charge,” he said at length.

  “Extortion!” I exclaimed. “Now I am really confused.”

  “The basis of the claim is that your marriage to Alasdair was premeditated and therefore invalid, and that therefore you have no right to inherit. There are pages and pages of documents, some going back as far as twenty years, allegations about your past in Canada, the charge that you came here knowing of Alasdair’s illness for the express purpose of extorting money from him. Your UK citizenship is being investigated. They are even digging into your parents’ pasts to see what can be discovered. Kidnapping also comes into it.”

  “Kidnapping…of whom?!”

  “Gwendolyn—the charge that you took Gwendolyn against both her own will and Olivia’s, who was her legal guardian at the time, and kept her from Olivia, as it turned out, for the rest of her life. She alleges that you used the kidnapping of Gwendolyn as a means of blackmail against Alasdair to get what you wanted, which was control of the Buchan estate. She alleges that you have been planning this for years, ever since your discovery of your Buchan ancestral roots. She even implies that you accelerated the effects of the illnesses of both father and daughter, in Alasdair’s case with drugs—an even more sinister claim with very dark legal implications. If she can prove collusion, she will have a strong case. She has documentation to show that you were investigating your family connections to Scotland as long as fifteen years ago.”

  “That was an innocent computer search. It was just a lark. Nothing came of it.”

  “Nevertheless, along with everything else…”

  By then I was in tears. I groped my way to a chair.

  “You don’t mean to tell me that there is more?”

  “I am sorry, Mrs. Reidhaven, I am afraid so.”
>
  “What else could there possibly be?”

  “She also says that you were…intimately involved—”

  The lawyer paused a moment.

  “—with the curate during your marriage to Alasdair.”

  I groaned with sickening despair, and shook my head. Mr. Crathie waited patiently.

  “How could she possibly have gotten all this together in a short two weeks?”

  “She didn’t,” rejoined Mr. Crathie. “Some of these drafts are over a year old. She has been working on this, in my opinion, since before your marriage to Alasdair. Even if she is not successful in overturning Alasdair’s will, I fear she will be able to seriously damage, if not completely ruin, your reputation throughout Scotland. It appears now that the original filing of her initial suit several months ago was merely the beginning. Whether she intended to use these latest allegations, or has only now decided to make them public because of your return, and our challenge to her right of control in the castle, that we may never know.”