Highland Fire
Abigail Clements
Copyright © Abigail Clements 2020
This edition first published by Wyndham Books 2020
(Wyndham Media Ltd)
27, Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX
www.wyndhambooks.com/abigail-clements
First published in 1976
The author has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, organisations and events are a product of the author’s imagination and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, organisations and events is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Cover artwork: images © faestock / chbaum (Shutterstock)
Cover artwork design © Wyndham Media Ltd
Titles by Abigail Clements
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Christabel’s Room
Mistress of the Moor
Highland Fire
The Sea-Harrower
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Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Preview: Abigail Clements
For Bonnie Prange,
wherever you are
Chapter One
The big Pan Am jet lumbered clumsily around the sky, wheeling, waiting for the word to go. Awkward and uneasy in its slow circles, it could not have been better calculated to frighten the passengers, already tense from the long delay on the ground. Some sipped nervously at their drinks, and fidgeted with papers. The young woman across from me clutched a whimpering toddler to her, while trying to soothe the crying baby in the basinette with her free hand. Outside the dark windows, the brilliant stars of New York below tipped and changed with the dim stars above. I watched, unmoved by either beauty or fear, then turned to smile reassuringly at the young woman with the children. If my calm surprised her, as it appeared to, it amazed me.
Once in that other world, three long long years ago, Danny and I had flown back to college together after the Christmas break. We pretended to be brave, but we were both nervous about planes and we were terrified. We chatted and giggled, shared a drink, clutched each other’s hands, and prayed as the plane lifted off. We had so much to lose; we had each other. It is strange how having nothing more to lose frees you from fear.
A last circle was completed; the pilot turned his plane like a rider putting his horse to a jump, it seemed to pause, and then it leaped out beautifully across the dark Atlantic.
New York was behind us. New York, my home, my parents on Long Island, work, college, my brief, sweet marriage … Danny. I said goodbye silently as we dashed on into an early dawn.
The baby in the basinette settled down, rocked to sleep by the great thundering engines and the creak of steel. Its young and exhausted mother held the older child tighter against her body, and when it, too, slept, she also relaxed against the padded seat. Then the sun came pouring in through the windows. The child woke and struggled, waking its mother. She sat up, quickly hushing it before it could wake the baby. Our eyes met, she grinned wearily, her hair straggling over her eyes. I smiled back and offered to take the child.
She hesitated, then nodded gratefully, holding him out to me over the aisle. He was about two, the age, and my arms had been wanting him all night.
Two years is a long time, Carrie. It’s time to forget. My mother was right. Two years was a long time, long enough to turn a soft, sheltered scrap of a newborn into this hearty struggling little person clambering up my shoulder for a better look out the window. But time to forget?
I had known from the start I would never forget my little daughter, never get over it, though my friends said I would. But I don’t think even I realized how she would haunt me. The world was full of reminders. When I first left the hospital, there seemed to be nothing in the world but newborn babies. I saw them everywhere. Time passed. They grew, and my ghost-child grew with them. She was two now, a sister to the little boy in my arms. He poked a fat finger against the glass and prodded it, reaching for the clouds below.
‘Fuzzy?’ he said.
‘Fuzzy,’ I assured him.
It’s not as if you really had her, and then lost her. My friends said that, too, as words of comfort. But I had had her. She was alive and part of my life from the very start, even the first strange, discomforted days when I understood nothing and my body shifted without my knowing it with a new tide. Then the first happy months, when Danny and I were together and childlike in our eagerness. Even after the news came and we knew he was going, the child that was coming seemed strong enough to win out against everything, even the war.
In my fifth month Danny left for Vietnam. Only the baby remained, a living tie between us. The tie held, through the hot, hazy spring months, while I waited at my parents’ home on the Island. When I went into the hospital, confident and happy, I was carrying Danny’s most recent letter with me. I kept it by my bed. I was fit and strong and my labour was easy. I had no idea anything was wrong until the moment of birth.
I’ll never forget the silence. I waited and waited for the cry. I was conscious of frantic work going on around me, everyone hurried and wordless. The nurse who came to tell me my baby was stillborn was younger than I was and she was crying. They didn’t let me see my daughter. They said it was better that way.
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t think babies were ever stillborn any more. They said I was very brave, because I didn’t cry. I wasn’t. I was numb.
One thought remained in the emptiness that followed: The link is broken; how do I tell Danny?
I tried again and again to write the letter. My pen would not make the words. The blank sheets, together with Danny’s last letter, were still in a drawer in the bedside table when my mother came with the news. I was thankful I was spared the vision I had dreaded, the uniformed figure coming to the door. Danny had died just two days after his baby daughter.
My family, and even Danny’s, were very good. They did everything, quietly, discreetly. When I returned from the hospital, everything, the baby clothes, the soft blankets, the wooden cradle Danny and I had made together in the days before he left, everything was gone. Nothing was left to remind me. Indeed so little was left of my life as wife and mother-to-be that at times, lying in my childhood bedroom a
t home, my mind would play shattering tricks and toy with the possibility that all of it had been a strange, lovely dream. But the pain was too real for any nightmare.
Life goes on. My mother said it. Danny’s mother said it. I kept quiet the voice in me saying why? What were they to say, after all, and who was I to throw my grief in their faces?
Life did go on. I stumbled through the depressions predicted by the doctors. In my room alone I wept for hours. I read, I went to the beach and walked and walked. Sometimes I met old friends from high school who had been away and had not even known I’d been married. I discovered that the things that had happened were not written on my face, as I felt sure they must be. Other people didn’t see them. Outwardly I was just the same as before.
It hurt me that no one could see the scars of my loss. Not for myself, but for Danny. I could not bear to see the world continuing so smoothly without him; his young life over and no visible witness of it remaining. Even I had failed him; I had given him no child.
I talked a lot about Danny, trying to keep him alive that way. Eventually even my family began to suggest gently that I move on to something new. They arranged the secretarial course; in my numbness I allowed myself to be led. It was sensible; my two years of liberal arts were of little practical use and I needed some way to support myself.
I threw myself into the course; it was different, it took up my time. I did quite well at it, surprising myself. I applied for, and got, my first job with little difficulty and found myself a tiny apartment in the city.
I saw Danny’s parents in Queens one or two times afterwards, and then I stopped seeing them at all. I realized that I was becoming a reminder of a time they wanted to forget. Danny’s college years had not been their happiest. He had disagreed with them about many things, even our marriage. They were practical and believed in waiting. We were in love and perhaps we sensed the time passing too quickly.
Then, too, we had clashed with them over the war. Danny was against it, and I bitterly so. I would have gone to Canada with him. In the end Danny went to war for his father’s honour.
After he was dead, I was surprised to find myself without bitterness, hoping his parents would not, like others, find doubts about the war that took their son. Now they reached back to his childhood for comfort. I went away with the conviction that never, never again would I go against what I believed in for anyone.
The job was sufficient financially, but dull. I found myself going through the want ads again. I found the ad in The Village Voice: ‘Girl Friday wanted, willing to live abroad, remote location. Apply Caledonian Importers.’
It could have been anything. Perhaps I should have been suspicious. Oddly I was not. My mind latched onto the word ‘remote’. Somewhere far away, clean away from everything and everybody. Somewhere, maybe, where my ghosts wouldn’t follow.
I answered the ad, found the address, a classy one on Madison Avenue. Inside, I found among the tiers of cool brass plates the one that said ‘Caledonian Importers’, and took the elevator up. I came out among carpeted air-conditioned corridors, hung with good paintings. I was beginning to feel girlish and clumpy in my miniskirt and platform-soled shoes, and wondered what I was doing here.
A slim, superbly groomed secretary appeared and asked me precisely that. I introduced myself and explained about the ad, and received a nod of acknowledgment and an indication to follow. Walking behind her I nervously patted my hair down, straightening the clip that held it in place. It had been so long since I’d bothered to think about how I looked. I’d taken to simply tying my dark hair back off my face and choosing my garments in order of which came first out of the closet. At the moment I regretted my disinterest. This looked like the sort of place where appearances might count for more than a little.
The plate on the door said ‘Dominic O’Brady, Executive Vice President’. The secretary opened the door, ushered me in, and closed it behind me all in one smooth gesture, leaving me alone in the room with the man who still stood, gazing out the wide window, his back to me, as if he hadn’t noticed my entrance. I started to speak, to introduce myself. Then he whirled around suddenly, those incredible blue eyes taking hold of my own, and I didn’t say anything at all, but just stood there, amazed.
I don’t know how it was he could dominate a room so. He didn’t seem big, or physically powerful, standing beside that massive executive desk. I’m five-foot-five, and I hardly had to look up to meet his gaze. But when I did I knew instantly that that room was under his control, that things that happened there were under his control, and that if I wasn’t careful, I would be under his control, too. I think I must have stepped back a step, away from him, coming up against the closed door behind me. He grinned.
‘Come in, I don’t bite,’ he said.
I stepped coolly forward, my pride getting the better of me. Charisma I might be wary of, but I was not going to be laughed at.
‘I’m Caroline Reilly,’ I said sharply. ‘I’ve come in response to your ad.’
His smile broadened, a look of interest lighting his face. ‘You’re Irish?’ he said.
I shook my head. I wasn’t actually, though he was not the first to say so. Somehow the many mixed nationalities that formed my ancestry had united to give me classically Celtic features, down to the blue eyes and fair freckled skin. Coupled now with my husband’s Irish name, the inaccurate picture was complete.
‘Reilly is my married name,’ I explained.
‘You’re married?’ he asked with such surprise that it was clear he had expected only single women to answer his ad, not without logic, considering its wording.
‘I’m a widow,’ I said simply, still finding it difficult to say. His heavy brows went up, questioning, and I realized that like others he found the concept of so young a widow strange. ‘My husband was killed in Vietnam,’ I added.
A genuine sorrow came over his face. He stepped forward and actually took both my hands between his. I was deeply conscious again of the tense, exciting feeling of power about him. ‘I’m so sorry,’ he said very softly, and I knew he meant it. ‘But at least,’ he added slowly, ‘you can take comfort that your husband died honourably for his country.’ My eyes came up, angrily meeting his. For an instant I thought he was making some sort of terrible cruel joke. But his sincerity was written on his face, sincerity and something deeper, like a sadness he was remembering. I lowered my eyes and said, ‘Thank you,’ softly. One of the things I had learned since Danny’s death was to take the words people offered as they were intended. If Dominic O’Brady saw something of value in the way Danny died, it was for me to accept that as the gift it was meant to be.
Perhaps because our first exchange set the tenor of our conversation, Dominic was utterly courteous, rather solemnly so, throughout the meeting. The light mockery with which he had greeted me did not return. He showed me to a chair, offered a cigarette from a beautiful silver box decorated all around with elaborate, intertwining patterns.
He asked about my qualifications, and I explained, briefly and directly. He seemed satisfied, but wanted to know if I could cook as well. I nodded, somewhat puzzled, and asked to know exactly what the job entailed.
‘I need a secretary,’ he replied. ‘There isn’t much paperwork, but enough so that I don’t want to be bothered with it myself. I also need a housekeeper, someone to cook, clean up a bit, look after things when I’m away. And’ ‒ he paused, smiling slightly ‒ ‘someone who will be willing to put up with my erratic hours and my erratic temper. I somehow feel the home-grown variety of housekeeper would not be willing.’
‘Home-grown?’ I questioned. ‘Where’s home?’
He whirled around and flung his right hand expansively at the wall behind him. ‘There,’ he said.
I had been glancing at the picture surreptitiously since I’d entered the room. I could not have helped but notice it. It was as out of place in that crisp, understated setting as a pop art poster of Mickey Mouse might have been. Which is not to draw a comparis
on, because it was a beautiful painting, probably a very valuable one also. But it was obvious that the fastidious decorator who had chosen the beige carpets, smooth oatmeal-coloured walls, and unobtrusive muted modern paintings had never hung this here. Rather, the sight of the carved gilt frame alone might have caused him to hang himself here.
It belonged in a castle. Indeed, I learned later it had come from a castle, after Dominic had crossed the impoverished castle owner’s palm with a lot of American dollars. It was a nineteenth-century Romantic oil, the paint laid on thick and dark and generous. It depicted a mountain scene, rising lines of jagged peaks, some reaching into snow. In the foreground, almost black in the artist’s twilight lighting, was a body of water, deep and mysterious. The far shore, almost as dark as the water, seemed to sweep out to a headland; beyond, perhaps, was the sea. On that long stretch of hillside and shore there was one tiny white speck, only just suggesting the square outlines of a rough house.
It looked like the loneliest place in the world.
‘Sron Ban,’ Dominic said softly.
‘What?’ I asked.
‘The house. The hill also, of course. Sron Ban. It’s Gaelic. It means “the white mountain”.’
‘It certainly doesn’t look white,’ I said.
He laughed. ‘No, it doesn’t much, there,’ he agreed. ‘It can, though, in the morning, and from the right direction. The name must have come from the way it looks from Ullapool.’
‘Ullapool?’
‘A small fishing port in the Northwest Highlands of Scotland.’
Home he had said, I remembered abruptly. ‘Is that where you live?’ I asked awkwardly.
‘I have lived there,’ he replied, ‘on and off, in the past five years. Mostly just the occasional week while I was seeing to things at the distillery. But,’ he added quickly, and with some determination, ‘that is where I am going to live. And where you are going to live … if you decide to accept the job, of course.’ He added the last as if it were an afterthought of little consequence, his statement that I would live at Sron Ban having been spoken with such assurance that any objections I might have had were already rendered irrelevant.
Highland Fire: captivating romantic suspense full of twists Page 1
