But who? Who would have more to lose than he, and why couldn’t he protect me? Everyone else in this business was merely an employee. If I was not a threat to Dominic himself, then who, indeed, did I threaten?
Then I had a thought that shamed me as deeply as it chilled me. But I couldn’t help thinking it. Was it Dominic?
Two awful realizations fled through my mind. The day we went to Ullapool, someone indeed had left the gas on in my room, and the room stoppered up like a time bomb. It could have been an accident, and my own fault. Or it could have been deliberate. And Dominic could so easily have done it
And the day on the road to Achbuie, when someone stood on the hillside and fired down at me with a rifle, that, too, could have been an accident. Or it could have been deliberate. And Dominic could so easily have done that, too. There was time and more for him to get home on the road, while I fought my way through the bracken and the birchwood. And he had the rifle. He had even shown it to me. But why? Was he calmly insane enough to show the would-be victim the murder weapon? Or had it been some tremendously elaborate attempt to feign innocence?
I left him standing by the kitchen door, and left the room quickly and went out to the washing line. I had to think, away from him, without him watching me.
If Dominic wanted to get rid of me, why try to kill me? He was the reason I was here, he could simply fire me and send me away. I recalled then, shakily, that he had tried to do just that. For my safety? For my safety from himself?
Mechanically I unpegged the string of Caitlin’s little playsuits and shirts, looking down from the windy drying green to the grey-black roof of Sron Ban.
I remembered the way he had held me, when we ran from the gas-filled room. I remembered the look on his face when I told him about the shooting. Even the day he told me to leave, he told me also that he loved me. He could not possibly care so much about me and still try to kill me. And yet, caring for me had not kept him from striking me so hard that my face still ached in the cold wind.
I stood still by the empty, flapping clothesline, with the bundle of sweet-smelling baby clothes in my arms. Evening was closing in. I wondered if I had the nerve any longer to go down there and spend the night under that roof with that man.
Unconsciously I rubbed my aching cheekbone. Then I caught myself and dropped my hand. I did not really doubt that Dominic could kill. I had seen what he could do in anger. But I knew him well now, and I was sure about one thing: he might do anything in a fury ‒ he might even commit murder ‒ but he could never, in cold blood, plot a murder.
There was nothing cold in him, nothing calculating. If he had any idea how to plan things, he probably wouldn’t be in the trouble he was in now.
I smiled slightly to myself. I was sad and ashamed for him. It didn’t seem worthy of him to run a petty little smuggling business for a few extra dollars he hardly needed. He didn’t seem like a man to whom money could mean so much. Suddenly I just couldn’t believe it did. But if he wasn’t smuggling whisky, then what was he doing?
I shook my head, my hair whipping loose about my face. I didn’t want to know. Tightening my hold on my bundle, I started cautiously down the muddy steep hill to the silent house at its feet.
Chapter Twelve
Caitlin sat on the bed, investigating the lines of quilting on the cover. She had a box of chessmen that she’d persuaded me to surrender to her, and she now set them in curving formation along the patterns of the quilt.
It was mid-morning on a late August day. The weather was perfect, the loch still as black glass, the wind dead, a wide blue sky above from which the sun washed hill and fields with pure white light.
Summer in the Northwest Highlands was short and uncertain, broken for days at a time with storms that would make autumn proud: grey and dull and cold for days. It was by nature a wet, cold, Arctic, and uneasy land. But when the sun did, rarely, shine, it shone like nowhere else on earth.
On a day like this I loved Sron Ban so much I never wanted to leave. I was sitting by my window, brushing my hair dry in the sunlight that poured through the open sash. I had washed Caitlin’s hair, too, and it fluffed out now, dry and silky, down her straight little back. She was a bonny child, and she would be beautiful when she was grown. I wondered if I’d ever see her in her womanhood.
I leaned easily against the papered wall of the dormer. We were alone at Sron Ban, Caitlin and I, and it was quiet and relaxing. I missed Dominic when he was away, but when he was here, the tension grew between us like hearty weeds. The soil was rich for it, and we had both sewn the seeds. There was friendship between us, at times there was something like love, but there was never any peace around Dominic.
There was a loud happy shout from below the window; I leaned out and laughed and waved hello. Seumas Cameron was walking up the road from Achbuie, striding great long bouncy strides, his hair flopping and shining the colour of the sun.
He wore jeans and a long purple shirt with wide, loose caftan sleeves. A purple band was tied around his head, keeping the hair from his eyes. He had seen me in the window and we waved and shouted a conversation until he was at the garden gate.
Caitlin scrambled from the bed and asked to be held up at the sill to see. She waved, too, remembering him and the horse rides, I imagined.
‘Fair lady in the tower, how’s the coffee today?’ Seumas called up from the gravel path in the rose garden.
I remembered then the last time and the bitter words I had had with Dominic about it. I made no answer, and in response to my silence Seumas said, with his wide smile, ‘Tea?’
I shook my head. ‘Look,’ I said, ‘I’m awfully busy today, I really haven’t time.’
He looked amazed and said with mock horror, ‘No time for coffee? What’s happening to the world?’
What, indeed, I thought, angry with myself for being rude, and furious with Dominic for forcing me to be rude.
‘No,’ I said sharply, wanting to end the conversation. ‘I just haven’t time.’
Seumas stood very still, watching me, and then he said clearly, ‘Look, Carrie, did I get you in some kind of trouble last time? Weren’t you supposed to entertain people or something?’
‘No,’ I said quickly, my surprise sounding in my voice. Did he know, somehow, or was he just quickly intuitive? ‘Look, will you please go away, I’ve got work to do.’ He guessed then, hearing the tension in my voice and catching the way I glanced instinctively to the road to see if Dominic were coming.
He looked up at me sadly, arms raised, palms upward, and said, ‘Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair?’ I laughed, resting my face on my hands. But it wasn’t so very funny. Dominic hadn’t made me a prisoner in a tower, but I was hardly free either.
‘If I can’t come in, can you come out?’ Seumas called. ‘Like Thursday night, perhaps?’
‘What’s Thursday night?’
‘The Thursday Night Dance in the village hall in Ullapool. It’s pretty fierce, but most of the participants survive. Would you like to come?’
‘How can I refuse when you put it so nicely?’ I said.
His smile broadened again to its natural state. ‘Thank you,’ he said, as if he really was grateful. ‘Eight o’clock?’
‘Yes, fine,’ I said, smiling and waving goodbye as he retreated obediently down the gravel path. I felt a lot better. I’d made up to him for my lack of hospitality, and I hadn’t broken the rules. Dominic could prevent me from having visitors, but he couldn’t object to my going out. Or so I thought.
Maybe deep down I realized otherwise. Maybe that’s why I didn’t tell him either that Seumas had come and asked me out or that I had agreed to go.
On Thursday afternoon I gave Caitlin her supper at five as usual and then carted her and her pyjamas down to Grisel MacLeod. I was hardly going to ask Dominic to baby-sit for me, and anyhow, I didn’t know when he’d be in. I never did.
I prepared a casserole and left it in the oven. I was serious about my job and I wasn’t going to be acc
used of letting my work go. Still I had a right to some time off, I assured myself angrily, because somehow going out was making me feel guilty.
Upstairs I changed into a long swirly tweed skirt and a low-necked cotton peasant blouse that usually passed on most occasions. I had no idea what degree of formality was favoured in the Ullapool village hall.
Outside I heard a car pull up and went quickly to my bedroom window, pulling the curtain aside. It was Seumas in an old purple Austin Sprite. He was early, and I was pleased at that. Dominic wasn’t back yet, and I was glad that I would not have to explain where I was going. Seumas bounded up the gravel path to the door, but I was already at the doorway, wrapping my heavy crocheted shawl around my shoulders.
I shut the door behind me and stepped out to meet him.
‘You look so pretty,’ he said softly, taking my hand. I looked up at him. He was wearing his usual jeans, this time topped by a short red velvet embroidered caftan. He had a purple cape around his shoulders, tied at the throat, and the blond hair waved smoothly over that.
‘So do you,’ I said, laughing. But he didn’t look girlish; he looked medieval and romantic, like a knight.
He bowed over my hand, like a knight, theatrical and graceful. Still holding my hand, he led me to the car, opened the door for me. I got in, and he stood waiting while I arranged my skirt around my ankles so that it wouldn’t catch in the low door. He smiled then and shut the door, coming around to the driver’s side and climbing in.
There was something leisurely and easy about him, like a big cat, unhurried and graceful. He drove in the same manner, easily and well, with a calm, unexcitable sureness. When he found Angus MacLeod’s gate shut at the border of the crofts, he got out patiently and swung it open without comment. I smiled briefly; Dominic hated that gate; it made him slow down. I relaxed and hardly noticed the road, passing the Achbuie curve without thinking.
On the moor road, we passed Dominic in the Range Rover. It was a single-track road, like most in that area, and drivers are obliged to alternate the courtesy of pulling over in the sign-posted car rests to let the other pass.
Dominic was nearer a car rest than we were, but it didn’t surprise me to see him pass it without slowing. It didn’t surprise Seumas either; he speeded up slightly to reach the next little widening of the road, this one nearer to us than to him, in time to park and let Dominic pass.
He never slowed, and did not recognize us, though Seumas gave a friendly wave as he went by.
‘Your boss,’ he said, nodding over his shoulder.
‘Uh huh.’
‘It was nice of him to give you the evening off,’ Seumas commented.
‘He didn’t,’ I said abruptly. ‘He didn’t know I was going.’
‘Why not?’ Seumas said, glancing briefly sideways.
‘I’ve a right to some time off,’ I said sharply.
‘I’m sure you have,’ Seumas replied easily. ‘Wouldn’t he agree?’
I paused, tense and nervous. ‘I don’t know,’ I said hesitantly. I didn’t want to talk about Dominic.
Seumas sensed that perhaps; anyhow, after another quick glance, he dropped the subject and we talked about other things for the rest of the drive.
He told me about his home in Greenock, near Glasgow, and his family who still lived there. He told me about the London School of Economics, where he had met Stephen Griffiths; and the excitement of that radically political college.
‘But you left?’ I said.
He was quiet for a long time. Then he said slowly, ‘When I was a boy, I wanted to be a doctor or a missionary or something. You know what it’s like when you’re young, you have this beautiful drive to do something great. Well’ ‒ he shrugged, smiling ‒ ‘I wasn’t much good at biology, so I gave up medicine. Then when I got into work with the church, well, I drifted into social work. Somehow that seemed more real and more important. Then the next thing was politics, when the social work never seemed to get things done fast enough. You know the progression, Carrie, don’t you?’ he said suddenly with another quick glance.
‘I think I do,’ I said slowly, remembering the path Danny and I had taken in college, from writing to senators about the war; to sit-ins, gentle guitars, and peace songs; to angry chanting demonstrations, until one day we were all in the streets and there was tear gas and the papers were calling it rioting. I knew the progression.
‘Well, the politics got pretty strong. There was some trouble. I was suspended for a while, and I had time to think, and’ ‒ he paused, swinging carefully around the turn onto the main road near Braemore ‒ ‘to paint.’
‘Didn’t you paint before that?’ I asked.
‘Oh yes. Always. It was always there; it was something that was always with me, just part of life. But I never thought it was worth enough, I mean as a thing to do. There were so many more important things to do.
‘I’m still not sure it’s worth enough,’ he said slowly, ‘but it got a hold on me, during that term off. I couldn’t ignore it any longer. Then somehow when it was time to go back to LSE, there I was registering at the art college in Edinburgh. That’s how it’s been since. I love to paint, it’s everything. But I’m still not sure it’s enough.’
‘Art gives more happiness than anything in the world,’ I said because I believed it.
‘Not to people who are hungry,’ Seumas returned instantly.
I sat silent, studying his strong beautiful profile. I had no answer to that.
He was serious for just a few moments, then he tossed back the blond hair, grinning at me. ‘Well, we’ve had my life story, now we’ve got from Braemore to Ullapool to have yours.’
I started to tell him about my home on Long Island, my parents, where I went to college. I ended up telling him about Danny and the war and how we had felt about it. And how Danny eventually went anyhow, and died out there for a cause he didn’t believe in.
Seumas seemed to understand it all better than anyone I had ever shared it with before.
I didn’t tell him about my baby. That was one thing I still found too hard to talk about. I had never even told Dominic that.
Suddenly we were in the narrow crowded streets of Ullapool. We had been so involved in conversation I hadn’t noticed.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said quickly, ‘I didn’t mean to be so solemn about everything.’
He was parking the car neatly in a miniscule space between two others. Switching off the engine, he turned to me and said softly, ‘Don’t be sorry, Carrie. I asked about you; I really did want to know.’ He slipped off his seat belt and opened the door, coming around to open mine. As he bent to help me out, he said, gesturing over his shoulder to the open doors of the hall from which music drifted in waves into the street, ‘Anyhow this place is a sure cure for solemnity.’
It was. It was also a sure cure for sanity. The hall was a small wood-panelled building with narrow church-like windows and a small stage raised at one end and decorated with a plaque in honour of those who had erected the building.
The little dance band occupied the stage, clustered around one microphone. There was an accordionist, a drummer, and a fiddle player, all wearing kilts, the traditional tweed jackets, and heavy white woollen stockings. The music was bright and loud and bouncy. Occasionally the fiddler or the accordionist would step to the microphone and sing. The crowd all knew the songs, and the chorus was filled in by the whole room, with occasional loud shouts and drunken solos from the group of men and boys nursing a whisky bottle in the corner.
Apparently the Thursday Night Dance was a regular and popular event. People came from all around, not just from Ullapool, but from the country villages and crofts round about. The room was packed and it reminded me of the old high school dances after basketball games. Only here there was no narrow division of age groups. Young and old came, and young and old danced.
It was in every way a very mixed group of people. There were young West Highland men in kilts, and others in bell-bottomed trousers and
flowered shirts. Some of the girls were modern and made up with shadowed eyes and layers of eyelashes, wearing short miniskirts or long flounced dresses. Others were traditional, pretty Scots girls with pink-cheeked, unmade-up faces, in knee-length tweed skirts and fair-isle sweaters.
And there were young married couples, and older married couples, too, hard-working country people, sturdy farm women, light as girls on their feet in a fast-paced reel.
There wasn’t anyone quite like Seumas, though. Eyes turned to us as we entered, and followed him, in his swirling cape, as he strode down the room. There was a sharp snicker from a young man in farm work clothes who leaned, a little drunkenly, against a panelled wall.
‘Will yer look?’ he said loudly, jabbing a somnolent companion. ‘Will yer look at the big jessie?’ I didn’t know what he meant, but I could guess. I tensed, glancing at Seumas, but he just smiled, not caring in the slightest, and waved in a big friendly gesture.
The two at the wall stared, taken aback. Then one of them grinned and raised his bottle of whisky in acknowledgment. I smiled to myself. Seumas had an easy way of making peace around him. I also had a feeling that for all his clowning and good nature, he could handle himself in a fight. He had the confidence of a man who didn’t need to prove himself.
It occurred to me that the two boys with the whisky bottle might have reached the same conclusion. They didn’t pursue the point, anyhow.
Seumas stopped by a line of empty folding chairs, undid the tie of his cape in a smooth gesture, and slipped it off his shoulders, laying it across a chair. ‘Would you care to dance, my lady?’ he said, blue-green eyes full of teasing light.
‘Yes, thank you,’ I answered, dropping my shawl on top of his cape and taking his offered hand. The band played a waltz, a Scottish waltz, the old-fashioned kind, fast and stirring.
Seumas was a delight to dance with. For all his flamboyance, he had a firm, sure control of his long, seemingly awkward body. He was light and exquisitely graceful on his feet. He whirled me round and round, my skirt swirling around my ankles, making me feel free and feminine and pretty. People watched us, and smiled.
Highland Fire: captivating romantic suspense full of twists Page 13
