Highland Fire: captivating romantic suspense full of twists

by Abigail Clements

  When the accordionist called an eightsome reel, we had no trouble finding a set. Suddenly we were part of a crowd of people that delineated into couples and shaped itself into a square on the dance floor.

  ‘Hey,’ I said to Seumas, ‘get me out of here. I don’t know how to do it.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘An eightsome reel. That’s what they’re expecting, isn’t it?’ I gestured to the other three sides of the square.

  Seumas grinned and leaned over very close and whispered in my ear, ‘Don’t worry, half of them won’t know how to do it either.’

  He was right. But they sure knew how to improvise. The music started with a formal chord, and Seumas bowed to me, and I curtsied quickly in return. Then the band was off and away, and we, too, in a hand-held circle, first to the left, and then to the right. Then there was the exchange and swing of partners and corners, so like the square dancing we did as children.

  But here the girls moved with the light skipping Scottish step, far more graceful than the American style. The men made up for them; half of them were drunk and did their swings and circles with wild gusto and dangerous enthusiasm. The other half had only a vague idea of where they were going and why.

  But Seumas did know the dance, and he, laughing and cheerful, sorted them out when they got too tangled and eventually we managed for brief moments to create the swirling pattern of moving bodies that was intended.

  I found myself swung from one pair of strong crofter’s hands to another, landing with one who reeked of whiskey and whirled me, skittering wildly across the floor. It was the boy who had greeted Seumas so rudely. His disapproval was forgotten now, and he clapped and shouted with the others as Seumas was whirled into the centre of the circle with a red-haired girl. They spun round and round, arms crossed, leaning back, strong young bodies braced each against the other. He released her to her partner and swung me the same way, and then the music stopped and we all collapsed, laughing, against each other.

  The boy who had taunted us flung an arm around Seumas’s shoulders and offered him his quarter-bottle from his pocket, saying, ‘Och, yer no’ bad, man, yer no’ bad.’ Seumas grinned, took a drink, and handed the bottle back. Then he took my arm and we stumbled dizzily across to the line of chairs.

  I flopped down on one of them, and leaned back, exhausted, panting. ‘How did you learn to dance so well?’

  He grinned. ‘Edinburgh. University Country Dance Society. Sometimes it helps to give the folk process a little encouragement.’

  ‘I should have known,’ I said, smiling. ‘Still, at least they do the dances, and at least they make their own music. Maybe it isn’t perfect, but it’s real and it’s their own.’

  ‘Aye,’ said Seumas, ‘it is. You see, it was never meant to be perfect. It was meant to be fun. That’s what’s so good about it.’

  It was fun, and it was good. When the music started up again, Seumas leaped up and grabbed my hand, saying, ‘Come on, you’re not getting away so easily as that.’

  We danced for hours. The music was irresistible, and so was the company. Finally, utterly exhausted, we stumbled off the floor. Seumas wrapped my shawl about my shoulders, took up his purple cape, and we left the room to shouts of oiche mhath and good night.

  Outside, the night air smelled of salt and was wonderfully cool and refreshing. I turned toward the car, but Seumas said, ‘Away with you. It’s time for food.’

  I hadn’t realized I was hungry, but when we got outside the brightly-lit modern fish and chip shop and caught the scent of fish frying, I was suddenly starving.

  Seumas dived into the packed crowd of people that milled about the door and within the shop. Somehow he managed to reach the counter and return in a few minutes with two packages wrapped in newspaper and smelling delicious.

  We walked slowly down the street, eating the batter-fried fish and crisp french-fried potatoes out of the newspaper packages, licking our fingers between bites.

  ‘It’s hardly civilized,’ Seumas apologized. ‘But somehow it tastes a bit better than the coffee and cheese sandwiches they have at the hotel.’

  ‘I’ll bet it does,’ I said, having already experienced the British sandwich elsewhere. And their coffee wasn’t to be discussed in polite company.

  We arrived back at the car, and Seumas crumpled up the newspapers and threw them in the back, behind the seats.

  ‘I clean out every now and then,’ he explained casually, holding my door for me. I got in, and decided not to look in the back at all.

  We drove home, taking our time, talking easily. It seemed to me that I had not felt so relaxed, so happy, or so simply young in years. But still, I could not help glancing instinctively at the line of cars in front of Lower Achbuie as we passed, looking for Dominic’s Range River, half expecting him to be down there with Mary Fraser. He wasn’t. Only the two other Achbuie vehicles appeared in the headlights, parked at the edge of the birchwood.

  We drove on passed the Inneses’ farm, dark against the hill, and the MacLeods’, also dark. It was very late. Sron Ban, too, was dark when we stopped in front of the gate.

  Seumas took me up the path to the door. I thanked him in a low voice for the evening, suddenly conscious of where I was. He held my shoulders and bent down and kissed me with honest affection. I liked it, and I liked him, and I slipped my arms around his neck, under his long heavy hair and kissed him back.

  Then suddenly I felt sharply guilty, and pulled away. I didn’t know if he realized why, but he let me go, and I turned and slipped inside the house.

  I shut the door behind me and stood still. The house was silent and I could hear the crunch of Seumas’s footsteps on the gravel and the squeak and clang of the gate. Then the car started, noisy in the stillness, rumbling around in a half-circle before driving back down the road to Achbuie.

  The house was so silent then that it seemed to be waiting for me to move. Uneasily I stepped into the hallway and walked, feeling my way in the darkness, to the front room where there would be a candle.

  The door slid open under my hand, scraping loudly against the rough floor. There was a dim red light from the dying fire. I stepped into the room, into that dark glow.

  ‘Where the hell have you been?’ a low voice whispered from the darkness.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I gasped out loud, clutching the doorjamb, tense with quick fear. Then I got a hold of myself and whispered, ‘Dominic?’

  ‘Who else?’

  ‘What are you doing up?’ I said, my voice shaking.

  ‘Where have you been?’ he asked again, spacing the words slowly and carefully.

  My fingers tightened on the doorjamb. I could barely see him in the red light of the fire. He was standing by the sideboard, standing very still. I was scared, but I was angry, too. He had no right to wait for me like that, in the dark. And no right to ask where I had been.

  ‘That’s not your concern,’ I said as calmly as I could.

  He moved then, stepping quickly, lightly forward, and I shrank back against the wall. His hands caught my shoulders and he held me there with a painful grip and whispered, ‘It damn well is my concern. I came home late, found you gone, the baby gone. Not even a note saying where you were. What was I to think?’

  I bit my lip, shaking my head a moment. I hadn’t thought of that. I hadn’t thought he’d worry about me. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said slowly. ‘Look, I didn’t think you’d worry.’

  ‘You didn’t think I’d worry?’ he repeated incredulously. ‘You and Caitlin just vanish, and that doesn’t worry me? What do you think I am?’

  ‘We didn’t just vanish,’ I said defensively. ‘Surely you would have tried Grisel’s. We often go down there.’

  ‘Not at eight-thirty,’ he returned justly. ‘Of course, I went to Grisel. I hoped maybe she’d have seen you or something. And then I found that Caitlin was staying the night there, and you apparently were going out. You could have told me, you know. I’ve got a right to know where Caitli
n is, if not you.’

  ‘Caitlin is my responsibility,’ I returned, and then, cruelly because I felt guilty, I said, ‘She’s nothing to do with you.’ I wanted him to be hurt by that. Instead he laughed, an odd sharp laugh, and let me go and turned in the darkness away from me.

  He was silent and after a few moments I said sharply, ‘Do you mind if I put a light on?’ He didn’t answer and I went to the mantel and took a box of matches and lit one and then the other of the two candlesticks.

  I could see him then in the soft light, still standing by the sideboard, leaning against it, looking down at the floor. He said, without looking up, ‘Why didn’t you tell me you were going out?’ I didn’t answer.

  ‘Did you think I’d object?’ His voice was oddly guarded, and when I still didn’t answer, he said again, ‘Where were you?’

  I said quickly and defiantly, ‘I went to a dance in Ullapool, with Seumas Cameron. We passed you on the road, didn’t you see us?’

  After a long pause he said, speaking very softly, ‘No. No, I didn’t.’ There was another silence and then he said, almost to himself, ‘Why Seumas? Why does it have to be Seumas?’

  ‘Why not Seumas?’ I returned angrily. ‘What have you got against him, anyhow?’

  ‘I haven’t got anything against him,’ he said simply.

  ‘Then what’s wrong with me going out with him?’

  ‘I can’t tell you, Carrie.’ He shook his head, turning away. ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘Well, you’re right about that,’ I shouted. ‘I don’t understand at all. What’s wrong with you, anyhow? Are you jealous?’ I flung the last at him with bitter emphasis. He looked up at me, solemn dark eyes full of shadows.

  ‘Yes, I am jealous,’ he said quietly. ‘But that’s not the reason.’

  ‘You’ve got no right to be jealous,’ I shouted.

  ‘I didn’t say I had.’ He smiled a little.

  ‘And you’ve got no right to ask where I’ve been,’ I continued furiously. ‘You’re out all hours, sometimes all night. I never ask where you’ve been.’

  ‘That’s different.’

  ‘Not to me it isn’t,’ I returned.

  He crossed the room slowly, not looking at me, and stood by the fire, shoulders hunched, arms crossed as if he was cold. Then he said without turning, ‘In the future you will tell me where you’re going and when you’ll be back.’

  ‘I will not!’ I shouted indignantly. ‘I’m a grown woman. And you’re not my father.’

  He turned quickly, the flicker of the low firelight in his eyes. There were nearly twenty years between us, but I had never flung that at him before. I shouldn’t have done it then, either. He lunged for me and I jumped back but he was quicker than I was. He had my left wrist firmly in his grip, and as he came closer, his right hand came up, casting a shadow across my face.

  ‘I don’t want to be your father,’ he whispered hoarsely. I pulled against his grip, uselessly, then glared up at him, angry and frightened, and said under my breath, ‘What are you going to do now, hit me again? Is that how you end all your arguments?’

  He looked as if I had struck him. He let my wrist go, dropped his hands to his sides, and stood very still for a moment. Then he flung his arms around me and held me, stroking my hair, burying his face in it. He was shaking, and almost leaning against me. Instinctively I put my arms around him, as I would have with Caitlin, and we stood like that for a long time.

  ‘Why has it always got to be like this between us?’ I said. He didn’t answer, but let go of me and went and methodically banked the fire, setting the screen in front of it. I blew out one candle and took up the other.

  We went together up the narrow stairs, holding hands. At the top we stood a moment, looking at each other in the pale flickering light. Then we went, alone, to our separate rooms and our separate beds.

  I had thought the matter was finished. In the morning I got up early, went to get Caitlin from Grisel, and was back in time to light the fire and make tea before Dominic came downstairs.

  We had breakfast together, peacefully, and sat afterwards by the fire, drinking coffee and talking, while Caitlin played around us, going alternately from one to the other with her doll or her books. Neither of us mentioned last night, or Seumas Cameron.

  Then we went out the front door together, Dominic to go to work, and I to set Caitlin out in the garden. He lifted her and kissed her goodbye as he always did, then put her down on the grass and went down the path.

  He opened the door of the Range Rover and turned abruptly. ‘You are not to see Seumas Cameron again,’ he said. ‘Not here, or anywhere.’ Then he jumped in the seat, slamming the door behind him, not looking at me.

  ‘You can’t tell me that,’ I shouted angrily, but the engine roar drowned my voice and he tore off down the road.

  I was more angry with the cowardly way he had said it than with what he had said.

  I went back into the house and worked inside for most of the morning. I knew instinctively that he would not return for lunch, perhaps not for dinner either. I wondered when he would find the nerve to face me. Perhaps tomorrow. Perhaps he would retreat again to Achbuie and Mary Fraser, or wherever he went at such times. I wouldn’t ask.

  And I wasn’t going to wait around for him either. I tucked Caitlin into the backpack, lifted her up to my shoulders, took the shepherd’s crook from the hall, and went out, slamming the double door shut behind me.

  I worked my anger out on the long walk to Achbuie Farm. When I reached the gate that crossed the road at the divide of the two crofts, I felt a twinge of fear. I hadn’t thought much for a while about the shooting. As time passed and nothing else happened, I shifted it away in my mind, into the realm of the illogical and impossible, where it more naturally belonged. It had stayed there, shut away, but now that I was standing where it had happened, the memory became sharply and chillingly clear once more.

  The gate was standing open. The sheep must be in another pasture, as they often were. I went through and on through the hazelwood to Achbuie.

  The Inneses made me very welcome. We shared a meal and I sat and talked with Rebecca, I sitting on the floor in front of the fire, she working steadily, unthinkingly, at her spinning.

  Rebecca asked me about Seumas, and I realized he had talked about me. I told her honestly that I liked him and that I had enjoyed our evening out at the dance.

  ‘So did he.’ She laughed, twisting the raw wool onto the distaff. ‘He was up here first thing this morning to tell me about it.’ She glanced lightly at the door, which stood open, letting in a long streak of sunshine. ‘He should be back quite soon now, actually. He’s coming to talk about work with Andrew.’

  I had been leaning against the edge of the hearth, relaxed and comfortable. I stiffened automatically and she noticed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ she asked, laughing softly. ‘Are you nervous?’ She was teasing me, treating Seumas and me like new lovers.

  ‘No,’ I said quickly. ‘No, I’d love to see him, I just didn’t expect to see him today.’

  She laughed, tossing back her thick black hair, white teeth showing bright against her tanned skin.

  ‘Then you’re fortunate,’ she said, setting the wheel whirring again with the treadle.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘Very fortunate.’ I wondered defiantly what Dominic would have to say about that. He really could hardly expect me to avoid Seumas, living as we did on the same road, on the same hill. Unless, of course, he really was going to lock me up in Sron Ban as in a tower.

  I heard the children shouting louder outside, and Tammy chanting, sing-song, ‘Seumas, Seumas.’

  There was giggling and a scuffle outside and Seumas came through the door with Tammy riding piggyback and Toby and Caitlin pulling at his floppy trousers, begging for their turns.

  He slid Tammy down his back and then lifted Toby and Caitlin, one under each arm, and carried them across the room. Then he flopped down cross-legged on the floor beside us,
with one of them on either side. Caitlin crawled up on my lap, and I stroked her soft hair as I said hello.

  ‘I saw this,’ he said, grabbing her foot, making her giggle, ‘out in the garden, and I guessed you might be about.’

  ‘Andrew will be back in a few minutes, I should think,’ said Rebecca. ‘Coffee?’

  Seumas nodded gratefully, and when she got up and went to the kitchen, he bent his long legs into a yoga position, sat with his arms extended to his knees in the traditional posture, and said, with his wide honest smile, ‘I am so happy to see you. I missed you all night. You’re beautiful. I love you.’

  I heard Rebecca giggling in the kitchen and I said, ‘Shut up. You’re a flatterer. Flatterers always come to bad endings.’

  He stretched his arms and unwound his legs. ‘This one is going to die of unrequited love apparently.’

  ‘Oh, I doubt it,’ Rebecca said. ‘The children love you. And so do the goats.’

  He snatched, teasing, at the hem of her long skirt, and she teetered with the coffee cups. ‘Stop it, idiot,’ she shouted, and then settled to the safety of the floor beside us. She handed out coffee and said, ‘Frankly, Carrie, we’d all be very grateful if you’d take him off our hands. He’s driving us mad.’ He tussled with her, and she laughed, not retracting anything. I knew from the way she talked that Seumas had told her I was important to him. She was matchmaking to the best of her ability, and I found that I didn’t really mind.

  When Andrew came in, they went together to the far room where Rebecca did her weaving and Andrew wrote. Rebecca explained that they were planning their children’s book, working in Andrew’s spare time.

  She said of Seumas, ‘He’s a terrible clown, Carrie, and an awful tease, but he’s brilliant. He’s so brilliant. You must see his work.’ I agreed I must. What little I had seen of it had certainly whetted my appetite for more.

  They came back into the room and Rebecca said to Seumas, ‘Look, while she’s here, why don’t you take Carrie down to the house and show her your paintings. I’ll look after the little one.’