“I’ll take half of this in for you, shall I?” He stacked his cup with Elspeth’s and slanted a smile at Anna. “And I’m sorry for waving you off talking about the festival earlier. I didn’t want to discuss it in front of Moira, but now that Elspeth has done her best to sweeten me up with that dinner and cleared Moira off, she’s left you to do the heavy lifting of talking sense into me. Is that about the size of it?”
Charm again. Anna suppressed a sigh.
“Did the sweetening work?” she asked.
“My concerns haven’t gone away, let’s put it that way. It may seem like I’m unreasonable, but now that you’ve met Moira, I hope you can at least empathize with what I’m trying to do.”
“Of course.” Responding to the wave of his arm, Anna tucked the cups beneath her chin and, grabbing the plate of leftover pie, preceded him through the doorway. But there must have been something in her expression that she hadn’t intended for him to see.
He hurried to catch up. “Look, I am sorry we got off on the wrong foot yesterday. I swear to you, I’m not generally prone to bellowing at women the first time I meet them.”
The cups rattled against the saucers, and Anna readjusted her chin to steady them. “We were both shaken by the accident.”
“That wasn’t the—never mind.” Connal looked past her as if seeing something else. “For whatever it’s worth, I am sorry, and I didn’t mean to lie to you. I haven’t been Gregor Mark in a decade, and I have no desire to be. I was angry at letting myself be recognized, and I didn’t realize who you were at first.”
“You knew to call Elspeth.”
“I was thinking straighter by the time I reached the car, and I remembered she was expecting you to arrive last night.” Connal trailed Anna into the kitchen. “Please try to understand. It might seem odd to you, but the glen has been a refuge for us. For Moira. I don’t want that to end. Can’t you imagine what the attention would do to her? We’re already careful because of the hikers who use the right of way across the upper part of my land outside the wall. I don’t want to have to keep her locked indoors with hundreds of people on our doorstep. How would I tell her she couldn’t participate in the fun? She’s as much a part of the glen as anyone—I don’t want her thinking otherwise. She looks forward to the procession and the bonfire and the Sighting every year.”
His voice had gone tight, and Anna’s heart squeezed at the thought of seeing hurt or disappointment in Moira’s eyes. What was Connal supposed to say that wouldn’t make Moira feel self-conscious or rejected—or signal to her that people weren’t to be trusted?
“No one would know who she is,” she said.
“Not this year, maybe, but she looks more and more like Isobel as she gets older. Like it or not, we’re setting a precedent. If this first Festival is successful, what happens two years from now when Moira’s the same age as Isobel was in Coronation Square?”
“You could take her away somewhere. Visit a friend for a week.”
“I’ve never taken Moira with me when I do that. Except for her surgeries, she’s never left the glen, and she wouldn’t want to leave with the festival going on. The Sighting is the biggest excitement we have here the entire year.”
It was a horrible, no-win situation for Connal, and Anna felt awful for him. She set the pie plate on the counter beside the sink and lowered the stack of cups, saucers, and dessert plates beside it. “I sympathize,” she said, “believe me, I do, but I have to play devil’s advocate. Elspeth says some of the businesses here are desperate for money from tourism. I researched some of the other Beltane festivals, and if we do this right, we could bring in a thousand people, not to mention press coverage that would help advertise the glen all year long. You’re asking the village to sacrifice a lot.”
“Don’t you think I’m aware of that?” Connal stopped beside Anna and put down his own stack of plates and cups. His arm brushed hers and gave her a jolt of static electricity. “I’m not an idiot. I realize full well that half the farmhouses in the Highlands have been turned into B&Bs, and any pile of stones that has, or ever had, any pretension of being called ‘stately’ has been turned into a hotel. There’s no shortage of competition for tourism, and I’d be blind not to see there are people here in the glen who are having a hard time scraping by. I try to help wherever I can. I’ve offered to pay to rebuild the Village Hall myself if it will keep us from having to turn the glen into a circus. That pig-headed Brando and his MacLaren mates turned me down.”
“It would be generous for you to pay for the reconstruction,” Anna said, bristling at the insult to Brando, “but it wouldn’t increase tourism. Which is what they need.”
“I know that, too. I’m just hoping you can see my position enough to be willing to help me find a solution Moira and I can live with.” Connal’s voice had gone softer, gentler, but his jaw was no less determined.
Anna felt for him and Moira. She did. Which didn’t help anything.
“I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you and Elspeth expect from me. Isn’t this something you and the village would be better off working out between yourselves?”
“Scots will discuss an issue to death. Highlanders will argue any point, small and large. Here in the glen, that argument will go on a hundred years without reaching a conclusion. But they’re more likely to listen to you since you’re an outsider. They know you’ve planned big events before, and you don’t have a history here aside from being Elspeth’s niece. They’ll assume you’re going to be on her side in any dispute between her and myself, and since you came here to organize the festival, you have no reason to try to help me. But I hope you will. I do have a compromise to propose. If the village will agree to turn the procession back at the hotel instead of cutting through Inverlochlarig to go all the way around the glen, and if they’ll have the bonfire back at the village instead of on my property, I’ll open the gate and let the public in for the Sighting on Beltane morning. Just help me convince Brando and the others. Otherwise, Brando will object to anything I suggest, and half the village will follow where he leads.”
Connal stood at Anna’s elbow, close enough that she had to step back to look up at him. But meeting his eyes . . . The kitchen walls shrank in around her.
Clearing her throat, she turned to run the water for the dishes, which involved rummaging under the sink until she found the drain stopper. The dishwashing liquid was dark green and came in a bottle that, appropriately enough for Balwhither, had the name FAIRY SOAP printed on the label. Connal took the bottle from her and squeezed a bit of the liquid into the sink as he submerged the plates. The soap sent bubbles drifting around his head, making him look as though he was surrounded by a thousand winking stars.
As if the universe hadn’t already provided enough reasons for women to look at Connal MacGregor and pay attention.
Shamed
As long as the Fates permit,
live cheerfully.
Sir Walter Scott
Rob Roy
Overlooked by a surly red Highland bull watching from beneath a shaggy forelock in a nearby pasture, Anna bumped Elspeth’s old Volvo station wagon along the single-track road toward the village. Loch Fàil, the long, narrow loch, sparkled on her right, and puffs of white clouds drifted above the braes that ringed the valley.
“Mind the sheep ahead,” Elspeth said as they passed the bright turquoise Braeside Hotel on the hill and approached the bend by the rowan tree. “Davy Grigg never can seem to keep them contained. In part because they’re smarter than he is, and in part because he takes the entire day delivering the mail and gabbing. Most of all because he’s got paralysis of the trousers and can’t abide a lick of farm work.”
“I’ve met his sheep, thanks very much,” Anna said, “and since I almost ran into a bog trying to avoid them, I’m not so sure that people in the village are going to believe I’m halfway competent.”
“You’re not the first those sheep have done in, believe me.” Elspeth chuckled and reached over
to pat Anna’s hand on the steering wheel. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect that Davy’d cut a deal with Brice MacLaren up at the garage to tow tourists out of the muck. You’re only lucky Connal called me first.”
Anna’s thoughts about Connal’s behavior that first night had little to do with luck, but since he’d apologized and explained, she couldn’t hold a grudge. She’d lain awake half the night thinking about him and Moira and the whole situation, and she couldn’t decide who was right. She felt responsible, though, because it had been her own setbacks that had given Elspeth the idea of bringing her to the glen in the first place and gotten the village’s hopes up about increasing tourism. She was here to organize the festival—that had to be her first priority, no matter how much she understood Connal’s concern for Moira.
They were two people. Two. In a village of over a hundred.
The problem was, Moira was incredibly sweet and vulnerable, and when he was being kind and worried about his daughter, Connal MacGregor was intriguing. Charming.
Dangerous to Anna’s thinking.
Pushing the thought away, Anna forced her concentration back onto the road.
Seen in daylight, there were fewer buildings than she’d expected for the size of the population. Apart from the white harled stone homes along the road and those dotted throughout the valley and surrounding hillsides, there was only the modern church beside the ruins of the old one, the shop with an array of breads, pastries, muffins, and scones in the front window, the Library and Tea Room in its look-at-me shade of Pepto Bismol pink, and The Last Stand Inn at the very end of the lake.
“Turn here.” Elspeth pointed to the other single-track road that led past The Last Stand, where the village meeting about the festival was being held.
The L-shaped inn was vaguely Tudor-looking, its white stone walls topped by a steep-pitched roof and its windows framed in wood stained dark by age. Cars and mud-splattered trucks packed the shoulders on both sides of the lane in front of it. Anna searched for a spot to park.
“Watch out!” Elspeth cried, her arm flashing out as if she could pin Anna to the seat.
An enormous golden retriever bounded into the road, tongue lolling and tail wagging.
Anna swerved and headed straight into a blue Toyota parked beside her. She jerked the wheel back and jammed the brake, but that only lessened the angle at which the two cars scraped with a sickening screech of metal. The Volvo shuddered to a stop straight in front of the inn, where people were already pouring from the entrance.
“Shame, you idiot,” Elspeth muttered, glaring at the dog then turning to Anna. “Are you all right, love?”
Anna sat there shaking, and she wasn’t the one on the side of the Volvo that had hit the other car. “I’m sorry. Yes, I’m fine. I’m an idiot, but I’m fine. You? Are you hurt?”
“I didn’t mean you were the idiot. It’s Shame—Seumas—the blasted dog that belongs to Duncan Macara.” Elspeth gestured at the retriever who now sat in the center of the road with his head cocked, staring at the car as if waiting to see if it would do something else as interesting as the crash. “I swear, Davy’s sheep are smarter. And easier to keep corralled.”
Someone tapped on Anna’s window. Intent on the dog, she jumped in her seat and found Brando standing at her window. Still wearing his kilt and tactical boots, he had no jacket this time, only a pale blue T-shirt stretched taut across his arms, chest, and shoulders. Beyond him, people spilled out the door of the inn, many of them familiar to Anna already from her encounter with the sheep, including Davy Grigg and the innkeepers, Flora Macara and her husband Duncan, who owned the dog.
With a sigh, Anna rolled the window down. “I don’t suppose you’d believe,” she said to Brando, “that I’d never had an accident in my entire life before I got here?”
His green eyes laughed at her. “I’ll be happy to pretend I believe you.” He leaned down to address Elspeth across in the passenger seat. “You want me to take the car into town or let Brice have it? Either way, he’s likely got a car you can borrow in the meanwhile.”
“No car,” Anna said. “From now on, I’m walking everywhere. Or I’ll take a cab—if you have cabs here.”
“For you? I’m always good for a lift.” Brando grinned again, waggling his eyebrows at her.
Elspeth groaned and leaned her elbow on the Volvo’s center console to shake her head at him. “Whose Toyota is that? Tell me it’s not Rhona’s new one. What in the world’s the bloody woman doing driving here when she lives a hundred yards up the road?”
“Trying to make sure everyone sees what she’s bought,” Brando said.
“And now she’ll be demanding a new one at the expense of my insurance.”
“My insurance,” said Anna.
“Not on your life—it ought to be Duncan’s insurance if it’s anyone’s, but we’ll worry about all that later.” Elspeth let out a hiss of breath. “Aye, take the car to town tomorrow, please, Brando. If you can spare the time. Park it for now so we don’t miss the meeting.”
“The meeting’s moved out here, it seems to me.” He waved a hand to indicate the gathering crowd and opened Anna’s door, stepping aside to let her out.
Red-faced, Anna considered insisting that she was perfectly competent to park on her own, but who was she kidding? She’d already proven her incompetence the past few days. Really, it was time to crawl back into bed for a week and pull the covers over her head.
She climbed out of the car and had to stand watching, furious with herself, while Brando slid into the driver’s seat without so much as ruffling his kilt. He backed the car away from the Toyota with another ear-jarring screech of metal. A well-preserved woman with an hourglass figure and streaked blond hair emerged from the pub. Shrieking at the sight of the car, she rushed forward on precarious stiletto heels, the flowing fabric of her red dress wrapping around her legs in the wind. Two surly and identical teenage girls followed in her wake.
“What did you do to my car?” she demanded.
“Only a little scrape, Rhona,” Elspeth called out the window as Brando set the car in drive again and lurched it forward. “Terribly sorry, but I’ll make it right—”
“You’d better.” The woman glared as Brando drove away, then she turned to gape at the damage to her car, clutching her small black cashmere cardigan around herself more tightly in the cold. Her expression hardened, and she set off after the Volvo with a determined stride and her daughters trailing behind her.
Anna stood at the side of the road, uncertain what to do. Cheeks burning, she didn’t want to turn to face the assembled crowd.
Flora Macara came over and squeezed her shoulder with a beaming smile of reassurance. “Don’t you worry about Rhona. Elspeth and Brando will sort her out.”
“I should at least go and admit that it was my fault,” Anna said.
“Don’t you feel one whit bad about any of this. There isn’t a soul in this glen that Seumas hasn’t gotten into trouble at one time or another.” Flora’s gaze shifted to where her husband had seized hold of Shame by the collar and was wrestling the retriever back inside the inn from whence, presumably, he’d escaped.
Tall and big-boned, with no makeup and a shapeless dress that had seen too many washings, Flora might have been considered plain except for the fact that her smile was clearly a force of nature. She was the type of woman, Anna suspected, who could wield kindness like a weapon.
“I keep threatening Duncan I’ll give him away one of these days,” Flora continued. “The dog, I mean, not my husband. Though no one’d take either one of them off my hands, and that’s a fact. But come on inside. I’ll get you a drink. You’re shivering.”
Anna didn’t dispute the need. She waded through the villagers in Flora’s wake, murmuring an embarrassed “hello” to the people she recognized—the people who had managed to witness the aftermaths of both her accidents—and nodding and smiling at the unfamiliar faces who pressed in to introduce themselves. They were universally a
mused, but not unsympathetic.
A sandy-haired barrel of a man with a wind-burned face opened the door to the inn for them as Flora and Anna approached. Inside, the lobby was off on the right, while to the left a wide doorway revealed the half-timbered pub fitted with booths and tables, many of them already occupied. Flora slipped behind the bar. “What can I get you, Anna?”
“My dignity back?” Anna suggested, prompting a laugh from the people who’d come in behind her.
“How about a Scottish coffee instead?” Flora asked. “It’s like Irish, except with Scotch, and I throw in a dash of citrus liqueur.”
“Sounds lovely, but it’s barely noon. A bit early for me to start drinking.”
“Nonsense. Never too early to start when you’ve been Shamed.”
Shamed.
It was, Anna thought, the perfect way to describe the last week of her life. And after her two accidents, how was she supposed to stand up in front of all the people who were watching her with equal parts curiosity and amusement to explain the plans she and Elspeth had spent half the night working out?
Turning to look for Elspeth, she found Connal MacGregor instead, entering the pub to the accompaniment of bells and ducking his head to keep from banging it on the low lintel above the door. He was backlit with a faint shimmer around the baseball-style cap he’d pulled low over his forehead, and he was already staring back at her as he started across the room. As if she wasn’t already mortified enough, Anna felt her cheeks heating. She raised her hand in a lukewarm greeting.
Eyes still locked on hers, Connal made his way through the crowd, stopping here and there to exchange a few words with people along the way. Anna couldn’t help watching him, and not just because the light V-neck sweater he wore made it clear he hadn’t let himself go one bit since giving up his acting career. He had the same compelling presence, too, the way he offered a smile each time someone stopped him, the way he leaned down to listen in the noisy room, the way he tipped his head in concentration when people spoke and clasped a shoulder or a forearm or a hand in greeting as if he was genuinely glad to see someone. He was nice.
Lake of Destiny Page 5
