“America’s hours behind us, and apparently he had time. Take a look and tell me what you think.”
Self-conscious while he watched her, Anna began to read. Almost immediately she laughed aloud—and she kept laughing. Graham Connor had managed to translate the play into modern English without altering its character, and the smaller parts were all delightfully more bungling and filled with quirks that would only seem quirkier when played by amateurs. Connal had penciled in notes about who should play what role, and she could almost picture different people in the village playing the parts—because they were the parts. All they had to do was draw from their life experience and be themselves.
“Do you like it?” Again there was a thread of anxiousness in Connal’s voice.
For the first time, Anna realized the risk he’d taken, the enormity of the favor he had asked of Graham Connor with no guarantee that she—or the talentless amateurs in the production—would be willing to work with what Graham gave them. Let alone do it justice.
“It’s genius,” she said, “and you’re brilliant for coming up with the idea and being willing to talk Graham Connor into writing it. How soon could he have it finished?” Then she had another thought. “But you aren’t paying him for it, are you? I don’t think the village fund will stretch that far.”
“Don’t worry about money. Graham likes to tinker. If the production goes off well, he’ll either release the modified play for royalties, or he’ll write it off as a favor for a friend who’s gotten him out of a jam or two in the past.” He smiled. “Money’s not Graham’s concern, and I imagine he can finish the revision in the next couple of days. So, is that settled, then?”
“Gratefully. Although I imagine there will be a few people in the village who feel this hits a bit too close to home. Sorcha, for example. Also Rhona won’t be happy.”
“Rhona will have to live with it. Victoria is booked, but Vanessa Devereaux is tentatively willing to play both Hippolyta and Titania. She and Pierce Saunders said they could come so long as they only have to be here for the final dress rehearsal and the two performances on Friday and Sunday. And Julian”—Connal paused with a barely perceptible wince—“can’t wait to get here. He’s finishing up a film and said to look for him in a couple of weeks.”
Elspeth had gotten up to get more tea. She turned with the teapot in her hand. “Vanessa Devereaux? The Vanessa Devereaux?”
Connal raised an eyebrow, as though that were obvious. “Is there another one?”
“Oh, my goodness.” Elspeth’s cheeks went pink, and she came over to hug first Connal then Anna. “This is fantastic, Connal. Anna. Only wait until I tell the others! Or you should tell them. You should definitely get the credit.”
“I only agreed to do this on the condition that I wouldn’t be credited, remember? That’s rather the entire point.” Connal turned back to Anna, his eyes smiling. “Now. About that lunch of ours. Can I pick you up at noon?”
Working together at the table in the sunny kitchen, Anna and Elspeth knocked as much off their enormous to-do lists as they could before lunch: phone calls to vendors for the main tent and rental chairs, crowd control ropes, velvet curtains for the stage they would need to build, not to mention trophies for all the athletic events and dance events and the piping competition. There were also the craftspeople to contact—renting out booths for food and crafts was a big part of the projected income needed for the Village Hall.
Then there was the matter of a graphic artist.
“Couldn’t JoAnne do the posters to save some money?” Anna asked as Elspeth complained about the prices on the websites she’d been studying. “The work she’s done for you on the museum placards is beautiful.”
“It is, and you should see her portraits. But she’s still spitting mad about us making the festival bigger. She’s scarcely speaking to me at all, much less ready to lift a finger to help.”
“How can she still be mad if Connal isn’t?” Anna glanced up from her laptop.
“She’s a sweet girl, but a bit of an odd duck. It’s herself she’s protecting as much as Moira, I suspect. Her own sanctuary here in the glen where she can work on her art in private.” Brows drawing low over clouded eyes, Elspeth stared out the mullioned window above the sink. “Her mother’s a school friend of mine,” she said, “and I thought I was doing her a favor helping JoAnne get the job taking care of Moira. Now I’m not so sure. The girl’s got more talent than her father ever had, but she grew up watching the way he swaggered around, convinced the world owed him a living as an artist. JoAnne’s afraid to show her art to anyone who matters for fear they’ll reject her the way they rejected him. She couldn’t love Moira more if Moira were her own, but she’s hiding here in the glen, same as Connal. I suppose remote places tend to collect broken souls.”
“You think Connal’s broken?” Anna asked.
Elspeth smiled gently. “I think every person is lost and broken in some way. Our own ways.”
Anna thought about JoAnne and Connal both protecting Moira so fiercely. Not that Moira wasn’t worth protecting. Maybe Anna had no right to think so, having known Moira for a few short hours, but it struck her that the girl was stronger than anyone gave her credit for being. Stronger and smarter.
Children were at that age, weren’t they? Anna herself hadn’t been able to go to the police or the pageant management and report the judge who had tried to touch her, but she could have. She would have if her mother had only let her. Even then she’d known that there were things you shouldn’t hide. Things you couldn’t hide. Maybe if she’d faced those demons then, she wouldn’t have spent her whole life trying so hard to be perfect and not ruffle any feathers.
Was that part of the reason she had agreed to marry a man she wasn’t head over heels in love with? She hated to admit it, but maybe it had been less painful to say yes to Mike, to go along, than it would have been to have to move out and start all over again, to acknowledge that she didn’t want to settle for someone who didn’t leave her ruffled.
Love was supposed to be messy, wasn’t it? Wild and free and a little dangerous. Love was meant to give you the confidence to soar, to fly, knowing there would always be someone to catch you if you fell.
Anna tried not to worry that it was Connal’s face she saw in her mind’s eye as she had that thought. Connal’s face, not Mike’s. Not Henry’s.
She forced her mind back to her work. Leaving the decision of choosing a graphics firm to Elspeth, she concentrated on the intricate puzzle of matching committees with volunteers and assigning them the most appropriate of the hundreds of tasks that needed to be done. The trick to any successful event, she had learned long ago, was to make everyone involved feel as if they’d been useful and heard and appreciated. She suspected, though, that she’d go deaf before everyone in Balwhither had their say.
Lost in the task, she jumped when Elspeth tapped her lightly on the shoulder.
“I hope you’re not planning on going out with Connal dressed like that?” Elspeth said, smiling down at her. “You’ll freeze, and he’s going to be here in fifteen minutes.”
Anna swept the papers back into their folders and charged toward the stairs. On the kitchen threshold, she turned back. “Are you sure it’s all right for me to leave you with all this? You’re not taking on too much, are you?”
“I’ll rest when the festival is over. I’m the one who got us into it, after all, so don’t try to use me as an excuse for being nervous about going out with Connal.” Elspeth came over and drew Anna into an embrace that smelled of cinnamon, vanilla, and the heather sachets she kept in her sweater drawer. “I’m just thankful you are here. For many, many different reasons, including the fact that we need you.”
Anna closed her eyes and felt damp warmth press against her lashes. Honestly, she needed to be here far more than anyone needed her. The chance to bury herself in meaningful work and help others had let her step away from her own problems enough to gain perspective, to discover things about hers
elf. That was the best gift anyone could have given her at this point in her life.
“The gratitude is all on my side,” she said, squeezing her aunt back so hard she embarrassed herself. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d given in and gone to Ohio like Mother wanted. Or sat around feeling sorry for myself in my apartment while I sent out resumes to a million law firms that were never going to hire a lawyer someone else had fired.”
Elspeth smoothed a strand of Anna’s hair and tucked it behind her ear. “Things happen for a reason. I firmly believe that, but sometimes we have to give them a little help. And we have to stop running long enough for the good in life to catch up with us.”
Something in Anna’s chest split open and inflated like a balloon, something full of hope, longing, and wonder. A red balloon, and she wanted to hold it in her fist and run with it up and down the loch while it caught the wind and flew.
Heat and Sweetness
I listened, motionless and still;
And, as I mounted up the hill,
The music in my heart I bore,
Long after it was heard no more.
William Wordsworth
“The Solitary Reaper”
Anna wore her warmest coat and sturdiest shoes, as Connal had requested. The climb wasn’t long, but it was steep and required scrambling over sodden ground made more difficult by the half-dormant heather and the low bushes of clustered blaeberries that grew beneath it.
“People confuse them with blueberries,” Connal explained, “but they’re different. Bilberries, I think, is the proper English term for them.”
“And I always thought Gregor Mark was English, but listen to you now.”
“Aye.” Connal laughed. “My father took us away from the glen when I was twelve and moved us to London. The accent’s been creeping back on me bit by bit. Here, mind your step.” He caught Anna’s elbow when her feet skidded on a wet clump of grass.
Elsewhere in the glen, there were trampled-down paths that would have made for easier walking. Between the museum and Inverlochlarig, there was even a small carpark, deserted now, that gave access to Beinn a’ Chroin and Ben More at the far end of the glen and Beinn Tulaichean and Cruach Ardrain, the nearest four of the high Munros that rose above the smaller hills. Connal had no interest in any of those more traveled paths. Hiking trails too often came with hikers, and though he laughed it off by saying he wanted to have Anna to himself if they were going to have a date, even now he wore a cap and sunglasses to screen his face.
Still, the climb wasn’t bad. On the worst of it, he was careful to walk beside Anna, steadying her anytime she missed her footing. Otherwise, he twined his hand with hers. Which wasn’t steadying at all.
His touch was unnerving. Every aspect of the day and the climb conspired to make Anna feel ready to burst out of her skin.
For once, the Highland drizzle had given way to a brilliant sky. Rain and grass and wildness perfumed the wind, and already on the slope behind Inverlochlarig House here and there a jonquil or a violet bloomed, providing a sharp burst of joyous color that struck Anna like an unexpected gift.
Halfway up the slope, they reached a gully sheltered from the wind. Connal stopped behind her and put his hands across her eyes. “Don’t look yet,” he said, and then he spun her around, her back brushing his chest and her skin warming beneath his fingers. He took his hands away. “Now open your eyes. What do you think? Was it worth the hike?”
“Oh yes,” Anna breathed.
The glen spread out below her: the two lochs, the scattered farmhouses and the harled white stone buildings clustered in the village, the turquoise hotel and, just beneath them, the two gray mansions, Inverlochlarig and Breagh House, though the first dwarfed the latter. Low to the ground, the temperature was dropping instead of rising, a cold front sweeping in. Wraiths of fog had formed on the lakes, giving the whole picture an enchanted appearance, as if any moment a hand with a sword might emerge from the water, or Oberon and Titania might step out from the woods with their fairy hosts, laughing at something that Robin Goodfellow might have done.
“It’s magical.” She turned back to Connal and found him watching her instead of looking out at the glen.
“I believe it is,” he said, his breath hitching just a little. He dipped his head and caught her lips with his own.
Heat and sweetness were instantaneous. Delicious. But Connal drew back after too brief a moment and swung the dark backpack off his shoulders. From it, he removed a red wool tartan blanket, which he shook out onto the ground, and a lighter cashmere one, which he tucked around Anna’s shoulders as he urged her to sit. When she’d complied, he produced a bottle of wine, two crystal glasses carefully wrapped, a loaf of crusty bread, several boxes of food, plates, cutlery, and a pair of crisp linen napkins.
“I’ll admit, this is a little more elaborate than I was expecting when you offered up a picnic,” she said, helping him pop the lids from containers of smoked salmon pâté, Scotch eggs, individual cold beef pies, and golden-brown Empire biscuits with gleaming candied cherries set atop perfect dollops of creamy icing.
The wine gurgled into her glass as he poured, ruby red shot through with sunlight. “This should be champagne, since I told you it was a date. But I have to confess”—he smiled at her—“I didn’t make the food. That was Agnes. I’m a little afraid of her, so we’ll have to eat every bite, or I won’t hear the end of it.”
Anna’s stomach growled as if on cue. She and Connal both laughed, and they watched each other while they filled their plates and ate amid easy conversation and occasional comfortable silences.
“So do you bring all your dates up here?” Anna asked, lightly but also seriously.
“I don’t know if I should admit this, but I’ve never had a date here in the glen before.”
“Never?” Anna let her lashes screen her eyes. “Then what do you do for company?”
“Moira’s usually all the companionship I need, though I still have friends to visit. Julian Ashford, for one. I meet up with them in different places. Women, too, occasionally—if that’s what you’re asking. But I’m discreet. I can’t afford to stir up tabloid interest.”
“Don’t you miss it, though?”
“Miss what?”
“The excitement of acting. Of being a star. Being able to go out in the world—to own the world.”
Connal stretched out on the blanket and propped himself on one elbow. “I had the fame long enough to realize that celebrity isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. I loved being an actor, don’t get me wrong. Sometimes I miss that part of it, the chance to put on someone else’s skin and see how and why they are who they are, what makes them shift and change and settle into patterns of behavior. I miss the challenge of becoming someone else, and the brief release of not being myself. But honestly? No, I don’t miss being Gregor Mark.”
“So you’ll never go back to it? Not even when Moira is grown and has her own life?”
“Whatever Moira wants, I’ll support her with every inch of my being. I’m not an ogre, and I won’t try to keep her here a minute longer than she wants to stay, but the world is cruel. I’ll protect her from it as long as I can. We like to pretend that we can remake it with speeches of inclusiveness or do-good campaigns. Maybe in a decade or two or three, those ideas will have truly taken root. Realistically, I doubt it. Beauty is still prized too highly, and the lack of it is penalized. Moira’s palsy would be less noticeable if the other half of her face was less beautiful than Isobel’s. If she weren’t Isobel’s daughter. And mine.”
“Have you decided what you’ll do about letting her go to the festival? Can’t she go without you? I could hear in her voice how much she wanted to go the Lochearnhead Games and hear the pipers. And you said yourself it would be cruel to have all the activities here when she can’t go.”
“People will stare even if they don’t know who she is. There’s at least one more surgery when she’s ready for it—when she makes the choice herself�
�but she’ll never be as perfect in the eyes of the world as she is to me. All I can do for her is keep her away from the attention and tabloids saying cruel things long enough to let her grow into the person she is meant to be. Long enough for her to see who she is instead of what she looks like.”
Anna studied him. He was staring down into the wine in his glass as though he could see Moira’s future written there. But there was no such thing as a crystal ball. Anna couldn’t help thinking how similar Connal’s speech was to the things her own mother had so often said to her. With one significant difference: Connal was fighting to protect Moira from the world of superficial judgments until she was comfortable enough in herself to meet it. Anna’s mother had tried to mold Anna to fit into that world.
Anna took Connal’s hand and brought it to her lips. If she’d tried to speak right then, her voice would have given her away. Connal sat up and shifted beside her. Her legs were folded beneath her, which made her tilt against him. Which wasn’t a bad thing.
Not that it was a good thing either. At some point, there was going to be a reckoning for the time she spent with him, and it was becoming increasingly obvious that the bill might be too high for her heart to pay.
Still, she decided to worry about that later. For three years, she had let herself settle for Mike and a nice, safe romance, and where had that gotten her?
Right here, her inner voice answered. Right now.
She was here with Connal, and for once, she was going to fight to stay firmly in the moment. As long as she was here, as long as Connal remained interested, she was going to enjoy every second they had together.
Casting Doubt
Lovers and madmen
have such seething brains,
Such shaping fantasies,
that apprehend
More than cool reason
ever comprehends.
William Shakespeare
Lake of Destiny Page 10
