“So,” her eyes had sparkled with hopeful anticipation, “my father tells me that ye are very interested in the smith’s trade, and have even made yer own sword?” Her eyes fluttered at the potential innuendo which hung around the word ‘sword’. “I’d like tae see it if I might?”
Callan had risen from his place with all the dignity he could muster.
“Yer pardon, miss, but I must visit the privy.”
The slight was so evident that he regretted it immediately. He had made his own sword and was very proud of it. He had learned the skill from the castle smith, old Donal McGraw, who had come to live with the MacPhersons in the years following the agreement of the truce. He liked Donal because the old man did not treat him like a princeling, or an heir, or anything other than an interested lad. Callan, an intelligent, practical, physical young man, had no taste for the polite political games which his role as heir to the clan obliged him to participate in.
And so, Flora Grant’s request to see the sword he had forged for himself touched a sore spot. He viewed his journey through learning the smithing skill from old Donal as a deeply personal thing, and the thought of using it as a playing piece in this ridiculous game of courtship for the sake of alliance appalled him. In truth, he had needed to visit the privy, but there was no need to use that to get out of the conversation in such a blunt way. He was just no good at this.
Callan, stood in the corridor, facing his father, who had followed and cornered him as he exited from the privy. In his mid-forties, Murdo MacPherson was still a big, powerful man, though his hair was streaked with grey and his face was lined with the cares that came with twenty years of managing his clan’s affairs. Callan had inherited his father’s build and stood almost as tall as the older man. The boy knew that if he drew himself up to his full height, he could have towered over his father, whose shoulders were now a little stooped, but he did not wish to do so. Instead, he bowed his head and said what he knew he needed to say.
“Och, I’m sorry, father, I’m just no good at this kind o’ thing, and the question caught me off guard. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder, and I’ll show her the blade if she wishes it.”
Sheepishly, he added, “I did truly need tae visit the privy…”
His father put his head back and laughed loudly, then swung a brawny arm around his son’s broad shoulders.
“Aye, I ken that this kind o’ thing does not appeal tae ye,” Murdo added kindly, as father and son walked back up the corridor to the dining room. “Tae tell the truth it has only come tae me through long practice. When I was your age, it was all swords, scouting, fighting, and risk, and much as I wouldn’t have us back at war, there were times when that was an easier and more honest task than the diplomatic dancing we must do so much o’ these days.”
“But come on, son, let’s away back in and do our best, eh? She’s a bonnie wee lassie! Give her a smile and talk tae her about yer smithing, there’s a good lad.”
Heat and the smells of rich food hit them as they swung the door to the dining room open and re-entered together. Callan smiled at everyone. His mother, Emily, looked strained and worried. His tall, red-haired twin sister Alice sat on his mother’s right-hand side, and she looked as if she was trying not to laugh. Iain Grant, Flora’s father, sat with a face like thunder, gripping his knife as if he fancied taking a chunk out of Callan with it rather than eating his dinner. Poor, pretty, young Flora Grant looked hurt.
Callan made an effort. He smiled around at everyone and took his seat beside Flora. Flora’s two younger sisters whispered behind their hands and giggled together. Murdo murmured something in Emily’s ear as he took his place beside her, and she nodded, looking relieved. Iain Grant continued to glare at Callan, who ignored everyone and focused his attention on Flora.
“I do beg yer pardon, mistress,” he spoke gallantly, and loud enough for everyone to hear. “Ye were asking a question about my smithing, I believe?” Her eyes lit up like the sun breaking through a cloud.
The meal passed slowly for Callan, and, hard as he worked to attend to the eager young lady beside him, he simply could not muster a romantic interest in her. She was, no doubt, an attractive, personable young woman. There was nothing wrong with her that he could pin down, but there was just no spark. She was too eager, too keen to please him. She hung on his every word and wriggled like a praised puppy every time he asked her a question in return. Really, he thought, she was not much more than a child, dressed up in the clothes of an adult and set to play a part. Well, it was a part he was able to play, too, but he could not muster any enthusiasm for it. He felt like a fraud, and by the time he had come to the end of the meal, he felt exhausted.
A sudden storm had blown up outside, and the servants rushed to close shutters and add more wood to the fire as the wind boomed and howled in the chimney. Iain Grant relaxed a little after seeing Callan’s efforts to make up for the slight to his daughter, struck up a conversation with Emily and Murdo about the weather. It was rare, he told them, but not unheard of for a summer storm to blow up so quickly, though nobody in his household had predicted this one.
“And a rare thing that is, too,” he said, “for there are many here in the castle and down in the town who watch the weather all day long. Fishermen and sailors who hae been on the sea all their lives. Nobody kens the sea and the weather as they do, but every now and then a storm blows up that even they don’t see coming. Woe betide any o’ my folk out caught out on the water in that storm, or anybody else for that matter!”
“Is that likely?” asked Emily. Her native English accent, which had hardly lessened despite the twenty years of living in the Highlands, rang oddly in the hall full of rich Scottish brogues.
“Oh, aye,” Iain warmed to his subject. “There’s a busy sea route not far from our wee bay here. The ships travel back and forth all year from the Queensferry at Edinburgh, north tae Aberdeen and even further afield. It’s July now, and there will be busy traffic back and forth at this time. It would be a dark day for any who were caught near the bay in such a storm.”
Callan was interested. “Why would it be worse here than anywhere else?” he asked. It was not Iain, but Flora who answered this time.
“Because o’ the reef,” she spoke in a sombre voice very different from her girlish tones of a moment ago.
“The reef?” asked Callan.
“Aye, not far from the bay there is a jagged reef o’ sharp rocks that cut up the water. Even on a calm day, ye can see the white water over the rocks if ye stand on the cliffs and look out tae the sea. Any ship that got caught in a hard easterly would be blown onto those rocks. Many have lost their lives there, so many that the folk hae named it Widow’s Bay, for the many widows have been made by the reef. Well is it named.”
Iain Grant frowned at his daughter, and her dark words and melancholy tone cast a chill over the group. Emily shivered.
Callan’s twin sister Alice spoke for the first time. Her voice was bright and hearty as if she tried to fill in for Flora’s lapse.
“That’s rare bad luck! If it were not for that reef, ye would have a valuable little bay there, and could develop it into a trading port.”
“Ah,” said Iain, “but it has been a rare defence over the years, too. No ship may pass the bay tae attack the castle here. There is a way through, but we keep it secret. Also, the reef makes the bay calm, and the fisherfolk o’ the village does well in the deep water there. No, we wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Thunder boomed outside.
* * *
After Callan’s initial gaffe was mended, the meal was more relaxed. The conversation, buoyed by the natural topic of the inclement weather, became more comfortable, and by the end of the meal, the atmosphere was much, much more comfortable. Callan even managed to laugh and flirt a little with young Miss Grant, and Iain’s attitude seemed to change from being offended by Callan’s apparent lack of interest, to being offended by his attempts at flirting. Callan felt he could not win, and the ev
ident, gawking attention from Flora’s two younger sisters, watching the interplay between him and Flora put him even more on edge. Relaxed as the atmosphere may have seemed to the others, Callan felt like he had fought a battle by the time they stood up to leave. The sudden storm passed quickly, and the servants came forward again to open the shutters. Outside the rain had washed the whole country into flashing bright colour, the sun was now breaking through the tattered remains of the storm clouds, blowing south and west, away over the land.
“The rain has stopped,” Alice took her brother’s arm. “I really feel like a ride after such an excellent meal. What do ye say, brother Callan? Will ye join me for a ride out?”
Callan looked at her gratefully and agreed. Before anyone else could suggest coming along, Alice had bid farewell to the gathering and hustled her brother away. The others were dressed in overly fancy clothing for dinner, and it would have taken them some time to change into clothes suitable for riding. Alice, true to her usual style, was dressed in close-fitting riding skirts and a simple, practical jerkin. Callan, too, had resisted the frills and lace on display as ‘the latest fashion from Edinburgh’, and save for a change of boots, was ready to ride.
Alice and Callan did not speak as they exited the dining room into the chill corridor. Despite Callan’s height, Alice was nearly as tall, and they lengthened their strides together as they went down the corridor to the castle’s guest rooms, where they were staying, to change their boots. They had grown up together at Glenoran, the ancestral home of the MacPhersons, under the guidance of their father and mother, their three grandparents, and the castle community, all of whom doted on them as the heirs to the MacPherson name, castle, and ancestral lands. As twins, and the only surviving children of their parents, they were close - indeed, they were so close that it rarely took more than a look for them to communicate. Alice had known precisely what Callan had needed at the end of the torturous dinner and had acted upon it.
Together they changed their footwear quickly, and Alice threw a bottle and some bread, fruit, cheese, and dried meat into a knapsack, more out of habit than out of any anticipation of hunger. Like fugitives both aware that they might at any moment be pursued by eligible Grant daughters wishing to accompany them, they took themselves rapidly down to the stables, readied their horses, and left.
Sunlight blazed down upon them as they rode forth. All around, the clean-washed world glowed after the recent rain. It was July, and the country around them was a riot of green growth. They pushed the horses into a steady canter, riding down from the steep hill where Castle Grant stood proudly, and bypassing the little fishing and trading town which huddled in its shadow. Callan’s fine brown hair whipped about his head, but Alice’s heavy red tresses glowed like burning coals and streamed out behind her in the fresh sea wind like a lion’s mane.
Brother and sister looked at one another, and the light of competition flashed suddenly between them. As the road widened and the green, moody sea lay before them, they spurred their horses on to a gallop and raced each other down to the sand.
At the beach, they pulled their horses in. Both horses were blowing hard from the sudden gallop and tossed their heads and nuzzled at each other at their riders slowed. Callan’s eyes were bright, and the colour was back in his cheeks from the exertion, and Alice smiled to see her brother so restored.
“Ye do not have much affection for young Flora Grant, do ye, brother?” she slowed, letting the horses breathe. He laughed bitterly.
“Is it that obvious? I thought I managed tae hide it after father spoke tae me.”
“Och, it was only obvious tae me by the end. Dinnae worry yersel. Ye did well. The lassie will not ken that ye cannae stand the site o’ her!”
Callan shook his head miserably. “It’s no’ so bad as that, Alice. Don’t tease me, I have not the heart for it right now. It’s not that I can’t stand the sight o’ her, I just… Och, I just can’t imagine marrying a lassie whom I didn’t truly love. I don’t hate the lass, but I’m no’ in love with her, and I can’t see love growing either.”
Alice took pity on her brother. The horses were walking side-by-side now on the firm-packed wet sand. She reached across the gap between them and clapped him on the shoulder.
“Ye are a good man, Callan. But she is young still, younger than we are. There’s a big difference between eighteen years and twenty. I like her. Maybe with time, once she has grown intae more o’ a woman…”
“What’s that?” Callan suddenly pointing down to the waterline. Alice stopped talking, stood up in her stirrups, and shaded her eyes with her hand.
“What?” she said. “Where?”
“There,” and still pointing he urged his horse forward. “There, by the tideline.”
She saw it. There was a dark shape, stretched out on the grey sand down by the water’s edge. It was very still.
“A dead seal?” she suggested doubtfully.
“Come on,” said Callan.
The beach stretched a long, lazy curve between the two high cliffs, and the water which it encompassed was calm. Out in the bay, however, they could see the reef churning the grey-green water into white foam. Beyond the reef the sea was wild, with the wind whipping the spray from the tops of the waves and the sunlight glinting on their sharp edges. The sky above was mottled with the remains of the storm clouds which had passed over and broken up when they hit the land.
As the two riders made their way across the sand toward the dark shape which lay sprawled beside the sparkling tideline, they began to see other shapes. There was wreckage washing up in the bay; wooden spars, broken casks, tatters of sailcloth. Further out, what looked like a whole ship’s mainmast floated on the water. The torn remains of the mainsail trailed behind it, floating just below the surface of the water.
As they got closer, their eyes resolved the slumped shape, and their hearts sank. It was no dead seal. It was the body of a man. There were others, too. Alice looked out over the water, her face grim, while Callan dismounted and put his hand to the man’s throat in the vain hope of finding a pulse.
“This is a sad tale for us tae bring back up tae the castle, sister,” and she nodded.
“There must have been a ship caught by the reef as the storm blew in, just as the Grants said could happen. That’s tragic. All these poor souls.”
“Come on,” said Callan, “Let’s look for others. There might hae been some who survived the smash and made it ontae the beach alive. It’s not that far tae swim.”
He led his horse along the tideline, and Alice dismounted and followed. The remains of the ship were all around them now, and the bay was choked with flotsam. They found another man washed up on the shore, dressed like a sailor, and then another, in the clothes of a priest. There was no sign of life on either of them. Then, they found the footprints.
“Alice!” called Callan, and she hurried over. There were the prints of small feet at the tideline, and they wove drunkenly up the beach toward the dunes.
“What’s this?”
“It looks like someone survived,” she said. “They have made it up tae the sand, and then managed tae walk up the beach. Maybe they were looking for help, or just wanted tae get away from the sea?”
He nodded. “Let’s follow.”
It didn’t take them long. The woman had hauled herself up the beach, stumbling and falling more than once, but getting up again and pressing on. They found her lying in the tough, springy dune grass at the top of the beach, face down and with her arms outstretched as if she had fallen over from complete exhaustion. Callan gave his reins to Alice and ran forward, dropping to his knees beside the prone woman. She was soaked. The seawater from her clothes had pooled like oil on the sand around her. Her head was on its side, but her black hair was plastered across her face like a curtain; he could not see what she looked like.
Without much hope, he slipped his hand under her collar and touched her neck. The woman’s skin was warm, and his heart leapt as he felt the flicker
of a pulse. He looked up at his sister, standing over him with the two horses and a look of concern on her face.
“She’s alive!” he said.
Alice was staring down at the two of them, the prone woman and her brother kneeling, looking concerned.
“What is it, Alice? What’s wrong?”
Alice shook her head slowly.
“I do not like the look o’ this, Callan. My heart misgives me. Can ye not feel it?”
“Feel what?” demanded Callan.
Alice’s mouth was set in a grim line.
“Trouble.”
Chapter Three
Tara’s eyes were gummy with dried saltwater. She pried them open and found herself lying on her back, looking up at a bright sky. Two figures stood over her, their faces silhouetted against the blue. Dreamlike, she lolled her head back and forth, trying to see them. She couldn’t. They spoke, but their voices sounded as if they were far away, or underwater. She felt her eyes close again.
Fighting For A Highland Lass (Defenders 0f The Highlands Book 3) Page 27