The foreshortened Mrs. Cameron—the one and only Mrs. Cameron—lifted a bonnet emblazoned with a silver crest and blue hackle. “It’s Allan’s. I was thinking Fergie’d enjoy seeing it, since Fergus Mor’s was destroyed. Or so you were saying, Alasdair.”
Not mentioning Dougie, Jean’s cat, Alasdair took the bonnet and settled it on his blond hair tipped with gray. There was the something old, and the something blue, and the something borrowed. Jean herself must be the something new.
With an open, unconstrained laugh, Alasdair took off the bonnet and set it on the table. “You’d best be getting me to the altar, Mum.”
“Oh aye,” replied Rhona, “it’s time Jean was making an honest man of you.” And they strolled from the room.
Smiling—her face was going to hurt from smiling before the day was over—Jean and Miranda made their way down the turnpike stair. Down, not up past the tripping stane, never mind that Jean hadn’t sensed Seonaid ’s ghost since the two of them together, the quick and the dead, realized where Dakota had gone.
Jean missed her little doppelganger. By now she was back home, surrounded by familiar things, anticipating returning to her school and her friends. With a tale to tell, which, unlike many tales, would of necessity shrink in the telling.
Dakota had left Jean her copy of Mysterious Castles of Scotland, inscribing it To my friend Jean. Happy wedding. xoxo, the “i’s” in “friend” and “wedding” dotted with tiny hearts. In time, Jean hoped, Dakota’s tiny, cautious handwriting would expand to fill the space it deserved.
As for Scott and Heather, well, maybe they had mellowed a bit after their scare. Heather had thanked everyone politely and rescinded her threat to post one-star reviews of Dunasheen. Scott had apologized for the episode of the Queen suite even as he handed out business cards. He’d driven his family away not into the sunset but into the sunrise, Dakota waving through the back window until they’d vanished down the drive.
Now the driveway glistened like jet beyond the open front door, where Fergie and Patrick Gilnockie stood in quiet conversation. Jean pulled up beside them while Miranda continued discreetly on around the corner, murmuring about collecting coats.
Gilnockie said, “I’ve had a word with Alasdair, but just so you’re knowing, Jean, Rab’s not confessed. Nancy’s made a statement, though, and Fergus, and we’ve got Dakota Krum’s statement and yours as well, agreeing as to what he said at the old castle. We’ve found traces of blood in the stitching of his raincoat as well, despite Nancy cleaning it.”
Beside the crisp pleats of his kilt Fergie held a sturdy walking stick, its brass handle shaped like a sea serpent. His eyes shone as brightly as his polished glasses, and the white rosebud decorating his lapel had nothing on his complexion, pale but fresh. “I can’t believe I never suspected Rab and Nancy of, well, of anything. Alasdair even asked me if any items had gone missing.”
“They betrayed your trust, Fergie.” Jean set her hand on his arm. It was rock-steady.
“Nancy admitted to reading your mail and spying on your guests,” Gilnockie went on. “In her and Rab’s own best interests, they’re saying.”
“They deserved to participate in the profits,” said Fergie. “Apparently they felt they weren’t meant to participate in the risks as well.”
“Quite so,” Gilnockie agreed. “I’m thinking Rab was seeing his chance to dispose not only of Greg MacLeod but also, with the coincidence of the texting ‘CU’ on Greg’s card, of Colin Urquhart. He went accidentally dropping the card in the pub, when the lass picked it up, but like as not he went dropping it deliberately in the car park. He was right baffled when it turned up in Diana’s pocket, but then, Pritchard . . .”
“. . . also wanted to scapegoat Colin. That’s my own fault.” Fergie shook his head. “Well, I hope I’m making it up to the lad. I’ve hired him as manager. He repaired the generator, he’s got a good head for figures, and with Diana, well, he’ll be all right, in time.”
Maybe there would be another wedding, also in time, Jean thought. “You’re going to be all right, too, Fergie. You’ll make a go of Dunasheen.”
He set both his chins and his shoulders as well. “Yes, I will. We will. Diana’s agreed to sell her Egyptian necklace, and we’re looking into a loan arrangement for Seonaid’s portrait. I’ll be donating the Crusader Coffer to Brenda’s museum—it’s an interesting artifact in its own right, eh, Jean?”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’ll offer the area round the chapel as an archaeological field school, hoping we can establish the bones as Tormod’s. The old church deserves an excavation as well.”
“It does that.” Gilnockie turned to Jean. “Again, my best wishes to you and Alasdair on your marriage.”
“Thank you. And good wishes to you on your retirement. I guess you’ll be limbering up a fishing pole or chasing golf balls, not criminals.”
The peaceful depths of his smile, the sort that passed all understanding, made Miranda’s look agitated. “No. I’ll be joining the community at Moray Abbey, to try my vocation as a Benedictine.”
Jean stared. D.C.I. Gilnockie was going to enter a monastery? Well if that didn’t—explain a lot. Again she stammered her good wishes.
“I’ll be praying for the souls of Tormod, Rory, and Seonaid,” he said to her and Fergie both. “Perhaps all they’ve ever wanted was acknowledgment. That’s what most folk are wanting, acknowledgment. And I’ll be praying for the Finlays as well.” Still smiling, he walked away into the sunlight that had transformed Skye's Calvinist gray to ecumenical color.
“Here I thought Alasdair and I were making a commitment,” Jean said as Gilnockie’s attenuated shape dwindled down the driveway.
“It takes all kinds, and thank goodness for that.” Fergie cocked his head to the side. “Was he implying he believed in our local ghosts and spirits?”
“If you believe in the Holy Ghost, then . . .”
Miranda swept down the hall, Diana and Brenda just behind. “It’s time, Jean.”
If impending execution concentrated the mind, then impending marriage concentrated the heart. Jean’s shimmied up and down her chest—ooooh—and again she flexed her knees.
Fergie set off into the cold if brilliant day. Miranda draped Jean’s coat over her shoulders. Brenda handed her a nosegay of roses wrapped with tartan ribbon, slightly larger than the one Miranda already held. Adjusting her diamond ring so that it caught the sunlight and sent flashes of rainbow across the old stone walls, Jean began her last journey as a single, independent, lonely entity.
She glanced back at the house to see the two dogs, brushed to within an inch of their lives, sitting in the drawing room window. In the beetling window of the Charlie suite sat Dougie, ears pricked like the famous Egyptian statue of Bastet.
Fergie walked along, swinging his walking stick rather than leaning on it, every inch the dapper laird. “The family cradle’s all right for the Campbell-Reids’ bairn, is it now?”
“Rebecca and Michael said she slept all night. Good vibes, I’m sure.”
Beyond the garden wall, the chapel bell rang merrily. Diana opened the gate. Brenda closed it. Funny, Jean wasn’t cold at all. In fact, she was contemplating grabbing a bit of ice from a nearby birdbath and rubbing it over her face—or even dropping it down the back of her neck—when they emerged from the woods to see the chapel in all its intricate glory rising before them.
A few people moved through the porch into the building. The open door emitted the sound of a jig or reel played on a harp, happy, resilient music.
Michael stood to one side, his bagpipes beneath his arm, the drones lying against his shoulder sporting tartan ribbons on the ends. He, too, made a handsome picture in kilt and jacket, and his Alasdair-blue eyes danced. “Here she is,” he called to his other half.
Rebecca strolled across the grass, her long tartan skirt flowing behind her, reminding Jean of Seonaid’s ghost. She’d been happy here, if guilty as well. Maybe now, after all these years, she
’d found peace. Maybe Gilnockie was right, and recognition had eased the ghosts of Dunasheen into eternal rest.
“Look what I found by the little gravestone beneath the tree. Alasdair’s impressed.” Rebecca crossed Fergie’s palm with a gold coin. There was no need, and no time, for her to explain how she, too, had paranormal abilities, her small mind connecting with the larger one . . .
Oh. Jean, Brenda, Miranda, and Diana all bent forward as Fergie brushed a few remaining grains of dirt from the coin. One gleaming side read “Sydney Mint, Australia, One Sovereign.” The other displayed the sober, proper profile of Queen Victoria. “It’s been working its way through the soil all these years,” Jean said.
“If the bones aren’t Tormod’s,” said Fergie, “then how . . . well, later, eh? When we’re not hastening to the wedding.” He tucked the coin away in his sporran and hurried to the vestry door.
Rebecca raised a camera and took photos of Jean and her entourage arriving in the porch, where Orla McCrummin stood holding six-month-old Linda Campbell-Reid. They were both dressed in frilly party frocks, although Orla was standing on her own feet, elevated in high-heeled shoes. Linda’s bright eyes took in every color, every movement, and her soft, toothless mouth opened in a laugh. The scent of baby powder emanating from her blanket mitigated the porch’s aura of musty stone.
Beside Orla hovered Sanjay Thomson, smiling and nodding. Brenda adjusted one of his buttons, more out of affection than need—his kilt was perfectly arranged and pinned with a miniature sword.
The door opened again, revealing Dr. Irvine’s shock of white hair. “Is everything a go?”
“It’s a go,” said Jean, even as her voice caught in her throat and her knees wobbled. This is it. A leap of folly and a leap of faith.
Irvine flung open the door. Diana took Jean’s and Miranda’s coats. With a whispered, “Keep your pecker up,” Miranda glided down the aisle and the audience rose.
Hugh Munro sat to one side of the chancel cradling his small Celtic harp. His bald head with its fringe of white hair glowed in the golden light of candles and sunshine both. His round cheeks above their fringe of white beard swelled in a grin. His fingertips stroked the strings and the graceful notes of “Peace and Plenty” filled the room and spilled out onto the lawn.
“Go on,” said Michael, and quelled a squeak from his pipes. “In just a few moments I’ll be piping you back down the aisle a married woman.”
Marriage, a state of grace . . .
Far, far away, at the end of the aisle, the blocky, bespectacled figure of Reverend Elphinstone led Fergie and Alasdair out of the vestry. Alasdair took up his stance at the altar step and looked Jean straight in the eye.
Alasdair. Her lodestone. Jean walked herself past all the smiling faces and put her hand in his. His warm, sensitive, capable fingers enclosed her chilly ones. His blue eyes sparked. The curve of his lips moved and he whispered, “Bonny Jean.”
Dizzy, and yet never more steady, Jean looked toward Elphinstone. His voice rose and fell like the pulse of the sea, and the words flew into her heart and nestled there.
“O God, who hast consecrated the state of Matrimony to such an excellent mystery . . . look mercifully upon these thy servants.”
Amen, Jean thought. Amen.
About the Author
After starting out in science fiction and fantasy, Lillian Stewart Carl is now writing contemporary novels blending mystery, romance, and fantasy, along with short mystery and fantasy stories. Her work often includes paranormal themes. It always features plots based on history and archaeology. While she doesn’t write comedy, she believes in characters with a sense of humor. Her novels have been compared to those of Daphne du Maurier, Mary Renault, Mary Stewart (no relation), Barbara Michaels/Elizabeth Peters, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s colleague Charles Williams.
Her fantasies are set in a mythological, alternate-history Mediterranean and India. Her contemporary novels are set in Texas, in Ohio, in Colonial Williamsburg, Virginia, and in England and Scotland.
Of Shadows in Scarlet, Publishers Weekly says, “Presenting a delicious mix of romance and supernatural suspense, Carl (Ashes to Ashes) delivers yet another immensely readable tale. She has created an engaging cast and a very entertaining plot, spicing the mix with some interesting twists on the ghostly romantic suspense novel.”
Of Lucifer's Crown, Library Journal says: “Blending historical mystery with a touch of the supernatural, the author creates an intriguing exploration of faith and redemption in a world that is at once both modern and timeless.”
Among many other novels, Lillian is the author of the five-volume Jean Fairbairn/Alasdair Cameron cross-genre mystery series: America’s exile and Scotland’s finest on the trail of all-too-living legends. Of The Secret Portrait, Kirkus says: "Mystery, history and sexual tension blend with a taste of the wild beauty of the Highlands." Of The Burning Glass, Publishers Weekly says: “Authentic dialect, detailed descriptions of the castle and environs, and vivid characters recreate an area rich in history and legend. The tightly woven plot is certain to delight history fans with its dramatic collision of past and present.”
With John Helfers, Lillian co-edited The Vorkosigan Companion, a retrospective on Lois McMaster Bujold’s science fiction work, which was nominated for a Hugo award.
Her first story collection, Along the Rim of Time, was published in 2000, and her second, The Muse and Other Stories of History, Mystery, and Myth, in 2008, including three stories that were reprinted in Year's Best mystery anthologies.
Her books are available in both print and electronic editions. Here is her website. Here is her Facebook Group Page. Here is a listing of more Smashwords books.
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