The Highlander's Yuletide Love

by Quigley, Alicia

  I thought she would be only too happy to marry such an honorable man with such a lovely estate, but she will have none of it! I asked Glencairn what her reasons might be, but he is as mystified as I. When I ask the girl to tell me what moved her to turn down such an advantageous offer from a man her family holds in such esteem, she will only look away, and bite her lip and tell me that she does not like him. Like him! What is there not to like in Ranulf Stirling!

  Of course we could not stay longer, as it would be far too mortifying for Colonel Stirling (and Sophy, of course, but that is her own fault and I find it difficult to sympathize with her), so we were packed and gone within two days of the event. Douglas complained very loudly, and he and Sophy quarreled a number of times, but we are now home and settled. Francis and Isobel stayed another few days at Spaethness but are now returned to Dargenwater Cottage, and, while I have teased Isobel to tell me what Sophy confides in her, she says only that Sophy will not talk to her either. The child locks herself in her studio or tramps about outside, wearing her oldest clothes and painting night and day. She seems to have lost her interest in anything else but her work, which makes it very difficult to winkle anything out of her. For a girl who claims she does not care if Colonel Stirling lives or dies, she is certainly working very hard to forget him!

  All in all, if Sophy did not look so tragic from time to time, I would be only too glad to scold her for her selfishness. I suspect she continues to have feelings for R., and rejected him out of some foolish whim. I hope she does not come to regret it, for a better husband she will not be able to find. I suppose now she will drift into spinsterhood, which seems a great pity. Still, she made her choice, and her father and I have agreed to respect it (though Douglas continues to tease her unmercifully, which is unkind of him). I hope that, in the coming year, Colonel Stirling will agree to visit again, for I do not care to lose his friendship over Sophy’s stubbornness.

  It is now well and truly Autumn here at Glencairn, and the harvest will soon be coming in. I hope that all is well with you and the children, and that the coming winter is kind to you.

  Your loving sister,

  Harriet.

  Chapter 28

  Sophy entered the breakfast room at Glencairn, and looked with disfavor on the customary wide assortment of fruits, breads, cured meats, fish, and condiments available. Glancing towards the table and seeing her father and stepmother absorbed in the mail and the newspaper, she dithered as she filled her plate, finally settling for kippers in cream and a slice of sweet brown bread, slathered in butter and the heather honey harvested from the estate beehives.

  “Good morning dear,” Harriet said absently as Sophy sat down, but didn’t lift her head from the letter she was perusing. After a moment she looked up. “Only fancy, Glencairn, Phillippa tells me that she is considering bringing out Elizabeth a year early. It seems some of the young gentlemen in their neighborhood are taking an interest in her, and she fears that one of them may fix her interest before she has a chance to meet a larger and more select group of young men.”

  “Hmmmph,” Glencairn replied inarticulately.

  “It’s all very well for you to grunt like that my dear, but if that’s the case we will need to expect them for the Season next year. It will mean any number of changes in our plans,” Harriet persisted. “At least now we need to worry less about escorting Sophy about.”

  “As they have yet to decide, and we have months to make plans, I don’t wish to spend time on it now,” Glencairn answered. “Did you see that Sir Walter Scott’s new novel Kenilworth has been published to great acclaim?”

  This gambit successfully distracted Harriet. “We must write for a copy to be sent immediately!” She looked over at Sophy. “Will it not be delightful to have a new work by Scott? It makes me think of how beautiful the Trossachs are. How happy I am I was able to visit there.”

  Sophy nodded her head and continued to push her breakfast around her plate, barely picking at it. She fidgeted until Harriet finally looked up. “Whatever ails you, Sophy? You have barely spoken a word and are fussing about like a cat with a dog in the room."

  “The everlasting rain is oppressive,” she muttered. “I feel so dull. “

  “‘Twas you who said you wished to stay here at Glencairn and go to Town no more,” Harriet pointed out.

  Sophy looked down, but didn’t speak.

  “Would you like to go to Edinburgh for a week?” her stepmother continued in a softer tone. “We could visit friends and attend some assemblies.”

  “Oh, I don’t know!” Sophy exclaimed, and tossing her napkin on the table, stood and stalked out of the room.

  “Goodness!” Harriet said. “Perhaps it is the weather. It has been gloomy the last few days, and little Euan’s fever has been exhausting for all of us.”

  “Or perhaps it is something else,” Glencairn answered. “She’s not been herself since we returned from Spaethness, and there is nothing like loneliness and ill weather to make you miss someone.”

  “It sounds as though you speak from experience,” Harriet answered teasingly.

  “Well, I own it’s true that it was gray days like this that made me realize how much I missed your company and conversation and loved you, rather than merely seeking a helpmate and a mother for my children,” her husband replied.

  Harriet laughed a little. “We shall have to keep an eye on her. If it’s Ranulf she is pining for, she likely will not wish to admit it to herself. Opening her eyes to it may take some managing, and even if she could be brought to acknowledge it, we have no idea if he still has an interest in her. After all, she did turn down his offer of marriage, which is not something likely to endear her to him.”

  After Sophy stormed out of the breakfast room she stood dithering in the passage, trying to decide what she wanted to do. She thought of visiting the gallery, but instead walked to the back of the castle, to the studio that her parents had created for her in an unused storage room that had been built onto the main building. It had a flagged stone floor, worn smooth with years of use, and a high shed ceiling that was ten feet high at the short side and easily twice that at the other. Windows had been installed along all three exposed walls, and light poured in from the north, east and west sides.

  She went to the workbench where her paints, brushes, charcoals and colors were stored, and opened one of a number of portfolios stacked towards the end. As she did so, pages of pencil and pen and ink sketches of Spaethness and the surrounding countryside slid out of it and across the wooden surface. Sophy spread them out, gazing at them intently, pushing them around before her, and studying first one then another, putting some aside, and leaving others in her field of view.

  Eventually she reached for a rack of prepared canvases, and withdrew one, placing it on her easel, before pulling on an apron and beginning to mix paints. Hours later, when the light was beginning to fail, she stood back from the canvas, and looked at it, a dissatisfied expression on her face. The painting, of a torrent of water rushing through a highland burn as the sun broke through heavy clouds, clearly depicted high water after a driving rainstorm.

  Sophy stood tapping a toe, arms akimbo as she looked at her work, and finally walked to the bell pull and yanked on it violently. A footman appeared shortly.

  “Send one of the estate carpenters to me, Ian,” ordered Sophy.

  “Aye, Lady Sophia,” the footman replied, but she had already turned back to the contemplation of her canvas.

  It took some time for a carpenter to arrive from the workshops, but when he did, Sophy was no longer looking at her canvas, but had cleared an area in front of the tall back wall of her studio.

  “Hello, MacIntosh,” she said when a grizzled workman opened the door. “Come this way, if you please,” she continued, as she walked to the area she had cleared. She indicated marks she had made in charcoal on the wall that were six feet apart. “I want a frame for a canvas that is as wide as this and half again as high.”

  The carpe
nter looked stunned. “You want me to make you a frame that is six feet wide and 3 yards tall, Lady Sophia?” he asked.

  “Quite so,” she agreed.

  “How will you reach up to paint it?” he asked as though she had lost her senses.

  “Oh, you will build me some scaffolding as well,” she replied airily. “I have seen them used in artists’ studios in London. It’s nothing out of the common way.”

  “It is at Glencairn, my lady,” he answered.

  “First make the frame,” she said. “I will need some help stretching the canvas over it too, and you had better reinforce it with some cross members.”

  “Aye, my lady, that I will.”

  “While you are making the frame, think about how to build the scaffolding, and then come talk to me, if you please,” Sophy said.

  MacIntosh thought that he’d be talking to the earl’s steward first, but said nothing, only nodding his head and saying that it would be some time before the frame and scaffolding could possibly be ready.

  “Oh, that is perfectly fine,” Sophy replied. “I will do several studies for the larger painting before I start, while I prepare the canvas and you build the scaffolding I require.”

  MacIntosh left, wondering if Lady Sophia had taken leave of her senses, and she returned to the contemplation of her sketches.

  Sophy spent all of the following day in her studio, missing breakfast, and ringing for bread and cheese to be brought to her for lunch. When at length she appeared in the drawing room before dinner, Harriet exclaimed, “My dear, I have barely seen you these two days. I--” She broke off, and touched one of the curls that fell from Sophy’s top knot to frame her face. “Whatever is that blue spot in your hair?” she asked.

  Sophy grimaced. “Oh dear, I must have gotten some paint in it. Poor Wallis will be so mortified! I will have to have her brush or snip it out before I go to bed tonight.”

  “Paint in your hair!” Harriet exclaimed, scandalized. “Really Sophy, it is perfectly fine to pursue your art, but surely you can do it without getting it in your hair?”

  “Calm yourself, Mama. I will wear a kerchief over my hair in the future.”

  “A kerchief? As though you were a dairymaid?”

  Sophy laughed. “Well, what would you have me wear? A lace cap? A little turban? A poke bonnet? Surely it is not a matter of concern how I cover my hair in the studio, as long as I do not come to dinner with paint in it.”

  Harriet was clearly dissatisfied with this response, but knew when to stop, and said no more.

  A few days later, Sophy’s enormous picture frame had been assembled and, with some effort, a large canvas delivered from Edinburgh had been stretched across it. She had covered it with gesso and allowed it to dry, and now it stood on a scaffold, leaning against the back wall of her studio in all its unformed potential. She stared at it, realizing she was terrified

  “Hallo, sister, I came to see this enormous painting you are doing,” Douglas called out from the door of the studio.

  “What do you know of it?” she snapped, spinning around in surprise.

  Douglas sauntered over to her. “All the talk in the stables has been of the immense frame and complicated scaffolding that the carpenters have been making for you. The stablemaster was annoyed when he had to wait a day to get some boards replaced after the stallion kicked out and broke them.”

  “Well, there is nothing to see yet, Paul Pry,” she retorted.

  “Why are you biting my head off for asking about your painting? I’d think you’d be glad for a bit of company.”

  “I’m not sure,” Sophy admitted ruefully. “I suppose it has to do with this rain, and being cooped up in the house for weeks on end.”

  Douglas continued to stroll around the studio, glancing at the paintings and sketches. Sophy bit her lip and fidgeted, but made no attempt to stop him. When he halted before a study depicting a stream in full spate, threatening a woman in a carriage being driven over a bridge, she set her jaw firmly, and turned away.

  “You’ve certainly changed your tune, going from watercolors of flowers on the banks of the Dargenwater to this,” he observed.

  “What of it? If I wish to be a great painter, I must do something besides charming watercolors,” she said.

  “You are cross as crabs today. Can’t I take an interest in what you are doing?”

  “When have you ever been anything but rude and tiresome about my painting?” Sophy responded. “Oh, do go away Douglas, I can’t think with you wandering about poking at my things!”

  Her brother looked as though he wanted to say more, but seeing the irritation etched in her face, and her tense stance, he left in silence.

  Sophy heaved a sigh of relief, before turning to her colors and dabbling about with various shades. Some minutes later, she stepped up to the intimidating canvas and laid the first brushstrokes on it.

  Chapter 29

  Sophy gazed out the sitting room window discontentedly. The view before her was lovely; the storm that had passed through the day before had left everything newly blanketed with snow. It glistened on the trees and covered the gray stones of the building with layers of white frosting. Even now, flakes glittered in the frigid air, reflecting back the few rays of sunshine that penetrated the clouds, which gathered again overhead, threatening another bout of snow. She sighed.

  The door opened and Harriet bustled in, shaking her head when she saw Sophy staring at the clouds, her chin in her hand.

  “My goodness, are you moping again? I never thought I’d wish you to be back in your studio all day, but you’ve done nothing but languish about the house for the past fortnight, ever since you finished that enormous painting. Oh, I do wish you could find it in yourself to be a bit merrier. It is Christmas Eve, after all.”

  “I’m sorry, Mama,” said Sophy. “I hoped to be able to go out today, but the snow is so deep, and it’s so cold, that I think it must be yet another day spent indoors.”

  Harriet nodded sympathetically. “I know, dear. Perhaps I can wheedle Glencairn into having the sleigh brought out, and we could go for a ride. We will need it tomorrow if we are to go to church, so it should not be too much of a bother. Would that make you happier?”

  Sophy bit her tongue, reflecting that she really could not tell her stepmother that she had been thinking of Ranulf Stirling. How many times had she told her parents that he was unacceptable to her, and that she meant never to marry? “It would be lovely, Mama,” she said quietly.

  “You don’t look overjoyed,” observed Harriet. “What has come over you? You’ve always loved Christmas. Tomorrow is the anniversary of my marriage to your father, you know.”

  Sophy summoned up a smile, knowing how precious that memory was to Harriet. “What a beautiful day that was. I remember the candles in the church, and the white vestments of the priest, and how very, very surprised you were when Papa asked him to marry the two of you right then.”

  Harriet sighed ecstatically. “How happy I was. Indeed, how happy I am now. I was very lucky to meet your father.”

  “Douglas and I were so pleased he fell in love with you,” said Sophy. “I think the two of us fell in love with you first, for your kindness and caring. It took Papa a bit longer to understand his heart.”

  “I was lucky indeed. Though you say you do not wish for such things, I hope someday you may have the same happiness, Sophy dear.”

  Sophy gazed out the window once more, her expression blank. “I know you do, Mama. Maybe someday.”

  Harriet watched her for a moment, perplexed, and then headed for the door. “I must speak to Cook about dinner. Do try to cheer up. The villagers will come caroling after dinner, if they get through the mountains of snow, and we will have wassails and refreshments. People will expect you to be enjoying yourself, not moping about.”

  “Yes, Mama.” Sophy heard the door close behind Harriet, and she sank back into her chair. She could remember her father’s Christmas wedding to Harriet as though it were yesterda
y. The weather had been cold and crisp, with sunlight bouncing off the snow, and the parish church had been full, with gentry and farmers side by side, celebrating the season. When Glencairn had stepped forward and spoken a few words to the priest, before leading Harriet to the altar, her delight had known no bounds. She had missed having a mother, and Harriet had almost filled that empty place in her heart. She realized now that, while Harriet had been content enough unwed, her marriage had made her life more complete, not less. She had found a good man, who understood the value of love and commitment. Sophy wondered again if Ranulf could be such a man.

  She sat for a few more minutes, pondering the riddle, before rising to her feet. It was a good two hours until she needed to dress for dinner, so she made her way to her studio, thinking she might bring her canvases into some semblance of order. But when she got there she felt listless, and stood for a few minutes, gazing up at the big windows and watching the snowflakes fall, one by one, adding to the mounds of snow outside. She wondered if it was snowing at Spaethness, and if Ranulf ever thought of her. Perhaps he did, from time to time, and felt a sense of relief that he no longer was entangled with someone so volatile and unforgiving. Maybe he was with the Lady of Ardfern now, and had forgotten all about her.

  Trying to banish her morose thoughts, she wandered over to the painting she had so recently completed. It dwarfed anything else she had ever done, and she wondered how she had found the temerity to produce it. A river in full spate dominated it, clearly flooded by a violent storm, for on one side of the huge canvas threatening clouds were breaking to allow the sun to shine on the roaring river, its golden rays forming little flashes as they were reflected by the rushing water. Over the torrent a bridge was tipping perilously, a trestle holding up one span buckling as the floodwaters beat against it. A carriage was trapped on its surface, the horses panicking in their harness, while the coachman ran for safety, leaving a lady struggling to get out of the coach. At the other end of the bridge a tall, dark gentleman was hastening towards the carriage, clearly planning a rescue despite the danger. As Sophy looked at it, she found herself unable to fathom whence the idea for it had come.