It Happened in the Highlands

by May McGoldrick

  “If you must know, we were engaged sixteen years ago. I broke it off.”

  He’d said it. It was out. And now perhaps he could bring it up with Jo and say the things she should have heard back then.

  “She must have been a mere lass,” Dermot observed with a note of accusation.

  Wynne glowered at the younger man. “Save your charming Highland tongue for her. Lady Jo and I are only a year apart in age.”

  Dermot abandoned his harassment of Wynne’s collection of books and walked to the window, gazing out. “You look old enough to be her father.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend standing in front of an open window if I were you.”

  Though he was trying to keep his voice flippant, annoyance edged under the surface of Wynne’s skin.

  “So you were afraid she wouldn’t come if you wrote to her yourself,” Dermot surmised.

  “No. I didn’t think she would.”

  “And you wanted her to come.” It was not a question.

  “I didn’t care if she came or not,” Wynne lied. “I thought it would be important to her. And to Barton.”

  “Any regrets?”

  “Regrets about what?” Wynne asked. “About bringing her up here?”

  “That . . . or about breaking off your engagement.”

  Dermot McKendry was his friend, a man he trusted more than his own brother. But he was pushing his luck.

  Before answering, Wynne paused, asking himself why he was finding this conversation so irritating. It should make no difference to him what Dermot knew about Jo.

  “Well? Any regrets?”

  He stood and made his way around the desk. Seizing a misplaced volume, he slid it back into the bookcase where it belonged. “You are not a spiritual advisor. You, McKendry, are the lowest, deucedest, maggot pie of a sawbones that I ever had the misfortune to sail with.”

  “So you do have regrets.”

  “None!” Wynne thundered, slamming another book back into the case.

  “And now that you two have met again,” Dermot asked, undeterred, “any renewed interest in her?”

  Composing himself, Wynne crossed his arms over his chest. He could see from his friend’s expression that the scurvy bastard was enjoying this.

  “None,” Wynne retorted. A thought flashed into his brain. One he didn’t want to consider. “Why are you asking? Do you plan to pursue her yourself?”

  “I? Pursue Lady Josephine Pennington? Let’s consider that for a moment,” he replied as if it had never occurred to him. The doctor leaned against the frame of the open window.

  As Wynne watched him closely, he felt coldness settle in the pit of his stomach. It was the same sensation he felt just before the grappling hooks shot out and secured an enemy vessel. It was the moment before leaping with his boarding crew across the gunwales into battle.

  “She’s quite attractive, even pretty in an unpretentious way.” Dermot paused, as if taking stock of the rest of her attributes. “She’s educated, connected, and compassionate. She’s told me already that she appreciates the humane way we’re approaching our work here. She’s a benefactor of charitable causes. And she’s rich enough to support more than a few.”

  Dermot, consumed with his plans for the Abbey, had never expressed any interest in marriage until now. Younger than Wynne by six years and handsome in a boyish way, he was certainly an eligible bachelor, now that he’d made his fortune and inherited the Abbey. But only a certain kind of woman would forego the comforts of a normal household to live in an asylum.

  Wynne’s hands fisted as he realized Jo might just be such a woman.

  “What are you going to do, sweep her off her feet with your renowned wit and charm?” he asked, charging his tone with all the irony he could muster. “Lady Jo is only here for one night.”

  “Say what you will, my friend. I know her visit this time is brief, but I’m told many romances begin with a single glance. We can write to each other.” He started toward the door. “Perhaps I’ll invite her for another visit. I might even leave you here to see to things while I travel up north and visit with her while she’s staying with her brother and sister-in-law.”

  Wynne used to like Dermot McKendry, but no more.

  “But I want you to know I would never convey such intentions if I thought you had any objection to this,” the scoundrel said, pausing on his way out the door. “What do you say, old man?”

  Wynne was responsible for her coming to the Abbey. She’d arrived not looking for romance, nor for a husband, but to find a connection to her mother’s past. These were reasons enough to tell Dermot to veer off. But he couldn’t say the words.

  “Do as you please,” he said finally. “But remember to treat her with utmost deference. And by God, your intentions had better be honorable. Don’t start down this path even one step unless you’re willing to stand beside her at the church door. Understand me?”

  “That’s all I needed to hear.” Dermot smiled and bowed before going out the door.

  Wynne finished putting his books back where they belonged. Life should be as easy to keep in order, he thought. Cuffe. His plans for the two of them. He shook his head. Nothing ever went smoothly. And now he’d need to accept Jo in the fabric of his everyday life . . . while she was married to someone else.

  His eyes were drawn to the open window. He should have pushed Dermot out while he had the chance.

  Chapter 7

  “You haven’t mentioned a word about dinner, m’lady,” Anna complained as she ran a brush through her mistress’s hair. “Pray, was the company pleasant enough? Did they have many guests? I can’t imagine these country folk entertain quite the way we do at Baronsford.”

  Jo smiled. After a lifetime in service, the maid’s benign snobbery was due to her pride in the Pennington family. In Anna’s world, the places she traveled with Jo were not necessarily deficient in hospitality or comfort, it was simply that nowhere could conceivably compare in her mind with Baronsford.

  “The food was delicious and well-prepared, Anna,” she told her. “And the company was quite pleasant. We were twelve in number, and although most were strangers to me, the conversations were lively and very interesting. Everyone was kind to me.”

  “Well, I should think they would be, m’lady,” the maid huffed. “A wee place like this in the middle of nowhere? I should think they’re thanking their stars to be having such fine company as you.”

  Jo laughed. “The Abbey is hardly a ‘wee place.’ It may not be as grand as Baronsford, but I think it’s lovely. Don’t you?”

  Anna nodded grudgingly and continued her brushing. “Well, all things considered, I suppose it’s good enough, m’lady.”

  At dinner, she sat between Dr. McKendry and the vicar of the village kirk, the younger brother of the Squire.

  The two men and the Squire engaged in witty banter all through the meal, ridiculing each other’s ability to hit a golf ball or deliver a sermon or fix a hangnail. Even as she listened to the men and to Mrs. McKendry’s efforts to shush them, Jo often felt the weight of Captain Melfort’s gaze upon her. At the far end of the table, he was speaking with Mr. Cameron, the Abbey’s bookkeeper. Wynne’s son, Cuffe, was not present at dinner, but from the snatches of conversation that she could hear, much of the talk between the two men pertained to the boy.

  “You came back early,” Anna remarked. “No social doings after dinner?”

  “Mrs. McKendry and I were the only females present. As soon as we left the dining room, I made my excuses and retired,” Jo explained. “We had a long day on the road, and I’d like to be up early tomorrow. The doctor told me Mr. Barton is generally at his most alert and active first thing in the morning.”

  She’d spent more than two hours this afternoon in the ward at the older man’s bedside. She’d spoken to him. Held his hand. But there was no other communication with the exception of an occasional glance in her direction. It was as if he knew she was there and was comforted by it, but couldn’t sort out w
hatever it was in his muddled mind.

  The mystery of their connection perplexed her. Now that she’d met him and seen his initial reaction to her, she had no doubt the answers to her mother’s past would be found here with this man and his family.

  She intended to accept the McKendrys’ hospitality for only one night, but she already knew it would be terribly difficult for her to walk away now. Even before going down to dinner, she’d been considering the possibility of taking a room at the village inn for a few more nights. She could easily come up to the Abbey each day and visit with the patient. She’d simply send a letter off to Gregory and Freya, explaining that she’d be delayed in arriving. With her family knowing her whereabouts and that she was safe, she could stay the extra time.

  Wynne edged into her thoughts. Sailing men were supposed to grow wrinkled and old from the ocean’s winds and the sun, but not him. His face was etched with the lines of responsibility, but his eyes were still bright and alert. Though he didn’t smile easily, when he did, the room brightened. Dressed for dinner in his navy-blue coat and cream-colored silk waistcoat, he appeared taller, broader across the shoulders than she remembered. And he had a manner of holding himself, a confidence in the way he spoke, that reflected years of command.

  She pushed his image from her mind, focusing instead on the sounds of birds drifting in from the darkness outside her open window. Two sedge warblers were calling and answering, but grew suddenly silent at the hoot of a distant owl.

  Jo wasn’t about to tell her maid, but Wynne was another reason she needed to escape after dinner. To sit around the same table was one thing, but to socialize in a drawing room and carry on casual conversation was quite another. And she never imagined her reaction to him would be so strong. Staying at the Abbey, even for one night, was difficult enough. The apartment where Jo was situated was on the floor above the patients’ ward and adjacent to the rooms Wynne and his son occupied. He was too close.

  Jo’s brother Hugh assumed she was ignorant of what the family had been doing for years, but she was well aware that he and the rest of them had cast a protective circle around her. All Melforts were kept out, excluded from interaction with the Penningtons, even when Wynne’s older brother and his wife acquired an estate near Baronsford.

  Her gaze lingered on the bedroom wall separating her apartment from his. A soft breeze wafted in, carrying with it the scent of cigar smoke and gorse and pine. The warblers started up again, and a nightingale joined them. She would make no mention of Captain Melfort in any letters to her family.

  “I’ll say this for them. They have a household staff here that is nearly that of Baronsford’s,” Anna continued on. “Though not the tradition of family we have, of course. I’d wager there’s not a second generation of servant folk here. And don’t you know that many of the menfolk are sailors, m’lady?”

  “I didn’t know that,” Jo replied.

  “They’re always looking for more help too, I’m told. I’ll need to make mention of it to my Aberdeen cousins the next time I wri—”

  A sharp crash and a furious roar from the ward below silenced the maid.

  The two of them sat frozen, listening to more shouts and cries for help. Jo’s head turned to the window as she heard footsteps running toward the house. The second crash of a heavy object brought Jo to her feet and scrambling to pull on and belt her robe. She rushed toward the door.

  “You can’t go out there, m’lady.”

  “Stay here in the room, Anna. I’ll be right back.”

  “But this is an asylum!” the servant cried out. “There could be madmen or killers on the loose!”

  “Stay here,” Jo repeated, going into the hall and closing the door firmly behind her.

  The hallway was dark. A door slammed. The shouting was now accompanied by wails. More shouts from a distant part of the house, and running footsteps. Quickly, she made her way to the stairwell and started down.

  Responding to the occasional crisis was a necessity at the Tower House. Jo wasn’t reckless. She knew whatever was happening in the ward wasn’t her concern. Still, having met Charles Barton, she couldn’t remain in her room and not worry.

  When she reached a landing at a turn of the stairs, she startled a small, thin figure hiding by the railing and listening to the confusion below. With a cry, the boy stepped back and Jo reached out, catching his arm before he went backwards down the steps.

  “I didn’t mean to!” he burst out in panic. “I . . . I didn’t know he would hurt him.”

  Jo recognized Wynne’s son. He’d shed the russet-hued jacket he’d been wearing earlier. He was shaking, and his head turned at the sound of the continuing commotion downstairs.

  “What happened, Cuffe?” she asked quietly, releasing him. “Has someone been hurt?”

  The boy spun away and rushed past her up the stairs, disappearing into the darkness above.

  He’d done something wrong, something that brought on this chaos. And he was sorry for his part in it. She kept to the wall and slowly descended.

  Three men were standing by the door into the ward. One was carrying a candle. Even with his back to her, Jo could see it was Wynne. Loud shouts and sounds of objects being thrown about could be heard coming through the thick door.

  “Stevenson was secured for the night, Captain, sure as I’m standing here,” one of the men hurriedly explained. “I watched the lads fasten the straps myself, same as always. We all know how difficult that one can be.”

  Jo went down another step.

  “Aye, Captain,” the other man said. “Two years we’ve had him here, and everyone knows he’s the one needs watching most.”

  “I came out here after checking on everyone,” the first man continued, raking a hand through his hair. “That was not an hour ago. They was all sleeping. I sat at my post here like I always do, night after night. Maybe I shut my eye a wink, but I was right here.”

  “And Stevenson’s tam,” the other jumped in. “What do ye make of that? How do ye think the other one got it? He never stirs once he’s abed, and we all know to leave it be.”

  Wynne was asking no questions as the men went back and forth in their explanations. Jo looked again to the door. The noises coming from the ward were subsiding.

  “I’m thinking this was no accident, Captain. Someone was causing mischief in there.”

  “Maybe the rogue slipped past me. Or more likely came in through a window.”

  “I’m thinking they wanted Stevenson to go after Barton.”

  Jo didn’t think she made a noise, but she must have. Wynne’s head snapped around and he peered in her direction.

  “Who’s there?” he demanded, holding the candle up and coming toward the stairs.

  Knowing it would be foolish to run away, she stayed where she was. She clutched the front of the robe, closing it tightly against her pounding chest.

  Please, she prayed silently. Don’t let Mr. Barton be hurt.

  Wynne’s face softened with recognition. “You shouldn’t be down here.”

  “Is he hurt? Mr. Barton?” she asked, unable to keep the trembling edge out of her tone. She had to know.

  “He’ll have some bruises, I expect. The doctor is seeing to his arm right now to make sure he hasn’t broken a bone. But considering everything, he’s doing well.”

  “What happened?”

  Wynne looked around them and motioned to the stairs. “This is not the best place to be speaking. Do you mind if we go up?”

  Jo turned to take a step, but as she did, the hem of her robe tripped her. She felt his hand grasp her elbow, steadying her until she found her footing. Though his action was an innocent reflex, his touch caused her face to catch fire and her pulse jump. With his hand still on her arm, he lighted their way up the stairs. As they ascended, his closeness filled her head with the scent of night air, whiskey, smoke, and the man. This was the second time he’d touched her after a very long time. It was the touch of a friend, she told herself.

  At
the top of the stairwell, she paused in the hallway and turned to him.

  “Pray tell, what happened?”

  As his eyes washed over her and took in her face, her lips, her hair hanging loose around her shoulders, she saw a fleeting expression of reminiscence. Then the look was gone.

  “We only have one patient at the hospital that we consider potentially dangerous to himself or to others,” he explained. “The man’s name is Stevenson. He’s tended to closely during every waking hour. During the night watch, he’s secured in his bed. And we have attendants who walk the ward regularly throughout the night.”

  She began to envision what took place in the ward, but waited for Wynne to expound.

  “Stevenson somehow got free of his restraints and attacked another man. The rest of the patients in the ward raised the alarm with their cries.”

  “And Charles Barton was the victim of the attack,” she reaffirmed what she’d already heard. “But no one else?”

  He nodded. “One or two others tried to intervene, but Stevenson directed his violence at Barton. The victim will be fine. Thankfully, the night attendant entered the melee and others quickly arrived to help. You can visit Barton yourself in the morning, if you like.”

  “What was all that about a tam?”

  “Stevenson is extremely attached to his hat. Carries it around like a baby. The tam was put on Barton’s bed.”

  Cuffe’s words came back to her. She recalled the distraught and fearful expression in the dim light of the stairwell.

  At the Tower House, Jo had seen and spoken to many troubled children. Many were entirely capable of inflicting harm on themselves and others. But there was real remorse in Cuffe’s tone. And his obvious shock at the way the events had unfolded indicated that there was a great deal more to this than simply a youth intent on doing mischief.

  “Those attendants downstairs are responsible men,” Wynne told her. “We’ve never had an incident like this at the Abbey. My guess is that none of it was accidental. It may have been intentional. Someone slipped into the ward, freed Stevenson, and moved the hat to give him a target for his rage. Why someone would do such a thing is hard to fathom.”