It Happened in the Highlands

by May McGoldrick

  “My manner of breaking our engagement was badly done. Leaving you a letter instead of meeting with you and telling you in person—”

  “Did you know Hugh lost his wife and son during the war on the Peninsula?” she interrupted, her voice grave. She was forcing a change in the topic. “They died of camp fever.”

  Wynne knew this. His sister-in-law sent him not only news of Jo. He was also regularly informed of Greysteil’s successes and losses.

  “He suffered terribly. The entire family mourned their deaths for years.” Her words were marked with sadness. His reference to the past reawakened more than just the tragedy of their own separation.

  “This past year, however, another chance at happiness came into his life. He’s married again, and he and his wife now have an infant daughter.”

  Studying Jo’s imploring look, he nodded and accepted her entreaty to cease his attempt to speak of their break, at least for now. She wasn’t ready to have the wound of their past reopened. At the same time he knew neither of them could fully mend until the scar had healed.

  “Is it true,” he asked instead, “that his new wife arrived at Baronsford in a crate?”

  Relief reflected in her eyes and in the smile that suddenly graced her lips. “Who are your spies, Captain Melfort? How could you know this?”

  “My brother, John, and his wife purchased Highfield Hall near Baronsford not long ago,” he explained. “They are not among the Penningtons’ circle of friends, justifiably, but there is very little news of you and your family that doesn’t reach me through their letters.”

  “Then you must know about Gregory’s marriage too?”

  “That must be fairly recent, for I hadn’t heard it. I only learned of it when you told the Squire and Mrs. McKendry that your younger brother now lives in Sutherland.”

  Perhaps he wouldn’t mention this in his letters. His sister-in-law was well aware of the history between the Melforts and Penningtons. She understood why they were the only family in that part of the Borders who were not invited to Baronsford’s summer and Christmas balls. Nonetheless, her disappointment at being excluded from the more public celebrations of the viscount’s wedding in the village of Melrose came through clearly in her letter. It wouldn’t be very kind to tweak her nose about this wedding as well.

  The carriage rolled on, climbing higher into the hills above the Don river valley, and Jo appeared preoccupied with her thoughts as she gazed out at the rugged forests and gorse-covered countryside. Still thinking of his brother, John, and his wife, Wynne now pondered their repeated invitations to bring Cuffe south to Highfield Hall. They wanted him to meet the rest of his family. They had a son who was twelve, or thereabouts, and a nine-year-old daughter. A fortnight ago, he would never have seriously considered bringing them all together. Now he was actually feeling quite sanguine about it.

  And all because of the woman seated across from him.

  “If I may ask, Jo, how are your parents?” During the time when they’d thought Wynne would soon be joining their family, the earl and the countess had shown him only kindness.

  Her eyes lit with pleasure. “My father pretends to be hard of hearing to get more attention, but my mother is a master at the game. Their arguments and their affection for each other still provide a great source of entertainment for the family.”

  As a young man, Wynne had considered the Penningtons the model of a happy family. So different from the Melforts.

  Her voice was solicitous when she continued. “I know it has been years since you lost your own parents, but I was sorry to hear of their passing.”

  He tipped his head in acknowledgment, but all he felt in his heart for the old baronet and his wife was pity.

  “I had been estranged from them for a number of years by the time they died. He went first, my mother a year later. It sounds harsh for me to say it, I know, but they were lonely and bitter people to the end.”

  She didn’t press him for more, but Wynne felt she deserved to know the truth about them.

  “You’re very kind to mention them, but you must have known that they were against us. It was less at first; slighting your family has its perils. But their opposition only became worse, privately, as the talk became more poisonous.”

  He recalled so clearly the arguments, the threats, the daily torment of repeating whatever malicious gossip had been circulating in one social circle or another. Jo’s dowry had been enticing, but they’d changed their minds faced with the talk regarding her past.

  Wynne studied Jo in silence. She’d been too generous to complain back then about their subtle slights, and she was too polite to acknowledge now what they both knew to be the truth.

  “After I recovered from my wound and went to sea, my brother fell in love with a minister’s daughter from Cornwall. She was a young woman of no social consequence and very little dowry. As you can imagine, their disapproval was fierce. They threatened to strip him of his inheritance, but John was much stronger than I. He spurned their efforts to intimidate him and called their bluff. He married the woman he still loves.”

  “I’m glad that Sir John has found happiness.”

  Wynne nodded. “Two lively children and a good life.”

  Gazing across at her, he wondered how she must have felt when she learned that he’d been married and had a son. She didn’t want to speak of the past, but these were the events that had steered both of their lives to this place. And time was running out to tell her the things he needed to share.

  “After my father died, my mother wrote to me and told me that my marriage to Fiba, Cuffe’s mother, had been the cause of his demise.”

  “Oh no,” she murmured, touching his knee.

  He shrugged. “At the time her words wounded me, but I’d been burned by them before. I had no regrets about marrying Fiba. My plan had been to leave the navy and establish myself in Jamaica. I didn’t think I’d ever return to England. In my mind they’d ceased to exist a long time ago.”

  “I am sorry.”

  Wynne understood how deeply heartfelt Jo’s words were. She had spent her entire life in search of her true parents. He had celebrated the day he could finally turn his back to his own, free and unencumbered.

  “I still have my brother,” he told her. “And our friendship gives me great pleasure.”

  “Pray accept my sincere apology,” she said. “My family and I have treated your brother and his wife unfairly. You can be certain I shall call on her and introduce her to Grace, my sister-in-law, when I return to Baronsford.”

  Wynne watched her closely. The blush blooming on her cheeks, the dark eyes swimming with compassion, the kindness that he knew permeated the very fabric of her existence.

  He’d mentioned Cuffe’s mother by name. He’d admitted that he readily walked away from his family to marry her, even though he’d been too weak only a few years earlier to face Jo and let her be a part of any decision regarding their future. He’d robbed her of a life. He’d taken away her voice. He’d done what he thought was best without thinking through how his choice would affect her life.

  And yet she was apologizing to him.

  “I couldn’t protect you,” he said, speaking the words in his heart. “I was going away to war. I knew how monstrous my parents would behave toward you. In marrying you, I would be throwing you into a den of lions.”

  “Please, Wynne. Let’s not—”

  “We must,” he interrupted, watching a single tear escape the corner of her glistening eye and slide down her cheek.

  “You kept yourself aloof and removed from the lies while I wanted to tear to pieces anyone who said a wrong word about you. You were kind and forgiving while I raged inwardly at those smiling vipers who were not worthy enough to buckle your slipper. But I was not worthy either. I was helpless, Jo. I was helpless in shielding you from the sadness that you so courageously hid in the face of each assault.”

  “Wynne, stop,” she whispered. “I pray you—”

  “I can’
t. You must hear me out.” More than anything else, he wanted to move across and sit beside her. Take her in his arms and ask for her forgiveness. But he couldn’t. Not when there was more that needed to be said.

  “My youth, my pride, my assumption that you wouldn’t be able to survive unless I was there to act as your protector led me to the selfish act of walking away. I decided for both of us that you’d be much better off without me, without our marriage. And I did it poorly. I allowed myself to be rushed by my parents’ cold arrogance and their opposition. But I can’t lay the blame at their door. I bear the blame. In the end I was really only thinking of my own well-being. I wanted to be done with it all, to walk away and lick my wounds in private. As if I were the one injured by all that happened. The way I left you, Jo, was wrong and hurtful. I know I caused you more heartache than you ever deserved.”

  * * *

  Since the day she’d arrived at the Abbey, Jo thought her heart would break if they spoke of their past. But she’d been wrong. Two hearts were at stake here.

  As he spoke, raw emotion was laced into each word. His frustration over the situation they had been facing was still so alive to him. She saw it in the set of his shoulders, in the turn of his head, in the searching gaze that constantly returned to her face. He’d carried the blame for so many years, and she knew she could not allow that to continue.

  “Two young people were involved, Wynne. Two,” she repeated, forcing the words past the knot in her throat. She paused, summoning her strength and willing herself to continue.

  His hand reached for hers and their fingers entwined. He always knew when she needed him. Whether it was in a ballroom when malicious rumor was destroying her or in the ward of an asylum when she found herself faced with the Barton family’s hostility.

  “Over the years,” she said, “I’ve looked carefully at my own actions and my own character. In the eyes of my family, I was the person injured, the one left behind, the victim. But as I’ve searched my soul, I’ve come to realize that I was greatly responsible for bringing an end to our engagement.”

  Wynne started to deny her assertion, but this time Jo silenced him.

  “I was timid, ashamed of my past. And I allowed the rumors and the innuendo and the slander to affect me. I withdrew rather than challenging the hateful people who spread the poison.” She met his troubled eyes. “My excuse was that I had no firm ground to stand on. I didn’t know what was true myself, so how could I fight the lies?”

  Long after their breakup, Jo continued to avoid confrontation with the rumormongers. In her mind, she always found a way to diminish the insult, back away, and retreat into silence. It pained her now to know that she’d forced the men in her family to become that much more protective. To this day, no one dared whisper a word about her in the presence of Hugh or Gregory or her parents. But when they weren’t present, the behavior of many others of their acquaintance was quite different.

  “I know that in my hesitation to fight the insidious backbiters so prevalent among the ton, I hindered you from defending my honor and speaking up for me. I wasn’t strong enough myself, and I rendered you helpless too.” She spoke the truth that had taken her years to see. “I know now you could never stand by and allow that. I asked you to be something you could not be. In doing so, I pushed you away.”

  His hands were warm when they closed around her icy fingers.

  “You can say all you like, but the blame still lies with me,” he said. “I was young and impatient. I was nearly mad with thoughts of war and dying, and I couldn’t think past tomorrow. When the orders came that I would soon be sailing, I panicked. My duties would not bring me back for some time, that I knew. What would happen if we married and you found after I left that you were with child? I certainly didn’t trust my parents to treat you as they should. And what would happen if I died at sea? I had more questions and insecurities than I could convey.”

  “We were both so young.”

  “But rather than giving you a voice in what our decision should be, I chose for both of us. I decided that our marriage would be a disaster.”

  And yet, Jo thought, she would have made it work, even in his absence. She loved him and what she wasn’t willing to do for herself, she would have done for him. But there was no point in saying any of that now.

  “I wanted everything to be ideal,” Wynne continued. “In the rashness of my youth, I thought if I couldn’t make things perfect, I couldn’t subject you to what I was certain would be a harsh reality. It took years for me to realize that the ideal is a goal, but falling short of it is not always disaster. To be honest, I still struggle with it when it comes to Cuffe and his life here in Scotland. I had to learn all over again who my son was. I needed to remember his mother and what she would have wanted for him.”

  He sat back.

  Jo kept her eyes on his face. Wynne’s apologies had been on behalf of a youth who’d proclaimed his love to her and then faltered. Since that time, another woman had helped him grow into someone better. What she saw now was a man firmly in control of his own destiny.

  “Will you tell me about Fiba?”

  He stirred in the seat. A moment of unease darkened his expression.

  “Pray forgive me. I’m not asking to pry into your life. I shouldn’t have—”

  “No. You should know,” he told her, relaxing. “When we met, Fiba had been married to an English naval officer but was recently widowed. I was taking command of the Carnatic, which was being fitted out for duty at the time.”

  Wynne’s gaze moved to the window, and Jo almost felt the groundswell of memories rushing back at him. Cuffe was an extremely handsome child, and she could only imagine how striking his mother must have been.

  “She came from a Maroon family, and in spite of being part of English society during her marriage, she maintained her allegiance to her people.”

  Jo knew that the number of those like Fiba in Jamaica was only a fraction of the multitudes enslaved there.

  “Cuffe comes about his fighting nature honestly. After Fiba and I became involved, I realized she had another life from the one she lived openly. I closed my eyes to what I saw. She was relaying to the Maroons living in the Cockpit information about the traders and the plantation owners.”

  “She was so brave,” she said admiringly. How different her life had been from Fiba’s. How meaningless her aspirations were to a champion like Cuffe’s mother. “I can understand why you would turn away from your family to marry such a special woman.”

  His intense blue eyes found and held her gaze.

  “Marriage was not part of our plan. Neither of us wanted or needed it. Fiba was financially independent after the death of her first husband, and she cherished her newfound freedoms. And my duties would rarely bring me back to Jamaica. To be honest, I had a very difficult time convincing her to marry me after we found out that she was with child.”

  Jo would have expected nothing less from him. His sense of honor had never changed over the years. In their own relationship so long ago, he’d never taken advantage of Jo.

  “Carrying your child didn’t influence her to marry you?”

  “Fiba’s refusal wasn’t about me. For the first time in her life, she’d been able to help her people. Marrying another English officer only complicated matters. As far as our child, she planned on raising him herself, and argued that the island had a large number of mixed-race children.”

  How sad that Cuffe lost a mother of such strength before having a chance to know her.

  “How did you finally convince her?”

  “I told her about you.”

  “About me?” she asked, confused.

  “I told her about a child who grew up searching for answers. About a young woman who couldn’t fathom the value her own qualities and character simply because of questions about her origins. I told her I did not want a child of mine to suffer as you had suffered.”

  Jo thought of all he’d said about Fiba. A rival. A woman she should d
islike, perhaps even hate. She’d married the only man Jo ever loved. She should envy Fiba for the multitude of days she’d had to spend with him. She had so many reasons to feel the deepest antipathy toward her. And yet, she could not. They’d loved the same man, and what Jo felt instead was nothing but kinship.

  Chapter 15

  Garloch had more to offer than the vicar had suggested.

  The rough Highland road they’d been following descended into a valley town, protected from the north winds by a rugged ridge of mountain. A coach road, no doubt built by the army for moving troops during the Jacobite Rising, followed the shore of a long, narrow loch that stretched to the west, and a number of shops, cottages, and a venerable coaching inn clustered around the market cross in the village center. A second river converged here at this end of the town, cascading from the higher elevations and flowing beneath a stone bridge that appeared fairly new. The small stone church, the object of their journey, sat in a shady flower-studded glen below the confluence of the waters.

  Going directly to the church, Wynne got out to speak to an old man bent over a well-tended plot in the kirkyard.

  “That’d be Mr. Kealy,” the villager said in response to his question about the priest. “Ain’t here but once a fortnight, but yer in luck, sir. The young fellow’s arrived for the service tomorrow.”

  After a few more questions, Wynne was able to ascertain that Kealy was the curate who divided his time traveling between two churches in area, the rector of the large parish keeping to a single church in a distant village.

  “If ye’ve a mind to stretch yer legs along the river path or take some refreshment at the inn, he should be back bye ’n’ bye. Off visiting one of the parishioners, he is,” the older man suggested.

  Wynne conveyed this information to Jo as he assisted her out of the carriage. He admired her profile as she raised her face to the sky and closed her eyes, taking in a deep breath.

  A great deal had been said between them. She finally allowed him to speak of the past, and she asked about his wife, but that wasn’t where her questions ended. Among other things, she wanted to know if Fiba had a chance to hold Cuffe and for how long she lived after delivering him.