It Happened in the Highlands

by May McGoldrick

  “Cry ‘Havoc!’ and let slip the dogs of war,” he murmured, moving to a window overlooking the front courtyard.

  Tilmory Castle, with its warlike, red stone exterior, presented itself far differently on the inside. Centuries old, the castle had been renovated only decades ago, and the interior had clearly been designed to convey the feeling of wealth and power. Reputed to be one the richest estates in the area east of the Grampians, the farms had long ago been cleared of tenants to make room for the more lucrative raising of sheep. The display of artwork, books, fine furniture, and other luxuries demonstrated the success of that strategy, in spite of the sometimes unrestrained shows of force it took to achieve it.

  But it was the behavior of the staff that gave Wynne greatest pause.

  In his time in the navy, he’d seen ships commanded by cruel men. The use of the lash and deprivation of rations in the hands of a sadistic captain often made for a disciplined but disheartened crew. Men accustomed to mistreatment did what was required, but with a slack and sullen manner, and they did nothing beyond it. It was the same here.

  From the moment he climbed out of the carriage, he’d seen the sidelong looks of fearful, unhappy servants. Without meaning to, they projected the attitudes of whipped dogs, slinking about, disappearing around corners, answering questions when asked in the most hesitant manner, averting their faces when they came in to light candles. The workers at Tilmory Castle were afraid, and they’d been that way for a long time.

  Wynne was still standing at the window when the Bartons’ carriage rolled to a stop in front of the entrance. Graham stepped out and offered a hand to Mrs. Barton, who ignored him and hurried toward the door with agility that belied her age.

  Dermot was to tell them that Wynne had found their son and was delivering him personally to Tilmory Castle, where he would await their return. He could only imagine how they must have received the message.

  Only a moment later, the library door opened, and Mrs. Barton barreled into the room, with Graham on her heels.

  She overlooked Wynne’s greeting, her eyes immediately finding her son sitting quietly at the desk near the door.

  “I’ve never been faced with such appalling negligence and ill-treatment. If my son were not waiting for us here, we would have taken the Abbey down, stone by stone. And we may do that yet.” She went closer to Barton. “He looks pale as death. What kind of ordeal did you put him through? Why couldn’t you bring him back to the Abbey?”

  Without waiting for an answer, she turned to Barton’s uncle. “Put him in the carriage. I want him taken directly to Aberdeen.”

  “It’s far too late in the day,” Graham told her. “Tomorrow is time enough.”

  Mrs. Barton glanced impatiently out the window at the late afternoon light, and then waved a hand imperiously in the air. “Call in the servants. Have him put to bed. Tomorrow at first light, Graham, you’ll take him.” She whirled toward Wynne. “We have nothing more to do with you, Captain. Our business is finished. Pray convey our dissatisfaction to Dr. McKendry regarding the management of what you claim to be an asylum. You’ll receive no favorable recommendation from us, I assure you. Now get out.”

  When no one moved, she turned to Graham, who was staring across the room.

  “Lady Josephine,” he said with a curt bow. “We were told you’d already gone north.”

  Mrs. Barton swung around, her expression furious as Jo moved away from a bookcase.

  “I did go north,” she said calmly, holding a volume to her chest. “But only to Garloch.”

  “You!” the older woman breathed with a tone of accusation.

  This was the way Jo wanted it, to stay in the shadows until these two were secure in their own lair.

  “After all these years, I was glad to know where my mother was born and baptized. I had to see it with my own eyes. Captain Melfort was kind enough to help me find what I was looking for,” Jo said, nodding with gratitude in Wynne’s direction. “He’s been instrumental in going through the records at the rectory in Garloch and at the offices of the bishop in Aberdeen. Thank heaven we are such dedicated record keepers in our modern age. One cannot rely on rumor alone.”

  Silence deadened the room. And then Graham closed the door as she continued.

  “In Garloch I visited with some old friends of my mother’s, and I had the opportunity of speaking with her cousin Ezekiel Sellar. He sends his best wishes to you, sir. He was heartily sorry he hasn’t seen you since you sold Josephine Sellar’s property to him.”

  There’d been a time when Jo would not stand up to her enemies or even allow anyone else to fight her battles. That time was long gone, Wynne thought proudly. A different woman stood in this room now.

  “And we stopped at the grave. But we all know she’s not the one buried there.”

  She was ignoring Mrs. Barton’s expression of scoffing disdain, but kept her gaze on Graham. And when she spoke again, her abhorrence spilled out with every word.

  “How could you do that to her? She was your ward. The daughter of your own sister. She was your own blood. How could you not protect her, cherish her?”

  “I—” Graham didn’t have a chance to say another word.

  “Get out!” Mrs. Barton exploded. “Get out of this house now. This very moment.”

  “Calm yourself,” Wynne ordered. “If you would allow Graham and Lady Josephine—”

  “No. I’ll allow nothing of the kind.” She glared wildly at Jo and pointed at the door. “You’re no one. Do you hear? No one. No connection. Josephine Sellar drowned in a flood. She’s gone. There was no child. You’re an intruder in our lives. Remove her from our home, Graham.”

  “Your home?” Jo asked sharply, looking from the irate woman back at Graham. “Look behind you. He is still here. Charles is alive. This is his home.”

  Neither moved. Their attention was on Jo’s flushed face.

  “Or will you do the same thing to Charles that you did to my mother? Why not? You can save yourself the expense of sending him to his death in Aberdeen. Why not simply dig a grave here and fill it with the body of any poor soul?”

  “You’re a devil,” Mrs. Barton fumed, her eyes spitting fire. “To say such a thing to a mother.”

  Jo ignored her, keeping her attention on Graham. “Isn’t that what you did in Garloch? Isn’t it true that you identified the first available corpse as your ward, Josephine Sellar?”

  Graham stalked to a desk by a window.

  “And what did you gain by it?” she persisted. “A few paltry pounds from the sale of her estate?” Jo shook her head in disgust. “In your vile scheming, is Charles next to die?”

  Mrs. Barton took a step toward her.

  “You are the only vile schemer,” she hissed. “You and your clever plans to take everything we have built. Everything we hold dear.”

  Jo continued to ignore her, keeping after Graham.

  “Or were your actions even more insidious?” she demanded. “Did you try to kill her? Did you throw her into those flood waters yourself? Is that the reason she was so terrified of coming back?”

  “You’re wrong,” he retorted, anguish in his voice. “I committed no murder. She was caught in the flood, and I thought she was dead. I was sure of it. No one could have survived those raging waters, certainly not a woman in her condition. And I tell you with God as my witness, it wasn’t about her estate. I wanted to bring her back. Save her.”

  His admission had a more powerful effect on Mrs. Barton than Wynne would have imagined. She crossed the room and slapped Graham hard across the face.

  “That’s a lie!” she screamed. “You wouldn’t betray me. Not then, not now.”

  Graham said nothing. He never lifted a hand to his face. He simply stood where he was as Mrs. Barton spun and started back toward Jo.

  “That harlot deserved to die.” The old woman stopped in the center of the room, her eyes wild, unfocused. “It was God’s will that she should drown like the Pharaoh and his Egyptian whore.
She died as she should. And the devil growing inside her died as well. I wanted them gone. God wanted them dead. Both dead.”

  As if suddenly awakened, Graham started toward her. “Leana. Stop.”

  She held up a hand, halting him in his tracks.

  “From the first moment the little jade stepped foot in this house, all she wanted was to steal the Barton men from me,” she sneered. “She wanted to take everything from me. Ainsley and his sanctimonious drivel. Speaking of her as the daughter I should have given him.”

  Backing toward the desk where her son sat, she reached out to touch his hair, but stopped, pulling her hand back as if burned.

  “And then my Charles, my boy, fell under her spell.”

  She glared at Jo, pure hatred in her eyes.

  “He turned on me like an adder, and she made him do it. Turned his back on the match that would have made him a man for all Scotland. Shrugged off the marriage prospect that I’d arranged for him like it was nothing. Nothing! And turned to her! Married her . . . just to spite me. All my plans for him. All for nothing!”

  * * *

  Married her.

  Josephine and Charles. Married. He was her father.

  Married her. Mrs. Barton’s words reverberated in Jo’s mind.

  She wanted to go to Charles, hold him. He was her father. But the old woman was standing beside him, her arms askew, her face twitching with fury. And Jo knew Charles’s mother would fight her like a wild animal if she tried to get near him now.

  Then something changed in Mrs. Barton’s face. A glimmer of understanding flickered in her eyes. She scowled darkly at Graham.

  “Saved her? You would have saved her?” Her mouth opened and closed as if forming words that did not come out. “You wouldn’t do that. Not you. Not the man who claimed he loved me. Not the man who had begged me to marry him for . . . how many years, Graham? Not the man who vowed to wait for me till the last breath of life left our bodies.”

  Suddenly, all the anger and doubt and frustration and helplessness inside of Jo was pushed aside, and pity welled up in her heart. In spite of the knowledge that this old woman was the cause of so much misery, responsible for the death of her mother, she could feel nothing but pity for her at this moment. Another lost woman.

  “Leana,” Graham began helplessly.

  Mrs. Barton shuddered and shot a fierce glance at Jo.

  “So you’ve stolen him from me, as well,” she rasped. “You and your whore mother have taken them all. Well, this one’s not half the man his brother was. Never could be. So take him. I don’t need him or anyone. You both should have drowned. I wish you’d never seen the light of day.”

  “That’s enough, Leana,” Graham said, crossing toward her.

  And then he stopped and began to back away, and Jo glimpsed the small, lady’s muff pistol she’d drawn from the drawer of the desk.

  The barrel of the gun swiveled toward Jo, and Mrs. Barton moved a step closer. She wasn’t going to miss.

  Their strategy, devised at Knockburn Hall when Charles haltingly asked Wynne and Jo to bring him here, had degenerated into imminent disaster. Jo had been willing to provoke Mrs. Barton and Graham, and prod them for answers, but right now it looked as if she would die in the effort.

  Jo didn’t know how he reached her, but suddenly Wynne was standing between them.

  “This has gone far enough, Mrs. Barton,” he said coolly. “You’ll hand me that pistol immediately.”

  “Do you think for a moment that I’ll let her take everything? My family? My home? My position? Get out of my way.”

  A thousand thoughts and fears raced through Jo, for she knew this woman was capable of pulling the trigger. She’d come to the Highlands to get answers, to find her origins. And now she knew her mother’s story. She’d discovered her father. But what about Wynne? He was the one true love of her life. And she could lose him now.

  Fear gripped her heart with iron claws. He was her past, her future, her present. Her life and her dreams. He was the happiness that she thought she had lost forever. He was the air that sustained her.

  Sixteen years ago she lost Wynne. Here in the Highlands she found him again. And now he was standing between her and a loaded weapon.

  “You can only shoot one of us,” he said to Mrs. Barton. “It won’t be her, I promise you.”

  Graham took a step toward the older woman.

  “Stop,” she barked. “If I had two bullets, one of them would be for you. Now get out of the way, Captain.”

  She couldn’t let him do this. Jo tried to step around Wynne, but he held her back.

  “They’ll hang you for this as sure as we’re standing here. Do you think her brother, the Lord Justice, would allow you to live if you kill either of us today?”

  “Do you think I care? Do you think I want to live after this?”

  Jo edged around Wynne enough to see Mrs. Barton waving the pistol.

  “Then you may as well shoot me,” he said. “I’ve already taken one bullet for her. I’m ready to take another.”

  “No!” Jo shouted, backing out of Wynne’s reach and stepping to the side.

  As the pistol turned, she saw the woman’s eyes focus on her, and her intent was deadly.

  “No, Mother,” Charles Barton said as his hand closed over the pistol, pushing the muzzle toward the floor. “You’ll not . . . not be killing . . . my daughter.”

  Chapter 23

  Though she hadn’t expected to, Jo saw Mrs. Barton every day after the incident in the library.

  When Charles intervened, the older woman had immediately sunk into a chair, shocked and staring at him. She’d been defeated, stripped of whatever power she imagined she had over her son, over Jo, even over Graham. When she failed to move or respond to anyone, servants carried her up to her chambers and put her to bed.

  Before they left for the Abbey, Wynne had them send for Dr. McKendry.

  Struck down by apoplexy from the shock she’d brought on herself, Mrs. Barton was attended by physicians, first by Dermot and then from the village and from Aberdeen. After two days, their diagnosis was hardly optimistic. The old woman was conscious, for she could blink her responses to simple questions even though she could not speak. But she’d been left with no ability to move or perform the simplest of tasks. Leana Barton would lie in her bedchamber indefinitely, stripped of the dignity of living as she had lived, sentenced to imprisonment within her own mind.

  After what had occurred at Tilmory Castle, Jo was relieved when her father expressed his wish to remain at the Abbey. Charles had given up Tilmory Castle as his home long ago.

  Rooms for him had been arranged near her in the north wing. With the assistance of an attendant, she was certain she could manage his ongoing recovery.

  Charles faltered in his efforts to speak, a continuing problem that frustrated him. But when the words failed him, he picked up his pen and wrote out his wishes, for his comprehension was improving daily. His memory contained great lapses, but Dermot told him not to despair. Others before him had recovered fully, and they would keep at it.

  Three days later, Graham asked for an opportunity to explain his side of things, so Jo and Wynne took her father by carriage back to Tilmory Castle.

  “There could be no punishment worse than what your mother has been sentenced,” Graham said to Charles. They were sitting in the library again, and a steady rain was beating against the windows.

  “For myself,” Graham continued with a glance at the others, “I fear for my everlasting soul.”

  Jo was stunned by the change in the man in such a short time. Since their first meeting a fortnight ago, his straight back was bent with age, and he favored one leg when he walked. The lines on his face were deeper. His eyes had lost their fire.

  “For years you stayed away from Tilmory Castle, from your mother and me,” Graham said in a hushed tone. “I know you thought we drove Josephine away. And you were right. Your mother bullied and threatened her until she ran, but I’m as res
ponsible for it. I stood by in silence, tending to my work overseeing the farms, even though I knew what the lass was suffering. I did nothing to stop it. I didn’t raise a finger to help her until it was too late.”

  Charles would not look at Graham, and he said nothing.

  “M’lady, your introduction to this family, to your own family has been . . .” The older man faltered and moved restlessly in his chair, searching for the right word to say to Jo. “Ghastly. But before I say another thing, I need to tell you how sorry I am for treating you as I did the day we met at the Abbey, and for wrongly holding my tongue since then.”

  “What I have to forgive is nothing compared to what you did to my mother and my father. It was their futures that you destroyed.”

  “I know,” he said grimly. “I know.”

  More than apologies, she wanted answers. “Two brothers and a sister. My father has conveyed to me some of our family history. What he can recall.”

  Perhaps it was the day Charles jumped into the pond hoping to save her. Or earlier, when Stevenson was released from his night restraints and dealt her father a blow as he slept. Perhaps it was the accumulation of many things, or even just the passage of time. There was no way to know, but a fog had cleared in her father’s mind and he was undoubtedly improving. And wanting to spend time with Jo, talking of the past, was his favorite pastime these days.

  “You were the youngest,” she continued. “You’ve remained a bachelor your entire life, serving the family at Tilmory Castle. And I know that Mary, my grandmother, was the middle child. She was married and lived on a farm in Garloch, where she gave birth to Josephine.”

  One day, she’d like to see that place. Ezekiel Sellar had invited them when they met, but there wasn’t time then.

  “What I can’t understand is why Mrs. Barton hated my mother so,” she told him. “It can’t simply be she was jealous of the attention of other men in her family.”

  The older man stared into the air for a long moment. Jo’s father had hinted to her that Graham never married because he’d always loved Leana Barton.

  “It was . . .” Graham finally broke the silence. “You have to understand it was her need to be the center of things, to control everyone. That’s what drove her always. She was raised in the fashionable society of Edinburgh. She always threw it in Ainsley’s face that she married down in marrying a Highlander.”