Sleepless in Scotland

by May McGoldrick

  “Where exactly have you looked?” he asked as he ushered her toward the great hall with Thornton on their heels.

  “The garden. The orchards. I checked with the grooms in the stables, thinking Phoebe might had decided to go for a ride. But no one saw her, and no horses are missing.”

  A footman appeared.

  “Get Mr. Singer now,” Ian ordered, sending the man running for the butler. He turned back to Millie. “Could she be up with my mother?”

  “She’s not. I asked Mrs. Young to check. She said your mother is resting, and Phoebe has not been to see her.”

  The butler rushed into the hall. Ian gave directions to organize a search. “Get Mr. Raeburn here as well.”

  The household was already stirring because of the urgency in his calls. The housekeeper appeared. “What is it, Captain?”

  “We can’t find Lady Phoebe. Have the servants look for her. Look everywhere.”

  As Mrs. Hume hurried out, Ian turned to Millie again. “Did you look in Sarah’s room?”

  “When she wasn’t in the garden, that was the first place I looked,” she answered. “She’s not there.”

  He tried to think of all the places where Sarah liked to take her friends. Bellhorne was a large house with extensive grounds, and Phoebe was no stranger to it. Running footsteps could be heard now, as well as doors opening and closing.

  Millie suddenly looked somewhat embarrassed by the upheaval she’d set in motion.

  “Perhaps I’ve overreacted, and my worry is for nothing. I know my sister. I know she has an adventurous nature. Perhaps she’s simply off on her own and will be back by dinner.”

  Nothing would make Ian happier than to have that be so, but wishing it did not make the worry diminish. He wouldn’t rest until they found her.

  * * *

  Phoebe had little strength left in her legs to kick and keep herself afloat. She’d found a slippery, narrow lip protruding on the stonework, and she clung to it for her life. Her fingers were growing numb, however, and she kept losing her hold. Each time, she sank deep into the water. But she wasn’t giving up, and each time she thrashed her way to the surface.

  She had no voice left to call for help. The only sound in the well was the clicking chatter of her own teeth and the hollow lapping of the water around her.

  The feeling in her left side had returned, but the cold and exhaustion rendered the arm useless. Her body felt more and more like dead weight, and she knew it was only a matter of time before she lost her handhold and sank to the bottom.

  Time. She didn’t know how long she’d been down here except that the sky far above was taking on a darker shade of blue. Whoever pushed her in had to be gone. Nothing else rained down on her. No boulders. No branches. There was no attempt to cover the top. Perhaps he thought the fall had killed her.

  She had no doubt they’d have realized by now she was missing. Millie would go looking when she didn’t find her in the rose garden. Phoebe wasn’t giving up, but the chances were poor that anyone would search the Auld Grove. And even if they did, how would they find her at the bottom of a forgotten well?

  Phoebe closed her eyes and rested her face against the slippery wall. She couldn’t lose hope. She couldn’t die. No. Not here. Not at Bellhorne. Ian’s face formed in her mind’s eye. He’d already suffered too much. He held himself responsible for what happened to Sarah. She couldn’t add to his guilt.

  “I’m waiting for you, Ian,” she murmured. “But find me.”

  * * *

  Bellhorne and the estate grounds were in complete turmoil. Every member of the staff was looking for Phoebe, and the tenants had now joined in.

  Fearing additional upset for his mother, Ian decided he needed to remove her from the center of the commotion. The minister, Mr. Garioch, stepped in and invited the older woman to join him in the village for dinner. The carriage was brought around, and Alice Young accompanied her to the rectory. Millie, however, would go nowhere until her sister was found.

  The house was searched again with care, room by room. The dogs had been taken out of the kennels, and field hands and grooms were combing the fields.

  Ian was about to lose his mind. He could not fathom where Phoebe might have gone. They’d arrived here in his carriage. She’d taken no horses from the stables. There was only so far she could have walked in a few hours on foot. But which direction would she go?

  As soon as the search was well under way, he rode to the village to query the fishermen laying out their catch to dry along the shore. Worry topped worry. What if she had been taken against her will? Everyone he questioned answered the same. No one had seen a woman matching her description. No strangers had traveled through. No one had seen her. All Ian was able to accomplish there was to enlist the help of more men to expand the search up and down the shoreline.

  He didn’t want to think it. There was no parallel between Sarah’s disappearance and what was happening now. They were at Bellhorne. They were not in Edinburgh. No dangerous netherworld of crime existed out here. He trusted his tenants and the villagers, everyone that she might have come in contact with.

  Riding hard back to Bellhorne, he prayed she’d be waiting there with Millie. But what if she wasn’t? Dread washed down his spine, and he spurred his horse on.

  Ian tried to put himself in Phoebe’s place. He knew she was upset while they were having lunch in the rose garden. His first thought on hearing of her disappearance was that she might have revisited places she’d gone with Sarah. But they’d already searched all the spots he could think of, and she was not to be found.

  Evening was drawing near. Soon the dark of night would overtake them. Ian felt the tension straining his every limb. He could hardly think for the knot of pain throbbing in his head.

  “Where are you, Phoebe?” he called out into the wind. No answer came back.

  Put yourself in her place. The words echoed again and again in his mind. How could she disappear? Where would she go? And why?

  He knew her. He’d witnessed her courage, her willingness to face danger.

  Ian had almost reached Bellhorne, and he saw his men and their dogs stretched out in lines across the fields. Raeburn was directing them. She hadn’t been found yet.

  “Where did you go, Phoebe?”

  The image of her unconscious body landing at his feet in the Vaults came to his mind. Few people he knew—man or woman—had her heart, her courage.

  The realization was slow in coming, but to solve any puzzle one needed to assemble the first pieces. And he had them.

  He’d found Phoebe wearing men’s clothing for her sojourn into the Vaults, the most dangerous place in Edinburgh for anyone. He’d followed her through the streets of Edinburgh, only to catch up to her by Greyfriars Kirkyard, where headless ghosts of Covenanters rose from their graves. She wanted to climb to the top of Arthur’s Seat where Bonnie Prince Charlie stood and surveyed the capital he’d come to fight for. She was drawn to the dangerous, to the untamed.

  The Auld Grove. No one went there anymore, except the travelers who camped nearby later in the summer. Like a fool, he’d shown his sister the standing stones once, and then, thinking better on it, he tried to warn her off with stories of witches and blood rituals. He thought he’d succeeded, but now he wondered if Sarah had taken Phoebe there during her visits.

  And if he was right and something happened to Phoebe out there, then he had one more reason for burning in hell.

  * * *

  Phoebe stared at the pale hand clinging to the mossy rock. The bloodless fingers didn’t belong to her. A vague indifference was clouding her brain, and she found she no longer worried about the cold, for she could hardly feel her legs. The chattering of her teeth continued, but she only occasionally heard it. Her panting breaths were not taking in enough air. But she didn’t care about that either. All she wanted to do was sleep.

  She rubbed her cheek against a slick rock and thought of her regrets.

  “Reg . . . rets.” She struggl
ed to get the words past her lips. The sound bounced around her head. Or was it echoing off the walls? She didn’t know.

  Regrets.

  She was a good daughter, even though she caused her father to lose his temper every other time they argued. She was also a good sister. And if Hugh and Gregory claimed that she’d given them the grey patches beginning to show in their hair, it was a lie. Millie and Jo loved her, tolerated her without their brothers’ meddlesome theatrics. And she was socially aware of the problems facing the poor. She had used her gift of writing for their welfare.

  She had no regrets.

  “Another lie,” she breathed.

  Closing her eyes, she saw Ian’s face. He was her regret. Not going after him. He’d always been the one. The only one.

  She was twenty-seven years old, and their few moments alone—and his kiss—were all she thought of.

  “Ian,” she whispered.

  She had secured a place for herself as a writer, despite the difficulties presented because she was a woman. She was writing columns for the Edinburgh Review. It was a great accomplishment. But what of the other things that could bring her happiness?

  Marriage. Children. Sex. It occurred to her that the order was muddled, but what did it matter? She’d missed all of it. She’d missed the passion that went with giving a man all of herself, body and soul. She was dying in a hole dug centuries ago in a forgotten grove . . . and she had not yet experienced life.

  “Let me go,” she said as one hand slipped off the rock. It would be so easy to let the other one go too.

  Her body begged to be allowed to sink to the bottom. Easy. Phoebe stared at the slippery hold keeping her afloat. All she had to do was release each finger.

  “Ian.” His face. He wouldn’t let her be.

  So she had regrets. But what of his? she wondered. His sister dead, and after three years he was no closer to resolving his feelings of guilt. And what about her? He’d saved her in the Vaults. He worried about her, lectured her, but treated her like an intelligent, feeling human being. And then he brought her to Bellhorne. He would feel responsible for her death. She had no doubt of it.

  Death. The grave. What did it matter if it was a casket in a kirkyard or the water at the bottom of a well? She stared again at the obstinate fingers clutching the rock.

  “Ian,” she cried out with all the breath she had.

  * * *

  Ian would never have heard it if he’d not followed the broken branches and trampled clumps of bracken and tall grass. The faint cry came from the bottom of the well, nearly hidden by the overgrown shrubs.

  As he led a group of men to the Auld Grove, he’d been worried that if Phoebe had ventured out here alone, she might have twisted an ankle. Much worse, she might have been attacked by a vagrant passing through. But the well? It had never occurred to him.

  “Blast me,” he cursed.

  As he scrambled to get to her, he nearly went in himself. Staring down into the darkness, Ian shouted orders to his men to bring ropes and a lantern.

  Going down on his hands and knees, he leaned into the well and heard the sound of a splash at the bottom.

  Relief at finding her and worry over how badly she might be injured battled in his brain.

  “Phoebe!” he called down to her. For a moment panic hit him that perhaps he’d imagined it. He’d wanted to hear her voice so badly that he’d conjured it up. “Talk to me, Phoebe.”

  “No.”

  The single word reverberated up along the stone walls, and relief swept through him.

  “That’s the spirit,” he said.

  A lantern was lit and lowered into the well. Ian could see her upturned face. Her wet hair was pushed back, her skin as pale as the dead. Tired eyes flashed in the flickering light.

  “I’m coming,” he said. “Hold on.”

  Ian quickly tied a large loop at the end of a second rope and went down into the well. As he descended, his heart almost broke. Wet and shivering, she clung to the moss-covered wall.

  When he’d nearly reached her, she stretched her arm out to grab the rope, but her fingers wouldn’t close over it and her body sank out of sight. Letting go, he knifed into the water, praying he wouldn’t drop on top of her.

  The water was black and cold, but he found her immediately. Wrapping his arm around her waist, he propelled them both quickly to the surface.

  He wanted to kiss her senseless.

  “Phoebe,” he breathed her name. Her face had taken on a masklike grey hue. Her skin was like ice, and she was shivering uncontrollably.

  Bloody hell, he thought. How long had she been in here?

  Sitting her in the loop, he tried to get her to wrap her hands around the rope. He wanted to get her out of the water, but she clung to his neck and was not letting go. He understood her response. He wanted to do the same.

  “Phoebe, you need to let me go. We can only get out one at a time.”

  She shook her head and held on tighter to his neck.

  “There’s a warm blanket waiting for you. Dry clothes. A bed.”

  “No.”

  “I promise to hold you, sweetheart. I will never let you go once we’re out of here.”

  She still was hesitant. Forcibly removing her arms from around his neck, he then wrapped them around the rope. He kissed her lips and shouted to the men above to pull her up slowly.

  “Hold on, my love.”

  Her eyes looked into his as they began to lift her. She was alive, he told himself. Alive. She’d survived the fall into this well. An absolute miracle. He commanded the worry carping at him to be silent. He hadn’t lost her.

  “No regrets,” she said through chattering teeth. “I want no regrets.”

  She continued to watch him as she ascended, and he never took his eyes off of her.

  Delirium can make a person say strange things, he thought, but Phoebe didn’t sound delirious.

  No regrets.

  As he waited for the rope to come back down the well, Ian wondered what she meant.

  Chapter 12

  Weak with exhaustion, emotional, and chilled to the bone, Phoebe felt she’d gained a new chance at life once they pulled her out and sat her beside the well. Ian found her, saved her, but she knew she had enough life left in her to limp to the house on her own two feet.

  But he wouldn’t allow it. Wrapping his coat around her, he then picked her up and carried her, holding her to his chest as if he would keep her there forever, just as he’d promised.

  As they crossed the gardens at Bellhorne, servants ran from every direction to meet them. It was a spectacle, to be sure. Shouts rang out. Millie appeared and burst into tears before they reached the house. She acted as if her sister had been dead and was now brought back to life.

  Phoebe didn’t want to think how close she’d come to giving up.

  Everything around her was a blur, and the excitement moved her, but she wanted nothing more than to sink deeper into Ian’s embrace. His name was what she’d continuously intoned during those moments when all hope seemed lost.

  All good things must come to an end, however. Once he carried her upstairs, her hero was pushed out of the room. In what seemed like an instant, Mrs. Hume and a number of maids stripped her out of her clothes, bathed her with warm water, dried her carefully, and tucked her into bed in a nightgown with a hot drink. Millie stayed with her, supervising and fussing over her every second. She was so weary and cold. She couldn’t warm up.

  “The doctor will be coming up,” the housekeeper told them as she and the others went out.

  “Mrs. Bell?” Phoebe asked her sister when they were alone. She could only imagine how upsetting the news of her disappearance could be to the woman. “I hope no one told her I was missing.”

  “She and Mrs. Young were taken to the rectory.” Millie looked out the window at the early evening sky. “I don’t know what story Captain Bell came up with to send his mother away, but it was all arranged quickly and efficiently. I don’t believe she kno
ws.”

  Phoebe was relieved, but she had no more time to speak privately with her sister as there came a sharp knock at the door. Millie admitted a man who introduced himself as Dr. Thornton.

  “So she’s alive,” he began, scowling at Phoebe from the darkening shadows by the door. “The instigator of this ruckus.”

  Even if she knew the doctor well, his rudeness would not have been easily overlooked. Of average height, he carried himself like a man ready to do battle at any moment. His face was pockmarked and showed a number of whitish scars that stood out on his ruddy skin, but beyond that there was nothing distinctive about his features. Phoebe knew for certain she’d never met him. But the way he paused when he entered, staring at her before coming into the candlelight by the bed, made her wonder if they might indeed have been introduced before. Perhaps when Sarah was still alive, she thought.

  Millie introduced the two of them, and the coolness in her tone indicated that she too was taken aback by the man’s behavior. The doctor, however, showed no awareness of how he was being perceived.

  “I know well enough who you are.” He scowled at Phoebe as he checked her pulse and bent to inspect her face and eyes. “You’re guests here, and I don’t mind telling you that no good comes of taking liberties when you’re a stranger.”

  She was no stranger to this house, not to the gardens and the grounds, and she was not taking any liberties. But as Phoebe began to reply to his impertinence, he picked up her hand, raised her elbow, and then proceeded to bend her arm in every possible manner until she gasped in pain. Apparently satisfied, he released it without ceremony. Turning to Millie—who hovered like a nervous mother and watched everything he did—he announced that nothing was broken, so far as he could tell, the heart was still beating, and her breathing was perfectly fine.

  “I won’t know how badly the shoulder is bruised until the swelling recedes. Perhaps tomorrow or the next day, we’ll have a better idea.”

  Phoebe stretched her left arm and flexed her shoulder. It hurt more now after his abuse, but she wouldn’t complain to this man if the limb fell off and dropped onto the floor.