Sleepless in Scotland

by May McGoldrick

  She gazed at the windows and the rose garden beyond again. If he didn’t know better, it would have been easy to imagine his sister was standing there, watching them.

  “My dear sweet Sarah. I felt the loss of her then, to be sure.”

  Years of warning those coming anywhere near Bellhorne to be sensitive to her fragility. Ian thought of all the guilt, all the battles he’d fought inwardly about telling her the truth. Some of them had been very recent.

  “Last week, you asked me to write to her and have her come home, even though you knew it was impossible.” He kept his tone gentle, but it stunned him how he’d believed she was unaware of the truth. “You cried over her roses dying in the garden.”

  Eyes as dark as his own challenged him. “You built a make-believe world, and I’ve lived in it. It’s only right that you should live with my confusion.”

  He couldn’t argue with her.

  “And more and more, that is exactly what it’s been like for me of late. Confusion. Puzzlement. I’ve been living in two worlds.” A pale hand waved in the air, indicating everything around her. “One that is real and one that is made of dreams. And as more time has passed, I’ve become more and more attached to my imaginary world.”

  He’d done this to her. All blame lay with him.

  “Sometimes there are moments when I forget which is real and which is invented. When I found one of the rose bushes dying, I was lost. I didn’t know. For a short time, I actually believed it was possible for you to bring Sarah back. I wanted to believe it. But that’s behind us now.”

  Whatever she did to give him a taste of his own bitter medicine, he deserved it. Her confusion was his fault too.

  “You’re a good son, Ian.” She placed a hand on his, drawing his attention. “And I know that everything you’ve done to protect me has brought no relief for you. I know you’ve suffered. I know you’re still suffering. But I want you to consider that perhaps . . . perhaps you’ll never be able to avenge your sister’s death.”

  He didn’t want to talk about vengeance or his suffering. He didn’t want his mother to know that since his search for Sarah started, he’d seen another side of life. Every time he descended into that netherworld of the city, he’d seen with his own eyes the tragic conditions in which people were forced to live. The crippling poverty of farmers forced from their land and scratching desperately for food and shelter in the squalid rookeries of Edinburgh. The opium addicts throwing away productive lives for an hour of oblivion. The drunken dock men giving away a week’s pay with one throw of the dice. He’d held the hands of starving children, standing beside a mother’s lifeless body.

  Sarah’s death had changed him in every way. Yes, he still spent sleepless nights in search of her killer, but he also found that in his waking hours he could do something to help those who suffered.

  “Why now?” he asked. “Why did you decide to put an end to all of this?”

  His mother’s attention again moved to the open window.

  “Phoebe.”

  Beyond the curtains, sitting on some bench in the garden, Ian had asked Phoebe to wait for him. His Phoebe.

  “When I heard this morning that she’d gone missing yesterday and that she was injured, my imaginary world folded and burned to tinder in an instant. Suddenly, the past was repeating itself, and I could no longer live in a dream.”

  Ian felt the same urgency yesterday while he searched for her. He’d been a man possessed.

  “She was Sarah’s closest friend,” he said. “From the moment she arrived at Bellhorne, your response to her presence here—”

  She put a hand on his arm, interrupting him. “My reaction when I heard she’d been hurt wasn’t because of Sarah’s relationship with her, but yours. You, Ian. The man who has sacrificed so much of his life for this family, for me . . . I couldn’t fathom losing our Lady Phoebe. I know how much she means to you.”

  Losing Phoebe would have meant the end of his sanity, the end of him. He stared at the furnishings of the room, at the alabaster icon on the wall, at the mementos of his and Sarah’s youth scattered around him. But everywhere he looked, there was only Phoebe. She was alive in his thoughts of today, in his dreams of tomorrow, in his hopes for happiness in the future.

  He turned to his mother. “How do you know what she means to me? We’ve spent so little time together in your company.”

  She smiled.

  “A mother’s intuition.”

  * * *

  He had no mother.

  He was found at the river. No basket of bulrushes had been woven for him. No pharaoh’s daughter standing by. No one called him prophet.

  But those who found him, raised him, and scorned him always had a word for him.

  Trouble. Ghoul. Accursed. Disaster. Barghest. Pain monger. Chain rattler. Blight. Satan’s hall boy.

  They never let up on him. He was always the cause of every evil.

  The rain’s come in . . . The barley’s withering . . . The barn is flooded . . . The milk is soured . . . The rats bit the old man . . . The new calf froze . . .

  ’Tis the boy!

  And when the old couple grew tired of searching for names or crimes to hang on him, he was . . . he was . . . nothing.

  How many years? How many years?

  Then the voices came, whispering, murmuring. Chosen. Snatches first, then louder, clearer. Avenge Us. He couldn’t ignore them. They were speaking to him. Coaxing. Prodding. Screaming. Kill.

  He had no mother. But then the voices came. You have been Chosen. You above all others. Avenge us.

  And on that day he was born.

  Chapter 15

  Phoebe stood by the sundial in the garden, urging the shadows to move. Some promises were surely not meant to be kept, she thought, eyeing the bright sun, which had apparently come to a standstill in the sky.

  “And waiting on a bench for more than a few minutes is one of those unenforceable promises,” she assured herself, thinking of what she’d told Ian. “But at least I’m still waiting in the garden. That should count for something.”

  She wandered along one of the grassy lanes where she could keep an eye on the door Ian had used to go into the house. She’d tried for a while to remain near the bench where Ian left her, but her restlessness had soon turned to worry. And by the time a full hour had passed, she’d made several trips back and forth to the sundial.

  It was difficult to believe they’d arrived only yesterday. So much had happened. Both bad and good, Phoebe thought, breathing in the garden smells. The scents and colors of the roses and azaleas, wild flowers and herbs invigorated her. The bright blue sky and the clear, clean air offered such a contrast to Edinburgh, though she did truly love the city too. Still, here one could almost forget about the world’s troubles. Almost. But she understood how, living here, Mrs. Bell had been able to pull the blinders over her eyes and shut out the harsh reality of her daughter’s death.

  Phoebe had completed several more circuits of the garden when the door opened. It wasn’t Ian, but she was delighted to see her sister coming out and carrying a book.

  “I saw you out here waiting, so I brought something to read to you to help pass the time.” Millie held up the volume. “Frankenstein; or, A Modern Prometheus. It’s new.”

  “I’ve read it.” Phoebe knew the book. It had caught her eye because it was published anonymously. And once she read it, she guessed the writer had to be a woman. “It was one of the books that came from London this spring for the library in Hertfordshire.”

  “Oh.” Millie wrinkled up her nose. “I must have missed it.”

  “It’s interesting enough. The so-called hero is a scientist who creates life in his laboratory, thereby leaving women out of the process entirely. You’ll see how well that works out for his motherless monster and for him.”

  For a while the two of them sat on the bench where Ian had asked her to wait, chatting about books, Mrs. Bell, and the events of the visit. But soon, having left the book on the bench, th
ey were circling the rose garden and then stretching their travels into the orchards and the long rows of berries.

  Moving along the raspberry bushes, Phoebe thought again about how staying busy with the grapevines and fruit and flowers could provide a shield for a broken heart against the arrows of hurtful rumor and gossip.

  Millie was browsing amongst the flowers in the bushes for berries that might have ripened early. “As abrupt as Mrs. Bell’s admission sounded to you today, I think it’s very encouraging news. The captain must be relieved.”

  Only moments ago, Phoebe had shared the conversation she had with Ian’s mother in the morning room. Still, as logical as Millie’s statement sounded, she was worried. An end to the pretense at Bellhorne of Sarah being alive didn’t put an end to Ian’s hunt. The mother could finally mourn her daughter’s death. But what about Ian? When would he be able to lay his sister to rest?

  “I imagine his life will be a little easier now that his mother knows,” Phoebe finally answered.

  At the end of the orchard, they decided not to venture out into the fields, though the smell of cut hay was enticing. Arm in arm, the sisters started back toward the gardens.

  “Are you ready to go back to the city tomorrow?” Millie asked as they moved through the arched opening in the wall.

  “I have to be, don’t I?”

  “I don’t know.” The two of them stopped by an arbor where the vines of red and white roses climbed and twisted and became inseparably entwined. “I see the way you look at things. The trees in the orchards, the fields, the sky, the gardens, the house. We haven’t even left yet, but I believe you’re already missing Bellhorne.”

  Phoebe was about to use Sarah as reason enough for her attachment to this place, but she couldn’t. It was no longer true. Yesterday had been about remembering her friend. But today . . . now . . . especially after the talk with Mrs. Bell and her words of encouragement, she was seeing Bellhorne differently.

  She recalled what Ian said as he helped her out of the well: I will never let you go. And his words when he’d put an end to their moments of passion: Another time, another place, under more appropriate circumstances . . . Could it be? Was it possible that one day she’d call this house her home?

  “I am right. Admit it,” Millie teased. “I can see you now, sitting in the rose garden on a sunny morning with your pen and paper, writing your stories or your articles. Later, you’ll have a bite to eat with Mrs. Bell or an early dinner when your husband comes back after his rounds with Mr. Raeburn.”

  “Don’t do this to me,” Phoebe protested.

  Her husband. Her face caught fire with the excitement of the possibility, remote as it might be. But for her part, Millie was too close to the truth.

  “Do what?”

  Phoebe was already sorry she’d told Millie about Mrs. Bell’s giving her blessing. “Make me want things I may never have.”

  “Make you want what, for example?”

  “Stop it, Millie,” she ordered. “I’m not going to pour out my heart.”

  “You don’t have to say anything. I see it in your face.”

  “No, you don’t.” Phoebe plucked a red petal from the climbing roses and held it to her lips. The fragrance of the flower was almost intoxicating. “I’m already guilty of spending too much time with my head in the clouds. Don’t make it worse by encouraging me.”

  “I’m your sister. Why shouldn’t I encourage you to pursue what makes you happy? To pursue all of your passions?”

  “My passion.” Phoebe held the rose petal up in her open palm and then blew it away. For so long, her passion had been her writing, and she always assumed that would be enough. To spin out onto a page the threads of stories and the poems and the arguments, and see the web of thoughts adhere and form a coherent shape had been a wonder. It had always been satisfying enough to forego marriage, children, a husband . . . but no longer. “I don’t know that I want to pursue one passion when it means I must forfeit another. Why can’t women have it all?”

  Millie quirked the corner of her mouth and arched an eyebrow. It was their mother’s famous you can do better than that look. She shook her head. “I’m sure I don’t know who you’re talking about, because my sister would never accept less than all.”

  Phoebe stamped a foot and frowned. Millie was supposed to be her voice of reason. The calm, the rational, the conventional-thinking sister who encouraged caution and careful consideration before taking action of any sort. She didn’t know this stranger standing before her.

  “Having it all would include someone this tall and this broad across the shoulders,” Phoebe said, holding her arms out to show the height and breadth of Ian. “But that particular man—whom we happen to be waiting for right now—is not so pliable that I can simply bend him to my fancy. So my only option is to wait, and wait, and wait until he is ready to pursue me.”

  “Until he is ready to pursue you.”

  She nodded, recalling the promise she’d made to allow herself no regrets. The words were simple enough but last night, after Ian had left her bedroom, she’d been mortified by what she’d done. Well, maybe not mortified, but slightly embarrassed, in any event.

  “Do you love him, Phoebe?”

  “What kind of question is that?” Now she was the one with hands on her hips, glaring at her sister.

  “It’s a simple question. For my own peace of mind. Do you love him?”

  “Of course I love him.”

  She let out a frustrated breath and tipped her head back, staring at the sky as memories of her youth rushed back. Walking these same garden lanes. Following Sarah through the house in search of ghosts. And then Ian. One look from him was enough to melt Phoebe in her tracks. A few friendly words and she might have swooned. But those days were gone. What she felt for him now was the love of a woman.

  “I’ve never loved anyone else. I know there will never be another. Ian Bell has always been my one true love.”

  Millie smiled, turned, and hurried away.

  “Where are you going?” Phoebe called after her.

  She took a step and picked up her skirts with the intention of running the troublesome creature to ground, but a hand on Phoebe’s shoulder stopped her.

  She didn’t have to look to know it was him. She recognized the warmth of his strong fingers, the tantalizing pressure.

  Finally she found her voice, though it sounded more like the strangled honk of a goose. “How long have you been standing behind me?”

  “Long enough.”

  “Why do you do this to me?”

  * * *

  Considering everything they’d been through in the last twenty-four hours, Ian thought, the day was improving by the minute.

  “Because I can’t stay away,” he said, gently pulling Phoebe around.

  A blush was blooming on her cheeks, and her blue eyes slowly lifted to his as he drew her into his embrace.

  “Because I’ve been blind for much of my life,” he continued. “But now that my eyes are opened, I can’t get enough of you.”

  She bit her lip, watching him closely, and he brought her closer, his arms tightening around her. Whether it was her drumming heart or his that he could feel, it made no difference, they’d become one.

  Her words, the admission she’d made to her sister about loving him was the most precious gift he’d ever received in this life.

  “I’m a flawed man. My body is scarred. I’m tormented by guilt. I don’t know that I’ll ever be content until I find out what happened to Sarah.” He traced the line of her high cheekbone, her jaw, her chin. “But I love you.”

  He held her face and looked into her eyes as his words registered. He could have swum in their blue depths.

  “You love me?”

  “I do.”

  Ian was about to say everything he’d intended. The conversation he’d overheard a moment earlier between Phoebe and her sister meant something. He wanted her to write and create. He wanted them to have a family. He wanted her
to have it all.

  “But I can’t ask you to marry me,” he said.

  She stiffened in his arms, but he held tight.

  “I can’t ask you to marry me because it’s become clear to me that you should be doing the asking.”

  Her eyes narrowed, her lips thinned. The blush on Phoebe’s cheeks turned a few shades darker.

  “Are you making fun of me?” she asked tensely. “Has it occurred to you, Captain Bell, that this is supposed to be a romantic moment?”

  If there was one thing he wanted, it would be to sweep her up and carry her off to some enchanted place of romance, where warm sea breezes bathed them with the sweet fragrance of tropical flowers. Where wines and exotic fruits from faraway places lay always within their reach. Where the azure sea dazzled the eye, and the sun kissed every inch of her glorious skin. Where every night was filled with the sounds of distant music. Where he would make love to her until the dawn glowed on a distant horizon.

  “I’m afraid I know very little about romance. But at the risk of sounding even more unromantic, two issues face us. First, you are an earl’s daughter. Second, you’ve been propositioning me for years with your beauty, your wit, your intelligence—”

  “You’re mocking me.”

  “I’m not. I was a blind man for years, but now I see everything clearly. That’s why I think it’s only right that you should ask me, considering the importance of the matter.”

  “Ian, you are not only being unromantic, you are also being ungentlemanly.”

  He smiled. “If I recall, last night a certain party had no interest in my gentlemanly qualities.”

  “Now you’re determined to embarrass me.”

  He feared that perhaps his attempt at humor had gone too far. But she wasn’t trying to escape him, so he held her tight, his nose touching hers, his lips stealing a kiss, and then another. A moment later, she sighed and kissed him back, her body becoming soft in his arms. She opened her lips, and he deepened the kiss and heard a moan in the back of her throat.