Sleepless in Scotland

by May McGoldrick

  He drew back slightly, and her blue eyes opened.

  “I am not as tall nor as broad as you think. And you don’t need to force me. Last night, you told me ‘no regrets,’” he reminded her. “I love you, Phoebe. I’m yours for the asking.”

  She pressed her fisted hands against his chest. “You had better say yes, or I’ll strangle you right here in this garden.”

  “Well, that’s a very romantic start to a proposal.”

  “I mean it.” She was glaring at him, but he could see the sparkle of amusement in her eyes.

  “More threats. More propositions. I’m mad about you.”

  “And my family thinks I am overly dramatic.” She sighed. “Very well. Captain Bell, will you . . . ?”

  “Wait. Have you brought a ring to seal our betrothal?”

  “You know that I haven’t, Captain. And I suggest you refrain from interrupting me again.”

  Ian smiled. “I’ll not interrupt you again. In fact, if the sky suddenly fills with angels blowing their horns and announcing some glorious event for mankind, I’ll tell them to wait.”

  Phoebe took a deep breath and began again.

  “Will you do me the honor, Captain Bell, of being my husband?”

  “Yes, Lady Phoebe. I would be honored.”

  He kissed her, and she kissed him back. The press of her body against his, the softness and the scent of her hair, the warmth of her skin all spoke to him of a lifetime of romance that lay ahead of them.

  Breaking off the kiss, he drew back and dropped to one knee.

  “Phoebe, you know who I am. You know the jagged scars of my past. You know the shadows that I chase.”

  “Ian, there’s no need—”

  “But know this too: I shall love you until every star plunges from the firmament. I shall cherish you until the moon melts into the sun. I promise that you will have the life you want . . . with all of the independence you require and all the support I can give. I’m yours, my love, now and forever. And I seal that vow with this.”

  Ian drew from his pocket the ring his mother had given him, a family heirloom that had graced the hands of Bell family brides for generations. The large diamond, mounted in an intricate gold setting at the center of a bed of rose petals, surrounded by small leaves of emerald. And now it would grace Phoebe’s slender hand.

  Standing, he slipped it onto her finger.

  The surprised smile and the tear running down her cheek told him all he needed to know. As she threw her arms around him, Ian kissed her and lifted her in the air, whirling her around before setting her down.

  “So you’re finally to make an honest man of me.”

  * * *

  Phoebe wished she could grow wings. She wanted to share her news with her sister that very instant.

  A dozen measured steps, a half-dozen running, again a restrained pace as she passed a middle-aged couple walking arm in arm in their Sunday best. Phoebe smiled and tried to look composed and demure as they greeted her. But as soon as she passed them, she was running again.

  She could no longer control her excitement as she flew down the lane after her sister. Millie hadn’t gone far, and Phoebe saw her waiting under an oak tree at the edge of the fields.

  “Millie,” she shouted, waving as she ran.

  Her sister turned around and the smile on her face told Phoebe she knew the cause of her excitement.

  “He proposed?” she squealed as Phoebe collided with her in the eagerness of the moment.

  Arms wrapped around each other. Laughter filled the air. For a few moments they were not mature adults; they were once again youngsters, holding each other’s hands and dancing in a happy circle.

  “We’re to be married.” Phoebe kissed her sister on each cheek and hugged her tightly again. She held out her hand so Millie could inspect the ring. “He gave me this.”

  “So beautiful!” she gasped. “You said yes! Of course, you said yes!”

  “I did, but he had to make it difficult. First, he made me do the asking, and after he said yes, he offered me the ring with a proposal of his own.”

  The giggle in her sister’s chest rose to full-blown laughter, and she pulled back to look at the ring again.

  “He’s the right man for our family. Never boring.”

  Ian had always been perfect for her. She’d known it long before he realized it himself.

  “But you set me up,” Phoebe scowled. “All the questions of whether I love him or not, and how I should pursue my passions. You gave him all the ammunition he needed.”

  Millie smiled, pushed the hair out of Phoebe’s face, and tucked it behind her ear. “I can’t tell you how happy I am.”

  She wanted to dance. She wanted to sing. She wanted to shout out and share her news.

  Phoebe once again pulled the younger woman into her embrace, but this time they held on to each other, neither in a hurry to let go. Sisters and friends. She was so glad that Millie was the first person she could share her joy with.

  Ian had gone back to tell his mother there would indeed be a wedding. Phoebe knew there were formalities they had to attend to once they returned to Edinburgh. Ian wished to speak to the earl and properly ask his and the countess’s permission. She doubted anyone in her family would have any objection. In many ways she guessed they’d actually be relieved.

  “Jo and Wynne and Cuffe leave for Jamaica in less than a week,” Millie reminded her. “She’ll not go if it means missing your wedding.”

  “We can get around that. We’ll plan to have the wedding after she gets back.” Phoebe took her sister’s hand as they started walking back along the lane toward the house. “The last thing I want is to disrupt any of their plans or take away attention from them.”

  Jo had endured sixteen years of waiting before she and Wynne Melfort found each other again. Their older sister deserved to savor her long overdue moments of joy.

  “Perhaps you and Captain Bell could plan to hold your wedding at Christmas. It seems that it has already become a tradition to have a wedding around either the Summer Ball or the Christmas Assembly.”

  Millie was right. Hugh and Grace married a year ago, the week of the Summer Ball. Gregory and Freya married last Christmas, and Jo and Wynne exchanged their vows less than a month ago.

  She shrugged. “I’d be happy to run away to Gretna Green, if that’s what Ian wants.”

  “Phoebe,” Millie responded, the note of warning in her voice. “You will not ruin the occasion for Mother. Nor for me. Nor for Jo.”

  “I know. I know. I know. I’ll be agreeable. I promise.”

  When they reached the castle, a maid was waiting in the entry foyer with Phoebe’s spencer jacket, gloves, a bonnet, and the message that the carriage was in the courtyard.

  “Where are you going?” Millie asked. As Phoebe buttoned the short jacket, she arranged the bonnet for her.

  “I asked Ian if he and I could go to the village.” Phoebe glanced at the door as Ian entered and came toward them. “Do I look respectable?”

  “Perfectly,” her sister replied. “But why are you going to the village?”

  “I wanted to share . . . we wanted to share our news with Sarah.”

  Chapter 16

  The church of brown and grey stone with its squat, square steeple sat on a promontory at the edge of the village, overlooking the choppy waters of the firth. Crossing a stone bridge, the carriage wound its way through a tidy kirkyard, where a half-dozen sheep were grazing between gravestones.

  The sunny skies of this morning had gradually filled with clouds as the day progressed. By the time they stepped out of the carriage, a soft rain was falling, and a fog was rolling in along the coast.

  “Why don’t you wait inside for me while I run up to the rectory for a quick word with Mr. Garioch,” Ian said, escorting Phoebe up the steps of the church. “I think the minister may be relieved to hear my mother has decided to forego having company in for dinner tonight. He was very accommodating in entertaining her while
we were searching for you yesterday.”

  On the way in to the village, Ian told her Mrs. Bell was both elated and exhausted after everything that had happened. She wanted to be surrounded only by family today. And Phoebe was happy with this arrangement as well. She didn’t completely trust her ability to sit across the table from Dr. Thornton at dinner and refrain from making one or two snide comments. She told Ian how she felt about the man’s manner, and he told her what he’d learned of the doctor’s affection for Alice.

  Poor man. Or perhaps, poor Alice. Phoebe decided it was not for her to judge either of them over a matter of the heart. In any event, she would try to think of the doctor in more favorable terms, considering Ian’s cousin was allegedly contemplating his offer of marriage. It was difficult to imagine a woman not rejecting him outright, but perhaps Dr. Thornton had some redeemable qualities Phoebe hadn’t been fortunate enough to experience.

  “You can wait for me in here, out of the rain,” Ian said, pulling Phoebe into his arms as they stepped into the small, empty vestibule of the church.

  “Where would I go?” She smiled up into his face, still reeling with the happiness of knowing this man was going to be her husband.

  “No walking in the kirkyard, no going back over the bridge, no strolling in the fields.” He placed a kiss on her nose, her chin, her lips, emphasizing every place he didn’t want her to go.

  “If you’re going to make your points so enticingly,” she murmured, sliding her hands up over his broad chest before slipping them around his neck. “I can think of at least a dozen more places I might possibly wander off to that you haven’t mentioned.”

  He guided her back into the shadows of the antechamber until she was pressed against a dark, paneled wall. Phoebe’s breath caught in her chest as he wrapped her tightly in his arms and crushed her lips beneath his own.

  Heat spread through her. This was exactly what she wanted. The time, the place, why they’d come here, all of that disappeared from her thoughts. She was only conscious of the excitement racing through her veins.

  Her hands seemed to move of their own accord, exploring beneath his coat, feeling the muscular lines of his back. He groaned his approval. Powerful arms gathered her closer to his body, pressing her to him until there was nothing left between their two hearts, pounding wildly as one.

  The embers of passion she’d felt last night were back, fanned by his embrace.

  He kissed her deeply, and she responded to him. She felt his tongue searching, tasting. As he pressed her back against the wall, his body warmed every inch of her with his heat. His hands glided down over her body—touching, possessing.

  “Phoebe.” He tore his mouth from her lips. “A wedding at Christmas is too far away.”

  It took a few moments to gather her wits and find her voice.

  “I agree,” she whispered against his throat. He smelled good, tasted good. “My brother Gregory and my sister Jo have both set the precedent of marrying privately first and having a public second ceremony later.”

  “This gives me another thing to talk to the minister about.” He smiled. “Perhaps we can have him marry us here.”

  “There’s always the blacksmith at Gretna Green to do the honors.”

  “I believe you may be on to something.”

  She was still tickled inside as Ian left her to go and speak with Mr. Garioch. Here they were—two adults, of age, independent, and free of impediments—talking about running away to Gretna Green.

  Trailing her fingers along the paneled wall, Phoebe stepped past the vestibule and into the back of the church. She felt like a traveler bathing in a fresh, clear lake after a dusty and arduous journey. Like a child seeing a rainbow after a flood. Like a writer hearing her poem recited for the first time. It was almost inconceivable that a night of horror in the Vaults should have led her down the road to today, to this happiness.

  Phoebe stopped beside the last pew. The wood was cool and smooth to her touch. The church was in darkness with only a few shafts of light stretching across the deep brown wood of the pews and the grey stone floor of the nave. The three tall, arched windows behind the altar and pulpit at the far end of the building had certainly held stained glass at one time, she surmised, but now they were filled with panels of the same dark wood that enclosed the bottom third of the interior walls. No decoration was visible anywhere, except for the carved stonework on the thick heavy pillars and the round arches that supported the roof.

  Phoebe made her way down the center aisle. Everything about the kirk reflected the somber seriousness of religious observance, including the vague scent of liturgical candles. The Firth of Forth—with its salty scent and tidal sounds not thirty yards away—might as well have been thirty miles from here; Phoebe could discover no hint of it inside. The silence was broken only by scratch of her soles on the worn stones. When she reached the transept, she saw a small alcove at the far end consisting of wide stone stairs leading downward.

  The crypt.

  As Phoebe moved through the murky light to the stairs, the cloak of happiness she’d been wearing around her shoulders slipped and fell away. Her memories of Sarah were back. Her friend had wished for her brother and Phoebe to come together. “Then we’ll be sisters for life,” she used to say. “Inseparable.”

  Phoebe fought back the sadness burning in her throat and thought of Mrs. Bell’s words about Sarah being with them. If that were true, she’d know about the engagement. She’d be happy for them.

  As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, Phoebe could see a hint of light at the foot of the stairs. Holding to the wall, Phoebe descended, and at the bottom she found an iron gate that swung open with an unexpected screech that made her jump when she put her hand to it. A few more steps and she was standing in the crypt.

  The space down here was darker than the church above, for only three tiny windows admitted any light. Still, she could see two arched alcoves on either side of the bisecting aisle. In the center, carved stone effigies of a knight and his lady lay side by side—likenesses, no doubt, of the inhabitants beneath—staring up for eternity at the black, barrel-roofed ceiling.

  The alcoves to the right and left held stone sarcophagi with heraldic emblems and names of family members displayed, but it was too dark for Phoebe to read any of them.

  She already knew from Ian that Sarah’s name had been left off to keep his mother from learning the truth. But now, with Mrs. Bell openly aware of all that had occurred, a beloved name would be added.

  The musty smell of death permeated the place, but she’d been in such places before and had been expecting it.

  Standing in the dark chamber, Phoebe knew she had to wait for Ian to come and show her where Sarah’s body lay. But for the time being, she shut her eyes and tried to close off her senses of touch and sound and smell, and open her mind to her friend’s presence.

  In the rose garden, Sarah was there. As she was in the morning room. But here in the crypt, Phoebe felt no sign of her friend. And then, suddenly, a pall she hadn’t expected descended over her, a chill so icy that Phoebe shivered and wrapped her arms around her body. Images of lost souls, weeping and bereft of hope, ran through her mind’s eye. The endless gloom of a bottomless pit yawned before her. A sensation of evil permeated the air, so close and so distinct that she opened her eyes and stared at each stone sarcophagus, half expecting them to burst open one by one and spew their contents of fragmented bone onto the shadowy floor.

  The low sound, barely more than a breath, made her whirl around. There, on the bottom stair, a man stood.

  Framed by the dim light coming from the church above, he was a statue, motionless as carved stone, a creature of death, risen from murky recesses of the crypt itself.

  Panic clutched her by the throat. She’d stepped into a nightmare. There was nowhere to go. Nowhere to hide. There was only one way out.

  “Mr. Garioch.” Ian’s voice rang down the stairwell. “I’ve been looking for you.”

  * * *
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br />   The minister hadn’t been in the rectory, and there was no sign of his housekeeper, which was to be expected, today being Sunday. Upon returning to the kirk, Ian found that Phoebe wasn’t where he’d left her, but he wasn’t surprised. A lamp flickered near the top of the stairs leading down to the crypt. Guessing she might have gone down ahead of him, he was happy to find Garioch with her.

  Apparently, she’d given the minister a start.

  “I must say I wasn’t expecting anyone in the crypt this afternoon,” the minister said as they all made their way back up into the church. “I thought I was in the company of a ghost.”

  Phoebe clung to Ian’s arm. Her face was pale when they came into the light of the lamp at the top of the stairs. She too had been frightened by the unexpected encounter.

  “Of course, I should not use the word ‘ghost’ without added clarification,” Garioch said.

  He never seemed to lose the suave, composed manner of speaking that drove Dr. Thornton mad, Ian thought. Even seeing a ghost was not enough.

  “Recent scholars of scripture tell us that the human consciousness doesn’t cease to exist when our bodies die,” he explained smoothly. “Lazarus, for example, retained his consciousness and responded when Christ called him from the grave.”

  “Yes, that is logical,” Ian said, gently trying to cut him off.

  “Therefore,” Garioch continued, “this permanent existence, in the presence of God, must manifest itself in a form fuller and richer than our current physical state. And yes, we believe too that some people choose to live in a manner that separates them from God’s goodness, a condition that continues for all eternity. That, my friends, is called Hell.”

  “Thank you, Mr. Garioch,” Ian interrupted, “for the clarification,” He really did not want to hear the sermon in its entirety.

  The minister appeared to pick up on Ian’s desire to change the subject. “But my alarm in the crypt just now stems from other sources. We’re seeing all sorts of people hugging the coastline as they travel down from the Highlands.” Garioch drew a kerchief from his pocket and ran it over his forehead and upper lip. “I’ve been thinking I may need to start locking the doors. I don’t want to find a family of vagrants here or in the crypts some morning.”