Or more accurately, he had hopes.
He and Brando maneuvered the fir tree into its customary spot and slowly eased the trunk down onto the cobblestones. While Duncan hammered the base around it, they held it in place, and a few adjustments later, Flora Macara tipped her head, strolled all the way around the tree and pronounced it straight enough at last. The four of them stood back, and the small crowd that had filed out of the pub nursing their drinks clapped sporadically or whistled before shuffling back inside, their feet stamping on the mat as they blew on cold-reddened hands.
Brice rolled his shoulders and his aching neck. “Tell me again why I keep letting you rope me into volunteering for more work?”
“You’re the one after redemption.” Brando clapped him on the back. “Are you out of shape now, mate or what?”
“If you want a go at me, you’ve only to say the word.”
“Naw. Thanks just the same,” Brando said, grinning. “I learned that lesson a long while back. Anyway, I’ll let Cait take you down a peg or two herself, now she’s back. I can stand and watch and enjoy the show.”
Brice wiped his palms on the rag he always kept in his back pocket while working at the garage. “Cait and I are good now. Or working our way in that direction. I hope.”
Brando sent him a searching look. “You showed her the house, then, did you?”
“The house has nothing to do with it. The two of us have other matters to settle first.”
“You’re daft, man.” Duncan, huddled like a tortoise inside of his roll neck sweater and anorak, stopped beside the two of them and frowned. “Here and you’ve been slaving away on that house for her these last eleven months. What are you waiting for?”
“The house is the topper, not the cake. I want Cait to believe in me without it.”
“Aye, but it’s nearly Christmas. Don’t women love nothing better than a great, grand gesture? You leave it too long and anything could happen. Donald could send Cait running off back to London, and then where would you be?”
“Leave the boy alone, you great oaf.” Flora strode toward the door to the Inn, her usual shapeless long skirt and drab, baggy sweater flapping around her. She rapped her husband’s temple with her knuckles as she swept past. “What you know about women could fit on half a cocktail napkin, Duncan Macara. Can’t think how I’ve put up with you all these years. Makes me wonder about myself sometimes.”
Brando laughed. “Why you’ve put up with him is the bigger question.”
The rest of them laughed, too, including Duncan, who raised his voice to call after his wife. “And I’m grateful you have, love. I truly am.”
“Well, so you should be.” Flora paused at the door and threw him a smile across her shoulder.
Her smile held so much love in it that Brice’s heart went warm. Maybe he was getting soft himself with Cait back home at last, but it struck him that he’d have needed to search a fair distance to find a better example of love than Flora and her Duncan. On the surface, they were as mismatched a couple as anyone could find. Duncan, still handsome despite his gray hair and stooping shoulders, couldn’t hold on to money to save his life, while Flora, plain-faced and raw-boned, wore clothes that had been washed and mended so often it was hard to imagine what they’d looked like originally. She wouldn’t part with tuppence unless she had to, not unless Duncan had his heart set on some new toy or bit of nothing. Or unless someone—anyone—in the glen found themselves in need. But as ill-suited as those two were on the surface, Brice could only hope that he and Cait would fit as well together when they reached their sixties.
He hoped they would reach their sixties together.
It still sat oddly to have worries about their future. Here in the glen, love was seldom in doubt. A given. From the moment they were old enough to hope, men and women alike lined up on the bank of the loch on Beltane morning, waiting for the day the veil would life away and the loch would show them the face of whoever they were meant to love. The gift of it took years, sometimes. Sometimes what was seen wasn’t wanted. And hadn’t that caused misery often enough?
Brice and Cait had never bothered looking. They’d never needed magic or a vision to tell them they were meant to be together, and all those years while others went down to the water, he and Cait had sat on the bank above, huddled in a blanket with their arms around each other, taking it for granted that they would build the future for themselves.
Brice had no intention of admitting to Cait that his faith hadn’t lasted. This past year when things had seemed so bleak, though, he’d needed the reassurance the loch could offer. He’d lined up for the Sighting on the first of May along with half the village and busloads of tourists that Elspeth Murray’s schemes and her American niece’s planning skills had managed to lure up to the glen for the occasion. And in spite of centuries of village tradition and all the happiness and heartache he’d seen the Sighting cause in the glen as he grew up, he had stood there at the water’s edge and found himself not quite believing. Then there Caitie had been, her face in the loch alongside his own as clearly as if she’d been on the bank beside him, so beautiful and dear it had been impossible to breathe.
He held that assurance close now, as he had all these long empty months without her. The promise that she’d come back to the glen, come back to him. Now that she was here, he had no intention of letting her slip away again.
That was why watching Flora and Duncan together warmed him, why he loved seeing how easily Brando and his fiancée Emma worked and laughed together. Brice hadn’t had many examples of good relationships in his own life growing up. His mum had run off when he was six, and the last memory he had of her involved sitting on the corner of the old cracked bathtub before she’d gone, watching her slather layers of makeup over bruises his father’s fists had left beneath her eyes.
Cait might have chewed the wrong end of the stick as far as Rhona Grewer was concerned the day she’d left him, but she hadn’t been wrong to think he was out of line for drinking that afternoon. He’d been drunk enough not to care that it was Rhona raising a glass beside him, and that had been too much like the path his father had taken. Brice was nothing like his father. Yet it was all too easy to live down to expectations. He’d been doing it all his life. That was all Cait had ever known about him.
Looking up, he caught Flora watching him with her head tipped in contemplation. “You want my advice, Brice MacLaren?” she said from the threshold of the Inn almost as though she’d heard what he was thinking. “Don’t be afraid to give Cait time to follow her heart. She’s a good girl. Always has been.”
She pushed through the door and went inside, and the three men stared after her awkwardly until Duncan cleared his throat. “Why is it,” he asked, “that women always think they know everything?”
“Usually because they do,” Brando said.
“Aye, maybe,” Duncan said, laughing and sending cloudlets of breath into the air, but then he shook his head. “Take it from me, though, lad, and never let your Emma know it. Keep the moral high ground, that’s the important thing, or you’ll never survive with your sense of worth intact.”
“I’d say the moral high ground is cold comfort compared to the warmth of a woman beside you,” Brando retorted, eyeing Brice with a worried frown.
“We can all raise a pint to that, and to getting the village tree put up.” Looping one arm around Brando’s shoulder and another around Duncan’s, Brice steered them toward the pub, though he knew his cousin well enough to suspect Brando had a lecture he meant to deliver. It had been Brando, after all, who’d picked Brice up after Cait had gone, who’d watched Brice trying to blame Cait, then Rhona, then Donald Fletcher—to blame anyone but himself—before he’d finally seen some sense. And Brando’d been the first to remind him that none of them were adolescents any longer, that if Brice wanted Cait or the rest of the village to take him seriously, he’d need to take himself more seriously first.
Which was a good reminder for the evening. Brice
still had work to do. Reaching the door of the pub, it was tempting to go inside where the fire was warm and half the village had already stopped in for a pint before heading home to eat, but he stopped and turned the other way. The sun had dropped behind the braes already, casting crimson bands across the sky, and there was still the DB5 to detail before the tree lighting started at eight o’clock. He also needed to pick up more of the shelving from his house and drop it at the Tea Room.
He hadn’t asked Cait if she was coming to the lighting, and he hadn’t invited her. But he could hope that she’d be there.
He said goodnight to Brando and Duncan and started back across the cobblestones toward the gate and the lane where he’d left his Land Rover parked.
“You’ll be careful with Cait, won’t you?” Brando called after him. “It’s not all about the two of you at the moment. She’s got a lot to consider.”
Brice turned back. “I know it. Which reminds me, it might ease her mind a bit if you’d consider finding a way to tell her you won’t be selling pastries to Rhona Grewer once the Tea Room is open again.”
“Even with the shop in Callander, I can’t fully support two chefs,” Brando said, ambling back to Brice and shaking his head. “Much as I wish business was that good. Emma needs the orders until she and Anna can get more events with catering on the books.”
“So have her make a deal with Cait instead. Rhona did fine selling groceries and scones to go, and Cait was always good to you—”
“She was good to the both of us.”
“Aye, and I was too stupid to see how lucky I was to have her.”
Brando stepped forward and clapped him on the shoulder. “She’s got a big heart, Cait does. She’ll forgive you eventually.”
“All I can do is the best I can,” Brice said, “and hope that will be good enough.”
Changes
“But the bravest man amongst us
is afraid of himself.”
Oscar Wilde
The Picture of Dorian Gray
The celebration of Christmas had only come to the Highlands recently, or rather, the public celebration of it had returned only in 1958. Whereas the abolition of Christian feast days in the rest of Britain had been long since repealed, in Scotland the kirk had continued to frown on any observances that went back to Roman Catholic traditions. Ironically, here in the glen and in pockets of other out-of-the-way places, even older celebrations had remained in place. In Balwhither, the winter solstice and the approach of Christmas still marked the cutting and lighting of the Yule tree in the courtyard of the Inn, with candles of hope for the return of the long, prosperous days and the remembrance of beloved friends and family lost, and a ball of mistletoe was cut from each year from oaks on the hillside to symbolize the promise of new life after the long months of winter.
The occasion made Cait think of her mother again, for many reasons, as she parked the car and walked alone in the darkness toward the Inn. The courtyard blazed with light, and already voices were raised in song, though not yet the Christmas carols that would be led later by the members of Cait’s old choir. These were rowdier drinking songs that went so well with the Highland coffees, spiced wine, warm grog, and hot Scotch toddies the Inn staff were passing around to the crowd gathered around the burning fire pots. Flames flickered gold over familiar faces, many of them people whom Cait hadn’t seen since her mother’s funeral.
Nerves slicked her palms with moisture and made her cold despite the layers in which she’d bundled herself before she’d left the house.
Still, it was better to get it over with. Like ripping a bandage off.
Smiling, she flicked the latch on the gate and went in, hoping most of the revelers would be too caught up in the occasion to notice her.
Elspeth Murray saw her straight away. Splitting away from a group that included her American niece Emma who’d come to the glen and married Connal MacGregor of Inverlochlarig House down at the end of the long glen road, Elspeth hurried toward Cait and pushed her arm through Cait’s elbow to draw her forward. “There you are,” she said. “I was so hoping you would come. Hoped you could talk your father into coming as well, but I suppose we can’t have everything. Not yet anyway.” Leaning closer, she added in Cait’s ear, “Now don’t you go letting yourself get nervous. Or caught up in sadness. This is a night for celebration. Everyone here will be remembering the last time they saw you, too, and they’ve already heard what Donald’s done. No one blames you for his decisions.”
Cait let herself be pulled deeper into the courtyard, returning the smiles and hugs and hands held out to greet her. Vision blurring just a little, she swallowed hard and blinked the moisture back, grateful to be home as the choir, dressed for the occasion in long white robes, took their places on one side of the tree.
In the midst of it all, Cait found herself, suddenly, standing in front of Brando MacLaren and a sweet-faced blond woman who she assumed must be the other American—the fiancée Brando had found for himself in Cornwall. The two of them were chatting with Anna MacGregor and her step-daughter, Moira. Brando, dressed in his usual kilt, boots, and leather jacket over a thick knitted sweater, swept Cait up and around and around and kissed her soundly on the cheek before setting her down again.
“It’s a sight for sore eyes, you are,” he said as Emma looked on, smiling shyly. “If you’d stayed away any longer, I’d have needed to come and drag you back from London myself. Have you met Emma, yet? The two of you should talk if you’re going to open the Tea Room back up again. She’s brilliant at making pastries, and we’d rather sell to you than to Rhona, if you’d find a use for something ready-made.”
Cait hugged Emma warmly. “Congratulations on taming the kilted beast,” she said. “You should know you’ve broken every feminine heart from here to Inverness—and I’d love to talk about pastries once I have my feet back under me a bit.”
“Any time,” Emma said. “Come up to the hotel for lunch. Or dinner.”
Moira MacGregor, her lovely, elfin face still mildly lopsided from facial palsy she’d been born with, ran to Cait and threw her arms around her. “Does that mean you’re opening the library again, Cait?” she asked. “Say you are.”
Cait squeezed Moira back, thinking of how many times her own mum had held her just like this, thinking how uncomplicated things were when you were Moira’s age. On the other hand, Moira had never let her courage fail her. Or lashed out at anyone unfairly.
Cait’s own doubts and nerves vanished just like that. “Absolutely,” she said to Moira. “What would the Tea Room be without the books?”
“There. You see?” Her face shining, Moira turned to Anna, who came to hug Cait, too, and though the two of them hadn’t had much time to get to know each other before Cait had left for London, Cait had always found herself drawn to Anna’s kindness and the little kernel of self-doubt she’d thought she glimpsed sometimes when Anna’s guard was down. A void of confidence that Cait had recognized in herself.
Of course, their circumstances were very different these days. Anna had married Connal MacGregor whose grandfather and grandmother, in turn, had been Chiefs of the clan MacGregor, making Connal the closest thing the glen had to a laird these days.
“And where’s Himself then?” Cait asked, looking around for the man, because in all the years he’d lived in the glen he’d never allowed himself to be far from his daughter, as much as he hated being out in the public eye.
“He’ll slip in quietly once the lighting is underway. That’s our compromise these days, now that the tabloid interest has mostly died down,” Anna said. “The paparazzi seem to have finally gotten used to the idea that he’s a settled family man with no intention of going back to acting. Still, he worries.”
She didn’t specify what caused the worry, but then she didn’t need to spell it out. Both she and Cait glanced down at Moira, whose fey, delicate features and long silvery hair increasingly resembled those of her famous mother, the actress Isobel Teague. Connal’s first wi
fe had been every bit as famous as Connal himself, and her death in a car accident had haunted Connal until he met and fell in love with Anna. Let himself fall in love with Anna.
Self-inflicted wounds, Cait decided, were so often the hardest ones to heal.
The thought was a bitter one made even harder to swallow as she spotted Brice walking toward her carrying a cup in either hand. It was strange how coming home again was making her aware of wounds she hadn’t even known she had inside her.
“I’m glad you came,” Brice said, stopping beside her. He handed her a cup of the spiced wine that she had always loved and kept the other for himself.
“I wasn’t going to come,” she admitted, gesturing around her, “but I’ve missed this. Remember how much we used to complain about being dragged out for all these village events? Now they’re among the things that make me thankful to be back again.”
She shifted uncomfortably as he searched her face, the fire in the nearby pot turning the amber rings around his honey brown irises to molten gold, and she could see the questions he was holding back, the sudden awkwardness and distance that stood between them. There was a time he would have said what he was thinking—a time when he wouldn’t have needed to say it aloud.
That was the most startling realization of all: that Brice had become someone she didn’t know anymore. But she wanted to know him.
She drew the cup of wine to her lips and took a cautious sip. It had cooled to the perfect temperature, tangy with orange juice, cardamom, cinnamon, and star anise. Heaven when her limbs felt cold and her throat felt dry.
“Thanks for this,” she said. “It’s perfect.”
“I remember.”
They both turned away as Duncan Macara stepped up to the makeshift platform that was used for so many of the village events and rang the bell to get everyone’s attention. He’d put on one of the ugliest of his Christmas sweaters, a red one with a tree that extended from collar to waist, hand-embroidered in long, awkward stitches and decorated with tiny pompom ornaments.
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