The Message in a Bottle Romance Collection

by Joanne Bischof

  Across the field, a single bird rose from the grasses and flitted away.

  “I know what that’s like,” Meg said, watching the bird as she returned the scroll and lid to the bottle.

  “To fly?”

  “No. To run away. ’Tis all I’ve done.” She paused, eyes on the clouds skidding across the sky in the same breeze that now rustled the grasses. “Do you ever wonder what would have happened that day, if…” She swallowed. Never before had she attempted to put this into words. It had just been a dark and leaden weight, hidden always in her own heart to carry.

  She sighed, trying again. “If the wedding had happened.”

  Duncan hung his head, expression grim. He pulled a handful of grass, twisting it into a rope. Listening.

  “I would be married,” she said. It seemed as foreign a thought now as it had that day.

  “To a scoundrel.” Duncan’s jaw worked.

  Now it was Meg’s turn to hang her head. “Yes,” she said. “But my family would be alive. Together. You would not be…” Her gaze shifted to his injured leg. He saw, and she scrambled for more thoughtful words, cheeks burning. “You would never have been harmed. And you would be playing your pipes across the highlands for all to hear, not bearing them like a mourning garment.”

  He winced. Instantly she regretted her words. She hadn’t meant them to be harsh. Only a lament for what he had lost, for she recalled the force of life and purpose in Duncan when he played.

  “And…” She closed her eyes and exhaled. “I would not have spent the past two years running like a coward.”

  When she opened her eyes, Duncan was beholding her with an expression so faceted and knowing, she could not speak.

  “Meg,” he said. He let her name linger there. It was cradled in his voice with such tender strength, she knew not whether to bury her face in her hands at how exposed she felt, or to dwell here in the fragile safety of the moment. Rise up and meet that strength, somehow. “Is that what you think?”

  “No. ’Tis what I know.”

  Duncan opened his mouth, a concerned expression on his face—but said nothing. For in the distance, a pounding sounded. A wild stallion ran toward the very place the starling had arisen from. Its chestnut coat and flaxen main shone with a halo of early sunlight.

  And in its wake, a massive veil of black-winged specks shot into the air. A dark cloud rising like a phoenix, taking ominous, changing shape low in the sky. Birds—thousands of them—headed straight for Meg and Duncan.

  Feathered applause swooped over them. So close Meg closed her eyes and ducked—but opened them again in time to see flashes of iridescent purple-green coming from their feathers. Pointed beaks, wings, and tails made them look like urgent stars darting across the sky. Starlings, they were, in a performance that captured Meg’s breath. The very second one of them changed direction, the rest condensed in near collision, changing direction at the last possible moment to follow the new course. Again and again they did this. Thinning, turning, flocking in an awe-striking dance.

  Startled into flight by something unfathomably larger than each one—yet as they flew, they formed a cloud greater still, webbing across the sky and hills as they swooped, spun, dipped, and soared together as one. One mammoth, marvelous creature. Enchanting. Terrifying.

  Duncan’s hand around hers squeezed. “Never let it be said, Meg MacNaughton…” He paused. “That when something sets a body to flight, there is not purpose in it.”

  His eyes were on her, suddenly, the birds disappearing beyond the village and river, on toward England. “There are those who will stand in awe at what the Lord intends. At the courage that rises.” He stepped closer, facing her. “There is a difference between fleeing”—his free hand lifted, brushing a hair away from her face, the backs of his fingers grazing her cheek—“and flying.”

  Hot tears stung Meg’s eyes. She blinked them away. Clasped her hands behind her back—willed them to cease trembling. Duncan’s words felt too large.

  A quickening in her heart harkened her to prayer. To grasp hold of this transformation he spoke of. Give me courage, Lord. Turn my fleeing into something good.

  She thought of what lay ahead. The Lake District. The Peak District, famous for highwaymen. And on and on until her thoughts reached the thing that loomed largest on the horizon: the city of London, bigger and grander than she could imagine herself a part of.

  Help me to fly.

  Chapter Eleven

  After spending the late morning bidding the Tinkers a long farewell, they’d embarked at last. The next three days on the road in Mrs. Bettredge’s carriage rolled rhythmically one into another. They passed through the crumbling remnants of Hadrian’s Wall built centuries before. Duncan couldn’t help but relish the irony. It had been built to keep wild and barbarous highlanders such as himself out of the more civil realm of England. And here he was, riding in a fine carriage toward the land’s very heart in London.

  Meg sat across from him stitching something upon her tartan scrap. It wasn’t long before Mrs. Bettredge discovered Meg’s gift of story weaving, and every landmark they passed became fodder for a fairy tale. Tales of scraggly tree stumps and shepherdesses and all manner of things.

  As they passed a ruined estate in Leeds, Mrs. Bettredge broke a rare silence. “Tell me of the ruggedly handsome man we left behind,” she said. “He’s full of tales of high adventure, I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “What, Jimmy?” Kate smiled preposterously. “Ruggedly handsome? Have ye set your cap at him, Mrs. Bettredge?” she asked with joyous scandal in her voice.

  “My cap is too old to be set for anyone, young lady.” The woman snapped her fan out, winking at Kate. A youthful spark shone in her smile-creased eyes. “Pray, Miss MacNaughton. Tell me instead, what possession of madness caused such a grand estate to be built upon such a forsaken hill?” She gestured out the window at the ruins.

  Meg paused a moment, and a tale spilled forth about a lone shepherd, who had nothing to his name but his staff. His master wouldn’t pay him in coin, instead offering him anything upon the hillside that he could carry. So he carried one stone after another until he’d built an estate on the hillside next to the sheepfold, living like a pauper king as he tended his woolly friends the rest of his days.

  “Clever man!” Kate clapped.

  Meg smiled. “‘Twould not be the first time a man has made a home for himself on the land he faithfully worked.” She looked Duncan’s way knowingly. “Even when he deserved much better.”

  Duncan shifted on his seat. He was hoping she’d forgotten his encampment in the woods. There was much that would be difficult to explain. But still she waited, a question on her face.

  Kate pointed to something out of the far window, asking Mrs. Bettredge about it. The two broke off into chatter, leaving none but Duncan to bear the weight of Meg’s unspoken question.

  At length, he answered. “Nor would it be the first time a man stayed to watch for someone he’d promised to watch for.”

  Surprise lit her face. She opened her mouth as if to respond but closed it again. Duncan restrained a laugh, enjoying the turn of roles a bit too much.

  “I…” Meg reached into her satchel, pulling out a canteen. She shook it. “We’re out of water,” she said. “And I daresay you all must be hungry. Is it time yet to stop?”

  “A fine idea,” Mrs. Bettredge said, and she thumped her cane atop the ceiling. The carriage stopped, and Duncan helped the ladies down.

  They picked their way over to a mound of rocks for a picnic lunch. But just as they’d settled, a mighty gust blasted debris into their faces.

  “Ach, ye monstrous bluster!” Kate clutched her skirts, hollering into the wind as if challenging it to a duel.

  “Come,” Meg said, tugging on her friend’s arm. “There’s shelter there!” She helped Mrs. Bettredge to her feet, placing herself as a buffer between the wind and the lady and holding her hand as she led the way to a chasm in the deep bedrock.

  T
he walls of sheer rock were topped in trees and draped in moss and trailing greenery, creating an open-roofed tunnel of sorts. And immediate respite from the wind.

  “Did you fear I would be blasted to smithereens?” Mrs. Bettredge patted Meg’s hand. “I’m not that frail yet, child.”

  Meg laughed. “On the contrary,” she said. “I was clingin’ to you for dear life!”

  Duncan caught her eye and her cheeks tinged a pleasant pink when he did. ’Twas good of her, caring for Mrs. Bettredge so.

  He journeyed farther into the chasm, a chill traversing his spine. The deep-earth path forked into a maze, and the walls soared higher in both directions.

  Meg released Mrs. Bettredge’s hand, looking to the top of the gorge they now stood in. “‘Twould seem we’ve found the entrance to the center of the earth,” she said, running her hand against the wall of cleaved rock.

  “Lud’s Church,” the coachman, Thomas, said behind them. “Not a church, mind you, though there are those who have worshipped here in hiding, in times past.” He hefted down a hamper of food on a table-like rock. “Watch for arrows of old. They say ’tis where Robin Hood once sheltered, too.”

  “Indeed!” Mrs. Bettredge brushed her hands together. “And is that water I hear? I declare I’m as parched as the Sahara. And if it’s good enough for a rogue like Robin of Loxley, well then. I’ve always wanted to be a rogue. Come.” She linked arms with Kate and met them at the fork. “You two go that way, we’ll go this, and see if we can’t find a stream.”

  Mrs. Bettredge and Kate were already poking their way through the muddy ground of the right fork of the canyon.

  Meg looked down their own canyon, and Duncan could feel the way curiosity pulled her on. Shafts of light filtered through the canopy of trees ahead.

  Duncan reached out his hand. “Shall we walk?”

  The corners of her mouth turned down in a deeply dimpled, restrained smile. “Nae. I’ll race ye. Like old times.” She darted away, skirts flying behind. And he followed. Down the stretch of ever-rising walls, like children running through corridors of a castle. Only here, in this earthen keep, he was laird and she was lady, and the world was theirs if just for a moment.

  They turned a bend, and Meg stopped suddenly at the foot of a mossy, gradual stairway. Laughter shone in her eyes. “‘Tis like the day we met,” she said. “D’ye remember?” Flyaway strands of her dark hair fell into her face.

  He furrowed his brow. This should be fun. “The day we met, ye say?” He paused, cast his eyes to the side as if thinking. Slowly he shook his head. Meg planted her hands on her hips. “Nae, I don’t seem to recall—”

  She swatted his arm. “Ye don’t recall nearly knocking me to my feet on the stairs.”

  “Oh, that. Yes, I remember very well a certain scullery maid. Very bonny indeed, she was.”

  Meg’s smile froze. She searched him and seemed to see the earnest threads beneath his jest.

  “And right clever I was to think so,” his voice grew serious. “For as the years drew on I saw she was bonny through and through. In her kindness…” He swallowed. He should not be speaking so. “Her spirit…” Meg’s hands dropped to her side. “Her soul.” He stepped closer to Meg. She turned her head ever so slightly, shifting her gaze away from him and to the wall beside them. He’d overstepped. He should stop. But pushing him like the mighty wind itself was the knowledge that he had only days left with Meg…and then she’d be gone.

  “That lass,” he said. “Aye, she was bonny.” He said. “But she was more than that, as I soon learned. She was true, and good, and showed me a light outside of the darkness I’d come from.”

  Meg lifted wide eyes to his. “What darkness, Duncan?” The melody of her voice was soft, curving up and then traveling down in the burr of their people. A question spoken in a tone not hungry for knowledge, but eager to share a burden. An invitation.

  For a second, he thought to tell her all. The people who had disowned him, the weight of their schemes. The details he’d never disclosed, for worry of burdening the MacNaughtons.

  But the way her eyes swam with a thirst for understanding, a tender care he’d known nowhere else…

  He opened his mouth to speak. To drag the truth by its chains from deepest part of him, raise it to the surface. The leaden words piled up on his tongue, ready to spill—when a sudden noise stopped them.

  Kate emerged from around the next turn, breathless. A somber look on her face.

  “Kate?” Meg said. “What is it?”

  “‘Tis nothing, I’m sure,” Kate said. “But we just met up with a fisherman. He asked if we were with the others.”

  “The others?” A foreboding swept through him as he stepped forward.

  Kate nodded. “A band of Scotsmen. Headed to London for the symphony.”

  Duncan looked to Meg, whose face was ashen. “It may not be Campbells,” he said, hoping it might bring some measure of comfort.

  “True.” Meg lifted her chin a mite. “Well. We can but go onward. Shall we?”

  Duncan nodded, and the threesome began the walk back to Mrs. Bettredge at a clipped pace. The merriment was gone. They would stop ahead for the night, as planned. But lodgings off the main road would be in order.

  One look at Meg and he knew it must be so. He would not take any chances with her. Not when her freedom, her reunion with Graeme was finally within reach.

  Chapter Twelve

  Ach, me bones,” Kate moaned dramatically. The coach clattered down a road so rutted, none had spoken a word for miles over the noise of it. “I’ll be shaken all the way to kingdom come!”

  Meg’s own head pounded, too. When Duncan had said “off the beaten path,” he had meant it. After making inquiries in the last village, they’d learned of a country inn that was seldom frequented because of the condition of the road leading to it.

  Meg laughed and slipped her arm through her friend’s. “Let’s hope you won’t be shaken quite that far. Unless ‘kingdom come’ is the name of the inn.” She pointed through the window, where in the high twilight, smoke curled from a red brick chimney poking up above a clump of trees.

  The road smoothed into a well-groomed drive. The wheels ticked across a bridge over a creek, and as they rounded the bend, a stunned silence swallowed them all. The inn was lovely, to be sure—window boxes spilling their blue bouquets down over the bricks, three stories of windows glowing soft yellow light from the boxlike structure. But the entire clearing was filled to the brim with coaches and wagons. Their carriage halted a ways from the open double doors, from whence strains of fiddles sang.

  Duncan eased forward, eyes narrowing as he scanned the scene keenly. Meg sensed the change in him—the peace that had finally found him miles after they’d left Lud’s Church, eclipsed now by sharp tension. “Quiet country inn, indeed,” he said.

  Their seats bounced with the driver’s dismount. As he opened the door, fresh evening air whooshed in. “My apologies, madam.” The coachman bowed toward Mrs. Bettredge. “I cannot draw nearer the entrance as there is no room, but I’ll dodge in and have a word—”

  “You’ll do no such thing,” Mrs. Bettredge said. “We’ve feet enough, haven’t we? We’ll walk.”

  The man offered his hand to help each of the ladies down. How he kept such a straight face in the wake of Mrs. Bettredge’s endless upturning of all that was proper, Meg did not know. She was thoroughly enjoying the woman’s surprising antics.

  “Before you know it, Mrs. Bettredge, you’ll be dancing a highland reel barefoot with the likes of us,” Meg jested.

  The woman’s solid form stopped, and she turned in slow delight. “Now that,” she said, “is a superb idea. I am a rogue now, after all.” With a wink, she led the way.

  Warmth unfurled from the door, the very energy of the assembly sending a thrill into the atmosphere. The others went in, but Meg turned, all too aware of Duncan’s presence behind her.

  She lingered on the step, the smell of sweet alyssum spicing the air
.

  “Duncan?”

  He gave another wary look around.

  “Is everything all right?” Meg stepped down to the ground, tilting her head.

  He shook his head, reaching his thumb and finger across his forehead as if to scrub the worry away. “Aye,” he said. “‘Tis fine. Not the hermitage we were wanting, but…it will be fine.”

  Meg released a soft laugh. “Hermitage, is it? Now if anyone knows a thing or two about living like a hermit, Duncan Blair, I suspect it might be you.”

  He smiled, but the reference to his shanty in the woods seemed to drive the shadow deeper within him. “Shall we?” He offered his arm.

  As she rested her fingers upon the sturdy cloth of his jacket, the single instant tore right down the middle. It felt at once the most natural thing in all the world—and the most terrifying. For the last time she’d taken his offered arm, their world had shattered.

  “Tomorrow, Duncan.” She smiled through the threatening panic, refusing to let it overcome the hope she’d begun to trust. “Tomorrow we’ll be in London at last. Tonight”—she gave his arm a gentle squeeze—“we celebrate.”

  The innkeeper handed over a single key on a hoop large enough to fit over Kate’s wrist. Their last room, and Duncan said he’d bunk beneath the stars.

  Meg would have protested, but she thought back to every place he’d slept along the journey. His open-air ruins back home. Sleeping outside at the monastery. Had he always craved such freedom?

  He carried Mrs. Bettredge’s trunk up the stairs, and Meg’s cheeks burned when Kate mentioned her state of dress within his hearing as they climbed. “We’ll have to shine you up for the symphony. These dresses of ours are fine enough for a country dance, but they may turn us away as ragamuffins in London!”

  But a quick glance over her shoulder told her he was busy easing the trunk around the hall corner and did not appear to have heard. Silly of her, anyway, to let her state of dress bother her. Her garments were plain but still held up, and that was all that mattered. Perhaps it would be dark enough at the symphony that no one would take note.